The Cold War and its Origins, 1917-1960¶
Metadata¶
- Author: D.F. Fleming
- ASIN: B08P1R4Z1Y
- ISBN: 978-0367557126
- Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08P1R4Z1Y
- Kindle link
Highlights¶
Our lives are made uneasy now because the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in the creation of a rival system to our own. This revolution was the most sweeping in all modern history. — location: 651 ^ref-34990
All possessed the right to send their serfs as convicts to Siberia and to reclaim them at will. — location: 691 ^ref-60122
The suppression of the Revolution of 1905–6 was made possible by a huge international loan from western Europe to the Tsar’s government. — location: 805 ^ref-32626
It is difficult to see how France and Britain could have withstood the combined might of the Central Powers on the Western front without Russia’s immense sacrificial diversion in the East until American aid arrived. — location: 855 ^ref-40692
France almost fell out of the war in 1917. — location: 857 ^ref-29759
At the end of the first ten months of war the Russian losses already amounted to 3,800,000 men. — location: 863 ^ref-27116
The latter was now independent of the village and need not aid it because of dependence on its labor. — location: 900 ^ref-16294
land. Local elections were held in Moscow for ward councils in July, the Social Revolutionaries polling 58 per cent of the vote and the Bolsheviki 11 per cent. Similar elections in October gave the Social Revolutionaries 14 per cent and the Bolsheviki 50 per cent. — location: 954 ^ref-41103
after a tremendous propaganda drive, the capital was taken over by well organized and directed action on November 5–7, 1917. Resistance melted away before overwhelming odds and only half a dozen lives were lost. — location: 975 ^ref-33595
“one must go back a full two centuries in Russian history before a personality among the rulers of the country fit to stand comparison with Lenin can be found.” — location: 981 ^ref-33427
four developments combined to usher in one of the most terrible civil conflicts in history, with the end result a totalitarian, one-party state. — location: 1003 ^ref-62120
were: (1) the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, January 18, 1917; (2) the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty between Germany and Russia, March 3, 1918; (3) the Soviet clash with the Czech legionnaires, May 14, 1918; and (4) a series of political assassinations beginning June 20, 1918, and culminating in the shooting of Lenin on August 30, though he was not killed. — location: 1004 ^ref-26309
Terror. In mid-1918 the Left SR’s, most radical of the non-Bolshevik socialists, began a campaign of assassination, along with many small revolts. — location: 1071 ^ref-51815
After the Armistice, Bolshevism was the great fear which haunted the controlling elements in the democracies. War upon it seemed urgent, with the great hope of crushing it in its lair before it spread further. Of all these motives there can hardly be any doubt that the last one became the dominant purpose of the British and French Governments. — location: 1365 ^ref-26604
The costs, however, were staggering. When it was all over Russia was devastated throughout her vast expanses, from Poland to the Pacific and from the Arctic to the Caucasus. Millions of poor civilians had died of abuse, hunger and famine, which was soon to claim millions more. Everything was in a far worse state than at the time of the March revolution, — location: 1420 ^ref-37820
Between November 1918 and February 1919 the Soviet Government addressed seven peace proposals, “couched in the most conciliatory language,” to the Entente Powers and to the United States. — location: 1432 ^ref-7346
It is difficult to conclude that the originally pacifist Reds would or could have created a powerful new war machine without the early and persistent intervention of the West. — location: 1460 ^ref-46736
Evolution in the Soviet Union would have proceeded much more slowly and, in all probability, with much greater moderation, without the scourging compulsion of Western intervention. — location: 1473 ^ref-16948
of Poland’s invasion of Russia, — location: 1527 ^ref-23117
by 1936 the British leaders “had reached an understanding with Hitler which allowed him a free hand toward Russia,” thus “making World War II inevitable.” — location: 2942 ^ref-20345
“There was never any doubt in my mind that Russia would aid us by all the ways open to her, but I did not dare to fight with Russian aid alone, because I knew that the British and French Governments would make out of my country another Spain.” — location: 2957 ^ref-11137
After Munich the British and French had lost all power to prevent Nazi Germany from becoming a colossus capable of attacking the Soviet Union or of turning upon them. — location: 2979 ^ref-65433
However blind and stupid the men of Munich may have been, they were not that simple. — location: 2983 ^ref-4741
when Hitler torpedoed his Munich vows and invaded the rump of Czechoslovakia in March 1938, “every newspaper correspondent, every business house, every embassy and legation in Europe” knew that he was going East. — location: 2990 ^ref-3480
From the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935 on, Russia had had ample evidence that London and Paris meant to turn Hitler in their direction. — location: 2995 ^ref-24853
the British Government suddenly remembered the existence of the Soviet Union and inquired what its attitude would be toward the Hitler threat in Eastern Europe. Moscow replied promptly and proposed an immediate conference between Britain, France, the U.S.S.R., Poland, Rumania and Turkey to consider how to resist German aggression. This was exactly and obviously what was urgently needed. — location: 3028 ^ref-53535
they ascribed to Russia the very same design of which they were guilty, as devious men so often do. They had a “deep seated conviction,” shared also by the French Rightists, that Russia wished to destroy the capitalist system in Europe by provoking a war from which she would remain aloof. — location: 3033 ^ref-29570
It was Russia which had incessantly pleaded that “peace is indivisible,” warning that if war came all would be engulfed in it. — location: 3038 ^ref-2367
Poland’s comfortable blocking of any liaison with Russia revealed the impossibility of stopping Hitler, at this late date, without a gigantic world war. — location: 3051 ^ref-3979
Poland might survive by close alliance with one of her great neighbors. Being unable to choose between her hatreds doomed her to sure destruction and in all probability to another partition. — location: 3061 ^ref-27056
Rumania. Poland had been on the hot spot since January 5, 1939, when Hitler had summoned Colonel Beck to Berlin to discuss an alliance against Soviet Russia. Beck temporized and incurred Hitler’s wrath. — location: 3068 ^ref-21975
it suddenly became apparent to the Munich men that the pursuit of their policy would enable Hitler to absorb the resources of all Central and Eastern Europe, not for use against Russia but against themselves, and without a fight. — location: 3073 ^ref-23259
This lightning change of front was not, of course, motivated by any sudden love for Polish liberty. It was bom of an abruptly acquired desire to have somebody absorb some of Hitler’s lethal fury. — location: 3082 ^ref-14433
Poland was a pale substitute in fighting power for the powerful Czechoslovak fortress which had been so resolutely and callously thrown away, but any sort of ally was now better than none. — location: 3083 ^ref-11601
Britain had no power whatever to save Rumania or Poland from German assault. Only the Soviet Union could do that, and serious consideration of an alliance with the much feared Soviets was not begun until April 15, after the Rumanian and Polish guarantees had been tossed out. — location: 3090 ^ref-42010
the British Government asked Russia to give a unilateral guarantee to Poland and Rumania. — location: 3093 ^ref-57702
Russia promptly proposed, on April 17, a binding pact of mutual assistance between Britain, France and Russia, to be implemented by a military agreement, which would guarantee all of the border states from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. — location: 3095 ^ref-29089
London replied to Russia on May 9, 1939, repeating its proposal that Russia give a unilateral guarantee to Poland and Rumania and adding the astounding proviso that the guarantee should go into effect only on the decision of the British Government. — location: 3101 ^ref-5919
Russia was invited to receive the full impact of Hitler’s giant war machine without the slightest suggestion of any willingness to aid in her defense and she was invited to move against Hitler on orders from London. — location: 3106 ^ref-35758
Thus Poland was to be defended against Germany by the ego of the Polish colonels and by the British Navy in the Atlantic, not by the powerful Red Army fighting with the Polish forces. — location: 3123 ^ref-37108
the absurdity of a guarantee to Poland and Rumania without an alliance with Russia compelled a negotiation. — location: 3127 ^ref-28935
A Gallup poll showed that 92 per cent of the British people favored an alliance with Russia. Everybody could see that a tight alliance with Russia was imperatively demanded, except the group of men who were determined not to see. — location: 3128 ^ref-1251
“He wanted it at all costs.” Gafencu was “struck by the clearness of his decision,” and sure that it had the full approval of the other French leaders. The Soviet proposals were also clear and to the point, but London advanced “a wealth of reservations,” proceeding “one step forward, three steps backward.” — location: 3136 ^ref-10805
Government.” The conservatives in the British Cabinet wanted to believe with Colonel Beck that an Anglo-French-Polish alliance would be sufficient. They feared that agreement with Russia would mean territorial acquisition by her in East Europe. — location: 3140 ^ref-44054
May 19 Lloyd George, Eden and Churchill again pressed upon the Government the life-and-death nature of the need for an immediate arrangement with Russia of the most far-reaching terms. Churchill begged the Government “to get some of these brutal truths into their heads. Without an effective Eastern Front, there can be no satisfactory defence of our interests in the West, and without Russia there can be no effective Eastern Frontl” — location: 3144 ^ref-35369
and instead they sent William Strang, a lesser official, from the Foreign Office. This was a triple insult to the Soviet Union because Strang was of low diplomatic rank, he had defended a group of British engineers in an espionage case in Soviet Russia, and he had been a member of Chamberlain’s entourage at Munich. — location: 3154 ^ref-28331
London had been wholly tenacious in helping the Italo-German conquest of Spain, while denying Spain the right to get arms for its defense. — location: 3178 ^ref-46064
the Munichmen had resorted to extreme coercion to batter down the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia, breaking up the finest democracy produced by the First World War and leaving it utterly helpless in Hitler’s hands. — location: 3179 ^ref-42555
While compelled by the urgency of agonized public opinion to go through the motions of negotiating an alliance with Russia, they could not bring themselves to cease making offers to Berlin. — location: 3194 ^ref-58472
His entire life experience since January 1933 taught him that his powerful friends in Britain and France would not permit armed opposition to him, and that another Munich at Poland’s expense would be the result. — location: 3207 ^ref-33352
There was one way, and only one, by which Germany could be deterred from taking the fatal plunge. TTiat was the signature of an air-tight alliance between the Western Powers and Russia, with no loopholes in it, but on July 30 his biographer records that Chamberlain regarded a breakdown of the Anglo-Russian negotiations “with equanimity, as highly probable.” — location: 3219 ^ref-26367
the Anglo-Soviet negotiations had been going on for 75 days, during which the Soviet Government took 11 days to return its answers while the British took 59. — location: 3226 ^ref-39927
it transpired, once again, that these men had no power to conclude an agreement. — location: 3238 ^ref-54776
The Allies conferred with Poland and, after four months of negotiations, with German troops piling up on her borders, Poland replied that she did not need Soviet aid. — location: 3240 ^ref-10251
with the entire Nazi machine going into high gear for the Polish kill—screaming propaganda, all the old business of atrocities by the Poles, Danzig filled with German troopers, mobilization gaining momentum—Chamberlain went off, on August 16, for “a holiday to the Far Highlands.” — location: 3250 ^ref-31919
The Allied chiefs knew well that their failure to make an alliance with Russia would mean the destruction of Poland. There was no other conceivable hope of preventing Poland’s liquidation, but London did not choose to bring pressure to bear on Poland or the Baltic states to prevent their own destruction. — location: 3259 ^ref-25315
into a formal Treaty of Mutual Assistance between Britain and Poland and signed in London on August 25. Never were names put to a more hollow instrument. Britain and France had not the slightest power to save the life of a single Pole, or even to fire a shot that would mean anything to Poland. — location: 3269 ^ref-38628
“all preferred the destruction of Poland to the Soviet defence of Poland. All hoped that the sequence would be a German-Soviet war over the spoils.” — location: 3274 ^ref-36790
Ambassador Henderson, who told Hitler, on August 23, that he preferred a German-Soviet agreement to an Anglo-Soviet agreement. — location: 3275 ^ref-23584
The decision to obliterate Poland was therefore fixed before the pact with Russia was signed. Without it the Nazi Panzer divisions would have rolled up to the borders of the Soviet Union, occupying the White Russian and Ukrainian half of Poland to which the Soviet Union had a far better right. — location: 3314 ^ref-52946
the Soviet Government did not have this choice. By standing aloof it would have lost not only Eastern Poland but the Baltic states as well. By rejecting Hitler’s promises, and the threats that always went with them, the Soviets would have placed themselves in the daily and imminent danger of fighting the German-Russian war which they believed the West had tried to bring about. — location: 3320 ^ref-47763
By making the truce with Hitler the Soviets gained four things. (1) They got everything in the Baltic states which the Allies had refused them, and more, plus the ability to ship home to Germany 100,000 Baltic Germans, as well as 300,000 other Germans from Poland and other Eastern areas. These huge fifth columns were quickly cleaned out of the Russian sphere, to the deep chagrin of the Nazi supermen. (2) They achieved freedom to correct their boundary with Finland and reclaim Bessarabia from Rumania. (3) Instead of incurring the full power of the Nazi war machine, while the West viewed their plight with satisfaction, they turned Hitler back upon the West. (4) They also acquired nearly two years of precious time in which to prepare for a German onslaught. — location: 3323 ^ref-502
At each step union against the aggressor was a crying need, and in each case the Soviet Union gave ample evidence of its willingness to unite, but in every instance its cooperation was rejected. — location: 3334 ^ref-55347
In similar circumstances it is difficult to conclude that any great power would have refrained from making the demands on Finland which the Soviets made on October 14, 1939. — location: 3359 ^ref-32174
Then when the U.S.S.R. committed an aggression upon Finland which was plainly due to considerations of defense against Germany, the king of all the aggressors, the League of Nations was hastily revived from its deep coma to morally reprimand the U.S.S.R. — location: 3423 ^ref-20240
the last act of the League of Nations would be the first memory of the same men in the Kremlin who had felt its sting. — location: 3431 ^ref-12404
Nothing was too good for the Finns. Although there was supposed to be a war on between Germany and the Allies, Italian, Spanish, French, British and German volunteers hurried to Finland to fight shoulder to shoulder against the horrid Red, while “Great Britain, France, the Vatican and the Fascist Powers all united in their denunciation of Russia.” — location: 3452 ^ref-19576
Britain and France had 50,000 troops ready to sail. The two governments were saved from plunging into war with Russia only by the refusal of Norway, Sweden and Turkey to grant transit privileges across their territories. Otherwise the Munichards would have been fighting both Germany and Russia. — location: 3461 ^ref-42555
a full month after the Finnish war had ended, “Gamelin and Weygand were still discussing a possible bombing of Baku, ostensibly to cut off Soviet oil supplies to Germany.” — location: 3466 ^ref-49733
Germany was a roaring furnace of war activity. On April 9 she unleashed overwhelming attacks on neutral Denmark and Norway, without any presentation of demands which they could weigh for a month and reject at their peril, as in Finland’s case. — location: 3473 ^ref-24579
Chapter 9, pp. 282–324, is an unusually informative and stimulating description of propaganda methods. — location: 3492 ^ref-31827
the humiliations suffered led to a sweeping reorganization and re-training of the Red armies and the territory gained may have been of decisive importance in saving Leningrad during 1941–4, after one of the longest and most heroic defenses of any epoch. — location: 3525 ^ref-35354
When the second war with Finland was over, in 1945, Moscow took both Viborg and Petsamo, and imposed reparations on Finland, but did not occupy the country, and by all accounts Finland maintains a high degree of ability to govern herself. — location: 3528 ^ref-17191
the absence of this cushion the Germans would have captured Moscow and Leningrad, compelling Russia to go on the defensive for at least two years and releasing fifty German divisions for an assault on Britain and the Middle East, and thirty Japanese divisions for use against China and the Americans in the Far East. — location: 3542 ^ref-56173
Had the Russian defense not held in early December 1941 the war would have cost the United States infinitely more in money, goods, and especially in blood. — location: 3549 ^ref-42225