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excellent spirits. That same evening, he welcomed General Eisenhower's chief of staff, Air Chief Marshal Tedder, who had finally arrived in Moscow after long delays in Cairo due to bad flying conditions. Tedder had come to discuss future developments, but Stalin observed smugly that the Ardennes offensive had been 'very stupid' of the Germans. He was also particularly pleased that the Germans had retained thirty divisions as 'a prestige garrison' in Courland - the remains of Army Group North, which Guderian wanted to bring back to Germany.
    The Soviet leader made an effort to charm Tedder. He clearly wanted to convince Eisenhower's deputy that he had done everything possible by the timing of the Red Army's great offensive to help them out over the Ardennes. It is impossible to tell whether or not he foresaw that this would help exacerbate the rift between the Americans and the much more sceptical Churchill.
    Soviet historians always tried to maintain that Stalin was planning to launch the attack on 20 January, but then, when he received a letter from Churchill on 6 January begging for help, he gave the order the next day to advance the attack to 12 January, even though the weather conditions were unfavourable. This was a gross misrepresentation of Churchill's letter. It was not a begging letter to save the Allies in the Ardennes. He had already written to say that the Allies were now 'masters of the situation' and Stalin knew perfectly well from his liaison officers in the west that the German threat there had collapsed by Christmas. Churchill was simply asking for information on when the Red Army was going to launch its great winter offensive, because the Kremlin had resolutely refused to reply to such requests, even when Soviet liaison officers were kept abreast of Eisenhower's plans.
    The Vistula offensive, planned since October, had been prepared well ahead: one Soviet source even says that it had been possible 'to start the advance on 8-10 January'. Stalin was therefore more than happy to give the impression that he was saving his allies from a difficult situation, especially when he had reasons of his own for pushing forward the date. Churchill was becoming increasingly concerned at Stalin's intention to impose on Poland its puppet 'Lublin government' made up of exiled Polish Communists controlled by Beria's NKVD. The Crimean conference at Yalta was imminent and Stalin wanted to make sure that his armies controlled the whole of Poland by the time he sat down with the American and British leaders. His law could be imposed ruthlessly on Polish territory purely because it constituted the immediate rear area to his operational troops. Anyone who objected could be classified as a saboteur or fascist agent. Finally, there was a much more down-to-earth reason for bringing the great offensive forward. Stalin was worried that the predicted change in the weather for the beginning of February would turn hard ground to mud and therefore slow up his tanks.
    One aspect of the meeting with Tedder is most revealing. 'Stalin emphasized,' the American report states, 'that one of the difficulties [of the Vistula offensive] was the large number of trained German agents among the Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and German-speaking Russians. He said that they were all equipped with radios and, as a result, the element of surprise was practically eliminated. However the Russians have succeeded in eliminating this menace to a large measure. He said that he considers the clearance of the rear areas to be just as important as bringing up supplies.' This gross exaggeration of German-trained stay-behind groups was Stalin's pre-emptive justification of Soviet ruthlessness in Poland. Beria was also trying to brand the non-Communist resistance, the Armia Krajowa, as 'fascist' despite its suicidal bravery in the Warsaw uprising.
    The next twenty-four hours proved that the Soviet armies which had broken through the Vistula front were indeed