p An Anglo-American-Soviet agreement was concluded in May and published in June 1942 envisaging a second front in Europe that year in order to bring closer the victorious end of the Second World War. All the requisites for a second front were at hand: the German troops were deeply involved on the Soviet Front, the United States and Britain had built up , strong, well-equipped armies, and the Resistance Movement in Western Europe was powerful enough to support an allied assault against Germany.

p Yet the second front was not opened in 1942, and not even in 1943. A veil of secrecy has been cast over British and US wartime strategy, but the reason why the second front was not opened when most needed, cannot be concealed. The British and American rulers were determined to save their strength until the war’s end in order to promote their imperialist policy. More, they wanted to see the Soviet Union, their 103 ally, weakened and exhausted by the single combat. Of course, the truth was kept from the public, while a variety of spurious excuses was tendered. The nazi claim of an Atlantic Wall against a possible Allied landing on the mainland, was exploited to the utmost for this purpose, giving succour to Hitler, who grew more and more convinced that Germany had nothing to fear in the West.

p Just eight days after the Anglo-Soviet-American second front announcement, Churchill pleaded with Washington for a postponement, and had no difficulty in convincing the US ^v rulers. Churchill, they decided, would go to Moscow to mollify the ruffled feelings this postponement would create there.

p Churchill was anything but enthusiastic about his mission, but his hatred of the Soviet Union was of long standing, and he was pleased with the decision to delay the second front. He described his feeling during the flight to Moscow in his memoirs: "I pondered on my mission to this sullen, sinister Bolshevik State I had once tried so hard to strangle on its birth, and which, until Hitler appeared, I had regarded as the mortal foe of civilised freedom. What was it my duty to say to them now? General Wavell... summed it all up in a poem. There were several verses, and the last line of each was, ’No second front in nineteen forty-two’."  [103•1 

p The Soviet Government was informed of this during the tensest days of the Stalingrad Battle (in August 1942). Churchill promised the front the following year. His perfidy strained the system of inter-allied relations. In contrast, the Soviet Government observed all its commitments to Britain and the USA and briefed Churchill on the situation on the Soviet-German Front and the Red Army preparations for the counter-offensive at Stalingrad. As we shall see, the British Premier took this into account in his planning.

p While in Moscow, Churchill offered British aid in defending the Transcaucasus. British troops, he said, could be sent in from Iran. His true intentions, of course, had nothing in common with any desire to help. At that same time the US Government offered “aid” to defend the Soviet Far East and Siberia from the Japanese by setting up American air bases there. The Soviet Government declined both offers, designed to take advantage of Soviet difficulties to carry forward 104 imperialist policy, and this by typically imperialist methods.

p The official British and US war histories argue that the second front delay was compensated amply by the flow of supplies to the Soviet Union. Fuller writes:.... "In the autumn of 1942 the economic position of Russia was a desperate one, and had it not been for the steady stream of Anglo-American supplies then pouring into Archangel, it is doubtful whether the Russians would have been able to turn to their advantage the fantastic situation in which Hitler had placed his armies."  [104•1 

p That is contrary to the facts. Far from being poured in, supplies were being withheld just at that time.

p One of the excuses given for delaying the opening of the second front were the heavy losses sustained by what were really modest-sized British commandoes raiding the shores of Western Europe, e.g., the Canadian divisions at Dieppe. And one of the excuses given for the break in the flow of supplies were the heavy losses sustained by one of the convoys en route to Archangel.

p The convoy, consisting of 34 merchant vessels, most of them American, left Iceland on June 27, 1942, accompanied by 28 British and US warships under command of British Rear-Admiral Louis Hamilton. A strong cover force of battleships and ’aircraft-carriers cruised somewhat, to the west. When this convoy, PQ.-I7, was 200 km east of Medvezhy Island, the Admiralty ordered Hamilton to leave the merchant vessels to their fate and retreat west, because there were "grounds to assume" a German attack. The merchant vessels were told to "disperse and head for Russian ports”. The result of this was indeed appalling: German planes and submarines sank 23 ships. As for the German fleet in the fear of which the British cruisers and destroyers had fled, it never even appeared in the vicinity. Yet the whole thing gave the British Government the wanted excuse to stop the flow of supplies to the USSR.

p The British and American seamen who delivered the supplies displayed a high degree of courage, scorning danger, seeking honestly to help the Soviet people in their dedicated fight.

p Two convoys were sent to the Soviet Union in September and December 1942, but regular communications were not resumed until the beginning of 1943. ... "Until the late 105 spring of 1943,” notes US historian Ivar Spector, "the. Red Army had to rely entirely upon Soviet resources."  [105•1 

p When Italy entered the war in the summer of 1940, engagements were fought in Northern Africa with alternating success. At first, the Italians managed to push back the British colonial army, then the latter mounted a counteroffensive. But when General Rommel and his troops landed in Africa, the British were again flung back to the approaches to the Suez Canal. A threat arose to the Middle East. But the intensity of the fighting on the Soviet front prevented reinforcements from being sent to Rommel. Panzers painted yellow-grey, the "colour of the desert”, went to the area between the Don and Volga instead of Africa.

p While delaying the second front, the US and British governments, acting on their colonial interests, co- ordinated their operations in Northern Africa: the British would hit the Italo-German divisions at El Alamein, whereupon considerable Anglo-American forces under General Eisenhower would land in the enemy rear.

p Taking note of the information he received in Moscow about the projected Soviet Stalingrad offensive, Churchill timed the British push at El Alamein shortly before it. He intended to produce the false impression that the British victory in the African desert, really quite secondary in importance, was the turning point in the war. When word of the victory in Africa reached Britain, churchbells rang for the first time since the war began, while the British Prime Minister declared: "It marked in fact the turning of ’the Hinge of Fate’."  [105•2 

p When the El Alamein battle began, Rommel had 96,000 men and 500-600 tanks, whereas the British had 150,000 men and 1,114 tanks.  [105•3  Moreover, two-thirds of Rommel’s force consisted of Italian divisions, the men and officers of which had little stomach for the fight.

p The British offensive went off to a start on October 23, 1942. At once, the Italo-Gernlan forces retreated. Advancing on the heels of the enemy, the British troops covered 850 km in 14 days. By that time, November 8, three Allied 106 groups of armies landed far in Rommel’s rear. One group, from the United States, went ashore in French Morocco, while the other two, consisting of British and US troops from the British Isles, landed at Oran and near Algiers. Ignoring Vichy orders, the French troops stationed in Northern Africa refused to resist the Anglo-American landing.

p Yet the Italo-German forces retreated slowly. Caught between the hammer and anvil, they withdrew to northern Tunisia and were finally crowded into the Bona Peninsula, the north-eastern tip of the country, where they surrendered en masse on May 12, 1943. That was the concluding act in Northern Africa.

p What the United States and Britain would now do had been decided back in January 1943, at the summit meeting in Casablanca, where Churchill and Roosevelt decided to postpone the invasion of the European mainland until the summer of 1944. Strategically tenable and prepared by Anglo-US workers, soldiers and sailors, the invasion was replaced by exercises. Nor did the British and American commands make a secret of it.

p The Soviet Union was informed of the postponement at the beginning of June 1943. The head of the Soviet Government replied that it would create great difficulties for the Soviet Union, which was having to "do the job alone, almost singlehanded, against an enemy that is still very strong and formidable".  [106•1  In the next letter to the British Prime Minister, Stalin said: "I must tell you that the point here is not just the disappointment of the Soviet Government, but the preservation of its confidence in its Allies, a confidence which is being subjected to severe stress. One should not forget that it is a question of saving millions of lives in the occupied areas of Western Europe and ^Russia and of reducing the enormous sacrifices of the Soviet armies, compared with which the sacrifices of the Anglo-American armies are insignificant."  [106•2 

p The perfidy of the US and British governments was not confined to the postponement of the second front. Behind the back of the Soviet Union their representatives conducted secret negotiations with spokesmen of Hitler Germany along 107 several channels—through Spain, Sweden, Portugal, Switzerland and the Vatican. In many cases, middlemen were employed.

p The focal point in these negotiations was the meeting of Allen Dulles, US Intelligence chief in Europe, with Count Moritz Hohenlohe, Hitler’s emissary, in Switzerland. The main theme of their discussion was how to save the nazi regime in Germany and use it to establish US hegemony in postwar Europe—a gross violation of America’s and Britain’s commitments as allies of the Soviet Union.

p The Soviet policy was entirely different. The USSR did its utmost to invigorate the anti-fascist coalition, to support all peoples fighting the nazis. It did its utmost to promote the cohesion of the patriotic forces in the occupied countries and to pave the way.for the restoration of independent national states.

p The Soviet people showed a warm affection for those Britons and Americans who wanted the war to end as quickly as possible. Public opinion in the United States and Great Britain clamoured for the second front. So did the army ranks and part of the officers. Pressure increased and became an important element in home affairs.

p The Soviet Government met the wishes of French patriots eager to contribute to the war effort. A French air squadron, the Normandie, was formed as part of the Soviet Air Force and saw action on the Soviet-German Front. The courage of the French airmen was acclaimed by the Soviet people. The Normandie’s splendid fighting record cemented the SovietFrench friendship and contributed to the solidity of the anti-fascist coalition.

p The Soviet attitude to France was reflected in the fact that the USSR recognised the French National Liberation Committee before any of the other powers as "the representative of all French patriots fighting against Hitler tyranny".  [107•1 

p The Soviet Union aided the Polish and Czechoslovak peoples. The Polish Thaddeus Kosciuszko Infantry Division was formed in the Soviet Union in the summer of 1943. Fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Soviet troops, it acquired combat experience and later became the nucleus of the Army of People’s Poland. By the end of 1942 the 1st 108 Czechoslovak Battalion was formed in the USSR, and a ao-year Soviet-Czechoslovak Treaty of Friendship, Mutual Assistance and Postwar Co-operation was concluded in Moscow on December n, 1943.

The Soviet policy of combining the efforts of all freedomloving peoples, and its accent on honest fulfilment of allied obligations helped consolidate the anti-fascist coalition, adding to its strength and offering the peoples the prospect of liberation from the fascist yoke, deliverance from enslavement, and revival of national independence and sovereignty trampled by the German invaders.