an improved pact ‘which would include additional points’.[331]At his first formal talks with Stalin, he added that ‘The French know what Soviet Russia has done for them, and that Soviet Russia played the chief role in their liberation… The origin of France’s recent misfortunes lay in the fact that France did not have Russia at her side and lacked an effective treaty.’[332]

For de Gaulle, the attractions of a treaty with Moscow were both symbolic and practical. It would mark France’s return to great-power status, able to deal on equal terms with the Soviet Union, and thus by implication the British and Americans. It revived the Franco-Russian alliance of 1893, which had always been directed against Germany: the heart of the new treaty was a commitment to fight together to the final defeat of Germany and to prevent any resurgence of the German threat. Both de Gaulle and Bidault also hoped for Soviet help in pressing France’s aims for Germany, above all the detachment of the Rhineland from the rest of the country, the internationalisation of the Ruhr, and the economic linkage of the Saar to France. For the Soviets, an alliance offered three possible benefits. France’s commitment to fight on until final victory would hinder any realisation of Stalin’s nightmare – a separate Anglo-American peace with Germany. A treaty would reinforce the position, within France, of a leader who had shown both independence from Washington and London and a willingness, however circumstantial, to govern with Communists. And it would, Stalin hoped, further his Eastern European plans if de Gaulle could be persuaded to support the displacement of Germany’s Eastern border to the Oder-Neisse line, and the claims of the Soviet-backed National Liberation Committee (the ‘Lublin Committee’) to rule Poland rather than the Polish government in exile in London.

The Moscow talks of December 1944 form one of the great set-pieces of de Gaulle’s War Memoirs.[333]The account centres on de Gaulle’s own refusal to bow to pressure from the Soviets, especially on the Polish issue. His willingness to break off negotiations won him Stalin’s respect, and an alliance that did not compromise France’s honour by selling out Poland – a country where, in 1920, he had acted as a military advisor to a government at war with the newborn Soviet Union. Other authors are more sceptical. Werth, for example, claims on his reading of Soviet archives that de Gaulle had asked for an invitation to Moscow – rather than, as de Gaulle argues, responding to pressing offers from the Soviet ambassador to the GPRF, Alexander Bogomolov – and has Stalin embarrassing the General with probing questions on France’s economic and military recovery, which had hardly begun.[334]Even Lacouture, a more sympa thetic biographer, takes some of the gloss off de Gaulle’s account.[335]

Compared with the protracted negotiations on an Anglo-French treaty, however, the drafting process in Moscow was speedy. Bidault had passed a draft to Bogomolov, who had accompanied the French party, on 3 December; Stalin gave de Gaulle a favourable response in principle on 6 December; and Molotov passed the Soviet draft ‘Treaty of alliance and mutual assistance between the USSR and the French Republic’ to Bidault on the same day.[336]The core of both drafts was a common commitment to pursue the war to final victory, to refuse any separate peace, and to provide mutual assistance in any future conflict with Germany.

There remained, however, two potential stumbling-blocks. The first was the issue of Poland and the Lublin committee. The second concerned the extension of the alliance to the United Kingdom. Stalin had kept Churchill informed of de Gaulle’s visit since 20 November, and had asked for British views on a Franco-Soviet pact by telegram on 2 December, the day of de Gaulle’s arrival. The British Cabinet had discussed the issue two days later, and backed Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden’s preference for a tripartite Anglo-Franco-Soviet alliance. Churchill’s telegram to Stalin of 5 December supported such a treaty, as well as the inclusion of de Gaulle in any Big Three talks affecting France. Stalin’s reply, dated 7 December, agreed to propose a tripartite pact to de Gaulle.[337]

The two questions came together at the de Gaulle-Stalin meeting of 8 December. To de Gaulle’s direct question as to ‘whether Marshal Stalin considered closer relations between our two countries were necessary’, Stalin again agreed to the principle of a Franco-Soviet pact but added that ‘there are good pacts and there are better pacts. A tripartite pact onto which Britain was coupled would be better.’[338]De Gaulle refused the proposal, with some irritation, for three reasons. It appeared as an unacceptable intervention by Churchill in the sovereign conduct of French foreign policy; France’s position in a triple pact would inevitably appear less important than in a bilateral treaty; and de Gaulle viewed France’s differences with the Soviet Union – despite the Polish question – as less fundamental than the unresolved issues with the United Kingdom, notably over the Levant and Germany. Those differences, for de Gaulle, could be settled only in the ‘second stage’ of France’s construction of alliances – the third being the future United Nations pact with the United States and other powers.[339]

The Soviet records suggest that Stalin then used the tripartite idea as a bar-gaining counter to secure recognition of the Lublin Committee. ‘Now the British propose a tripartite pact’, he told de Gaulle. ‘Let the French do us a service and we will do the same for them. Poland is an element of our security. We have been talking with the French about this question for two days. Let the French receive the Paris representative of the Polish National Liberation Committee. We will sign a bilateral agreement. If Churchill doesn’t like it, too bad.’ When de Gaulle observed that ‘Stalin had won this game’, Stalin replied that ‘Winning is the purpose of playing – but France will win more.’[340]This account