The Northern Department of the British Foreign Office and the Soviet Union, 1939-1942. Jacqueline Helen Dooley. Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. University of Leeds. School of History. September 2014. 1 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. ©2014. The University of Leeds and Jacqueline Helen Dooley. 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Geoff Waddington, for all his help throughout these four years, as well as his continued support, for which I am extremely appreciative. The love and support of my family has been essential throughout my studies. I am eternally indebted to my parents, who have provided me with love, support and guidance, without which I would not be where I am today. I would especially like to thank my late Grandparents, Edward and Joyce Hughes, for their never failing belief in my abilities and their eternal love and support. Finally, I would like to thank my partner and best friend, Gareth Harrop, who has provided me with much-needed love and support. I am forever grateful. 3 Abstract This thesis examines the opinions of, and advice tendered by, members of the Northern Department of the British Foreign Office during the years 1939-1942. Previous works on this era have focussed predominantly on the role of Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden. However, an in depth and exhaustive analysis of the views of the various members of the Northern Department provides a new and original perspective on the relations between London and Moscow in the critical period from the outbreak of war in September 1939 to the signature of the Anglo-Soviet Treaty in May 1942. 4 Contents Introduction p. 6. Chapter One ‘An act of treachery unparalleled in the history of the modern world’. p. 53. Chapter Two ‘The question for a British Ambassador here is not how much he can do, but merely how much he can stand’. p. 138. Chapter Three ‘It is essential to treat the Russians as though we thought that they were reasonable human beings’. p. 222. Conclusion p. 312. Bibliography p. 319. 5 Introduction. At the heart of the following analysis will be Great Britain’s relations with the USSR from the signature of the Nazi-Soviet Pact on 23 August 1939 to the conclusion of the Anglo-Soviet alliance of May 1942. Through an examination of the activities of the members of the Northern Department, the Foreign Office unit which dealt with the Soviet Union, it is possible to offer a new and original perspective on the development of relations between London and Moscow during this critical period of the Second World War. As Raymond Smith notes, there is a growing acceptance by historians of the validity of examining more closely not merely the process of policy formulation but the need to ‘highlight the role of permanent officials of the Foreign Office and Foreign Service in that process’.1 Indeed, as the late Sir Herbert Butterfield wrote in 1949: The importance of the higher permanent officials of the Foreign Office is now accepted as a matter of common knowledge; and it has often been noted to what degree a Foreign Secretary is in their hands… These sub-governmental, sub-ministerial actors in the drama are bound to be the real objective of a genuine enquiry into British foreign policy; and the real secrets and the real problems are situated in the very nature of things at this level.2 This is in marked contrast to the hypothesis of A.J.P. Taylor who once described what has traditionally passed as diplomatic history as the story of ‘“what one clerk said to another clerk” during a period when great events were happening a long way from Whitehall’.3 However, it is through a close examination of the men of the Northern Department that one can gain a great deal of insight into the reactions and responses 1 Raymond Smith, ‘Introduction’, in British Officials and British Foreign Policy 1945-50, edited by John Zametica (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990), 1-7 (p. 1). 2 Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London: Collins, 1951), p. 203. 3 Ibid., p. 3. 6 of these men to the ever-changing and fluid nature of the war. It is my contention that the belief that the Northern Department was a ‘relative backwater in the Office’4 is incorrect. As William Strang noted, although the men working within the various political departments did not finally determine British foreign policy, they would collate the ‘pertinent information upon which the policy may be intelligently established’.5 Indeed, ‘a man stationed at one of these geographical desks for a number of years is a veritable goldmine of information on both the region’s problems and the precedents which have been used in past British relations with the area’.6 It was the business of the men of the Foreign Office to make themselves expert in the conduct of international relations, and the officials within the Northern Department were no different to other Foreign Office departments.7 A second criticism of the men of the Northern Department will be addressed in this analysis of British foreign policy towards the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The charge that these men were ‘neither the best nor the brightest’ is both insulting and erroneous. Interestingly, the main criticisms of the Northern Department that will be dispelled in this study came from Laurence Collier, the Head of the Department between 1934 and 1941. Similar sentiments were expressed by Erik Goldstein in 2006. Goldstein remarked that the Northern Department was a ‘marginal’ entity within the Foreign Office.8 Collier, as will be shown, had a penchant for hyperbole and was guilty of self-deprecation and self-pity during his time at the Soviet desk in the Foreign Office. To diminish the intellectual acuity of 4 National Archives [hereafter NA], FO371/ 21103/ N2109/ 272/ 38, Collier to Osborne, 29 July 1937. 5 Donald G. Bishop, The Administration of British Foreign Relations (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1961), p. 236. 6 Ibid. 7 William Strang, The Diplomatic Career (London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1962), p. 117. Head of the Central Department 1937-39; Special mission to Moscow 1939. 8 Erik Goldstein, ‘Sir Laurence Collier (1890-1976)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (October, 2006). Online edition, www.oxforddnb.com/article/64924, accessed 22 February 2009. 7 these men, and the influence that they did on occasion exert is misleading. The case of Fitzroy Maclean, who was Second Secretary at the Embassy in Moscow during the Stalinist purges prior to his tenure at the Northern Department, dispels both misconceptions. Maclean was highly intelligent with excellent and influential contacts, and in fact requested a transfer to the Moscow Embassy in the mid-1930s.9 Although the Central Department was regarded by contemporaries and historians alike as a more prestigious department, one ought not marginalise the work of Collier and his colleagues during this tumultuous period. As will be shown through an analysis of the activities of the Northern Department, influence could be exerted by men of rather junior rank, not merely by the Permanent Under-Secretary and Foreign Secretary, a process facilitated by changes to the structure of the Foreign Office at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1962 Strang wrote that ‘the foreign policy of a state may be defined in a rough and ready way as embodying the purposes, intentions or objectives pursued by its government in the conduct of relations with the governments of other states, and the methods adopted by it in order to achieve those purposes’.10 For D.C. Watt, Britain is essentially an oligarchic society in which power is exercised by a minority of its citizens.11 At the heart of the formulation of foreign policy lies the Foreign Office, which has been regarded as the ‘headquarters for the administration of foreign relations’12 and was the place where policy was framed.13 It is the job of the Foreign Office to make available to the Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister all of the relevant information and recommendations from which future policy may be decided. 9 Fitzroy Maclean will be discussed in greater detail in the latter part of this chapter. 10 Strang, The Diplomatic Career, p. 114. 11 D.C. Watt, Personalities and Policies. Studies in the Formulation of British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (London: Longmans, 1965), p. 1. 12 Bishop, The Administration of British Foreign Relations, p. 229. 13 Strang, Diplomatic Career, p. 14. 8 Although the Foreign Office was ‘not so much a maker of policy as an instrument for its execution’, Strang clearly illustrated the significance of this government department: It does not … seek to impose its own ideas in disregard of the democratic principle of ministerial and parliamentary control over a nation’s action; but it does supply, in marshalled and digested form, the bulk of those facts on which alone sound policy can be based, and gives its own opinions on the courses of action which the facts make necessary or indicate as desirable.14 The Foreign Office is responsible for the conduct of Britain’s international affairs. Working alongside the Diplomatic Service,15 the permanent officials within the Foreign Office ‘help to fit together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle’.16 Although an examination of the Foreign Office is at the heart of this study, one must not neglect exploration into the Diplomatic Service which provided the men in Whitehall with the intelligence upon which their recommendations were based.17 If the Foreign Office ought to be regarded as the headquarters of diplomatic activity, then the embassies abroad were the ‘front lines’ through which the Foreign Office operated.