Hidden away in the woodlands that skirt around the edge of glorious Loch Eck in Cowal, Argyll, lies the grave of a man that undoubtedly changed the world. Chances are you’ll have never heard of Archibald Clark Kerr but his careful coaxing of Winston Churchill and many liquor-fuelled liaisons with Joseph Stalin in Moscow played a big role in bringing World War 2 to a conclusion. His face features in the official photographs from the three key landmark conferences that straddled the end of hostilities. From Tehran to Yalta to Potsdam, Kerr was there in the background helping to bring the Allies and the Soviet Union around the table in order to finally see off the Nazi threat and define the new post conflict global order.
The greatest diplomat in the world
It’s impossible to sum up the myriad achievements of Archie in one article. It needs a book, and it was to Radical Diplomat by Donald Gillies (1999) that I turned along with a number of online resources and countless vintage videos on YouTube. A career diplomat once described as ‘the greatest diplomat in the world’, Kerr was born in Sydney, Australia in 1882. He had strong Scottish family roots and regularly returned to his home in Inverchapel from his many foreign ambassadorial adventures. His family relocated to the UK in 1891 with Archie starting his schooling at Bath College a year later. His ambition was clear although it was always expressed with a degree of self-deprecating humour. He was only 20 when he wrote “I am thinking of getting made a peer. I should first…call myself Lord Inverchapel…Then I should be promoted to Viscount Inverchapel and finally Earl Kilmun.” In 1906 he joined the Diplomatic Service with his first posting taking him to Berlin. He very nearly hit it off with Princess Sophie, sister of the Kaiser and twelve years his senior. She went on to marry the King of Greece. By 1910 it was time for Archie’s diplomatic odyssey to quicken with postings in Buenos Aires and Washington, DC before heading to Rome just before the outbreak of the First World War.
He was desperate to enlist but his efforts were thwarted at every turn. In 1915 he was posted to Persia, now Iran and a nation at the time that was undergoing its own crisis of identity given competing German/Turkish, Russian and British influences. He finally got the chance to sign up in June 1918, joining the Scots Guards as a Private but the war ended just as he finished his basic training. In 1919 he headed to north Africa with a posting in Morocco and then Cairo in Egypt where he almost became romantically involved with Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later to become Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. In 1925 he returned to the Americas with a position in Guatemala. Despite political differences, Archie was nurturing a strong friendship with Winston Churchill and regularly sent him exotic butterflies for his private collection garnered from across central America. From there it was south to Santiago. It was in the Chilean capital that he met his future wife, Maria Theresa Diaz Salas (Tita), 29 years younger and the daughter of a millionaire. In a speech to the St Andrew’s Society of Valparaiso in late 1928 Archie was reported as saying: “Wherever he lives…the heart of the Scot is always in Scotland…Scotland is always home.”
Stalin
Archie and Tita headed to Sweden for a new posting in Stockholm in 1931. He didn’t hold back when describing the natives! “They are only interesting when stark naked. Dressed they are the worst of bores” he was reported to have said. He had just taken up sketching nudes in his spare time! In 1935 it was onward and eastward yet again with Baghdad, capital of the fledgeling nation of Iraq, beckoning for Archie and with it, a host of tricky issues to resolve. By now a Sir, his trouble shooting reputation was growing and a posting to China followed in 1938. It was another ‘hot spot’ with Japanese and communist threats growing against the nationalist government. The war clouds were gathering yet again across Europe. Of the Munich Agreement Archie said: “The effect of the Munich accord on foreign opinion…is that perfidious Albion has been true to form and let down her friends again. The Chinese reaction is that we are entirely self-seeking and have merely been keeping them in play with fair words….our prestige is at a low ebb in the east.”
In 1942, a year after he’d separated from Tita, he got a position in the USSR that really moulded his reputation in the midst of conflict. He was based in Kuibyshev, now Samara, in the Russian deep south. Diplomatic missions had been relocated there from Moscow given the Nazi threat to the Soviet capital. Whilst in China his flat in London had been destroyed in the Blitz, many of his personal belongings had gone down in a ship sunk by Japanese torpedos and he had lost his true love. His first meeting with the Stalin proved to be the stuff of legend despite being interrupted by an air raid on Moscow! He wrote: “My first surprise was the shape and size of him. I had expected something big and burly but I saw…a little, slim, bent, grey man with a large head and immense white hands. When he shook my hand, he looked almost furtively at my shoulder and not at my face.”
The pair found common ground in their passion for alcohol, tobacco…and sex! In a communication to Anthony Eden he wrote “It was probably no more than a juxtaposition of two old rogues, each one seeing the roguery in the other and finding comfort and harmony in it…and chuckling over it…chuckling all the more because of the governess presence of the boot faced Molotov.”
He also wrote of Stalin… “I found him to be just my cup of tea. And now he has done something which the staff here declare to be without precedent. He has sent me a large quantity of his own pipe tobacco.” Archie was fully aware of Stalin’s murderous ways with the blood of more than 5 million Russians on his hands but he navigated a pragmatic approach with the Soviet leader… “…if we let ourselves be disturbed by backgrounds in Russia today we shall get nowhere…” Soviet secrecy and fear presented big obstacles to Archie’s work and he became bored and disillusioned with life in the backwater of Kuibyshev. He hankered after the banks of Loch Eck. It was now four years since his last visit to his beloved Scotland. His request fell on deaf ears. There was work to do in the USSR and a Treaty to sign that could hasten a conclusion to the hostilities that were crippling Europe and the Soviet Union. Donald Gillies, author of Radical Diplomat, wrote: “Clark Kerr’s ability to establish a good working relationship with Stalin did prove crucial in smoothing out the many difficulties which arose during the war years…without Clark Kerr there is a good chance that the alliance with the Soviet Union would have foundered long before it actually did in the post war fall out. It’s hard to imagine any other British diplomat being able to settle down to a drinking session, punctuated with bawdy jokes and coarse tales, with the Politburo!”
The alliance with the Soviets
In August 1942 Churchill visited Moscow to meet with Stalin. Archie described his arrival: “The first glimpse I had of the PM was a pair of stout legs dangling from the belly of the plane and feeling for terra firma. They found it and then came the plump trunk and finally the round football head.. And quite a normal hat. It was like a bull at the corrida when it first comes out of its dark pen and stands dazzled and bewildered and gazes at the crowd…” The talks were a rollercoaster with the two leaders not always seeing eye to eye…until Clark Kerr’s finest hour!
Clark Kerr had a private chat with Churchill in the grounds of a dacha where the PM was staying. He was straight to the point with the British leader and told him that he was going about the talks in the wrong way. Churchill said of Stalin: “That man has insulted me. From now on he will have to fight his battles alone.”
Clark Kerr suggested Churchill had made a mess of things: “You mean that you think it’s all my fault,” said Churchill. Clark Kerr replied: “Yes I’m sorry but I do.” He persuaded Churchill to meet Stalin that evening one to one. The pair had a very successful meeting, more of a social ’get to know you’ chat than anything strategic. It started at 7PM and ended at 2AM when a final communique was agreed. They had connected, there had been a meeting of minds that seemed impossible just hours earlier. Churchill, previously grumpy and moody, was ecstatic that morning and openly (quite literally) got ready for his bath in front of Archie who provided the Foreign Office with a sketch of that memorable moment! Over the coming months, as war raged on, relationships were cemented further between Archie, Stalin and the Russians…although lubricated would be a better description! At one event one of the Russians, after many vodkas, got out an unarmed tommy gun and asked Archie if he knew how to use it. Archie accepted the challenge and proceeded to fire from the hip raking the bellies of Stalin, Molotov et al. Stalin then took the gun and fairly decimated the crowd, thoroughly enjoying the joke but paying special attention to many of his worried ministers!
Archie returned to Britain for three months leave in late 1942 but got the chance to broadcast on BBC radio immediately prior to his return to the USSR in February 1943. “The alliance with the Soviets was not only a solemn bond,” pronounced Archie during his 15-minute speech “..but a human pact between two nations. We shall do all we can to see that it runs smoothly, and we shall do it with heart and soul.” Churchill’s final instructions to Archie were: “I don’t mind kissing Stalin’s bum but I’m damned if I’ll lick his arse!”
Diplomacy walks a fine line
The expectations of the Russians from the start were that a second front should be opened up in western Europe and they were keen to pin down the post war arrangements in eastern Europe. With the Normandy landings still some way off, Archie used all of his charm and charisma to keep the USSR on side helped immensely by his relationship with Stalin and lots of Russian alcohol! Towards the end of 1943 Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met in Tehran to discuss the opening of the aforementioned second front and other issues. During a lunch meeting one of the party farted rather loudly. Clark Kerr chuckled but was chided by Churchill who said: “Do not let the heat imparted by someone else’s buttocks detract you from the discipline of a solemn matter.” The conference proved to be a great success. The winds of change were in motion! Diplomacy walks a fine line and Archie was an adept tight rope walker in that respect wherever and whenever he was called upon. The Yalta conference followed in early 1945 with the Nazi war machine in full retreat on all fronts.
Following the end of World War 2 the third great conference of Allied leaders took place with Churchill being replaced by Atlee halfway thru as a result of his defeat in the General Election. Truman made up the triumvirate. Once again Clark Kerr was at the centre of proceedings and was also becoming more realistic and honest in his assessment of the Soviets. In his final years Kerr was a pivotal character in the establishment of NATO and played his part in the start of the European Union project prior to his untimely death at the age of 69 in 1951. You do wonder what Archie would make of the parlous state of the world today with authoritarianism once again rife and a ‘tribes in trenches’ culture running riot. We hardly ever learn the lessons of history…but you can bet Archie learnt a few!
Text by: Rob Wilkinson
Main photo: Archibald Clark Kerr. Photo: National Portrait Gallery.