BEFORE WE START COULD YOU TELL US WHAT YOUR TITLE WAS DURING '38 THROUGH '46?

Well, I came back to the foreign office at the end of '37 to be, I think, what you in the States probably call the German desk in the foreign office. And then I stayed right through until the end of '44 moving up to be the deputy head of the department and then the head of the department dealing with Germany, the allied governments in London, the Poles, the Czechs, the Dutch, the Belgians, and so on. And also with the Iberian Peninsula.

THAT WAS DURING WHAT YEARS AGAIN?

'37 to '44. And then at the end of '44 I went to the Yalta conference on my way to Moscow where I was minister from the beginning of '45, I mean February of '45 until October '47.

[DISCUSSION ABOUT RANK AND TITLE]...SO LET'S START WITH WHAT WE WERE TALKING ABOUT IN THE OTHER ROOM. STARTING IN 1938, YOU WERE TELLING ME HOW CHAMBERLAIN PERCEIVED THE UNITED STATES AND THE SOVIET UNION — HOW THEY MIGHT BE USEFUL DURING THE WAR.

Yes. One has to just go back into '37, I think, a tiny bit. Chamberlain was a very hardheaded practical sort of chap. And he was a... he thought he was rearming Britain to stand up to Germany if necessary. But but when people said, why don't you come to terms with the Russians? he said, Well, how can you when Stalin is killing all his colleagues on the Central Committee and killing all his soldiers of the rank of colonel and above? As regard to the United States, of course, the United States had been isolationists ever since the First World War — had been very much preoccupied with her own economic problems and Roosevelt's new deal. And he felt that there wasn't much more than sympathetic words to be got from the United States. Eden, who was foreign secretary, took a different view. And there was a very important moment when Roosevelt sent a letter to Chamberlain and I can't remember the end of — I think it was the end of '37, but it may have been the beginning of '38. I mean that period. In which he more or less said that he was very interested in what was going on in Europe and would like to keep in touch and be consulted and so on. Eden was away in France on holiday. Their relations were already rather bad over Italy. Chamberlain didn't even consult him and sent a rather dismissive reply to Roosevelt which didn't pick this up and say, Yes, I'd be delighted to keep in touch with you, but more or less said, Thank you for your letter. And that was it. And Eden was so angry and so was the foreign office at this opportunity, which was obviously intended as a feeler by Roosevelt, having been missed that Eden resigned. A lot of people think he resigned over Italy, but it was on that issue that he resigned.

WITHOUT BRINGING UP THE POINT THAT EDEN RESIGNED JUST TALK ABOUT ROOSEVELT'S LETTER TO CHAMBERLAIN AND THE RESPONSE.

Well, I mean, I haven't got the letters in my mind obviously, but basically it was Roosevelt putting out a feeler to Chamberlain which Chamberlain could have seized on to. And and kept in touch with Roosevelt as of course Churchill did later on.

[REPEAT QUESTION]

Well I mean, as I say, I can't remember the exact terms of the letter. But what it was a letter expressing an interest in what was then going on Europe which was Hitler getting stronger and stronger.

[REPEAT QUESTION]

Well for us in the foreign office one of the most important things that happened at that time was when Roosevelt wrote to Chamberlain because they had not been in direct correspondence as Churchill and Roosevelt were later on. And it was obviously intended as an opening, as it were, to have an exchange of letters and to keep in touch. And we in the foreign office thought that Chamberlain should have seized upon this and tried to draw Roosevelt more and more into the European scene as Roosevelt obviously wanted to be drawn. But Chamberlain was a very sort of practical Birmingham businessman and said, America is isolationist; Roosevelt can't bring America into these affairs. And he sent a reply which was frankly discouraging.

SO IN THE LATE '30S HOW DID THE UK REGARD THE UNITED STATES? THE UNITED STATES WAS NOT A WORLD POWER REALLY AT THAT TIME...

Well, it was potentially a world power. But when I tell you that I of course knew Beetle Smith, your ambassador to Moscow very well, who had been Chief of Staff to Eisenhower. And Beetle Smith told me that before America came into the war, but when Britain was alone and when Roosevelt was trying to help Churchill, we had a problem in Bermuda, I think it was. A little rising. And of course we had no troops there. And so we sent an SOS to our friends in America who were interested. And said, Do you think you could send a few companies of troops or something. And Beetle Smith told me it was far more difficult to get together a company of troops and the necessary means of conveyance than it was later on to around an army of 5 million. So, obviously, you were not a military power at that time. You were a naval power. That yes.

I'M GOING TO ASK YOU AGAIN.

The United States was a naval power.

IN 1939 HOW WAS THE UNITED STATES REGARDED BY THE UK AS A MILITARY POWER?

Well, mainly as a naval, as a naval power. Because of course we had dealing with the United States after the First World War and later on the whole question of navel disarmament. And of course, as the United States naval power was very much not exclusively, but very much in the far east where we still had big interests but were having to concentrate more and more upon Europe. Obviously America was not regarded as in any sense a military power. And that had to be all built up after you came into the war.

WHEN CHURCHILL CAME TO POWER IN MAY OF 1940, WHAT WAS HIS ATTITUDE TOWARDS TRYING TO GET THE US INVOLVED IN THE CONFLICT?

Well, Churchill of course was naturally interested in America. He had an American mother. And he'd always wanted to work closely with America. He had these great feelings as a historian and a writer of the Anglo-Saxon peoples and the two great democracies on whom the peace of the world depended. I mean he was a romantic. As distinct from Neville Chamberlain who was a Birmingham businessman. And Churchill of course became...had been in the wilderness for many years before the war trying to persuade Neville Chamberlain that Germany was dangerous at the time when Neville Chamberlain was trying to... reach agreements with Hitler. And when Churchill became a minister in Chamberlain's government when the war began he was First Lord of the Admiralty. And so he then started a special correspondence with Franklin D. Roosevelt who he had known when Roosevelt was running the American navy. And this correspondence was on the basis of former naval persons— was how they signed that is. So quite unlike Chamberlain -- I mean Churchill at once entered into this correspondence and always felt that without American help — and he felt America would in the end would support us without coming into the war as best she could and would eventually probably be involved -- without that we would find it very difficult to win the war. Because, don't forget, Russia only came into the war against Hitler in the Summer of 1941 a few months before America came into the war as a result of the Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.

DID CHURCHILL TAKE SOME KIND OF ACTION BEFORE THE UNITED STATES ENTERED THE WAR TO TRY TO CONVINCE ROOSEVELT TO COME INTO THE WAR?

Well, not to... not to persuade Roosevelt to come into the war because Churchill knew America well enough to know that Roosevelt just couldn't persuade the congress at that time to come into the war. But to encourage Roosevelt who wanted to do it; to give us every kind of assistance short of war and some manifestations of it the Germans might well have regarded as very near to war. And I'm thinking in particular of the famous destroyers deal. Because of course we were terribly dependent upon the convoys across the Atlantic. And we were getting a very great deal of non-military supplies and some military supplies to from the United States. But we needed all our ships. All our naval ships and we were alone at that time and rather worried about the French navy. So Roosevelt agreed to do a lease — well to hand over to us and bring out of mothballs 50 American world... First World War destroyers in return for bases in the Caribbean. And this was the first sort of major achievement in this relationship between the former naval persons.

WHAT WAS CHURCHILL'S ATTITUDE TOWARD AMERICA BEING ISOLATIONIST? DID HE THINK THAT COULD CONTINUE?

He understood it, because he knew America very well.

[REPEAT QUESTION]

I think Churchill understood the isolationist tradition of the United States, but because he knew the United States very well. But equally, he knew perfectly well that Roosevelt wanted to change this. And therefore his task was to encourage Roosevelt to go as far as he could in bringing America out of isolation. But Churchill knew he couldn't do it on his own. And indeed, it took the Japanese to do it.

HOW DID CHURCHILL REACT TO THE NEWS OF PEARL HARBOR?

Well, I remember very well being with Churchill — no not with Churchill, but with Eden, but having known Churchill's point of view, because I was with Eden going to Moscow. We were in a train on our way up to the north where we were going to take a cruiser at Sandsail to Russia by the Arctic Ocean and Murmansk. And it was...when was -- we were having dinner on this train that a young naval lieutenant who we were taking up to rejoin his ship suddenly came to me as the junior member of the party and said he had a radio which in those days were not so good as they are today — And he said, you know, I had my radio on, and if I've heard it right — but you know, reception wasn't very good, the Japanese seemed to have attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. And I remember sending this news up — we were at a table at dinner, you see — to Eden and the others who just couldn't believe it. But of course, once the news had come through and once we'd consulted with Churchill — I mean Churchill naturally wasn't very happy at the American fleet having been...having been sunk and ( ) a lot of it. But at the same time he... taking the long view, he said, Well, this is going to enable us to win the war, because America is now in the war. And without that he couldn't see how the war was going to be won.

IN 1941 AFTER HITLER INVADED RUSSIA, HOW DID CHURCHILL EXPLAIN HIS WANTING TO BE AN ALLY OF STALIN AT THIS POINT?

A: Well, Churchill had no had no second thoughts on it. I mean we had been expecting this. Because-

[REPEAT QUESTION]

Well, when the Nazis invaded Russia of course, it was a great surprise to Stalin but it wasn't a surprise to us, because for several weeks before we'd had information that this was going to happen. And we had been trying to warn Stalin that it would happen. But Stalin felt that we were just trying to make trouble between him and the Germans with whom he wished to remain on relatively good relations. So Churchill had plenty of time to prepare himself for this event. It didn't come as a surprise. And of course, just as... he later on in a sense welcomed...you understand — he wasn't pleased at the sinking of the American fleet, but I mean, he welcomed the Japanese bringing America into the war. So he welcomed the complete change in the position in Europe with Russia being compelled to fight against the... against the Germans instead of being almost allied to them. So Churchill being the man he was who took big decisions I think within less than 24 hours he'd gone on the air with a great speech welcoming the Russians as the victims of Nazi aggression. I mean that's how he put it. And as our ally in the war against Hitler. Of course he said privately, I think, that if Hitler invaded hell, he wouldn't mind having the devil as an ally. The devil of course, in this case, being Stalin. Because of course, a lot of people were Surprised because Churchill had been very strongly anti-Communist going back to the First World War when he'd been the great advocate against military intervention against the Bolsheviks in the early days of the Revolution.

COULD YOU TELL ME AGAIN WHAT CHURCHILL SAID PRIVATELY?

Well, yes. While, while Churchill was obv... Whereas Churchill in public was welcoming the Soviet Union as a victim of Nazi aggression and as a gallant ally he in private of course was taking... saying to his friends -- who were rather critical of him — was saying why you are now prepared to work with the... with the Communists who you always so much disliked. He said "Well if Hitler invaded Hell he would be perfectly prepared to...welcome the Devil as an ally;" The Devil in this case being Stalin.

PART OF WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT IN OUR PROGRAM IS THE IDEA OF STRATEGIC BOMBING AND HOW THAT CONCEPT DEVELOPED DURING THE WAR. COULD, WHAT WAS, HOW DID THE BRITISH MILITARY VIEW THE IDEA OF DROPPING BOMBS ON CIVILIAN POPULATIONS WHEN IT STARTED TO OCCUR EARLY IN THE WAR?

Well, the, of course, there were two, main factors in this question of strategic bombing. The first was that we had been the victims of Nazi strategic bombing. I mean it was they that started bombing our civilian populations in London, as I very well remember. Because I was at the receiving end for several weeks, living just down the road here and sleeping every night in the cellar. And so the idea of taking this back again to the German civilian populations, didn't seem to the British to be, in any way, unfair. But the second, and I suppose in a way more serious factor was that once we, once France had gone out of the War and we had to withdraw our armies from the continent. We saw very little prospect of the British on their own, and we were on our own at that time, continuing the war on land, on the continent. Therefore our only way of hitting the Germans was, by, partially the naval blockade of course, but by above all the strategic bombing. And we built up the Royal Air Force with that in mind. I think most people today would probably say that we overrated the probable results of strategic bombing. But still, it certainly, especially when America came in and added daytime bombing with fighter support, to our nighttime bombing. It certainly did make the task of the Germans in maintaining a war economy more difficult. But the idea that we were going to get key bits of their economy completely out of action, that never worked.

WHEN IT FIRST BECAME APPARENT THAT THE JAPANESE WERE BOMBING MANCHURIA IN THE MID 30S AND THEN WHEN THE GERMANS BEGAN BOMBING LONDON WAS THERE ANY KIND OF, WAS THE BRITISH MILITARY KIND OF APPALLED BY THIS SORT OF ACTION? WAS IT CONSIDERED-

Well, it, as far as we were concerned, I mean, you know, Manchuria was a long way away and the British public probably didn't think much about that. But the Spanish Civil War, of course, had been a very major thing for British public opinion. And of course the Germans, and the Italians, had bombed the republican centers in Spain. I mean Guernica is the famous case, Picasso did his famous picture of that. So, this had really, made people very well aware of what was going to happen. In fact when the, when the, we of course came into the war by giving the Germans an ultimatum. It was our own choice. But we were expecting when the ultimatum expired that there'd be a German air raid on London there and then. And in fact there was an air raid warning within an hour or so. But it proved to be a British plane I think that set it off. And the Germans didn't in fact, begin to... begin to bomb us until after the fall of France.

WWII REALLY MARKED THE END OF THE DAYS WHEN THE CASUALTIES WERE JUST AMONG SOLDIERS...

Soldiers. That's right. And of course it's — Even at that time we felt it that if the Germans had concentrated their bombing in the autumn of 1940 on our airfield because they were preparing for an invasion at that time. Instead of moving a great deal of effort to bombing civilian populations, they might well have won. We think it was a great mistake on their part. And therefore the civilian populations, although we were rather sad, you know, that a lot of people in the east end of London or Coventry or wherever were being killed, it was a great deal better than having the attacks on our airfield.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE, DID YOU HAVE, CAN YOU RECALL PARTICULARLY HARROWING EXPERIENCE OF YOUR OWN DURING THE BOMBING OF LONDON?

Well, as I've said, I we used to sleep down in the cellar in a block of flats just down the road here, for seven weeks but I recall, particularly vividly the first, the first raid. We, we were having dinner with a former ambassador of mine somewhere down near Harrods. And that was the night when the German bombers, for the first time, came and bombed the Port of London. And they made quite a mess. So the next morning no sorry, our host said you can't go home because we had to get back to Kensington. So we slept the night there, and the next morning I went to the Foreign Office and my wife walked back, very near here actually, and she was walking along and there was a big church there, it's the big Scottish church in Columbus, and it had been hit, the first time she'd seen anything like that. And there was a policeman standing there and my wife said, rather stupidly as one does, "officer what's happened?" and this rather tall chap, and my wife is very small, and he looked down at her and said "Mice madam!" And that's my most vivid memory of the bombing. But we were very lucky, we had, we never, we never had a hit or even a windowpane broken.

COULD DESCRIBE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FDR AND CHURCHILL DURING THE COURSE OF THE WAR? AND HOW, AND HOW THEY EACH PERCEIVED STALIN?

Well I think the relationship between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill was a very close one, I mean, they knew each other very well, they were on very close terms, with these messages going backwards and forwards at the same time naturally, they didn't always agree on everything, and plainly the position of the United States was different from the position of the United Kingdom. But I think they were very close to each other. Where however, difficulties if you like, to put that way arose, and I'm not talking about strategic questions of whether you landed in the South of France or whether you didn't, I mean these were inevitable problems in a war. But when it came to the relationship of Stalin, for quite a long time, I would say for about three years, '41 to '44, they were both very much on the same tack, that you know, we've got to get along with, they called him "Uncle Joe" you see, in all their messages, and they had this theory that if only you treat Uncle Joe like a member of the club, you see, like one of us, he will eventually behave like a member of the club. And this of course was a great mistake because Uncle Joe had his own communist club, of which he was the boss. And had no particular desire to join our western club as a country member. But this where they were quite wrong, you see, they thought they could do that with him. And of course, towards the end of the period, when we are moving towards the Yalta Settlement, Roosevelt was thinking by then, very much in terms of the future of the world after the war depending on continuing a cord between, hopefully, the three victorious powers but above all, the two countries which were going to be superpowers. I mean the United States and the Soviet Union. Now, Roosevelt's one sort of, if you like, criticism of Churchill, which he criticized him to his face, he said "You're an old imperialist" And as you may remember Churchill had said on, we might all remember, as Churchill had said on one occasion, he had not become the King's Prime Minister in order to dismantle the British Empire. And indeed after the War he hoped to keep it going, and he much opposed independence for India, and things like this. Chur-, Roosevelt had the strange idea that Stalin was an anti-imperialist too. Forgetting of course that the Russians are the great imperialists of modern times. And so at Yalta, where he was very anxious to get Stalin's agreement on things like the United Nations, and coming into the war against Japan. He played up to Stalin very much, and rather, saying "You and I...can't always agree with our friend Churchill because he is an old imperialist." And Churchill much resented this. On one occasion at Yalta, he was so angry, he got up to leave the room. And it wasn't Roosevelt that brought him back, spite of their close relation, it was Stalin who got up and said, "No, no Mr. Churchill, we value you as a great ally, a war leader, we were joking, you mustn't take this seriously." But this was, this was the issue, if you like, between Roosevelt and Churchill. And again, the other, as really as part of this, of course, Roosevelt wanted to build up Chiang Kai-shek, as an equal member of the victorious allied team, as it were. Whereas Churchill never felt this was possible.

WHY DO YOU THINK ROOSEVELT AND CHURCHILL EVEN THOUGHT FOR A MOMENT THAT STALIN MIGHT JOIN THEIR CLUB?

I just don't know. I think it was very strange. Well, you know, we were all fighting together and the Russians were fighting very hard and they were losing lots of people. And although Stalin was a very difficult ally, still he was for a long time, bearing the main brunt of the actual fighting. I mean, he was losing millions of people, when neither the Americans nor the British were having those kinds of casualties. And this created a mood, certainly in this country, of tremendous friendliness and sympathy for Russia I suppose. But inevitably for the Soviet Union. And they were — they had the same feeling and were reflecting it I suppose. But, of course, Churchill got out of that mood rather quicker than Roosevelt. By the middle of 1944, I think he decided that there wasn't any hope of getting Stalin in as an ally after the war.

WHAT HAPPENED TO CHANGE CHURCHILL'S MIND?

Well, I think there were many things, but above all the Polish question. And here I think it's important to realize what difficulties were created for the British because we had gone, we had entered the war for Poland. I mean it was the alliance with Poland. We'd been unable to do anything, really, to prevent Hitler overrunning Poland. And of course, when Hitler started overrunning Poland, Stalin overran the eastern part of Poland and took it all. And we, and then we had worked very hard to give the Poles a new base in this country and when Russia was attacked by Hitler, then we suddenly found ourselves with two allies. First of all the Poles, and then secondly the Russians, who were enemies. Who had actually been fighting each other and were still fighting each other. And so we worked very hard. I was very closely involved in all this throughout the war to somehow try and bring them together. And preferably before the Red Army began to advance and enter Poland. And we had some success. I mean we got, who was then the great Polish leader and who was less anti-Russian than most Poles were. He did, he made an agreement with Stalin, as a result of which, we got well, over, between a hundred and two hundred thousand Poles out of Russia, where they'd been taken as prisoners, who formed the Polish army in the West which was a an important military force, which fought in the Italian campaign and in the Normandy campaign extremely well. And of course, the Polish air force had been very important in the battle of Britain. And the Poles had a big navy at one time. And so we had a great debt towards the Poles, which became more and more difficult to as it were to carry out, as the Russians advanced and made it perfectly clear that they were going to take back what they had gained as allies of Hitler at the beginning of the war.

CAN I ASK YOU TO JUST BACK UP A COUPLE OF SENTENCES. YOU SAID "SO WE OWED A GREAT DEBT TO THE POLES." COULD YOU START THERE AGAIN…?

Yes. Well, we thought we owed a debt to the Poles. I mean, firstly because we'd been unable to help them at the beginning. And then in spite of the fact that they'd lost their country, they'd built up again their army and their air force and their navy, fighting with us, very bravely and very effectively, and Churchill was a very sentimental person and he, and also very military minded, and he had a great respect for a brave man fighting battles and things like this. And and, of course, as it became progressively more difficult to reestablish relations between our Polish allies and Russia, and as Stalin began to behave very badly toward the Poles.

YOU WERE STARTING TO SAY HOW STALIN...

Yes. Well, well I mean, apart of course, from his i- initial invasion of Poland, which, of course, to be fair to the Russians, they said "We are only taking back parts of Poland which are inhabited by Ukrainians and Lithuanians." But then, of course, the first disaster was when the graves of ten thousand Polish officers were found at Katyn, who had obviously been shot by the Russians, but of course, the Russians maintained they'd been shot by the Germans. Well.... Poland, the Polish government, even Sikorsky, could hardly let this pass, and as a result, relations were broken off. And then we tried again and then unfortunately Sikorsky died — he was killed in an air crash — and then we came on t 19 44, by which time the Russian armies were advancing, you see, into Poland. Arid they came up to Warsaw, and the Polish underground army, which was a very... biggish force, decided... in the light of later events, unfortunately — to have a rising before the Germans had actually left Warsaw, in order that they could liberate Warsaw, as it were, and hand it over to the Russians when they came. But they needed Russian help for this, and the Russians stopped their advance, and left the Poles to be... murdered, by the Germans, in a... battle that went on for about a fortnight. And we... had been doing our best to help them. The only way we could help them was by sending airplanes, with ammunition and, this kind of thing. But... in the... with the airplanes of those days, Warsaw, from the south of Italy, where they went from, was the extreme limit, and so the obvious thing was for them to land at Russian airfields, you see, behind the lines, and then they could have carried much better loads. The Russians wouldn't let us do it, even with pressure from Churchill and from Roosevelt. And this was, I think, above all, the thing that convinced Churchill that it was going to be very difficult to go on working with Stalin, because he had quite different aims. And I think the beginning of what led on to Churchill's Fulton speech in '46, was his indignation and disappointment over Russian behavior in Eastern Europe and particularly in Poland. But of course, Churchill ceased to be prime minister, you see, in '45, and the Labor government that came in, although Bevin and Attlee were anything but pro-Communist, but they then felt that they had to see whether they could work with Stalin, just as Roosevelt and Churchill had tried to work with Stalin, and they spent a year or more trying to, trying to work with Stalin, and then had to give up the attempt.

(BELL) COULD YOU GIVE A BRIEF SUMMARY OF WHAT HAPPENED IN WARSAW AND OF CHURCHILL'S ATTITUDE TOWARD IT?

Well. The, the Red, the Red Army had been advancing rather rapidly into Poland, and was coming up to Warsaw, which is on the Vistula and — Warsaw is the western side — so... the Russians had a problem in crossing the Vistula but they were expected to go on. And the Polish national army, it was... the resistance force, but it was quite well armed, and was very much under instructions from the Polish government in London, tried to — there was no consultation with us — decided that they would the Germans were then leaving Warsaw — and so they said they would... not wait for the Russians; they would rise and complete the evacuation of the Germans by pushing them out, and liberate their capital city — expecting the Russians to come and help them. And- and needing Russian help. Well. The Russians decided that they were going to stay where they were, on the other side of the Vistula. The Russian argument is that they had already advanced so fast that they couldn't advance any further, and there may be some truth in that, but I think it was rather more that Stalin wanted the Poles to come out into the open and be massacred. And once the German saw this situation, and saw that the Russians had stopped, they would come back into Warsaw. And then there was a great battle of about... three weeks or so, I think, between the Germans and the... and the Poles, which resulted in the complete destruction of Warsaw and the complete destruction of the Polish underground army. And, of course, we had been — the only way we could help, was by sending supplies, by air from Italy. The only way we could help was by sending supplies by air, from Italy, but Warsaw was at the extreme limit of the endurance of the airplane of those days. So, to make it an effective operation we needed to land our planes behind Warsaw, at the Russian, in the Russian airfields. And Churchill and Roosevelt asked for permission to do that, and Stalin... refused it. And so it was quite clear that he was only too happy to see the Polish resistance in Warsaw destroyed, in order that he could then push in his own Communists instead.

AND SO CHURCHILL (ROBERTS INTERRUPTS)...

So this really, I mean this, I think was the major event that convinced Churchill that, although he had to go on, obviously, trying to work with Stalin, I mean, we still had a war on and he was an ally — but... the old optimistic idea of the alliance going forward into peace, and the reconstruction of the world on the basis of this wartime alliance, alas, was not going to be realized. And he came to that conclusion, you see, well before Roosevelt. In fact Roosevelt never came to it, I think, because he died before...

LET'S TALK ABOUT YALTA FOR A FEW MINUTES. COULD YOU TELL ME WHAT DID EACH OF THE BIG THREE WANT OUT OF THE YALTA CONFERENCE?

Well, there were really four things, at Yalta — I mean, there were a few other peripheral things, but four major things. The first, and this tends to be forgotten, was to reach agreement on how Germany was to be occupied by the victorious Allies coming in from the east and the west. The work had all been done for that — they had a thing called the European Advisory Council in London — and so that wasn't too difficult, I mean, you know, the idea of having zones and then an Allied control council in Berlin, and all that. But this was important, because otherwise there'd have been... rather a mess, with the two armies coming in, not quite sure who was going where. So that was very important but, in a sense, taken for granted. That didn't cause great difficulty. A few other German things were done, like setting up a reparations council, but the major part of the detailed work was left over to the Potsdam Conference, later on. Well— So— and they were all agreeing on that. Now, Roosevelt's main priorities, apart from that, were to persuade Stalin to... come into the war against Japan, once the war in Europe was over.

COULD YOU PICK UP THAT SECOND POINT AGAIN, PLEASE?

Roosevelt's, one of Roosevelt's had two main priorities. And the first was to persuade Stalin, to bring Russia into the war against Japan, because she had not been fighting Japan — neutral — once the war in Europe was over. And you may say why, one might say, why did he attach importance to this when America was developing the atom bomb? But, the feeling at that time, and at Yalta, where I was ... there were only two atom bombs, I think, and it wasn't sure that they were really going to work, or that even these incredibly brave Japanese would necessarily... be affected by them. And that one had to think in terms of at least half a million American lives being lost on the beaches of Japan, after the experience that the Americans had in landing on all the islands in the Pacific. So it did seem rather important to get the Russians in to attack the Japanese through Manchuria, from the back. I think in the light of history... Stalin had every advantage in coming in, so... it wasn't so necessary to be nice to him to bring him in — but anyway, that was... an obvious priority. Then the second of Roosevelt's major priorities, and this is the third main issue at Yalta—

PICK UP ON WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT, IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY...

In the light of the, in the light of history, it might well be said that since Stalin... had every advantage in coming in the war against Japan; after all, he'd only he hardly lost any troops in it only took about a week, and he took the whole of Manchuria, and got back for Russia all that they'd lost in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, at the expense of the Chinese. But, but still at that time it was, it wasn't so sure. The other priority of Roosevelt, and the third major question, was related to the postwar organization of the world. And Roosevelt had the view, which was supported by Churchill, that the future organization of the world was to depend upon the United Nations. And the United Nations had to be different from the League of Nations, in that it had to have the major powers as members, and that particularly applied, of course, to the United States and the Soviet Union. And Roosevelt wasn't so sure that Stalin was prepared to come in on this. And indeed, Stalin was bargaining for special terms; he wanted three seats in the United Nations — he wanted a seat for the Ukraine and White Russia as well as for the Soviet Union. And, and that was a major issue. Now, the fourth major question, at Yalta, and it's the one, which Yalta is now associated with in everybody's minds, which is the settlement in Eastern Europe. And this was, if you like, the major issue for Stalin. A-and the, and the settlement in Eastern Europe was the major issue for Stalin, and also for Churchill, because of how, having come into the war for the Poles, and the fact that we had to try and get, even if not an ideal solution, the best possible solution for the Poles, this was what Churchill wanted to get out of Yalta. This is really why I was at Yalta, because I'd been dealing with the Polish situation. But of course Roosevelt wasn't so interested in that; and this was rather obvious, and Stalin could see that, you see. And also Roosevelt, at Yalta, made a statement which, again, in the light of history, was very unfortunate: when he told Stalin that he intended to take the American troops out of Europe within a year or two after the end of the war; which meant that Stalin was going to be left with far and away the biggest army in a... completely devastated continent. And we the British were not strong enough to provide the balance. So in the light of that, I think Stalin said, "Well, that's all right, I can do what I want in Eastern Europe, basically. But, but I mean now everybody says, "Well, Poland was given away to the Russians and... all the other Eastern European countries on the way" — but, it wasn't quite like that, because the Red Army had already taken all these places; the Red Army, by the time of Yalta, was right through Poland and moving into Germany. So it was in fact the military results of the war which decided what was going to happen in Eastern Europe, just as in the Mediterranean, where Stalin wanted quite a lot of things, he couldn't get them because there it was the Anglo-American armies which were in occupation. I mean, one tends to forget this was a mort— a war situation, it wasn't diplomats just discussing what would be nice and what could be done. But, in spite of all that, I mean, one did get... on paper, I mean, quite reasonable settlements, but... the point was that the Russians interpreted free elections and democracy and... all that kind of thing rather differently from the way we did. But these were the four, the four main issues — and I think if Roosevelt had not been... had not had his eyes so firmly on Japan and the United Nations, and had... given Stalin the impression that he was more interested in the future of Eastern Europe, we might have got a better settlement, but... I only say might, because the Russians were determined to control Eastern Europe. You see, after the first world war, it was the West who controlled Eastern Europe against... the Soviet Union, so he was going to reverse this and... what the Red Army had taken, he was going to hold.

BUT WHY DID CHURCHILL AND ROOSEVELT EVEN THINK THAT DEMOCRACIES COULD BE ESTABLISHED ALONG THE BORDERS OF RUSSIA?

Well, I don't think we were expecting "pattern" democracies in Rumania or Bulgaria, but Poland... had been... rather too much of a democracy at various... of its history, you know. When they had the De Rerum Veto (?) and... any one member of the Polish Parliament could stop the government of the day doing whatever it wanted to, and... it was a... if you like, a... an exaggeration of democracy; and Czechoslovakia had been, had been, and still was a democratic system, so it wasn't so entirely outrageous to think that this might be possible. I would suppose that Roosevelt thought, and Churchill might have to a lesser extent that Russia was going to come out of the war, very dependent upon American aid, because it had been... devastated; it needed food, it needed every kind of thing. And I think Roosevelt thought that would be... a weapon is perhaps the wrong word, but it would, it would make Stalin on the whole want a better relationship, and that therefore he might... moderate his ambitions. But it became clear as time went on that Stalin was not prepared to sell his political goals or his territorial ambitions, for economic advantages — in fact he turned down offers from Roosevelt, later on — not from Roosevelt, from Truman — and eventually refused... even to join in the Marshall Plan, which was offered to Eastern Europe as well as to the West. But at that time that didn't seem quite so clear.

WHAT WAS IN STALIN'S MIND AT YALTA? WHAT WAS HIS POINT OF VIEW TOWARD EASTERN EUROPE AT THAT TIME?

Well, I — one can only speculate; Stalin wasn't kind enough to explain to us that. But I think it was perfectly clear that Stalin wanted to establish what he called "friendly and reliable governments" throughout Eastern Europe. Now, friendly and reli— and that's what he wanted... from the very beginning; I mean, when I was in Moscow in '39, before the war, and we were negotiating with Stalin, trying to... get his help in supporting the Poles and the Rumanians against Hitler, he, even then he made... certain demands: he said, "I want to be free to move my troops into..." what he regarded as parts of the Ukraine and Lithuania that were then parts of Poland. He wanted to have control of the Baltic States. He wanted to have control of Bessarabia, and Bukavina, on the Rumanian borders. And and he wanted certain things in Finland. Well — he took all these things, when our negotiations failed, and he came to terms with Hitler. Then of course he lost them all, when Hitler attacked Russia and pushed the Russians back. But even in December, 1941, with the German armies 16 kilometers from the center of Moscow — when I went to Moscow with Anthony Eden — one of the first things that Stalin asked for, he said, "Mr. Eden, I want British... assurance that you will support me at the end of the war in my claims" upon what we would say was eastern Poland, the Baltic states, Bukovina, and all these things. So he was entirely consistent. So it was quite clear that once the Red Army had, he would say, "liberated," as we would say, "occupied", all these areas, he was going, in one way or another, to hold them. Now the problem, in our minds, was how was he going to do it? In, in Poland, you see, we knew there were very few Polish communists. And Stalin himself had killed most of the communist leaders who'd been in Moscow in 1937. So, we felt that, if he did want to work with the Poles, he had to work with non-communist Poles, because they were the majority, and therefore you could have a situation which was not entirely unacceptable. But, on the contrary, Stalin brought in Polish leaders who hadn't been bumped off in '37, from Russia, Beirut or Subkomarovsky, Rada.... (???), they all had double-barreled names. And there was only one Pole who appeared at that time who was a local communist: that was Gomulka, who was entirely different from the others — he was a Polish nationalist, the others were Russian stooges. And and the first elections that they did have in Poland, which, under the Yalta agreements, had to be held Mikolichik (?), who'd been the Polish leader in London, and had gone back to Poland to form this joint government — his Peasant Party came out very well; they got lots of votes. But after that the Russians said there weren't going to be any more elections like that!

SO, SINCE STALIN HAD BEEN SAYING IN 1939 AND THEN IN 1941 THAT HE WANTED EASTERN POLAND AND THE BALTIC STATES, WHY WAS ANYONE SURPRISED AFTER THE WAR THAT HE DID NOT WITHDRAW PROM THOSE TERRITORIES?

Well, he wasn't expected to withdraw — I mean he was expected, obviously, to maintain a rather close relationship with all those countries — the problem was... would his... control be... a very brutal one, as it became; or would it be exercised in a rather more subtle fashion? Unfortunately it wasn't. But when you say everybody — I mean, we were not, I was not very surprised; I mean — only, we had to, we had to do the best we could.

COULD YOU SAY THAT AGAIN? YOU WERE NOT VERY SURPRISED BY WHAT?

I mean, the accusation is now made, that the Western Allies were very naive in... not realizing that Stalin was just going to... seize Eastern Europe and control it. Well, frankly, many of us, certainly I myself was not the least bit surprised — I thought he would! But there were various ways of doing it could be done in a sort of rather brutal way, as it eventually was, or it could be done in a... way which was slightly more acceptable, in that he would have close relations with all these countries, but they would, they would still be able to have relations with the outside world. It was when he really cut them off from the outside world that it became impossible. I mean... we surely understood, and in fact it had to be accepted, that the, that Russia was going to, once she had the military strength to do it, was going to reverse the position after the first world war, when Russia was militarily weak, and it had to abandon any kind of influence in neighboring territories. She was going, obviously, to reverse that, a and she, and she, and she did.

IN THE SPRING OF '45, YOU WROTE TO THE FOREIGN OFFICE SAYING THAT, AFTER WORKING SO HARD TO ESTABLISH GOOD RELATIONS IN MOSCOW, IT WAS VERY GALLING TO BE CONFRONTED WITH EXAMPLE AFTER EXAMPLE OF POWER POLITICS IN THEIR CRUDEST FORM. COULD YOU EXPLAIN WHAT YOU WERE SEEING IN MOSCOW THEN?

Well, I mean, the, this applied particularly to Eastern Europe, but not only. You see, within a very few weeks of the Yalta agreements on Poland the Russians had still not accepted any representatives of the western Poles, back into Poland, to form this new government, which was to be the Moscow Poles and the London Poles. They were, they were holding back on this, and suggesting that, frankly, Russian stooges from the United States — I've forgotten their names, there were two particular people — should be the representatives of the west, and not the people who'd been in London who were the official government. Then, secondly, they, the Russians called upon... the Polish army ... underground army, I mean there was still a big underground army in Poland which was loyal to the government in London to declare themselves and cooperate with the Red Army moving through Russia, which on the face of it was a reasonable request, you see, and the minute the, they, the, they were then instructed from London to do so, and the minute they had done so, they were all arrested and brought to Moscow for a show trial. And, I think none of them escaped from that; I mean, they were all in prison. So these were not exactly encouraging. Then again there'd been an agreement in Rumania, where there was a control commission on which there was an American and a British, as well as a Russian representative, and of course Rumania had come in, had, at the end of the war there'd been a coup d'état in Rumania, in which the king, and one of his main political leaders, whose name I forget, had come out on top as allies of the Russians. But they were not communists; and so again within about two months of Yalta, they were changing the whole situation — in Rumania... they got rid of the king while pushing in their communists, and not paying the slightest attention to the American and British representatives on the Tripartite Control Commission. So all these things, I mean, were— what I had in mind.

I WONDER IF YOU COULD SUMMARIZE WHAT YOU WERE SEEING THAT YOU WERE CALLING POWER POLITICS IN MOSCOW IN THE SPRING OF '45.

Well, the power politics were basically not carrying out the terms of the Yalta Agreement, either in Poland or in Rumania. And in Poland, it took a very long time. In fact it was only after, I think Hopkins had paid another visit to Stalin that they were ready to accept any of the London Poles to go back to Poland as they were entitled to under the Yalta Agreement to form the new government. That in addition, they had arrested and brought to Moscow for a show trial the leaders of the Polish underground army, which was loyal to the, to the London government. And in, and in Rumania, they had got rid of the king and his followers who were not communists, who had nevertheless, brought Rumania out of the German alliance and into cooperation with Russia in order to substitute Communist, ah. These were obvious things that I remember. I have no doubt that there were other things going on in Iran and other places.

AND SO WHAT WAS THE CONCLUSION THAT WAS DRAWN FROM THIS?

Well I mean one has to distinguish, I suppose, between what our conclusion was in Moscow and what we were advising our governments and what conclusion was drawn back into our capitals. I mean, I recall very vividly that George Kennan at the American Embassy and I at the British Embassy were constantly telling our people back home, you can't, you mustn't build your post-war policy on the idea that Stalin is going to be an ally and a reliable person to work with. He is not. He has quite different objectives. But, but that doesn't mean that was automatically accepted as true. It took a little time.

THERE WAS ONE OTHER THING YOU MENTIONED WHEN WE WERE HERE THE OTHER DAY THAT WAS ANOTHER PIECE OF EVIDENCE TO YOU THAT THERE WAS NOT GOING TO BE A ( )…RAY PARKER

Yes, you see in Moscow, we could see what the, what the Soviet authorities were telling their own people, which is far more important than their sort of general propaganda. And before the war was over the, they had what were called agitators, not quite what we would interpret an agitator as they were really lecturers who went around the factories and to tell the Russians what they were to think. And George Kennan and I would tell by the then TIMES correspondent with whom we used to lunch frequently that the, already in April, I think it was. The war ended in May, the theme of the agitators was that the Russian people must no longer regard the Americans and the British, who had been their wartime allies, as real allies. I mean it was a pure chance that Russia had fought the war with American and British allies against the Germans and the Italians. It might equally have been the other way around....

FROM THE BEGINNING...

You, you, in Moscow, of course, we were following what the Russians were telling their own people, in so far as we could. And we could follow quite a bit. And I remember very vividly that in April, before the war was over Ray Parker, who was then the TIMES correspondent, and he and George Kennan and I used to meet fairly regularly, telling us that the agitators and that's not quite what we would consider as agitators, they were really lecturers who went around the factories, telling the Russian workers and people what they should think. And the theme then was that they must no longer regard the Americans and the British as their friends and allies. It was a pure chance that the war had been fought with this lot of capitalists on their side against another lot of capitalists and the Germans and the Italians now being defeated the Americans and British must be regarded as just as much enemies of the Soviet Union as the others had been. Well, that was a pretty clear warning that the idea of if you treat Stalin as a member of the club, he'll behave as a member of the club, had been an illusion from the beginning.

TELL ME A LITTLE ABOUT GEORGE KENNAN, IF YOU WOULD... HOW DID HIS VIEW OF SOVIET INTENTIONS CHANGE DURING THE WAR. WAS HE THERE DURING THE WAR?

Oh, George was there before I was. And left before I left, also. I came just after Yalta, but George had been there I think for about a year, I think before that at least. Well, George, of course, was a great expert on Russian. He always had been. And I wasn't. I mean, I had gone to Moscow because I dealt with Poland and Germany. So, I learned a great deal about Russia from George, who I think was really the greatest American expert on Russia. And of course George naturally felt that in dealing with Russia you must take into account not only Russia as a great power, but Marxism, Leninism as a very important ideology and the two things went together. In the circumstances of the war particularly the American leaders were apt to say, don't let's bother about ideology. I mean that's the Russian's affair. And we have Stalin as an ally with the great Russian people fighting the war. In fact there was an occasion, I remember when George was trying to persuade to put a point to Roosevelt saying, well you must remember that the Russians do believe in their ideology and under their own ideology, they should act in such and such a way. And said oh, no I'm not interested in that. We're allies fighting a war and that's nothing to do with us. And Roosevelt took the same line. And so George was very worried about this and therefore wanted to bring home that the Russian leaders, apart from Stalin's rather more unpleasant qualities in being ready to kill off any number of people to achieve his ends or so did believe in the Marxist, Leninist ideology, which was not our ideology. And therefore, he was thinking in terms of a world which was going to be a Communist world one day. I mean, you didn't take any risks in bringing it about, but you equally didn't, didn't neglect any opportunity to push the cause along. I remember the great phrase was you what was it, Stalin's great phrase that you didn't pluck the unripe fruit from the trees. But once the fruit was ripe, you took care to gather it in.

WHAT WAS THE CIRCUMSTANCE, DO YOU RECALL BEHIND KENNAN'S WRITING OF THE LONG TELEGRAM EARLY IN '46?

Well, we were both rather doing the same kind of thing. I was also writing long things back to London. One of the main jobs of the diplomat in Moscow is really to influence his government's thinking. Almost, he has much more opportunity to do that than he had to change the Russian thinking. And, of course, we were, I mean we weren't saying, let us quarrel with the Russians, not at all, but we were saying, we must realize the war is now over, the Russian interest in working with us is not what it was It may be in certain fields. As indeed it is today, for example, in crisis management, or something like that. But in any other field they're not going to look at things the same way we do. They're going to feel they must push their own communists interests. And that will be entirely different from ours. And again, they viewed the whole of the Third world as potentially their oyster. I mean all these former colonies, I mean were going to be fed up with their former colonial masters, and were, not immediately, but gradually, going to fall into the Soviet lap. I mean, Lenin had made this great statement that the road to Paris lay through I think it was Shanghai, Calcutta, and Cairo. Meaning that it was through control of the Third World that the Soviet Union would come out on top in the end. And this became clearer and clearer and they had abolished... in early stage of the war, in order to appease us a little bit. The common, was it the common four. Anyway the great Communists of international organization. But then they started another one in 1946, which was much the same.

SO DO YOU KNOW HOW KENNANS SO CALLED LONG TELEGRAM WAS RECEIVED IN WASHINGTON?

Well, my impression is that it did have a very major effect. I mean...

COULD I ASK YOU TO START AGAIN AND SAY "THE TELEGRAM THAT CAME..."

The telegram, the telegram, I mean, it wasn't one thing and I think there were two or three at least. I mean, these really became eventually the containment policy of ....

WE WERE STARTING TO TALK ABOUT WHAT EFFECT THAT KEN- KENNAN'S WRITINGS HAD ON WASHINGTON?

Well, I think, I think certainly, Kennon's warnings if you like to put it that way and advice on how to handle had a very major effect and let on to the policy of containment. Which was what he'd advocated. Of course George Kennon himself, I think, felt that his advice had been taken too literally and at the, later on the American government had gone too far in basing its policy upon distressed and in a way an adversary relationship with the Soviet Union. But at that time, I mean he felt that we must be realistic and realize what it was we were dealing with. Which at--See during the days when almost any a--western statesman who went to Moscow was confident that he knew how to get on with Stalin and we were there always warning them, "Oh no, that was—might be a who didn't know how to do it. I will know how to do it." The first person who broke that was Andy who was a really realistic person, but you see things like George Kennon's uh—dispatches from Moscow to people what the reality was. But I don't think George Kennon or for that matter myself ever advocated that we should just regard Moscow as the force of evil and have nothing to do with it. That way we have a certain respect for the--for the Russian concept to dwell, they wanted to limit. And not that it was the world we wanted to live in but from their point of view, and it's very natural they should behave as they were doing.

YOU WERE IN MOSCOW WEREN'T YOU AT THE TIME OF THE ATOMIC BOMBING IN JAPAN? COULD YOU DESCRIBE WHAT THE REACTION WAS IN MOSCOW AND WHAT THE PRESS REPORTED?

Well of course, I remember, I have to speak from memory and I'm -- my memory isn't very clear on this, but I don't think they made much of it, because the very Russian was rather to play down... The attack on Japan with atom bombs did not in my recollection uhf create any very enormous impression in Moscow, by that I mean to say that the Soviets leaders did not want to play this up tremendously. You see when Truman had told Stalin at Potsdam that they—that America had this weapon and Robert expected Stalin to be either impressed in the sense of good for you, or impressed in the sense of saying oh my god, the Americans have got something I haven't got. But Stalin hadn't shown any kind of reaction, bu— I mean that might have been because he already was making his own atom bomb or it might have been pure tactics that he didn't want to appear to be too much impressed. And following on that tack of course they were not going to make too much of the—of the dropping of the atom bomb against the Japanese. But I don't, I mean I haven't a clear recollection of what he's done a great spread, I'm proud or not I don't recollect it having been put on the great spread on PRAVDA, it wouldn't have fitted in with the general Russian approach at that time.

SO IN THE SOVIET UNION WHAT WAS THEIR EXPLANATION OF THE JAPANESE SURRENDER?

Well I do—I think that there— they made a great deal of course, being Russians, of their own rapid advance in and how this had been very important in the--in the five year result. I don't think they kept the atom bomb as a secret to all. But they weren't playing it up. And they weren't doing what of course they might have done which was to say what a terrible thing to do, and how awful to destroy all these populations. There--that not--they didn't at all.

ONE THING YOU MENTIONED THE OTHER DAY... YOU MADE THE STATEMENT AND I'M NOT CLEAR NOW IN MY NOTES WHO YOU WERE QUOTING BUT HE SAID, "ALL THE RUSSIANS NEED TO GET TO THE ATLANTIC WERE " AND COULD YOU... COULD YOU TIE IT IN WITH THE DEMOBILIZATION?

Yes. The Russians as we now know, were of course determined to try and catch up with and have their own atom bomb. But in the meantime they were dependent upon maintaining any way numerically vastly superior conventional forces. And since the Americans were withdrawing to America and the British were withdrawing either to England or to various parts of the empire where we needed troops, and the French hadn't much of an army and the Germans of course were disarmed. So there really wasn't very much in Europe on the ground. I think at that time, you could have said that the strongest military forces west of the Russians were the Swedes and Swiss and Yugoslavs. And I think it was Lord Stewart who was I mean it's now Lord Stewart, but as Michael Stewart he was Foreign Secretary, who once said that all the Russians needed to reach the Atlantic coast of France was boots.

FROM YOUR VANTAGE POINT IN THE SOVIET UNION DID YOU FEEL THAT THE U.S. AND U.K. WERE DEMOBILIZING TOO QUICKLY?

Yes. Certainly, certainly we did. Because we were—the... I mean we were at a position in which the Americans and the British felt the war was over both wars, I mean... What--what one was looking at from Moscow was of course a demobilization on the part of the Americans and the British and the Russians were cutting down their forces to some extent but not very much. And maintaining a very large army and air force which was not as technically efficient as it is today but still it was certainly at that time, much the largest military force on the continent of Europe. And ih--but of course we were still working with them particularly in Germany and there was no question in our minds of the Russians suddenly telling the Red Army to move forwards, I mean that wasn't the fear. But when in 1948, were moving later on of course from the immediate post-war period when they had the coup d'état in Prague to substitute the Communists for a normal democratic government and then this was followed by the Berlin Blockade and when the background to this was the Russian refusal to join in the Marshal and Ace--AUEC as it then was. Then of course we began to get a little bit more worried and felt that something had to be done to build up the military strength of the west to produce a balance. And this—and this led on to the Brussels Treaty and eventually NATO.

...I WANTED TO ASK JUST A COUPLE MORE THINGS ABOUT THE ATOMIC BOMB. RIGHT AFTER THE WAR, WHAT WAS THE GREATEST PERCEPTION OF THE IMPORTANCE OF THE UNITED STATES HAVING AN ATOMIC MONOPOLY?

Well, I think we were very glad it was the United States and not the Russians which had it. But of course the Americans at that time or soon afterwards were proposing to give up their atomic monopoly and that was the period if I remember correctly of the Barach Plan, which was to put the American atomic power into a sort of United Nations Trusteeship, if the Russians had accepted that. But of course they didn't because they were preparing their own bomb and didn't want to be—to be stopped.

DID THE U.K. THOUGH HAVE SOME FEELING THAT THE UNITED STATES HAVING AN ATOMIC WEAPON WAS IMPORTANT TO THE SECURITY OF WESTERN EUROPE IN THOSE DAYS?

Yes because since we had anything but a conventional balance it was reassuring thought that we at least had the atom bomb if we if we needed it. Although we weren't thinking in those days in terms of fighting the Russians.

YOU MENTIONED SOMETHING...

I also don't forget that one shouldn't forget that the—that the British felt we had a share in the, in the American and atom bomb because we'd been instrumental in the whole enterprise.

...DOES THE EXISTENCE OF ATOMIC WEAPONS CHANGE THE WAY THAT NATIONS THINK ABOUT WAR?

Oh, yes, it has completely. I mean wars used to be regarded whether desirable or undesirable as a continuation of policy by other means. And their government in Europe felt we cannot in any circumstances conceive going to war. In fact we in Britain, only we don't regard ourselves as particularly warlike country had in fact declared war in 1914 and also in 1939. But I think far more important of course is how it affected the Russians. And I've done Russian-Marxist-Leninist ideology. It had been an act of faith so-to-speak that these success of communism in the world would not come without a final war when declining capitalism would pull itself together to make one last effort to save itself. Well, after the atom bomb, and above all them, the Russians had the atom bomb, later on, Khrushchev now we much rather of course, changed, which is not a very easy thing to do—changed the theology, if I may put it this way and--

LET'S COME BACK TO THAT... WHEN THE AMERICANS DID HAVE THE MONOPOLY RIGHT AFTER THE WAR, WHEN THE FOREIGN MINISTERS WERE MEETING IN LONDON AND THEN IN MOSCOW, DID THE EXISTENCE OF THE UNITED STATES BOMB MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE IN THE DIPLOMACY THAT WAS CARRIED ON? DID THE RUSSIANS FEEL THREATENED AT ALL?

I think it's impossible to say what the Russians felt or didn't feel. Though th--normally dislike intensely that their allies or whatever way you like to look at having something which they haven't got They wouldn't like that and they were very busy trying to change that situation. But to go back to the question of whether the American monopoly of the atom bomb did affect the actual negotiations in the post-war period, I think odds are must be no. Because we were still operating as—uh the victorious allies. We were still for at least a year after the end of the war right into 1946, were still discussing how to run Germany together, how to run Austria together we were—we were—we were engaged in the peace treaties, negotiations in Paris in '46, peace treaties with Bulgaria and Romania and all the countries in Eastern Europe and we were not yet, consciously moving into an adversary relationship. Which I remember are thinking in terms of—I mean can we threaten the Russians with the atom bomb, it would have been regarded as quite ridiculous at that time, I mean, how angry we might have got, these policies. I mean Russia was still the great power which had lost millions of people fighting for us, as public opinion thought, in the— in the—in the great war fought for people behind the scenes. I mean it was a rather reassuring sort that we had it and they hadn't. But in terms of weapon in diplomacy— it--was still based upon trying to reach agreement, and trying to run Germany which was the biggest question of the day in agreement. We didn't succeed but that went on right through 1946, well over a year after the war.

IN THIS PERIOD OF TIME WHEN WE CALL THE NUCLEAR THE LAST 40 YEARS OR SO, ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT NUCLEAR WEAPONS HAVE NOT BEEN USED SINCE WORLD WAR TWO?

Frankly no, I mean I think the minute any country has nuclear weapons and understands what nuclear weapons can do it—the-- we've got the deterrent because uh—there it is I mean leaders who started wars were fairly competent that they weren't going to be hit by it personally, but now, I mean everybody's going to be hit. There nobody even thinks so, I think in—uh, I mean there are no major nuclear power would think in terms of using nuclear weapons. I think a very interesting example of that is the way Khrushchev had to change the whole ideology in Marxism-Leninism to get rid of the idea of the inevitable war between capitalism and communism and say there wasn't any longer the inevitability of war because war would have meant nuclear war. And again another interesting example I think is the Chinese, because before the Chinese had the nuclear weapon and when Mao used to talk about, this is only a paper tiger and there are, I don't know how many, 800 million or 900 million Chinese and we can well afford to lose a few million people. But once they had the nuclear weapon themselves, they didn't talk like that anymore.

THIS IS THE NUCLEAR AGE, PROGRAM 1, INTERVIEW WITH SIR FRANK ROBERTS ON THE 21ST OF MARCH 1986. THIS TAPE'S USER BIT REFERENCE IS 0D0162, AND THE TONE ON THE BEGINNING OF THIS TAPE WAS AT ODBM. WE TOUCHED ON SOMETHING EARLIER AND ALICE SUGGESTED THAT WE CLARIFY IT A LITTLE BIT IN THE TIME PERIOD THAT OUR PROGRAM IS DEALING WITH. YOU TALKED ABOUT THE NOTION OF WHAT WAR IS. DID THE ATOMIC BOMB CHANGE THAT? DID IT CHANGE THE WAY PEOPLE THOUGHT ABOUT WARS, IN 1945, RIGHT WHEN THE BOMB WAS JUST BORN?

I find it hard to say, how soon the idea became accepted that the atom bomb had changed the whole concept of whether you could fight wars or whether you couldn't. Because in that period immediately after the war, everybody was thinking in terms of that there wasn't going to be any more war. I mean, after all, we really, the Americans and the Russians and to a lessor extent the British were shaping the new world and was, at that time there didn't seem to be any other fear. So I don't think many people at that time were saying well, has the atom bomb stopped the possibility of war because on the whole, nobody was thinking in terms of the possibility of war. I mean, those thoughts came later, when in '46, '47 our relations with the Soviet Union became progressively more difficult. And eventually, in 1948, of course, were adversarial at best, and hostile at worst. So, I mean, for my recollection, but there may have been other people who thought differently, I would say that it was at a later stage that we began to say know the whole concept of ever fighting wars has changed.

LET'S GO AHEAD AND TALK ABOUT THAT LATER STAGE...

THIS IS CONTINUATION ON THE SAME TAPE, BUT ITS FOR PROGRAM TWO, THE USER BIT CODE HAS CHANGED TO 0A0262. SO WE WERE STARTING TO TALK ABOUT WHAT ABOUT IN THE LATE '40S, THE TIME OF THE BERLIN BLOCKADE AND THOSE DAYS, HOW DID THE ATOMIC...CHANGE THE WAY PEOPLE THOUGHT ABOUT WAR...

Well I think, I think about the time of the Berlin Blockade, and the coup in Prague, which, of course, really marked the watershed in western relations with the Soviet Union we were, we felt that, leaving the navy aside, but in European terms the Russians had infinitely stronger conventional forces. And therefore, it was rather important that the, that we have the nuclear weapon at that time. I'm not quite sure when it was that people realized the Russians were going to have a nuclear weapons, but it wasn't an issue at all in discussions of the Russians at the Berlin Blockade. I mean, I obviously wouldn't be an issue at all, sometime it wasn't even an issue in the background. We went from saying, well we can be a bit tougher because we have the nu—the nuclear weapon. But so at the time of the Berlin Blockade, we were still thinking in terms of the possibility of conventional military action. In fact, when I say we some people were, because at... it was decided that something had to be done when we, when we realized that the talk of mending bridges over the and all that was purely a device. Then, the, then, I think it was General Clay (??), and Bob Murphy, who was his diplomatic advisor, they were rather in favor of sending a ground force through to Berlin. And our argument against doing that was, well, you might conceivably get them there, but you would never get them back again because the road would be, would be interrupted and somebody would have to fire first and the essential thing was that our side should not be the ones to fire first. And in that kind of situation we'd have had to fire first to clear the road. And therefore, we in Britain, I mean, were pressing for the air supply line instead, because we had rights to fly and in that case, it was the Russians who's have had to fire first. And as we felt nobody was going to fire first, if they could help it we would be able to handle the thing better that way. But, in the whole of this, I don't recall, and I was handling the Berlin Blockade... the London end in Moscow and afterwards in the United Nations, I don't recall the nuclear weapon ever sort of coming into consideration, because nobody was dreaming of threatening the Russians with our then nuclear weapon... and just wasn't on. But I think it was really later on, when the Russians had a nuclear weapon themselves, and I can't remember exactly when that was but in the early '50s, and then each side had nuclear weapons, then I think the whole, sort of thinking changed. And it particularly changed on the Russian side. I mean it was more remarkable on the Russian side because they had always had a spot of their basic ideology, the theory that Communism could only eventually succeed in the world, after a major military clash between what they call the bourgeois world in it's death throws and Communism. But obviously realized, Khrushchev wasn't in power, don't forget until 1955, so this is seven years after the Berlin Blockade, or anyway, six. And he felt that th—this was no longer a possible scenario because if you once moved into having to have wars between the bourgeois and the Communist worlds you would have to use it, nuclear weapons would be used. And this was absolutely impossible because neither side could win. And so he had to change the ideology and remove from the Bible, so to speak, which is a very difficult thing to do in Russia the concept of the final war with between the dying capitalists cause and the Communists. It was not going to be ended by that at all. So then you moved into the other theory of peaceful competition.

CAN I JUST ASK YOU TO SAY BRIEFLY, SO WE HAVE A GOOD SENTENCE TO BEGIN THE NOTION THAT KHRUSHCHEV HAD TO CHANGE THE BIBLE, SO TO SPEAK...

Do that again? Well well I think the important period in what we might call general thinking about nuclear weapons was when Khrushchev came to power in Russia, which was about 1955. And he was a revolutionary thinker in many ways and particularly impressed by the new weapons, and above all, the new nuclear weapons. And he felt that it was quite inconceivable that there should be war between nuclear powers however adversarial because neither was going to win. And therefore this very basic tenet of Marxism-Leninism that the eventual victory of Communism in the world would only come after a, after a war which, in their view, the bourgeois capitalist society would start in a spirit of self-preservation when they were nearing destruction. That that had to be changed and abandoned because it was far too dangerous.

RIGHT AROUND '47, '48,WHAT WAS THE EXTENT OF THE OFFICIAL BRITISH KNOWLEDGE OF THE SIZE OF THE US ATOMIC ARSENAL?

I was not handling nuclear questions at any point, so I mean I'm not a, I can't give an expert view on this but my impression is that we were always very close to the Americans on these things, because after all, we had worked together in the war in developing nuclear weapons. We had been very put out after the war when the Americans felt they had to go it alone. And it was from then on that we felt we had to go it alone, but with American help. But I think there was a great deal of consultation going on all the time and I would be very surprised if we hadn't got a pretty good idea because, let's face it, we'd recently been in the business together.

...YOU MENTIONED THE OTHER DAY THE FOUR POWER CONFERENCE IN MOSCOW IN EARLY '47 AS BEING A PIVOTAL POINT. COULD YOU EXPLAIN THAT PLEASE?

Well the American post war governments, government rather, administration, I should say, with Secretaries of State Burns and, had certainly worked hard at trying to get on with the Russians in Germany and elsewhere. So had the post-war British labor government. They had not picked opposite from Churchill, who, by that time was getting rather skeptical about working with the Russians. But, throughout 1946, it became increasingly difficult, we couldn't reach agreements in Germany, I mean, it's a long story, but things got more and more difficult. And equally, there were problems in Iran and other places, and of course, everything was supposed to be discussed from time to time at Four Power (??) Conferences. And there was a big Four Power Conference to be held in Moscow in March, I think it was. It was a seven week conference. March '47. And by that time, both on the American side and the British, I think the feeling was that it was getting very difficult but we still had to go on trying. But things had reached a pretty critical stage because it was during the Moscow conference that the Truman Doctrine was proclaimed, which again, was America coming in to take over for the British, the support of Greece and Turkey against the Russians. And, this was a very major breech in American isolationism. And this came before NATO. This was the first, I think, basic post-war American commitment. So it showed the mood of the day. But we were still trying to treat Germany and Austria as united countries, or countries to be united, although, we couldn't agree how. But where I think the '47 Moscow Conference was very important was that the French, who were the fourth occupying power in Germany had never up till then, wanted to join with the Americans and the British in building up what was known then as the 'bi-zone' (??), in other words the West German administration, because they still thought that they might be able to come to satisfactory terms on Germany with the Russians. Traditionally, France and Russia had been allied often against Germany. And the particular issue was they wanted to have control of the Saar, and the Saar should not go back to Germany of coal mines and iron works there. And also, they still hoped, with the help of the Russians to get some control of the, of the heavy industry of the Ruhr. But it became clear to who was the French foreign minister at the time, during this Moscow Conference, that Stalin just wasn't interested in this. He had a very low opinion of the French. He never quite forgave the French for having collapsed in 1941, and so destroyed his scenario of France and England fighting against Germany for many years and bleeding each other white and keeping Russia on top. And and it was there that the French realized that they were not going to be able to get anything out of a special relationship with Russia, and decided to come in with the Americans and the British on building up what became the Federal Republic of Germany in the West. So that was, I think the key thing. That and the Truman Doctrine, which had nothing to do with the, with the actual conference in Moscow, but happened to take place at that time.

WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE BRITISH REACTION TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE AND OF THE MARSHALL PLAN?

Well, the two main, two main results of the policies of a very great British Foreign Secretary Ernie Bevin, were in fact, the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine. You may say, well, one might say they were American things and why are we giving Mr. (?) the credit. Well, I think he did deserve a great deal of the credit, anyway for the Marshall Plan, because he was feeling very strongly that the first requirement in Western Europe was to build up the economy there. And this could not be done without American aid in a big way. And Marshall's speech at Harvard, I think, was one in a series of speeches but decided that this was the moment to seize upon it. And I remember I was his private secretary, you see, and he came in to the office and said, now this is what we've been waiting for. But he didn't want to do it purely from Britain. He's—it had to be a European response. So, he had, I remember his saying, 'get me that nice little man Mr. Bidault. He always called the French Foreign Minister 'that nice little man.' Bidault didn't like this very much. But, so that we could make this an Anglo-French sort of reply. And so we talked to the French and then we went to General Marshall and said, now this is marvelous and we're with you and we support this and this was the beginning of what became the OEC and the whole rebuilding of the Western Europe. And so naturally, I mean to say we welcomed the Harvard would be a British understatement. The, the Truman Doctrine, of course, was a slightly different thing, which was unfortunately our economic position, after the war was getting more and more difficult. Support for Turkey and Greece... the, I better go back to the beginning. The Harvard, the Truman Doctrine was a different story. I mean we can hardly say we were very proud of that, because unfortunately, it was, the Truman Doctrine came about because the British economic position after the war got weaker, especially after Lend-Lease had been stopped, and we had traditionally... been the people who looked after the eastern end of the Mediterranean and therefore gave the economic and military support to Turkey and Greece, who were standing opposite to the Communists or to the Russians. But it became clear that we couldn't go on doing that much longer. We hadn't got there sources. And so Bevin had to go to his American opposite numbers and say, you know, we're going to have to their out of supporting Greece and Turkey. Can you, replace us. Can you take over? And, of course, it was a very remarkable American response, and I think the first time America had really in peacetime accepted those kind of obligations outside the Americas. It was very much what Bevin wanted and when I, when I gave him the news which oddly enough, we got from Pravda first, because we were in Moscow, he was naturally delighted. But I mean not in the sense delighted that we'd had to do this, because it was, he regretted that our economic position was such. But it was a very important development.

CONTAINMENT POLICY TOWARD THE SOVIET UNION IS THE QUESTION. ALL SET? OK. THAT IS THE QUESTION.

I think after the British and American governments towards the end of '46 were coming, regretfully, to the conclusion that we couldn't go on cooperating with the Russians, The question naturally arose of what was the alternative policy. Well, there had been proposals from Moscow which were you had to contain the Soviet Union. And here I think obviously America alone had the power to contain with help from Britain. But I think the British Foreign Secretary of that time, Bevin who was a man of almost the greatness of Churchill in a different way, played a major part in this. Because already in— at the end of 1947, when there was a four-power foreign ministers meeting in London, it was the last of them until another one in '54. And Marshall was then the American Secretary of State. And at a dinner in London, Bevin said, well it's clear from the ( ) of this fortnight in London that we can't cooperate with Stalin and Molotov. And what are we going to do? We've got to build up the strength of Western Europe and it had to be done in two ways, economically — and that was, of course, the Marshall Plan side of it. But you couldn't expect the European countries to put all their hearts into building up the economy if they didn't have a feeling of military security. So that would have to be done as well. And they were quite agreed that I mean, it would require a return of American forces to Europe. But he— they were equally— ( ) equally accepted that this was quite impossible for the Truman administration to do just like that. And that therefore he, Bevin, had to show that Europe was doing everything it could do. And so he got first of all the treaty with France of Dunkirk, that was in '47. Then he built that up into a bigger treaty, the treaty Brussels with the governments of Belgium and Holland and Luxembourg, and that made a five-power alliance. And the military headquarters were set up in Fontainebleau under Field Marshal Montgomery. And then, as nobody in those was thinking at all about German rearmament, that was ( ). So then, having achieved the Brussels treaty, Bevin then turned around to Marshall, and reminding him no doubt of the dinner meeting in London, said, "I've done all I can do. I've prepared the ground. And we can't go any further yet. And now we need you." And so then started the talks on building up NATO. Which of course had been very much strengthened by what had happened in Prague in the beginning of '48 and the Berlin blockade later in the year. So I think the British and particularly Bevin played a very big part in containment, in the sense of I regard the Marshall Plan, once the Russians had refused to be associated with it, and NATO as the two great instruments of containment.

MEDIUM SHOT. SO DID THE BRITISH STILL INFLUENCE THE UNITED STATES TO ADOPT A POLICY OF CONTAINMENT?

Well, I think we— I think the British did, yes. I mean, I think you had great need of us at that time. Truman himself—

I'M GOING TO ASK YOU TO START AGAIN AND SAY THE UNITED STATES—

I think, I think the Uni— I think, I think the British certainly did influence the United States. But of course, the British were, in a sense, preaching to the, to the converted in the sense that you then had a very great generation of leaders, Truman, Marshall, Acheson, Lovett, and one could go on. Brandenburg and Connelly in the, in the Senate. But I think without the British input or pressures or what you like, it would have been much more difficult for Truman and his and his and his cabinet, to persuade the Congress to take on the amazing responsibilities of the— of the North Atlantic Alliance.

ASK YOU FOR ANY SPECIFIC RECOLLECTIONS YOU HAVE TO BRITISH REACTION TO THE CZECHOSLOVAKIAN COUP.

Yes. Well, the coup in Prague came before the Berlin blockade. And was really...the...

EXCUSE ME, COULD I ASK YOU TO START AGAIN AND NOT MENTION THE BERLIN BLOCKADE IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH. WE'LL GET—

I see, but I mean, everybody thinks about the Berlin blockade, but this came before. Well, let's put it this way. The, the coup in Prague, I think, was the first what you might call obvious sign that cooperation with the Russians was impossible I think there'd been many instances of it before. Because one has to remember that Czechoslovakia had been set up, if you like to put it that way, or reconstituted after the war, in full agreement between West and the Russians. And Benes, who went back as the president, and Masaryk, his foreign minister wanted to cooperate equally with both sides. And and thought they were doing so. And indeed at times, we in the West thought they went too far in appeasing the Russians, if you like. So that when even the Czechs, even Benes was not regarded as a sufficiently friendly and reliable government for the Russians, it became pretty clear that we were in for a long hard winter as you might say. So this had quite a great effect. And after all, don't forget that the Czech government had been in London during the war. And, and again, we had feelings of some guilt because of Munich. But we knew Benes very well, and above all we knew Masaryk very well, and Masaryk was a very great friend of the British. And when they were, so to speak, thrown out, and the communist leaders under Gotwelt(?) were substituted, this really was a very bad business indeed. And -- if I may go even further you see the negotiations for setting up NATO were going on at that time. And some countries were very reluctant to come in. Norway, for example. It was the Czech coup that persuaded the Norwegian government that they needed support and that they'd better come into NATO.

LET'S GO TO THE MEDIUM SHOT PLEASE. JUST MENTION THAT AGAIN. WE WEREN'T REALLY READY 'FOR THAT STATEMENT ABOUT THE CZECH COUP BRINGING NORWAY—

Going, going beyond Britain the effects of the Czech coup were very great. For example, negotiations were then beginning for what eventually became NATO in 1949. And there were various countries which became founder members of NATO who were not very keen and rather dubious, you know. They'd had a background of neutrality and so on. One in particular is Norway. And the Norwegians were rather close to the Czechs in their general sort of approach to life. And the, what had— what Stalin had done in Prague persuaded the Norwegians that they had better come into NATO.

OK. WIDE SHOT AGAIN PLEASE. THE BERLIN BLOCKADE, NOW, YOU MENTIONED THE OTHER DAY SOMETHING ABOUT UH, HOW STALIN WENT ON VACATION. MAYBE YOU COULD TELL US THAT STORY ABOUT HOW NEGOTIATIONS BROKE DOWN.

Well, the— we were— I was, I was of course--I was private secretary to Bevin, but our ambassador was ill, so I was sent to Berlin to be the British negotiator with Bedell Smith, the American ambassador, and the French ambassador. And we were there seven weeks. And we were obviously the things we were talking about were the Berlin currency and whether it was to be the Deutschmark East or the Deutschmark West and all this kind of thing. But behind all this, it was perfectly clear that the Russians were using this weapon as it were to try and persuade us to abandon our plans for building up a West German administration, that was really... Now we had, I think, seven meetings in the course of those seven weeks, five of which were with Molotov... I think , well, one was a preparatory one and two with Stalin. And of course, Stalin only came in when— he thought there was some chance of reaching agreement. When when he thought we might be prepared perhaps to meet him on this. But it became quite clear... after the second meeting with Stalin that we were not prepared to do that. And so he lost interest in the negotiations. And he decided and indeed he had I suppose very good reason to do so, that we were going— we the West were going to find it very difficult to supply Berlin through a long, hard winter, from the air. And so he decided, well, he'd see what was going to happen and hopefully before the winter was over we would have to come along and say, "Please, we want, we want an agreement on your terms. But of course it didn't happen that way. And the minute we knew the negotiations were over was when we did ask for a third meeting with Stalin.

EXCUSE ME ONE SECOND. MEDIUM SHOT PLEASE. COULD YOU START AGAIN WITH THE MINUTE WE REALIZED THE NEGOTIATIONS WERE...

And we did we on the Western side had instructions to ask for a third meeting with Stalin. And when we were told that it was impossible because he'd already gone off for his summer holidays to the Crimea, we realized he'd given up the project and that we were wasting our time.

OK, STAY WITH THAT SHOT. I HAVE ONE LAST QUESTION IS, DO YOU RECALL WHAT THE BRITISH REACTION WAS TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT THE SOVIETS HAD TESTED AN ATOMIC BOMB IN 1949?

I don't really. No. I don't. I can't even remember— in 1949?

'49, YEAH.

I was in India. I don't recall it. So if I give you any reaction it would be an Indian one, but I don't even remember that very well.

WELL, THAT'S A GOOD POINT. LET'S GO TO A WIDE SHOT. WE'VE TOUCHED ON THIS BEFORE, BUT YOU USED A PHRASE THE OTHER DAY THAT WAS SO NICE THAT I THOUGHT I'D ASK YOU TO REPEAT IT. IN TALKING ABOUT HOW THE WEST VIEWED STALIN AND HOW HE VIEWED REACTIONS IN EASTERN EUROPE AFTER THE WAR, WHAT THE WEST SAW AS BEING EXPANSIONISTIC WAS FOR STALIN HIS CORDON SANITAIRE. COULD YOU SAY THAT BRIEFLY—

Well I had I... Whilst I think it's impossible to excuse the way Stalin pursued his policies in Eastern Europe after the war, at the same time, I think it is important to understand that he was really in the tradition of Russian policy. I mean, Russian— the Russians had always felt that all these countries in what we now call Eastern Europe should be under their, under their influence- And they felt that at the time of the Bolshevik revolution at the end of the First World War they had lost all these areas, when they were weak. And therefore, if they were strong enough, they should resume their traditional influence, as they would put it, or control of as we would put it Eastern Europe. In other words, they would be reversing what had been a cordon sanitaire against them after the First World War into what would be a cordon sanitaire in their favor. And a point I think that has to be made here from the British point of view, is you see, when Stalin claimed the eastern part of pre-war Poland for Russia, although naturally we in Britain opposed the methods he used to seize these areas, we couldn't really oppose the policy. Because, after the First World War, when Poland had been recreated as an independent country we in Britain had always thought that the frontier should be on what was known then as the Curzon Line. Curzon was a British foreign secretary. And that was brought giving the Russians most of Eastern Poland, the parts that were inhabited by Ukrainians and Lithuanians. And when we made our alliance with Poland, in 1939, we'd been very careful not to commit ourselves to restore the territorial integrity of Poland, because we didn't think that was right. The independence of Poland, but not territorial integrity. And and Churchill, you see... got along very well with Shikovski(?) and the Poles in London, was always pressing them to accept that the Russians would have to have these areas inhabited by Ukrainians and Lithuanians, and that Poland would be compensated by taking areas of what had been Germany but which, if you go back far enough in history had also been Polish.