Churchill's Triumph Read online

  The President talked of his plans for the new world organization—his United Nations. And as he did so, the embers glowed once more and his eyes burned bright with hope. “Not just an end to this war, Winston, but an end to all wars.”

  He talked of it as his legacy, in his educated accent that stretched and softened his vowels and sounded elegant. It also sounded final. As Roosevelt talked and smoked, interrupted only by his own coughing, Churchill pondered how much the President had grown to look like his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, with his pince-nez and his cheeks gouged hollow with fatigue. To sound like him, too. Wilson had led the United States throughout the last war and emerged waving his banner for his own world organization, the League of Nations, a government of governments that would bring an end to the old world of shifting alliances. Churchill even thought he remembered Wilson introducing it with similar words about an end to all war. Fine words, the most noble of aspirations. And yet… Before its collapse, the League of Nations had spawned weakness, procrastination, and appeasement. And, of course, Hitler. It wasn’t perhaps the League’s fault, not directly, but the rise of Hitler was the fault of those naïve men who hid behind it. Evil fills a vacuum in men’s souls and they had as good as invited the devil in by believing only in good intentions and ignoring any signs of sin. Was Roosevelt another Wilson, another faded idealist whose head was held so high he couldn’t see when his boots were being stolen?

  “We must learn to live as men, Winston,” the President continued, “not as ostriches or as dogs in the manger.”

  Churchill almost choked. He hadn’t ever been an ostrich or any sort of dog. “And what of Bolshevist Russia, Franklin? Can we persuade them of this purpose?”

  “That is our task here, at Yalta. To show them that there’s a better way—for us all.”

  “You think Comrade Stalin is the persuadable type?”

  “I cannot believe he would want to repeat the present slaughter,” Roosevelt said, ignoring his food and slipping yet another cigarette into his holder. “Stalin is one of the most powerful men the world has ever seen. We cannot avoid him, and neither should we try. On a personal level, Winston, I like to think I can do business with the man—and, I might say, perhaps do it better than anyone. Better than all these officials we have around us.” Roosevelt waved in light-hearted manner at the rest of the table, but there was no lightness in his meaning. “And if you’ll allow me to encroach upon our friendship, Winston. . . better even than you. The Marshal will never forget what you are and what you stand for. Monarchism. Imperialism. Everything the Soviet system is not.”

  Churchill recalled the sight in his Map Room of Stalin’s paw waving across the Soviet Union and wiping up so many neighboring countries. And Roosevelt thought the Russian wasn’t an imperialist… Reluctantly, and savagely, the Englishman bit his lip.

  “We all change, Winston. We Americans may have been a little slow, a little reluctant at first to face up to our changing world, but we have come to learn that our own well-being is dependent upon the well-being of countries far away…” And so the President continued, wrapped up in what Churchill would later term his “swaddle of idealism.”

  “You know, in all my dealings with Mr. Stalin, I’ve never forgotten that Russia is one of the most profoundly religious societies on the planet. It happens to be governed—for the moment—by a creed of absolute atheism. I don’t think it’s in God’s plan for that to carry on too long, and I don’t think it’s in Russia’s, either. We’ll draw closer together, I’m sure of it, not out of ideology but out of plain old Russian self-interest. I think we’ve already seen that happen during this war. That’s why I say we can do business with that man.”

  “Business such as Katyn?”

  “That old chestnut? Why, Averell’s daughter Kathy went there herself. Didn’t she, Averell?”

  The ambassador nodded. “Not the most pleasant thing to ask a daughter to do, but we thought it was important to see for ourselves.”

  “Tell ’em what she found,” the President instructed.

  With almost too much care, Harriman put aside his fork and wiped his mouth on the corner of his napkin. He seemed to have lost his appetite. “Something happened there, for sure. There were bodies everywhere. Buried all across the forest. And almost everybody she saw had a single bullet to the back of the neck.” He held two fingers to the base of his own skull. “Apparently, it’s a typical German technique.”

  Since when? Churchill demanded silently. Since they ran out of gas chambers? What did Franklin require in order to prove Russian involvement? An ice pick in every skull, as had been arranged for Trotsky? The lip was being chewed almost to tatters.

  “And they inspected the corpses,” Harriman continued. “Searched through their pockets. They found letters, newspaper cuttings—all from 1941. That’s after the Russians had been pushed out of Katyn, and after the Germans arrived.”

  “How…” Churchill, unable to resist a response, had been going to say “convenient,” but he changed tack just in time. “How compelling.”

  “Who knows precisely what took place there, let alone who was responsible?” Roosevelt concluded wearily. “I refuse to listen to rumor and dark whispers. . . ”

  A pity, Churchill thought. It might have saved you from Pearl Harbor. And an even greater pity to sweep aside the brutalities of Katyn like—what?—ostriches? Or dogs in the manger?

  Roosevelt was visibly tired. He had eaten little and was drawing heavily on his cigarette for comfort. Harriman sensed it was time to spare him and move on. “I can’t believe you intend to raise Katyn, not with the Marshal. It will achieve nothing, Winston.”

  “It’s not Katyn that I hope to resolve, it’s. . . ”

  They had barely begun their business in Yalta yet already so much had happened to disturb him. The sense he had gained in the Map Room of Stalin’s territorial ambition. The abruptness with which Roosevelt had washed his hands of Europe. The idealism the American expressed that sounded all too much like romance rather than reality. There was nothing wrong with dreams but. . .

  Churchill’s own dreams had been different. That morning he had woken in a sweat, tormented by a vision of the map of Europe being turned to stepping-stones. They were dripping in blood, with Stalin’s boots marching inexorably forward, stepping upon them, one by one. If he were to be stopped, then better he be stopped as far east, as far away from England, as possible.

  “Poland,” he said softly. “I am concerned about Poland. It is, after all, the reason why all of us are here. Poland led us into this war, and Poland seems destined to determine how we shall finish it.”

  “That’s not quite accurate,” Harriman interjected. “Poland led Europe into war, not us. Not America.”

  “Averell, my friend, it is the reason why I am here. If we cannot rescue Poland from the ashes of this conflict then Britain will have gone to war for nothing.”

  “Winston, there are nearly eight million Polish-American voters in America,” declared the newly re-elected President. “You can rely on us to ensure that Poland won’t be forgotten.”

  “Poland independent. Free. Democratic. Not a vassal—”

  But Roosevelt cut across him: “Emerson once said that the only way to have a friend is to be one. Be a friend, Winston. The Soviets are our allies—and we shall still need them once the war in Europe is won. After all, they will be the ones to liberate Poland.”

  “And are you aware, Franklin, of events in liberated Bulgaria?”

  But Roosevelt’s mind was already elsewhere. He was looking at his watch. “Is it so late? They’ll be piping Uncle Joe aboard before we know it. Time to clear the decks!” The other Americans stood. “You will forgive me, Winston.”

  So Churchill never discovered whether his friend knew of or cared about the happenings in Bulgaria. Four days earlier, those men who had held power under the old system, and who were se
t to become the challengers to Russian influence in the new, had been slaughtered. Three former regents, two former prime ministers and twenty other leading politicians, every one of them wiped out. An entire level of non-Communist leadership in the country gunned down, with the print of Moscow left all too clearly on the trigger. Such was the price of liberation. Moscow had explained away the tactics as “an effective purge of Fascist elements.” To Churchill’s mind, it had seemed all too bloody effective.

  ***

  It was a silly, sad affair that followed immediately upon the lunch and left behind it so many regrets.

  By the time Churchill rose from the President’s lunch-table, little more than an hour remained before the time when Stalin would sweep through the door and the day’s plenary session would start. Roosevelt, as always a solicitous host, knew that Churchill wouldn’t have enough time to return to the Vorontsov and claim his afternoon nap so he beckoned to Hopkins, for no better reason than that Hopkins happened to be closest.

  “Harry,” Roosevelt said, “find somewhere for Winston to lay his old head. I don’t want him out of shape and all crotchety for later—it’ll only lead to more of his speeches.”

  Hopkins needed his bed more than anyone—he was rarely to leave it during the conference—but he did as he was asked. Yet he was tired, ill, short of both stamina and patience. Without knocking, he opened the first bedroom door he came to. Inside he discovered another close presidential aide, General “Pa” Watson, who was in his underwear and about to take a nap. The general was as physically frail as Hopkins, suffering from advanced heart disease, while Hopkins had any number of ailments that on their own could kill him. Neither man should have made the arduous journey to Yalta, but they did so for the sake of their shared friendship with a president whom they had long served and admired, and who liked to surround himself with familiar, trusted faces. Neither Hopkins nor Watson wanted to let their man down. So they had come. And they quarreled. Horribly.

  “Get out,” Hopkins instructed.

  “Get out yourself. I’m using this room.”

  “Winston needs it.”

  “To hell with Winston. I’m sick, he’s not. Go find him another room.”

  “I said, get out.”

  “Then to hell with you, too.”

  What followed was crude, intemperate, deeply hurtful, the sort of thing that is best forgotten between two good colleagues. It left Pa Watson clutching at an insistent pain in his chest and Hopkins trembling. It should never have happened, but it did. It finished only when Churchill, who knew nothing of the row, got his bed.

  It was the last time those two old friends, Watson and Hopkins, were ever to speak to each other.

  Old men, worn down by war, who couldn’t properly finish what they had begun. It summed up the story of Yalta.

  ***

  Before the opening of the new play comes the final act of the old. It was to be played out in the square of Piorun.

  As the clock dragged its hand towards the appointed hour, the square filled with townsfolk. They came in small groups, old men in black caps leaning on their daughters, mothers clutching their children, small gaggles of widows, with their heads low, dragging their feet behind them. The thaw that had delayed the advance of the Russians was a miserable, half-hearted affair: old snow was still piled at every corner and icy winds snatched at the hems of skirts and cheekbones, and dragged tears from the corners of rebellious eyes. Even in Poland, where death had become so plentiful, the townspeople of Piorun refused to allow it to come cheap.

  The hand of the clock trembled once more. Five minutes to four. Then the coughing of cold engines. Trucks filled with Germans. A Kubelwagen in which sat Kluge and, beside him, the mayor’s wife. It drew up beneath the lamppost in the square. It was the only lamppost in the whole of Piorun, an overly ornate cast-iron affair. It hadn’t been lit since the first day of September, 1939.

  A rope was quickly thrown over the lamppost, a noose knotted at its end. The mayor’s wife was made to stand in the back of Kluge’s vehicle while the scarf was snatched from her head and the noose placed round her neck. She was a woman in the last years of her life. Her many winters had left their scars across her face, the summers had bleached her hair to a steel grey, and the pain of a life filled with many harvests had bent her back and made claws of her hands, but her head was held high so they could see her eyes. They were dry, defiant.

  At one minute to four, a young lieutenant began to read from a sheet of paper, his breath forming little clouds, but the wind carried away his worthless words. The driver gunned the engine, anxious that it shouldn’t stall when the moment came. Kluge checked his wristwatch against the town-hall clock. Old bones creaked. Children sobbed. The lieutenant read on.

  Then a ripple of agitation passed through the square. Voices were raised. The lieutenant paused in confusion. The crowd began to part. And through it, muddied and exhausted by his race from the forest, stumbled the figure of Mayor Nowak. He was totally breathless. “Stuj! Stuj! Stop! Please stop!” he cried, and sank to his knees.

  Kluge could not hide his delight. He clapped his leather-gloved hands and stamped his boot several times. Then he ordered that a second rope be thrown over the lamppost. “We shall have a double celebration!” he declared.

  Yet his greed was his undoing, for they had brought only one rope with them. While the German soldiers scurried around in search of another, the Kommandant continued to stamp his boot, but this time in impatience. Then the doctor stepped forward. “Herr Kommandant Kluge, is there nothing we can do to save our friends?”

  “You want to die in their place?”

  “No one wants to die, Herr Kommandant.”

  “Then what do you have in mind?”

  “It appears, Herr Kommandant, that you may soon be leaving our town.”

  Even though they had no newspapers other than German and they listened to radio only under pain of death, they all knew what was going on. Many of the Volksdeutsche had already left the Settlement, abandoning the white-painted farms they had stolen. They had gone to join the long, straggling columns of refugees that for weeks had been clogging the main routes near Piorun, their horses floundering on the ice, belly-deep in the thick snow, pulling sleighs, carts, even upturned tables loaded with whatever these people could save or steal. But wherever they came from, and however they traveled, the refugees were all heading west. They quickly became targets. By day the SS patrols would drag off any male of fighting age, while by night Polish bandits and German deserters would come for the women. The very old and the very young were left to freeze slowly to death. Babies died quickest of all as the milk turned to ice in their mothers’ breasts. Yes, the Germans were leaving Poland, and they would soon be leaving Piorun, everyone knew that. It was only a matter of time.

  “War is a terrible thing,” the doctor continued, “and none of us is sure what we shall meet in the days ahead. But we implore you, Herr Kommandant, not to leave Piorun with innocent blood on your hands. How much better to go with your heads held high with honor—and your pockets filled with our thanks.”

  “What?”

  “Allow us to purchase the lives of our friends.”

  “Ridiculous! There’s no more than a thousand Reichsmarks left in the entire town.”

  “True enough. Money burns so easily. But gold, silver, jewelry—all these things can be so much more useful in times like these.”

  “You’ve been hoarding? I’ll do for the lot of you!”

  “Perhaps, Herr Kommandant, as you say, you could do for every single one of us—if you had the time. But I fear. . . ”

  Kluge’s jaw was working hard, chewing over the doctor’s words. The war was lost, every German knew it, but whatever else lay ahead was buried beneath uncertainty. And, like all Germans of his age, he remembered the times when you could fill a wheelbarrow with money and still not have enough t
o buy breakfast for your babies. But a good watch, a gold bracelet, a brooch—even during the darkest days, they sang for themselves.

  “An hour, then! Everything you have here within an hour. Or more will die.”

  But the insolent dog of a doctor was shaking his head. “In an hour, Herr Kommandant, it will be dark. These things cannot be gathered in the dark. Give us until the morning. Please.”

  The Kommandant hesitated, but only for a second. His garrison was desperately weak, depleted by the demands of glory on the Russian front. And these scheisskerl Poles scuttled around like cockroaches. He had neither sufficient men nor enough time to do for the lot of them, no matter how much he blustered. So he took what he thought was the easy way out.

  “Everything the town has by ten tomorrow morning,” he snapped at the doctor. “And if it’s not enough, not only will the mayor and his wife die, holding each other’s hands, but you and your own wife will be given the honor of showing them how.”

  ***

  This was a time of trial for Winston Churchill, perhaps the greatest trial of his life. He wasn’t a stranger to challenge, of course, he was a man who thrived on being kicked, yet somehow the circumstances in which he found himself now were different, more difficult, and not simply because he had grown old. Even at the start of ’39 they’d said he was too old. Too old, too unreliable, too unprincipled, too drunk: that was what they’d whispered about him. But, by God, he’d shown the buggers! Whatever they said about him now—and much of it was still robust and unforgiving—they’d never again wrap up his name in a whisper. They would never be able to forget Winston Churchill, no matter how much they might try.