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Table of Contents
The Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 3
  • 10 January
  • 19 January
  • 20 January
  • 22 January
  • 26 January
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  • 30 January
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  • Conversation with Butler on 18 March 1940
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© 2025
7 September
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By Liakhovetsky, Ivan Mikhailovich (Maisky)

The Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 2

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7 September


Page 617

The Germans are having astonishing success in Poland. The Corridor has been occupied, Krakow has fallen, Łódź is under fire, the motorized sections of the German forces are closing in on Warsaw. The Polish government has evacuated and moved to Lublin.
And all this in the course of a single week!
The weakness of the Poles is quite striking. They are retreating everywhere. Nowhere can they hold out for more than a few hours, or one or two days at most. There have been no major, dogged conflicts. True, the Germans are pressing the Poles with their motorized forces and air force, but still… One can’t help thinking of Spain. Franco probably had no less technical superiority over the Republicans, but the Republican armies fought with astonishing stubbornness and true heroism! And what do we see here? Motorization is clearly not the whole story. It would seem that the current Polish state is rotten to the core. So deeply rotten that its army is unable to put up serious resistance to the enemy, even in the cause of the defence of national independence.
Yesterday, the British government granted Poland a loan of 8.5 million pounds. Is it not too late?
A tragicomic incident occurred early on the morning of 5 September. The sirens began blaring at about 6 a.m. and we all jumped out of our beds. Some of our embassy staff ran down to the basement with their families. We waited. All was quiet and normal. The all clear signal came after an hour and a half. By then my wife and I had already returned to the bedroom and got into bed. Later it transpired that there had been no air raid. A German reconnaissance plane had approached England’s eastern shore. Fighters had rushed to meet it. The German plane turned around and flew away. The fighters headed home. But as they approached their own shores, they were taken for enemy machines and were fired on by anti-aircraft guns. Fortunately, the mistake was promptly discovered, and none of the pilots seem to have been hurt.
Smuts has formed a government, and South Africa has declared war on Germany. Hertzog has decided to assume the role of loyal opposition for the time being. Will this last? We shall see.
[Once again, Maisky’s survival was hanging by a thread. The Daily Herald suggested that he was being recalled to Moscow to report. Beatrice Webb felt sorry for him, as his friends were bound to ‘fall off’. She was wondering whether their forthcoming encounter was ‘a farewell visit? I fear so … Poor Maiskys, we shall never see them again … With their friend, Litvinoff, they will disappear, let us hope safely, somewhere in the background of that enormous and enigmatic territory.’
Webb, diary, 3, 15 & 18 Sep. 1939, pp. 6720 & 6729–31.
In no time, however, Maisky bounced back, hoping that the inclusion in the Cabinet of Eden and Churchill, whom he had been cultivating for years now, would still bring the countries together.
See correspondence with both in RAN f.1702 op.4 d.1357 l.7 & d.1677 l.4, 7 Sept. 1939.
‘I earnestly hope,’ Churchill wrote for the first time on Admiralty notepaper, ‘all will go well between our two countries, and I am sure you will do all in your power to that


Page 618

end.’ Maisky was relieved to hear from Boothby that Churchill had indeed told him that ‘in those circumstances, it was the way he would expect that particular crocodile to behave’. If there was a change in government, Maisky threw down the gauntlet, ‘they might well be prepared to modify their attitude and even … co-operate with us’. ‘Winston Churchill,’ Maisky told the Webbs, ‘would be trusted by the Kremlin.’
Dalton papers, II, 5/2, letter from Dalton, 15 Sep.; Webb, diary, 2 Oct. 1939, p. 6743.
]
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Document Details
Document Title7 September
AuthorLiakhovetsky, Ivan Mikhailovich (Maisky)
RecipientN/A
RepositoryN/A
ID #N/A
DescriptionN/A
Date1939 Sep 7
AOC VolumeThe Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 2
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