p The world was fast drifting to war. London and Paris knew that Hitler had decided to attack Poland, that a mobilisation was under way in Germany, and that she was quite ready to open hostilities at the end of August. The Soviet government likewise had rather complete and precise information about the military plans and preparations of the Nazis.^^104^^

p Although the British government did, finally, accept, on July 25, 1939, the Soviet proposal for negotiations of military representatives of the USSR, Britain and France, that did not mean at all, as stated earlier on, that Chamberlain 238 had, indeed, decided to agree on Co-Operation with the USSR. One characteristic fact was that British and French military representatives had taken 17 days to reach Moscow. Military conversations could not start until August 12. The very composition of the British and French military missions showed that Britain’s and France’s attitude to these negotiations was not serious. At a meeting of the British government’s Foreign Policy Committee on July 10, the Minister for Coordination of Defence Lord Chatfield suggested that military conversations would have to be conducted on the level of Deputy Chiefs of Staff because of their complexity.^^105^^ However, military representatives that were ultimately sent to Moscow were of a far lower rank. The British delegation was led by Admiral Drax. Even Lord Strang had to admit in his recollections that the British government had not wanted to conclude any military agreement with the USSR. That was why a military mission of an "inadequate standing" with instructions of a "limiting character" was sent to Moscow.^^106^^

p The French military mission, led by General Doumenc, member of the French Supreme Council, produced no better impression. The Soviet Ambassador to France, Surits, reporting the make-up of the French mission to Moscow, said it showed that the French government must have set a "modest programme" for it to work on.^^107^^

p Information now made public about the instructions which had been given to the British and French military delegations bore out this assessment.

p The British delegation’s instruction had been examined at a British Cabinet meeting on July 26. It is worth pointing out that the minutes of that meeting contained not a single word about Britain’s interest in the successful completion of the negotiations and in the signing of an effective military convention. That put it beyond all doubt that the British government had not set itself such a task at all. Halifax confined himself to noting in his speech that the opening of the military conversations would have a good effect on world opinion.^^108^^ So the only concern of the British government was to mislead both the Soviet government and British public opinion, while trying to reach an understanding with the Nazi Reich (that was just the time when Wilson’s above-stated proposals to the Nazi omissar Wohlthat had been made).

p The debate on this issue at the Cabinet meeting predetermined the instruction to be given to the British military mission. The instruction slated, for example: "The British government is unwilling to enter into any detailed commitments which are likely to tie our hands in all circumstances.” Although the political discussions had been suspended as early as August 2 (William Strang returned to London) and the British government did not propose to take any initiative towards their resumption, the British military delegation was instructed until they were over to "go very slowly" with the military conversations.^^109^^ That was how the British diplomacy created a "vicious circle" at the talks.

p All the British government still intended to conduct with the USSR was "conversations for the sake of conversations”. Refferring to the object of these “conversations”, Halifax pointed out that "so long as the military conversations were taking place, we should be preventing" a rapprochement between Germany and the USSR.^^110^^

p Neither did the instructions to the French military mission provide for an effective military convention to be concluded. All referred to was a set of items of secondary importance, as the lines of communication with the USSR, or action in the Baltic against the German sea routes.^^111^^ Naturally, such instructions were utterly inadequate for the talks to be conducted successfully and for a military convention to be concluded.

p British general H. Ismay, having studied these instructions, wrote: "The document strikes me as being couched in such general terms as to be almost useless as a brief: it deals solely with what the French wish the Russians to do, and throws no light on what the French will do.” When, talking to the French generals Jamet and Doumenc, Ismay asked what the French proposed to say about the contribution of France and Britain, Jamet "smiled and shrugged his shoulders”, and Doumenc said: "Very little. I shall just listen.” "^^2^^

p Once informed of the instructions to Drax, Ambassador Seeds could not but come to the conclusion that they meant creating a hopeless deadlock at the talks which would be immediately obvious to the Soviet government, too. There is no doubt, he wrote to London on August 13, that under such conditions the "military talks are likely to produce no 240 result beyond arousing once again Russian i’ears that we are not in earnest, and are not trying to conclude a concrete and definite agreement". ^^113^^

p The principal objective of the British military mission was to keep on creating a semblance of negotiating until autumn rains which, as British military experts believed, would make Germany’s attack on Poland virtually impossible. Thereupon, the negotiations with the USSR were to have been suspended in the hope of overtaking the Nazi Reich in the arms race to some extent until the subsequent spring and also coming to terms with it on a division of the spheres of influence. The Director-General of the British Territorial Army, General W. Kirke, declared that by that spring Britain would have become strong enough militarily "not to need any more Russian help".^^114^^ Ambassador Seeds also noted in one of his letters to London that the military conversations "might be prolonged sufficiently" to tide over the nearest dangerous period.^^115^^ The Foreign Office even informed the U.S. Embassy in London that the British military mission "has been told to make every effort to prolong its discussions until October 1." ^^116^^ A member of the French military mission in Moscow General Beaufre and the French Ambassador in Warsaw pointed out in their recollections that the British government was concerned, above all, with gaining time in the military conversa- tions. ^^117^^

p The British plans became known to the Nazis as well. For example, the German Ambassador in Moscow, von Schulenburg, cabled to Berlin to say that he had been informed by British military sources that "from the very start the military missions were under instruction to go slow in Moscow and to drag out the conversations until October, if possible".

p It was understood perfectly well in London and Paris that the central problem in the negotiations would be that of the passage of Soviet troops through the territory of Poland to engage the German troops. The Soviet government, as has been shown earlier on, had raised the matter back in 1937 and also in 1938 in connection with possible Soviet assistance to Czechoslovakia. The same issue was raised by the French, too, in their note of July 11, 1939, to Britain. William Strang reminded Halifax of that problem on July 20 just when the British government was 241 drawing up the instruction to its delegation at the military conversations. "The military negotiations will probably not be brought to a conclusion,” Strang wrote, "until it can be agreed, for example, between the Soviet Union and Poland that the Soviet Union will have passage through at any rate a section of Polish territory in the event of a war in which Poland is involved on our side." ^^118^^

p However, no steps were suggested either by the British or by the French government towards resolving the issue.

p The British government had virtually brought the political discussions into an impasse by the stand it had taken on guarantees for other nations in the event of indirect aggression. As far as the military conversations were concerned, it did want to have them deadlocked on the issue of passage for Soviet troops through the territory of Poland. Besides, London was striving to put the blame for the breakdown of the talks on the Polish government because its abstractionist position furnished enough reason for doing so.

p One cannot fail to note that having dispatched their military mission off to Moscow with an instruction that doomed the talks to failure, all British ministers (that is, the British government as a whole) went on holiday, by tradition, early in August. And that at a time when London knew that Nazi Germany contemplated an attack on Poland before they would be back from their holiday! Just as there is a notion of "diplomatic sickness" in historical vocabulary, so there is ample reason to speak of the British government’s "diplomatic holiday”. The whole point was this: howcould the British government be reproached with having failed to offer any resistance to German aggression when it was on its statutory holiday? All that meant that the British government was not proposing to make any change in the instruction to its military mission even if Nazi Germany really decided to attack Poland at the end of August, as planned (which was well known to London).

p The Soviet Union’s altitude to the military conversations was quite different. On August 2, 1939 the composition of the Soviet military delegation was endorsed by People’s Commissar for Defence Marshal K. Y. Voroshilov.

p The General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces had prepared a detailed plan of military co-operation of the Three Powers in time for the talks. That was a clear indication of 242 the Soviet government’s keen interest in bringing the talks lo conciusion as soon as possible and thereby preventing the Nazis from starting the war.

p At the same time the Soviet side could not help being alerted by the true intentions oi the British and French governments. So one objective the Soviet military delegation had to achieve was to hnd out these intentions of the British and French missions so as to avoid being misled.

p The Soviet-British-French conversations opened in Moscow on August 12, 1939. The head of the Soviet military mission, Voroshilov, proposed, first of all that they should open with a statement of the powers the delegation had. Those of the Soviet representatives were full and comprehensive. However, it turned out that the head of the French delegation, Doumenc, was authorized only to negotiate, but not to sign any agreements. Drax had arrived in Moscow without any powers at all (he had to declare that he would ask for them and present them subsequently).

p When the discussions on the substance of the matter opened, the head of the Soviet military mission asked the British and the French to state their proposals regarding the steps which, in their opinion, should assure a joint organisation of defence by the contracting parties, that is, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. "Do the missions of Britain and France have appropriate military plans?" Voroshilov asked. The head of the Soviet military delegation underlined that the Three Powers had to work out a joint military plan to meet the contingency of aggression. "This plan must be discussed in detail,” he said, "so we must come to agreement, sign a military convention and go home to wait for the course the events will take, sure of our own strength." ^^119^^

p It turned out that the British and French delegations had arrived in Moscow without any detailed plans of military co-operation of the Three Powers. That fact could not, of course, fail to alert the Soviet delegation no less than the absence of the requisite powers.

p What the head of the French delegation general Doumenc announced at the talks on August 13 had nothing to do with France’s real plans and intentions. As stated earlier on, the Western powers had agreed between them long in advance that, in the event of war, they would stick to purely defensive tactics, pinning their greatest hopes on 243 a blockade. Doumenc, however, asserted that the French Army, 110 divisions strong, would, having first checked enemy advance on its line of fortifications, "concentrate its forces in places convenient for tank and artillery action and then go over to a counter-offensive”. Should, however, Lhc bulk of the Nazi forces be channelled eastwards, France "will throw all of her forces into an offensive against the Germans.” ^^120^^ That statement was a premeditated attempt at misleading the Soviet government.

British General Heywood announced that Britain had as few as five infantry divisions and one motorised division at the time. ^^121^^ This statement signified that in the event of war Britain virtually intended to keep out.