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24 October

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By Liakhovetsky, Ivan Mikhailovich (Maisky)

The Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 2

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24 October

A strange war!

It’s as if you were on the western front. The bulletins of the French general staff contain phrases such as: ‘the night passed uneventfully’, ‘the day was marked by patrol operations’, ‘German forces about the size of a single company mounted an offensive’, etc. The bulletins of the German general staff are in the same vein.

In the skies, we also see only minor advance guard operations, with no serious consequences. The Germans announced proudly over the radio not long ago that they have shot down 37 French and 12 British planes in the course of almost an entire month. The English, in their turn, boasted some three days ago that of the 30 German machines that recently raided Scotland, 25% were destroyed! What astonishing successes!

The war at sea is a bit more serious. The British blockade is being conducted in earnest, and the Germans feel it. More than 20 submarines have been sunk by the British and the French. One hears that this represents between a quarter and a third of the German submarine fleet. This might be possible, were it not for the fact that the Germans have begun manufacturing submarines as quickly as they produce aircraft. Germany, in turn, has delivered a number of impressive blows to Britain at sea, of which the most painful was, of course, the

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loss of the Royal Oak at Scapa Flow. This was a truly superb strike on the part of Germany and a shameful failure for Britain. Still, even at sea ‘real’ war has not yet begun.

A strange war! One gains the impression that everything that is being done today is just an opening flourish: the main story is still ahead of us. Sometimes it seems to me that on the European arena, before my very eyes, two prize fighters are circling one another, sizing each other up, sniffing, spitting on their palms, and occasionally giving each other little shoves, as if to test one another’s vigilance and readiness for the fight. But the real fight has not yet started. Something is holding them back from delivering the first resolute blow; something restrains their energy, their will, and their muscles…

What?

If one listens to the local ‘sages’, there is a simple and natural explanation for everything.

The British and the French, they say, are counting on wearing their opponents down. The Allies have time on their side. Their aim, with minimum human losses to themselves, is to impose a long ‘siege’ on the enemy’s fortress by way of a blockade, pressure on the western front, air operations, and the economic and diplomatic encirclement of Germany. Let this siege last one, two, three or more years – the Allies are far richer than Germany in resources and capability, and in the long run they ought to win. That is why the Allies do not want to seize the initiative in any major, sensational operations on the western front or even in the skies. Major air initiatives might shock US ‘public opinion’, which is always taken into account here. Besides, winter is approaching. The mud and weather conditions make serious operations on the front impossible until spring. All the better. We shall save our strength for March. In the meantime, Germany will become not stronger, but weaker.

On the other hand – the same people say – Germany is slow to pursue the war in earnest, since Hitler fears war, would like to avoid it, and seeks ways and means to conclude peace. On 6 October, Hitler made his peace proposals. They were rejected by Britain and France. He refuses to accept, however, that his ‘peace offensive’ has failed. Germany has poor resources and difficulties with food supply. Within Germany, Hitler, Ribbentrop and the other adherents of the ‘Russian Entente’ line are wrestling with the Reichswehr leaders, the landlords of East Prussia, and the big industrialists, who dread ‘playing games with Bolshevism’. In the international sphere, Germany is isolated. Japan and Spain have turned their backs on Germany. Italy acts ambivalently. The USSR cares only for its own interests and is not going to make any sacrifices on behalf of Germany. Waging war means certain defeat for Germany, with all the ensuing consequences. Sure enough, Hitler is frantically searching for ways to annul the war through some sort of Anglo-French agreement. Despite

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disappointments, he still pins his hopes on the ‘rotten state of the democracies’ and continues to trust his phenomenal ‘luck’. That is why he is in no hurry to move onto the attack, all the more so as the approach of winter does indeed render large military operations difficult (although not entirely impossible).

Are these speculations correct?

Yes and no. They are correct in so far as they accurately portray the state of affairs and the alignment of forces on both sides. They are incorrect in so far as they leave out one very important motive, perhaps the crucial, most fundamental one, which paralyses the rivals’ will to fight.

This crucial, fundamental motive is a vague, elementary, deep-seated terror felt by the ruling classes on both sides of the front: terror of a proletarian revolution. Wherever I turn here I keep hearing that ‘in the final reckoning only Russia stands to gain from the war’, or that ‘when the Western capitalist countries cut one another’s throats, communism will triumph’, or else that ‘a long war will definitely lead to a revolution in Germany – and what will become of Britain, and of Europe, then?’, and so on and so forth. There is no doubt that similar conversations may be heard now among Germany’s ruling elite.

It is this fear which keeps the two ‘prize fighters’ from fully launching themselves on one another. They’re scared stiff. What will their fight lead to? The future is fraught with frightening possibilities. A terrifying spectre, the spectre of communism, haunts Europe – in a far more real and direct form than it did at the time of Marx’s Communist Manifesto. Is there no way of avoiding historical destiny, even if it means crawling on all fours?

There is no shortage of symptoms to indicate that the ruling elites on both sides of the front are trying even now to find a modus for a deal, an agreement.

Will they succeed? I doubt it. The imperialist contradictions within the dying capitalist system are so deep that constructing a bridge between them is difficult even for Chamberlain and Daladier. Barring a truly extraordinary turn of events – some sort of real political ‘miracle’ – a terrible, bestial, blind slaughter will begin in the very nearest future.

[Although Molotov kept Maisky very much at arm’s length, the ambassador continued to seek an improvement in relations through trade negotiations at his meeting with Halifax on 25 October and with Oliver Stanley, president of the Board of Trade. He also exerted indirect pressure on Halifax to replace Seeds in Moscow with an ambassador who enjoyed the confidence of the British government and yet was favourably disposed towards Russia. Aware of the gap between his position and that of Molotov, his correspondence continued to be highly censored. He nonetheless pursued his subversive line, overlooking Molotov’s instructions of 11 November to hint to Halifax that, since British policy was not defined by Churchill and Eden and remained hostile, ‘the Soviet government does not see at the present time encouraging possibilities’ for an improvement in relations.

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Carley, 1939, pp. 230–2; see also TNA FO 800/322 pp. 328–9, 20 Oct. 1939, ‘The Red Dean’ of Canterbury to Halifax.

Molotov’s reserve betrayed his belief that the British

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lay behind the Finnish intransigence in the negotiations that were under way. Vansittart – formerly an ally of Maisky’s, but now highly critical of him – alerted Halifax that Maisky ‘was going beyond his functions as a foreign ambassador’. He had been ‘entertaining several members of the Cabinet at different times (and incidentally boasting about it behind their backs), though the gambits that he plays on them are of course very different from his typical moves among the dupes’.

TNA FO 371 23701 N5717/5717/18, 25 Oct. 1939.

]

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Document Details

Document Title24 October

AuthorLiakhovetsky, Ivan Mikhailovich (Maisky)

RecipientN/A

RepositoryN/A

ID #N/A

DescriptionN/A

Date1939 Oct 24

AOC VolumeThe Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 2

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