The Anglo-Soviet Treaty

On the afternoon of 26 May 1942, in London, the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and the Soviet People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov signed a treaty which in its Russian version was entitled a treaty “on the alliance in the war against Hitlerite Germany and her accomplices in Europe and on collaboration and mutual assistance after the war”. In it Britain and the Soviet Union undertook to fight together until victory, not to negotiate with Hitler’s government, and not to conclude an armistice or peace with Germany and her European allies without mutual consent. The second part of the treaty bound the two states for twenty years: they promised each other assistance should Germany attack either of them again, and co-operation in post-war Europe. The most important thing, however, was what the document did not contain. The treaty said nothing about borders, although only a few days earlier Moscow had made any agreement conditional on them.

From deadlock to signature

Molotov had come to London demanding that Britain recognise the western borders of the USSR as of June 1941 – that is, the annexation of the Baltic states, the border with Finland after the Winter War, Bessarabia and the territories taken from Poland. The talks in London stalled because the British would not agree to anything concerning Poland and the Americans opposed any territorial provisions at all. On 23 May Eden proposed instead a treaty of alliance without territorial clauses. On 24 May Joseph Stalin replied to Molotov that he regarded the draft not as an empty declaration but as an important document that left Moscow a free hand, and on 25 May Molotov went through the text with Eden article by article.

On the morning of 26 May the two sides agreed the final amendments. They had been proposed by the Soviet side and accepted by the British. They were meant to emphasise that the treaty was an alliance after the war as well. A reference to a military alliance was added to the title; Article I called the two states allies; in Article III the words about “associating” with other states were replaced by “uniting”; and the commitment to mutual assistance against Germany was explicitly applied to the post-war period. A reference to the security interests of each party was added to Article V, and at its end the word “peoples” was replaced by “states”, which concerned the principle of non-interference in their internal affairs. Eden judged that the amendments did not change the substance of the document. Stalin approved the replacement of a border treaty with the amended British draft.

That day the Soviet ambassador, Ivan Maisky, gave a luncheon in Molotov’s honour, attended by Winston Churchill, members of the Cabinet and the most senior British military officers. The only guests from outside the two delegations were the United States ambassador, John Winant, and the President’s envoy, Averell Harriman. The speakers were at one in stressing that victory and peace would come through the co-operation of Britain, the USSR and the United States. In the afternoon Eden and Molotov put their signatures to the treaty. Both sides agreed not to announce either the treaty or the visit itself for several weeks, as Molotov was still to travel to Washington and had to return safely to Moscow.

Part one: alliance in war

The treaty had eight articles in two parts. The preamble recalled that it confirmed and replaced the agreement of 12 July 1941 and referred to the Atlantic Charter, to which the USSR had adhered. Article I laid down that by virtue of the alliance the two states would afford each other “military and other assistance and support of all kinds” in the war against Germany and all the states associated with her in acts of aggression in Europe. Article II prohibited negotiations with the Hitlerite government or with any other German government that did not clearly renounce all aggressive intentions, as well as negotiating or concluding, except by mutual consent, any armistice or peace treaty with Germany and her European allies. This part was to remain in force until peace was re-established.

The ban on a separate peace was not new. It had already been contained in the July agreement and, in a broader form, in the Declaration by United Nations of 1 January 1942. Now, however, it took the form of a solemn treaty, ratified by both sides. For London it was a safeguard against a repetition of 1939, when Stalin had come to terms with Hitler; for Moscow, a safeguard against its fear that the Western Allies might one day strike a deal with Germany at its expense.

Part two: twenty years

The second part concerned the period after the war. In Article III the two states declared their desire to unite with other like-minded states in order to preserve peace and resist aggression, and until such a system was established they undertook to do everything in their power to prevent renewed aggression by Germany and her allies. Article IV was the heart of the alliance: if after the war either party were attacked by Germany or one of her allies, the other would at once give it all the military and other assistance in its power. This commitment was to last until both parties agreed that it had been superseded by a general security system, and failing such a system for twenty years and longer, until denounced.

Article V bound the two states to close and friendly collaboration for the security and economic prosperity of Europe after the war, taking into account the interests of the United Nations and in accordance with two principles: not seeking territorial aggrandisement for themselves, and non-interference in the internal affairs of other states. Article VI provided for mutual economic assistance after the war, and Article VII forbade either party to conclude any alliance or take part in any coalition directed against the other. Article VIII dealt with ratification and the exchange of instruments in Moscow, after which the treaty was to replace the July agreement. Part two was to remain in force for twenty years and thereafter until denounced with a year’s notice.

What the treaty did not contain

For the Poles the most important thing was the treaty’s silence on borders. Britain did not recognise the incorporation of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into the USSR or the Soviet acquisitions at the expense of Poland and Romania, and Article V, with its principle of not seeking territorial gains, could be read as confirming the position defended by the Prime Minister, General Władysław Sikorski: that borders were to be decided by a peace conference and by agreements with the states concerned, not by wartime arrangements between the great powers. In his talks with Molotov Eden rejected a Soviet clause on Poland, invoking the Anglo-Polish alliance. The Polish government in London, which since December 1941 had feared that the question of its eastern lands would be bargained away behind the Poles’ backs, received the outcome of the talks with relief.

Washington was satisfied too. On 11 June, when Eden announced the treaty in the House of Commons, the Labour member Arthur Greenwood asked whether any secret agreements had been reached during the negotiations. Eden replied that all the provisions were contained in the published White Paper and that there were “no secret engagements or understandings of any kind”. The former Prime Minister David Lloyd George, for years an advocate of an understanding with Russia, said that had such a treaty existed a few years earlier, many mistakes could have been avoided and this war would never have broken out at all.

The Poles’ relief, however, was only partial. In a telegram to Molotov Stalin wrote plainly that a treaty without borders left the USSR a free hand and that the question of borders would be settled by force. Moscow had renounced nothing; it had merely postponed the dispute until its armies could decide it on the ground.

Molotov in Washington and the promise of a second front

On 27 May Molotov flew in the same bomber via Iceland and Canada to the United States. From 29 May to 1 June he held talks at the White House with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Harry Hopkins and Ambassador Maxim Litvinov. Roosevelt told him that he regarded the London treaty as advantageous and was glad that the question of borders had not been raised in it, as there would be time for that later. On 30 May, after a brief exchange with the Army Chief of Staff, General George Marshall, he authorised Molotov to tell Stalin that the United States “expected the formation of a second front this year”.

On his way back Molotov stopped in London again. Churchill, who did not believe that a large landing in France was possible in 1942, handed him on 10 June a memorandum in which he wrote of preparations for a landing on the Continent but stipulated that he could promise nothing. The next day, 11 June, London, Moscow and Washington announced Molotov’s journey and the text of the treaty. The communiqués stated that “full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a Second Front in Europe in 1942”. The Supreme Soviet of the USSR approved the treaty in the second half of June, after Molotov’s report. The instruments of ratification were exchanged in Moscow on 4 July 1942, and on that day the treaty came into force.

Place in the war

The promise of a second front in 1942 proved hollow. In July the British and Americans decided on a landing in North Africa, and in August Churchill travelled to Moscow to tell Stalin in person that there would be no landing in France that year. The dispute over the second front, in which Moscow invoked the communiqué of 11 June, weighed on relations between the Allies until the Normandy landings in June 1944.

The ban on a separate peace, on the other hand, survived the whole war. When in April 1945 Heinrich Himmler, through the Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, offered to surrender to the Western powers alone, Churchill and President Harry Truman rejected the offer and informed Stalin of it. This loyalty sprang from a whole system of commitments, from the Declaration by United Nations to the demand for unconditional surrender announced at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, but the treaty of 26 May was its strongest, bilateral knot between London and Moscow, and it is cited precisely as an obstacle to such attempts to split the coalition.

The twenty-year alliance did not last its full term. After the war Anglo-Soviet relations quickly turned into the hostility of the Cold War. On 7 May 1955 the USSR denounced the treaty, holding that Britain had violated Article VII when, in the Paris Agreements, it agreed to the admission of West Germany to NATO. The question of borders, set aside in May 1942, was settled as Stalin had foreseen: at the Tehran and Yalta conferences the Western powers accepted the Curzon Line as Poland’s eastern border, and the fate of Central and Eastern Europe was decided by the presence of the Red Army.