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.

[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 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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