In November,
1943, Joseph Stalin, Winston
Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt
met together in Teheran, Iran, to discuss
military strategy and post-war Europe. Ever since the Soviet Union
had entered the war, Stalin had been demanding that the Allies open-up
a second front in Europe. Churchill and Roosevelt argued that any
attempt to land troops in Western Europe would result in heavy casualties.
Until the Soviet's victory at Stalingrad in January, 1943, Stalin
had feared that without a second front, Germany would defeat them.
Stalin,
who always favoured in offensive strategy, believed that there were
political, as well as military reasons for the Allies' failure to
open up a second front in Europe. Stalin was still highly suspicious
of Winston Churchill and Franklin
D. Roosevelt and was worried about them signing a peace agreement
with Adolf Hitler. The foreign policies
of the capitalist countries since the October
Revolution had convinced Stalin that their main objective was
the destruction of the communist system in the Soviet Union. Stalin
was fully aware that if Britain and the USA withdrew from the war,
the Red Army would have great difficulty
in dealing with Germany on its own.
At Teheran,
Joseph Stalin reminded Churchill and Roosevelt
of a previous promise of landing troops in Western Europe in 1942.
Later they postponed it to the spring of 1943. Stalin complained that
it was now November and there was still no sign of an allied invasion
of France. After lengthy discussions it was agreed that the Allies
would mount a major offensive in the spring of 1944.
From the
memoirs published by those who took part in the negotiations in Teheran,
it would appear that Stalin dominated the conference. Alan
Brook, chief of the British General Staff, was later to say: "I
rapidly grew to appreciate the fact that he had a military brain of
the very highest calibre. Never once in any of his statements did
he make any strategic error, nor did he ever fail to appreciate all
the implications of a situation with a quick and unerring eye. In
this respect he stood out compared with Roosevelt and Churchill."
The D-Day
landings in June, 1944, created a second-front and took the pressure
off the Red Army and from that date they
made steady progress into territory held by Germany.
David
Low, What news from the second front?
(14th July, 1942)
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