Churchill to Stalin - No ‘Second Front’

5th September 1941: The Soviet Ambassador to Britain, Ivan Maisky, meets Churchill to be told that Britain is in no position to open a 'second front’

Winston Churchill and Ivan Maisky dined in the observatory of the Russian Embassy in London in August 1941. Courtesy Of The Scheffer-Voskressenski Family.

On the 4th September the Soviet Ambassador to Britain, Ivan Maisky, met Churchill to discuss an urgent telegram from the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. Received in Britain on the 4th, Stalin’s message was a desperate plea for help:

I think the only way is to open a second front this year somewhere in the Balkans or in France, one that would divert 30-40 German divisions from the Eastern Front, and simultaneously to supply the Soviet Union with 30,000 tons of aluminium by the beginning of October and a minimum monthly aid of 400 aeroplanes and 500 tanks (of small or medium size).

Without these two kinds of aid the Soviet Union will be either defeated or weakened to the extent that it will lose for a long time the ability to help its Allies by active operations at the front against Hitlerism.

Churchill did his best to tell Maisky that this was impossible. Britain was itself weakened and in no position to mount offensive operations, however much it wanted to assist Russia.

One cannot exclude the possibility that the denouement may have to be postponed until 1944.

Soviet cavalry charging. The Red Army had struggled to coordinate its resistance to the German onslaught despite great determination and sacrifice.