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"We will get along well with Marshal Stalin and with the entire Russian people"

Allies of the USSR in World War II. Part One: Roosevelt

The day before, on April 12, it was 70 years since the termination of the political activity of the 32nd US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; 10 years later, only a week earlier, on April 5, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ended his active political career. Roosevelt's presidency was interrupted by death, Churchill's leadership by old age (he died a decade later, in 1965, at the age of 90). One way or another, both dates are an occasion on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Victory, which the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition celebrate separately, to recall that in the person of both the American president and the British prime minister, the Soviet people had not only brilliant representatives of competing systems, but also outstanding statesmen who sincerely admired the feat of the USSR.

“The most important event is the crushing counteroffensive of the great Russian army”

Throughout the war, the parties argued, sometimes fiercely, about the volume of supplies to the Soviet Union from the United States and the Kingdom of weapons and materials, about the opening of a second front, separate negotiations with Germany and the post-war order of the world, specifically Europe. But from the very beginning, from 1941, Roosevelt took an unequivocal and unshakable position: America is an ally and assistant to Soviet Russia, in which he saw a potential "great society." We emphasize this because not everyone shared the president's benevolence towards the "class hostile" state. Thus, the future successor to Roosevelt in the presidency, Senator Harry Truman, did not hesitate to tell The New York Times: “If we see that Germany is winning, then we should help Russia, and if Russia wins, then we should help Germany, and so so let them kill [each other] as much as they can!”

The volume of American deliveries to the Soviet Union during the war years amounted to more than $ 11 billion in 1940s prices.

By November 1941, Roosevelt assured Stalin of the determination of the American government to provide the USSR with an interest-free loan of $1 billion. In total, during the years of the war, under the Lend-Lease program, the United States sent military and civilian equipment, explosives, materials, fuel, food, etc. to the Soviet Union. more than $11 billion (multiply this amount by ten to present the volume of supplies in modern prices).

Today, we often point to the historical ingratitude of the Americans, who appropriated the overall victory of the Allies over the Third Reich. However, it is enough to read the texts of Roosevelt's regular addresses to his people (they went down in history as "Conversations by the Fireplace") to make sure that he honestly - and with admiration - gave undeniable priority in the fight against fascism to the Soviet people. April 1942: “On the European front, the most important event of the past year, without a doubt, was the crushing counteroffensive of the great Russian army against the powerful German grouping. Russian troops have destroyed and continue to destroy more manpower, aircraft, tanks and guns of our common enemy than the rest of the United Nations put together. September 1942: “The Russians exterminate more Nazi soldiers, destroy more enemy planes and tanks than Hitler's opponents on any other front. The Russians fight not only bravely, but skillfully. Despite all the temporary setbacks, Russia will stand firm and, with the help of its allies, will finally drive every last Nazi from its land.” December 1942: “The successes of the Red Army in this war represent the outstanding military achievements of recent centuries. For 18 months, she defends her fatherland against the attack of the strongest military enemy in history. In the course of the Battle of Stalingrad, which went down in history forever, she not only stopped the enemy, but also launched a counteroffensive, which is now developing along the entire huge front - from Leningrad to the Caucasus. The Red Army, its valiant soldiers, men and women, its talented military leaders, supported by the efforts of all Russian citizens - men, women and children, laid the foundation for the inevitable victory over Hitler's army.

"The successes of the Red Army in this war represent the outstanding military achievements of recent centuries"

The same assessments of superlatives are found in the personal correspondence of Roosevelt and Stalin. August 1942: "The United States is well aware of the fact that the Soviet Union bears the brunt of the struggle and the heaviest losses throughout 1942, and I can report that we are very delighted with the magnificent resistance that your country has shown." February 1944: “The magnificent victories achieved by the Red Army under your leadership were an inspiration to everyone. The heroic defense of Leningrad was crowned and rewarded by the recent crushing defeat of the enemy at the gates of this city. As a result of the victorious offensive of the Red Army, millions of Soviet citizens were liberated from slavery and oppression. These achievements, together with the cooperation agreed upon in Moscow and Tehran, ensure our final victory over the Nazi aggressors."

"The soul and heart of Russia have their true representative in Stalin"

For all the difference in origin and fate, the aristocrat Franklin Roosevelt and the revolutionary Joseph Stalin were somewhat similar to each other: both secretive, cautious, pragmatic to the marrow of their bones. Perhaps that is why there was more unanimity and warmth in relations between the President and the Presovnarkom than in relations between Stalin and Churchill. Once, when his assistant remarked that Stalin was a bandit who should not be dealt with like a gentleman, Roosevelt retorted: “No, we will treat him exactly like a gentleman, and he should gradually stop being a bandit.”

They say that the anecdotal episode significantly influenced the tone of the relationship between the two leaders. In the hardest year for the USSR in 1942 (the Red Army crashed near Kharkov, Sevastopol and Rostov-on-Don were surrendered, the Germans reached the Volga near Stalingrad), Stalin sent Roosevelt a copy of his favorite pre-war film, Volga-Volga. The President guessed the trick when, getting acquainted with the tape in translation, he came to the verses of one of the main characters:

America gave Russia a steamboat -

Steam from the nose, wheels in the back

And terribly, and terribly, and terribly quiet running!

"We will treat him like a gentleman, and he should gradually stop being a bandit"

Stalin delicately, with humor, in a friendly way, hinted to his overseas colleague about delays in deliveries and about delays in opening a second front.

In a Christmas Fireside Chat in December 1943, Roosevelt told the Americans: “To put it simply, I got on very well with Marshal Stalin. This person combines a huge, unyielding will and a healthy sense of humor; I think the soul and heart of Russia have their true representative in him. I believe that we will continue to get along well with him and with the entire Russian people.”

The president and the general secretary, indeed, "got along very well." A month before the Christmas "talk", in November 1943, during the Tehran conference, Roosevelt, for security reasons, was accommodated in the Soviet embassy. And during the Yalta Conference in February 1945, both allies, in front of the rest of the participants, closed for as much as 23 minutes in the American "half" for secret bilateral negotiations, so that the wounded Churchill had to carefully pretend that nothing extraordinary had happened.

Before the death of Roosevelt, who due to the disease of polio spent almost a quarter of a century in a wheelchair, there were only two months left. According to the memoirs of the legendary Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko, visiting the sick president during the Yalta Conference, Stalin quietly said: “Well, tell me, why is this person worse than others, why did nature punish him? Is it true that the president is not from the British? (The Roosevelts have Dutch roots. - Approx. ed.). However, in his behavior and manner of expressing thoughts, he is more like an Englishman than Churchill. The latter somehow has less control over his emotions. Roosevelt, on the contrary, is the very prudence and laconicism.

Mourning was declared on the day of Roosevelt's funeral in the USSR

As if returning well-deserved compliments, the president told his son Elliot about Stalin: “This man knows how to act. He always has a goal in front of his eyes. Working with him is a pleasure. No roundabouts. He has a thick deep voice, he speaks slowly, seems very confident in himself, unhurried - in general, he makes a strong impression.

Years later, in the eyes of the president, the bandit turned into a trustworthy gentleman. “Under the leadership of Marshal Joseph Stalin, the Russian people showed such an example of love for the motherland, firmness of spirit and self-sacrifice, which the world has not yet known. After the war, our country will always be happy to maintain relations of good neighborliness and sincere friendship with Russia, whose people, saving themselves, help save the whole world from the Nazi threat, ”Roosevelt said in Fireside Conversations in July 1943.

The American president had no idea of ​​fighting the Soviet Union after the joint defeat of Hitler, hot or cold. He valued the friendly ties of the two leaders and the two peoples, which were gained through the bloody war, and saw the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and China as guarantors of global peace and prosperity. When Soviet intelligence reported to Stalin about the Allies' separate negotiations with Himmler, Roosevelt hastened to send a conciliatory telegram to the Kremlin: "In any case, there should be no mutual distrust, and minor misunderstandings of this nature should not arise in the future." The Soviet leader received the telegram on April 13, the day after Roosevelt's death: he dictated it a few hours before his death.

Mourning was declared in the Soviet Union. On April 15, the day of the president's funeral, several hundred people gathered at the American embassy in Moscow. “In President Franklin Roosevelt, the Soviet people saw an outstanding political figure and an adamant champion of close cooperation between our three states,” Stalin wrote to Winston Churchill. – The friendly attitude of President Roosevelt towards the USSR will always be highly valued and remembered by the Soviet people. As for me personally, I especially deeply feel the weight of the loss of this great man - our mutual friend.

At the Potsdam Conference, Roosevelt's successor Truman told Stalin that America had acquired nuclear weapons.

A little over three months later, at the Potsdam Conference of the Victorious Countries, Truman told Stalin that America "now has a weapon of extraordinary destructive power" - atomic weapons. In March of the following year, 1946, at Westminster College, Missouri, Churchill delivered the famous Fulton speech: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended on Europe. On the other side of the curtain are all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe - Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, Sofia. All these famous cities and the populations in their districts have come within what I call the Soviet sphere, all of them in one form or another are subject not only to Soviet influence, but also to the significant and increasing control of Moscow ... The Communist Parties, which were very are few in all these states of Eastern Europe, have attained an exceptional power, far outnumbering them, and everywhere strive to establish totalitarian control. Almost all of these countries are run by police governments, and to this day, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy in them.

The Cold War has begun. Without Roosevelt, there was no one to stop her. No wonder there are rumors that the president was killed: an autopsy was not performed, and the memorial service was held with a closed coffin.

In the coming days, read the next part of the historical review - about the role of Winston Churchill in the victory over fascism.

It is not customary to talk much about the help of the allies of the USSR during the Second World War. However, it was, and was considerable. And not only within the framework of Lend-Lease. Food, medicines, military equipment were delivered to the Soviet troops.

As you know, there is only one step from love to hate. Especially in politics, where it is quite permissible to smile at those who were vilified yesterday as fiends. Here we are, if we open the Pravda newspaper for 1941 (until June 22), we will immediately find out which Americans and British were bad. They starved their own population and unleashed a war in Europe, while the chancellor of the German people, Adolf Hitler, was only defending himself ... Well, even earlier in Pravda one could even find the words that "fascism helps the growth of the class consciousness of the working class." .

And then they got really good...

But then came June 22, 1941, and literally the next day Pravda came out with reports that Winston Churchill had promised the USSR military assistance, and the US President had unfrozen Soviet deposits in American banks frozen after the war with Finland. And that's it! Articles about starvation among British workers disappeared in an instant, and Hitler turned from "Chancellor of the German people" into a cannibal.

Convoy "Dervish" and others

Of course, we don't know about all the behind-the-scenes negotiations that took place at the time; even the declassified correspondence between Stalin and Churchill does not reveal all the nuances of this difficult period of our common history. But there are facts showing that the Anglo-American allies of the USSR began to provide assistance, if not immediately, then quite timely. Already on August 12, 1941, a caravan of Dervish ships left Loch Ewe (Great Britain). On August 31, 1941, the first transports of the Dervish convoy delivered ten thousand tons of rubber, about four thousand depth charges and magnetic mines, fifteen Hurricane-type fighters, as well as 524 military pilots from the 151st air wing of two squadrons of the royal military British Air Force. Later, pilots even from Australia arrived on the territory of the USSR. In total, between August 1941 and May 1945, there were 78 convoys (although there were no convoys between July and September 1942 and March and November 1943). In total, about 1,400 merchant ships delivered important military materials to the USSR as part of the Lend-Lease program. 85 merchant ships and 16 warships of the Royal Navy (2 cruisers, 6 destroyers and 8 other escorts) were lost. And this is only the northern route, because the cargo flow also went through Iran, through Vladivostok, and planes from the United States were directly ferried to Siberia from Alaska. Well, and then the same Pravda reported that in honor of the victories of the Red Army and the conclusion of agreements between the USSR and Great Britain, the British were organizing festivities.

Not only and not so much convoys!

The Soviet Union received assistance from the allies not only under Lend-Lease. In the United States, the Committee for Assistance to Russians in the War (Russia War Relief) was organized. “With the money raised, the committee purchased and sent medicines, medicines and equipment, food, clothing to the Red Army, the Soviet people. In total, during the war, the Soviet Union was provided with assistance in the amount of more than one and a half billion dollars. A similar committee under the leadership of Churchill's wife operated in England, and he also bought medicines and food to help the USSR.

Pravda wrote the truth!

On June 11, 1944, the Pravda newspaper placed a significant material on the entire page: “On the supply of weapons, strategic raw materials, industrial equipment and food to the Soviet Union by the United States of America, Great Britain and Canada”, and it was immediately reprinted by all Soviet newspapers, including local and even newspapers of individual tank armies. It reported in detail how much was sent to us and how much cargo in tons was floating by sea at the time the newspaper was published! Not only tanks, guns and planes were listed, but also rubber, copper, zinc, rails, flour, electric motors and presses, portal cranes and technical diamonds! Army shoes - 15 million pairs, 6491 metal-cutting machines and much more. It is interesting that the message made a precise division of how much was bought for cash, that is, before the adoption of the Lend-Lease program, and how much was sent after. By the way, it was precisely the fact that at the beginning of the war a lot was bought for money that gave rise to the still prevailing opinion that all Lend-Lease came to us for money, and for gold at that. No, much was paid for by “reverse lend-lease” - raw materials, but the calculation was postponed until the end of the war, since everything that was destroyed during hostilities was not subject to payment! Well, why such information was needed at this particular time is understandable. Good PR is always a useful thing! On the one hand, the citizens of the USSR found out how much they supply us with, on the other hand, the Germans also found out the same thing, and those well, they simply could not help but be overcome with despondency. How reliable are these numbers? It is obvious that it is possible. After all, if they contained incorrect data, then as soon as German intelligence would have found out, although according to some indicators, how could they declare everything else to be propaganda and, of course, Stalin, giving permission for the publication of this information, could not help but understand this!

Both quantity and quality!

In Soviet times, it was customary to scold equipment supplied under Lend-Lease. But ... it is worth reading the same Pravda and, in particular, articles by the famous pilot Gromov about American and British aircraft, articles about the same British Matilda tanks, to make sure that during the war years all this was assessed in a completely different way than after it ended! And how can one evaluate the powerful presses on which turrets for T-34 tanks, American drills with corundum tips or technical diamonds, which the Soviet industry did not produce at all, were stamped?! So the quantity and quality of supplies, as well as the participation of foreign technical specialists, sailors and pilots, was very noticeable. Well, then politics intervened in this matter, the post-war conjuncture, and everything that was good during the war years immediately became bad with just a stroke of the guiding pen!

Stalin case in Samara

USSR and Allies in World War II.

Soviet diplomacy during the war years solved three main tasks: the creation of an anti-fascist coalition, the opening of a second front, and the solution of the question of the post-war order of the world. The process of folding the coalition dragged on for a year - from June 1941 to June 1942. The first step towards a coalition was the Soviet-British agreement concluded on July 12, 1941 in Moscow on joint actions in the war against Germany. It contained two clauses: mutual obligations to render assistance and support to each other in the war against Germany, and mutual obligations to negotiate, conclude an armistice or peace only by mutual consent. The last point was directed against a possible separate peace of one of the parties with Germany. A new step towards a coalition was the Moscow Conference of representatives of the USSR, USA and Great Britain (September-October 1941). The USA and Britain undertook to supply the USSR with arms and military materials, the Soviet Union undertook to supply the allies with the necessary raw materials. Movement towards a coalition was accelerated after the Japanese defeated the largest US naval base in the Pacific, Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, and the United States of America entered the war. On January 1, 1942, at the initiative of the United States in Washington, representatives of 26 countries, including the Soviet Union, signed the Declaration of the United Nations. It stated that the governments of these countries pledged to use all their resources, military or economic, against those members of the Tripartite Pact and the states that acceded to it, with which these governments are at war. The states that signed the Declaration pledged to cooperate with each other and not to conclude a separate peace with enemies. In London, a Soviet-British treaty was signed on an alliance in the war against Nazi Germany and its accomplices in Europe and on cooperation and mutual assistance after the war. On June 11, 1942, a Soviet-American agreement on the principles of mutual assistance in war was concluded in Washington. The Americans agreed to this agreement, clearly realizing how dangerous the aggressive plans of the fascist bloc were for the United States. The alliance treaty with Great Britain and the agreement with the United States finally formalized the anti-Hitler coalition, which included more than 40 states during the war years. The problem of the second front was solved for a long time and with difficulty. The Soviet leadership understood the second front as the landing of Allied troops on the territory of Northern France and only there, and not in Africa or the Balkans. For the first time this question was raised by the Soviet government in July 1941 before the government of Great Britain. However, the British government then evaded a definite answer, referring to the limited resources and geographical position of their country. The question of a second front was at the center of the negotiations that V. Molotov led in May-June 1942 in London and Washington. During the negotiations, the Allies stubbornly avoided specific commitments regarding the timing and number of military forces that could be allocated for the invasion. Nevertheless, Molotov knocked out from the British the obligation to land troops on the continent "in August or September 1942." However, during his visit to Washington, British Prime Minister Churchill agreed with US President Roosevelt not to carry out an invasion of Europe across the English Channel in 1942, but to occupy French North-West Africa with a joint expeditionary force. At the end of 1942, such an operation was carried out. At the beginning of 1943, Anglo-American conferences were held in Casablanca and Washington, which approved the "Balkan version" of the second front, on which Churchill insisted. The meaning of this option was that the Anglo-American troops would enter the countries of South-Eastern Europe before the then they cut off the Red Army's path to the West.The operation in the Mediterranean area was scheduled for 1943. The opening of the second front on the Atlantic coast (Northern France) was postponed until May 1944. The problem of the second front became the most important at the Tehran conference of the heads of government of the USSR, the USA Great Britain - I.V. Stalin, F. Roosevelt and W. Churchill, which took place on November 28 - December 1, 1943. This was the first of three conferences of the "Big Three". Despite Churchill's next attempt to replace the landing of US and British troops in France "Balkan" option, an agreement was reached at the conference on the landing of Anglo-American troops in France in May 1944. This is a decision of the Soviet I regarded diplomacy as my weighty victory. In turn, at the conference, Stalin promised that the USSR would declare war on Japan after the defeat of Germany. The second front was opened in June 1944. On June 6, in the north-west of France, in Normandy, the landing of Anglo-American troops began (Operation Overlord). General D. Eisenhower commanded the united forces. It was the largest landing operation of the Second World War, in which up to 1 million people participated. Allied losses amounted to several tens of thousands of soldiers. On August 15, the landing of the Allied troops in the south of France (auxiliary operation "Envil") followed, by mid-September 1944, the Allied troops reached the western border of Germany. The opening of a second front shortened the duration of the Second World War and brought the collapse of Nazi Germany closer. For the first time, the tasks of the post-war order of the world were widely discussed at the Moscow Conference of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the three great powers in October 1943. At the conference, a declaration was adopted on the issue of universal security, where the three states pledged not only to wage war until the unconditional surrender of the countries of the fascist bloc, but also to continue cooperation after the war. This document contained the main principles of the post-war structure of the world. Questions of the post-war structure took an important place on the agenda of the Tehran Conference. In the adopted declaration, the heads of government of the three states expressed their determination to work together both during the war and in the subsequent peacetime. Since the Soviet delegation insisted on decisive measures to prevent German revanchism and militarism in the future, Roosevelt proposed a plan for dividing Germany into five independent states. Churchill supported him. In turn, Stalin obtained from the Allies a principled consent to the transfer to the Soviet Union of Koenigsberg with the territories adjacent to it. The tasks of a post-war peace order came to the fore at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of the Big Three. The Yalta (Crimean) conference of the heads of government of the three great powers took place on February 4-11, 1945 in the Livadia Palace. It agreed on plans for the final defeat of Germany, the terms of its surrender, the procedure for its occupation, the mechanism of allied control. The goal of the occupation and control was declared to be "the destruction of German militarism and Nazism and the creation of guarantees that Germany will never again be able to disturb the peace of the whole world." The "three D" plan (demilitarization, denazification and democratization of Germany) united the interests of the three great powers. At the insistence of the Soviet delegation, France was also involved in the occupation of Germany on an equal footing with other great powers. The conference adopted a "Declaration on a Liberated Europe", which stated the need to destroy the traces of Nazism and fascism in the liberated countries of Europe and create democratic institutions of the peoples' own choice. Polish and Yugoslav issues were highlighted, as well as a complex of Far Eastern issues, including the transfer of the Kuril Islands to the USSR and the return of South Sakhalin, captured by Japan in 1904, to it. At the conference in Crimea, the issue of establishing the United Nations to ensure international security in the post-war years was finally resolved. The parties agreed to convene a UN conference in San Francisco in April 1945 to finalize the Charter of this organization. It was agreed to invite to the conference the states that signed the Declaration of the United Nations on January 1, 1942, and those countries that declared war on the common enemy by March 1, 1945.

USSR and allies.

After the German attack on the USSR in 1941, Great Britain and the USA expressed support for the Soviet Union. An anti-fascist, or anti-Hitler, coalition between the three countries began to take shape. The United States provided economic assistance to the Soviet Union under the lend-lease (long-term lease) program. Under Lend-Lease, certain types of military equipment and vehicles, equipment, ammunition, clothing, and food were supplied to the USSR. Lend-lease deliveries accounted for about 4% of Soviet production, nevertheless, their role in certain categories of goods was very significant.

From the very beginning of the war, the Soviet leadership turned to its Western allies with a request to deploy a second, Western front of the war against Nazi Germany, which would weaken the onslaught of the German army on the USSR and speed up victory in the war. However, the allies were in no hurry to take this step, citing insufficient preparedness. In the ruling circles of Western countries, there was a strong distrust of the USSR and a desire not to take active military action in Europe until the USSR and Germany mutually bled each other.

To resolve the disagreements that had arisen, the Tehran Conference was convened in November 1943, at which I. V. Stalin (USSR), F. D. Roosevelt (USA) and W. Churchill (Great Britain) met. The main outcome of the conference was the adoption of a decision to open a second front in France in June 1944. The USSR also undertook to enter the war with Japan immediately after the defeat of Germany.

By the end of 1943, British and American troops had defeated the Axis in North Africa and were advancing through Italy. On June 6, 1944, after the decisive victories of the Red Army, the Anglo-American landing force landed in Normandy, in northern France. Now Germany had to fight on two fronts, in the west and in the east, which greatly accelerated the end of the war. In April 1945, Soviet and American troops, who were attacking Germany from two sides, met on the Elbe River.

Even earlier, in February 1945, on the eve of the final defeat of Germany, the Yalta Conference of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition was held in the Crimea with the same composition of participants. Decisions were made regarding the establishment of new borders in Europe and spheres of influence, the creation of the United Nations (UN) to resolve all international issues in the future by peaceful means.

After the capitulation of Germany, the third and last conference of the allied powers was convened, at which the United States was represented by H. Truman, and Great Britain by C. Attlee. The conference took place in Potsdam in August 1945. It determined the procedure for the occupation of Germany by the Allied forces, its post-war structure, and stipulated the payment by Germany of reparations (compensation for damage from the war), half of which went to the Soviet Union.

Despite the existing ideological and political differences between the USSR and the Western allies, their cooperation within the framework of the anti-Hitler coalition played a significant role in the victory over fascism.