Sir: May one who was there and an active participant
in the communist ferment in Cambridge University from 1936 to 1940 comment on Geoffrey Wheatcroft's article on Philby.
Accepting that Philby was a traitorous rascal, it contributes nothing to historical understanding to allege that none of us knew what we were doing and that all of us revered Stalin's Russia, not despite the terror, but because of it. Some may have done so, and many still do so, but there were also a substantial number who, living with the policies of appeasement of Hitler and Mussolini, believed (and rightly so as the second world war demonstrated) that the fascist powers could only be resisted and defeated by a united front with the Soviet Union. The appeasement of the Axis powers by the British and French governments was an evident reality. That Stalin would attempt the same policy was, to say the least, unexpected, but, having regard for the consequences of Munich, not illogical. The salient fact seems to be that no one — Chamberlain, Daladier or Stalin — could conceive of the diabolical insanity of the Hitler regime, nor did they have the skill to contain it and then destroy it. And it must be remembered that, for all that Stalin was a bloody tyrant and a bloody fool, he had created in the USSR the means of resisting and then defeating the Third Reich.
H.S. Ferns
1 Kesteven Close, Sir Harry's Road, Birmingham 15
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