The Pittsburgh Press (March 6, 1943)
Background of news –
Russia and a separate peace
By editorial research reports
Tentative negotiations are evidently underway on what Finland may expect from making a separate peace with the Soviet Union. Feelers, perhaps not yet in the class of negotiations, may have been put out by Italy toward a separate peace. Balkan rumors say that Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, also impressed by the recent Russian victories, are gingerly taking steps to withdraw from the war.
Fears have been expressed here and there that the Soviet Union would withdraw from the war and make a separate peace with Germany if Stalin could get the complete satisfaction from Hitler and the revenge he demands. Disseminators of such talk, whether or not aware that they are following a line laid down in Berlin, point to Stalin’s order of the day on Feb. 22, which averred:
The Red Army is bearing the brunt of the war alone, in view of the absence of a second front in Europe.
They also point to the absence of a Russian delegate at the Anglo-American discussions at Casablanca.
The Soviet government has officially pledged itself not to conclude peace until Great Britain does. A British-Russian 20-year treaty of alliance and mutual assistance was signed at London on May 26, 1942. Article II provides:
The high contracting parties undertake not to enter into any negotiations with the Hitlerite government or any other government in Germany that does not clearly renounce all aggression intentions, and not to negotiate or conclude, except by mutual consent, any armistice or peace treaty with Germany or any other state associated with her in acts of aggression in Europe.
The treaty was signed by Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Vyacheslav M. Molotov, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs. The text was made public after Molotov had flown to Washington to confer with President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull. At noon of that day, the White House issued a statement saying that in the course of the conversations:
Full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a second front in Europe in 1942… Further were discussed the fundamental problems of cooperation of the Soviet Union and the United States in safeguarding peace and security to the freedom-loving peoples after the war.
At midnight on June 11, the State Department announced that a master Lead-Lease agreement had been signed with Russia. It included a provision that:
The government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will continue to contribute to the defense of the United States of America and the strengthening thereof.
The Atlantic Charter, subscribed to by Russia, says nothing about a separate peace, and the Soviet Embassy in Washington reports that it knows of no pledge by Russia not to conclude a separate peace except the pledge in the treaty with Great Britain. The Anglo-Soviet Treaty of 1942 replaced one of July 12, 1941, less than one months after Germany had invaded Russia, which similarly contained a mutual commitment against a separate peace.
Russia made a separate peace in 1918 only after its armies had degenerated into impotence, and after the communist regime had tried in vain to get the Allies and the United States to enter its peace negotiations with Germany. The Russians had protracted the negotiations with Germany at Brest-Litovsk, in the meantime trying to propagandize the German armies, until Germany denounced the armistice terms and again sent its army forward on Russian soil.
