The ambassadors told C[omrade] Molotov that the Anglo-French side did not insist on including Switzerland and Holland in the list of guaranteed countries. So, one difficulty has been overcome.

On the other hand, no progress has been made on the issue of indirect aggression. On the contrary, all the proposals and modifications put forward by the British and the French looked more like a swindler’s tricks and ruses. Our negotiators rejected them in the sharpest possible terms.

The matter of the simultaneous implementation of the pact and the military convention fared no better. The British and the French proposed first reaching an agreement on the political side, and then moving on to military negotiations. Our position was that there should be one single agreement, divided into a political part and a military part. In addition, we made it absolutely clear that the military part held much more significance than the political one, and that it itself represented politics in distilled form. A pact without the military part would be an empty declaration. On this point, no agreement has been reached.

Indeed, the meeting on 17 July left such an unpleasant aftertaste that our people in Moscow have started wondering whether anything will come of these never-ending talks. Judging by some indicators, one cannot exclude the possibility that they may be broken off in the very near future. For now, let us wait and see.

Having succeeded in warding off the pressure for a treaty with Russia, Chamberlain reverted to attempting to deter Hitler from resorting to force by offering him various economic incentives. A series of intermediaries who had received Halifax’s blessing

Inskip papers, INKP2, diary, 27 Aug. 1939.

paved the way for a meeting of prominent British industrialists with Göring. Likewise, Rab Butler, Halifax’s parliamentary undersecretary of state, was actively engaged in seeking conciliation with Berlin and made a dubious comment about the negotiations with the Russians at a critical stage, which only served to enhance Soviet suspicions.

Stafford, ‘Political autobiography’, pp. 903–5; TNA FO 371 23072 C11018/3356/18, Butler’s conversations with Maisky, 4 Aug. 1939.

Meanwhile Horace Wilson and Hudson had – entirely on their own initiative – embarked on dialogue with Helmut Wohlthat, architect of Göring’s Four Year Plan. Their plan was to offer Hitler a full-blown economic partnership and recognition of German hegemony over Central and Eastern Europe, in return for Hitler’s renunciation of a resort to force as an instrument of international policy. The negotiations with the Russians had hardly regained their momentum when they were interrupted by a distorted press leak, which provoked a rebuttal by Hudson. Although Chamberlain condemned the unauthorized initiative, his fury appears to have been reserved for the liberties taken by Hudson, which had dealt a ‘disastrous’ blow to a policy he himself subscribed to. Henceforth, he would ensure that negotiations with Germany would be pursued through ‘other and discreet channels’.

Self, Chamberlain Diary Letters, IV, pp. 430–1, 23 July 1939. This summary relies also on an excellent and even-handed analysis by S. Newton, Profits of Peace: The political economy of Anglo-German appeasement (Oxford, 1996), ch. 5; see also Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, pp. 269–71; Carley, 1939, pp. 179f.

Though the negotiations never really got anywhere, they did succeed in fuelling Soviet suspicion and may well have contributed to the volte face in Maisky’s critical assessment of British intentions in the fortnight preceding the conclusion of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Maisky – who, as the following entry shows, continued to believe in an agreement right up to, and even after, the outbreak of war – was now attuned to Moscow. He saw Chamberlain ‘resuscitating his old policy of appeasement’ in an attempt to defuse the Danzig problem, which would obviate the need for an early conclusion of the Anglo-Soviet negotiations.

God Krizisa, II, no. 493, 24 July 1939. On the suspicion fuelled by the feelers, see Stamford papers, diary, 30 April 1940.

]