During lunch, I spoke a lot with Halifax, who sat on my right as the senior guest. Halifax questioned me about the status of religion in the USSR (he is a very religious man, one of the senior representatives of Anglo-Catholicism). The talk then somehow turned to the fall of the Romanov dynasty, and I related many curious details to Halifax about the last period of tsarist rule in Russia. He displayed great interest in Rasputin

Grigorii Efimovich Rasputin, Russian mystic who served as personal and domestic policy adviser to Tsarina Aleksandra Fedorovna; murdered in December 1916, following a monarchist conspiracy suspicious of his intentions.

and in the correspondence between the tsar and tsarina, published in the early years of the revolution.

We spoke little about current issues. I merely asked Halifax whether he had reached any conclusions, following our talk of 21 May. Halifax didn’t give a straight answer, and asked in return: ‘So you are quite sure that a tripartite pact could avert the threat of war?’

‘Yes, I am,’ I answered.

Halifax had nothing to add, but he gave the impression that he was mentally underscoring some paragraph or other in the speech he’ll be giving tomorrow to the Cabinet. He is leaving Geneva today on the night train, he’ll be in Paris tomorrow morning at seven, and will fly from there to London at 8.30 a.m. on a plane sent for him from England so that he can attend the Cabinet meeting at eleven. That’s what modern transport can do!

Bonnet told me over lunch that after speaking to me, Halifax had reached the definitive conclusion that a tripartite pact was essential, and that he would report to the Cabinet tomorrow along these lines. Bonnet himself is also leaving for Paris tonight in order to exert pressure on London after the governmental meeting ‘if need be’. What a hero! What an ardent advocate of the tripartite bloc!

[Halifax had urged the Cabinet to reach a decision before his departure for Geneva, scarcely concealing his ‘strongest possible distaste’ for an alliance, which would amount to ‘acquiescing in Soviet blackmail and bluff’ while closing all doors to conciliation with Germany.

TNA EP (36) 48 in FO 371 23066, C7499/3356/18, 19 May 1939.

In Geneva, however, Maisky found Halifax to be more amenable and ‘much freer than at the FO’. Expressing his ‘personal opinion’, he made it plain to Halifax that an alliance was a sine qua non, for if Russia ‘was to abandon her position of isolation & thus her freedom of action she must be certain that what took its place did not endanger her position’. The only way to prevent the outbreak of war – the main Soviet objective – was through ‘a concentration of powerful forces on the side of peace as would crush any hope of victory for the aggressor’. Reporting on his conversation with Maisky, Halifax – oblivious to the more pressing Soviet objective of forestalling Anglo-German collusion – preferred to attribute Soviet rejection of the proposed British guarantees to a fear that they would not cover a German attack on the Soviet Union through a third country.

Maisky tailored his report home to suit the views of Molotov and Stalin, with which he had become acquainted during his latest sojourn in Moscow. The report, based on information he had gleaned from Churchill’s circles before his departure for Geneva, maintained that Chamberlain was ‘being pushed all the time into a policy which he does not like, and hates abandoning the last bridges which might still enable him to renew his former policy’. It was ‘perfectly obvious’, Maisky concluded, that the British government was ‘avoiding a tripartite pact purely out of a desire not to burn its bridges to Hitler and Mussolini’. He deliberately withheld the information that, notwithstanding Chamberlain’s efforts ‘to avoid a war alliance’, his own sources were convinced that the prime minister would ‘have to do what Stalin wants’.

God Krizisa, I, no. 366; TNA FO 371 23066 C7522/3356/18; Harvey, Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey, pp. 37–40; Amery papers, diary, AMEL 7/39, 19 May 1939.

Indeed the records describe Maisky emerging from the talks optimistic, convinced that Halifax had appreciated his arguments and would make ‘a favourable report to the Cabinet’. Journalists expected an agreement to be concluded within a week or two.

The Times, 22 May 1939; Bilainkin, ‘Mr Maisky sees it through’.

In Chamberlain’s entourage, however, they were only too familiar with Halifax’s tendency to change his tune depending on whom he saw last (not to mention whom he was addressing). Halifax’s shift towards the Soviet position occurred after he had conferred with Bonnet and Daladier in Paris on the way to the League meeting. Both stood fast by the Soviet proposal and warned that a failure to reach an imminent agreement might tempt Stalin either to retire into isolation and ‘let Europe destroy itself if it would’, or (worse still) to reach accommodation with Germany.

TNA FO 371 23066 C7551/3356/18, 21 May 1939; see also a paper by the French chief of staff, in DDF, 2 Serie, XVI, Doc. 268, 24 May 1939.

Chamberlain was indeed disappointed by Halifax’s failure to ‘shake Maisky’ from his demand for an alliance. Yet, guided by domestic considerations, he ‘very reluctantly’ conceded that it would be most difficult to reject the Soviet proposal. He remained, however, deeply suspicious of Soviet aims. As Maisky had correctly surmised, above all he was concerned lest an alliance ‘make any negotiation or discussion with the totalitarians difficult if not impossible’. This indeed figured prominently in Halifax’s presentation in Cabinet of the ‘pros’ and the ‘cons’ of an alliance. However, it was outweighed by the grim realization that an alliance had become indispensable if Hitler was to be deterred.

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TNA FO 371 23066 C7591/3356/18, 22 May 1939; Self, Chamberlain Diary Letters, IV, pp. 418–19.

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