America's Second Crusade

11. Poland: The Great Betrayal

THE QUESTIONS are not: Shall Poland’s eastern border be shifted westward? Shall she lose her eastern territories or, losing them acquire in their place western territories at the expense of Germany?

“The question is: Shall Poland exist?

One wonders what would have happened if the British Government, when offering its guarantee against aggression to the Polish Government in the spring of 1939, had said:

“You must understand that this guarantee applies only against Germany. If the Soviet Union proposes to take almost half of your territory and impose on what is left of Poland a Communist-dominated government, you cannot count on our help. On the contrary, we will make no serious effort to prevent the Soviet Government from accomplishing these designs and will even support its case against yours.”

Suppose that, while the Yugoslav Government was being pushed and prodded by the Roosevelt Administration into entering an unequal struggle against Germany, some candid and far-sighted American diplomat had offered the following prophetic warning:

“You will experience all the sufferings of foreign occupation. More than that, your country will be devastated by a savage social civil war. In this war the Moscow-trained Communist Josip Broz Tito will enjoy the support not only of the Soviet Union, but of Great Britain and the United States. You, and other non-Communist Yugoslav patriots, will be lucky if you save your lives in exile or in obscurity at home.”

Suppose some authoritative voice had warned the American people before Pearl Harbor:

“Our policy of giving unconditional support to Chiang Kai-shek’s regime in China will lead to war with Japan. This war will be fought to the complete ruin of Japan. However, we will not worry about Soviet and Communist aggression in China. In fact, we will bribe Stalin, at China’s expense, so as to draw him into our grand crusade against Japan. The end of this will be that China will fall into the grip of Chinese Communists, devoted disciples of Moscow, bitter enemies of the United States. These Communists will inflict upon American diplomatic representatives insults unheard of since the Boxer uprising.”

Would our crusade have made much sense, if its consequences in Eastern Europe and East Asia had been accurately foreseen?

The betrayals of those groups in Poland and Yugoslavia and China which looked to America and Britain for sympathy and support were also acts of profound stupidity, from the cold-blooded standpoint of national interest. Can any American or Briton believe in retrospect that a great outlay of blood and treasure was vindicated by the emergence of a Moscow-trained clique as rulers of Poland, of Tito as dictator of Yugoslavia, of Mao Tse-tung as the Communist overlord of China?

The betrayal of Poland was the crudest and most flagrant of the three, if only because Poland was the pretense for the whole crusade. Therefore this betrayal will be examined in detail, as a symbol of what went wrong with a war that was being waged ostensibly for national self-determination and against aggression.

During the period 1939-41 when Poland was partitioned between the Nazi and Soviet regimes, both these dictatorships did everything in their power to stamp out Polish national consciousness. The Nazis expelled Poles from cities like Gdynia and Poznan and from some regions which were marked for German colonization. They closed universities and higher schools. They were ruthless in dealing with every sign of resistance and sent large numbers of Poles to concentration camps, where many perished. Especially terrible was the planned extermination of the Jews. Most of the large Jewish population of Poland had been destroyed by the end of the war.

The Soviet masters of Eastern Poland did not resort to this maniacal policy of exterminating a whole ethnic group. But on every other count they equalled and sometimes exceeded the brutalities of the Nazis. They systematically arrested and in some cases killed individuals who were associated with political activity: leaders of Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish organizations, members of the Diet, judges, intellectuals. They carried off about 1,200,000 persons in mass deportations to Russia. Most of the deportees were sent to slave-labor camps.

A principal aim of the deportations was to diminish the number of people of ethnic Polish stock in the eastern provinces, which were annexed to the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Republics. These annexations occurred after typically farcical totalitarian “elections”, held without the most elementary safeguards of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and secrecy of voting.

These contentions are without any basis in fact. The Curzon Line (with the fixing of which Lord Curzon had little to do) was never thought of as a final frontier settlement. It was proposed as a temporary demarcation line by the Supreme Allied Council in Paris on December 8, 1919. Later Lord Curzon, as British Foreign Secretary, proposed that this should be the provisional frontier at a time when the Red Army held the military advantage over the Poles in the Soviet-Polish war of 1920. But the Soviet leaders at that time were bent on sovietizing all Poland. They refused to halt their armies at the Curzon Line. The Soviet Government even stated officially that the line was unjust to Poland; it was willing to grant a more favorable boundary to a Communist Poland.

The Soviet-Polish frontier, as finally established by the Treaty of Riga, in March 1921, was almost identical with the boundary imposed on Poland at the time of that country’s second partition at the hands of Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1791. Only about 150,000 Russians were on the Polish side of this frontier, while about 1,500,000 Poles were left in the Soviet Union.

To be sure, the population of eastern Poland is ethnically mixed. This is equally true of many parts of the Soviet Union and most countries of Eastern and Central Europe. According to the Polish census of 1931, the territory seized by the Soviet Union in 1939 was inhabited by 4,794,000 Poles, 4,139,000 Ukrainians, 1,045,000 Jews, 993,000 Byelorussians, 120,000 Russians, 76,000 Lithuanians, and 845,000 others. All these figures had somewhat increased in 1939. The two principal cities of eastern Poland, Wilno and Lwów, were Polish by the tests of population, language, architecture, and long historical association. Lwów had never belonged to Russia.

As for the security argument, it is disposed of by simple and indisputable historical facts. Russia was twice invaded by Germany when the former was in possession of eastern Poland. It was never thus invaded while this region was in the possession of an independent Poland.

The Soviet Government accepted the boundary fixed by the Treaty of Riga in free negotiation. It gave a new voluntary endorsement of this frontier by concluding a nonaggression and neutrality pact with Poland in 1932. In short, there is nothing to distinguish the Soviet seizure of eastern Poland from any of the acts of predatory aggression which were supposed to warrant a global crusade against Hitler and the Japanese militarists.

Molotov had gleefully exclaimed in October 1939 that nothing remained of Poland, “that ugly offspring of the Versailles Treaty”. But the Polish Government continued to function abroad, first in France, later in London. Polish aviators played a heroic and brilliant part in the Battle of Britain. Polish armed forces increased in numbers after it was possible to recruit soldiers among the war prisoners and deportees in Russia. By 1944, 140,000 Poles were fighting on land, on sea, and in the air, and there were substantial Polish units on the Italian and western fronts.

The Polish Government in London was composed of representatives of the four principal Polish political parties: the National Democratic, the Peasant, the Socialist, and the Christian Labor parties. It was in close touch with one of the most daring and active underground movements in Europe.

Communism had never been strong in Poland, even among the industrial workers. It was closely linked in the people’s memory with the hated Russian rule. The Polish Communist party was so weak and so torn by factional strife that it was dissolved by the Communist International in 1937.

Hitler’s attack on Russia marked the beginning of a new phase in Soviet-Polish relations. Stalin’s spoils from the pact of August 1939, eastern Poland and the Baltic states, were rapidly overrun by the Germans, uprisings against Soviet rule in Lithuania and eastern Galicia hastening the process. Always astute and flexible, Stalin saw the advantage of reaching a temporary agreement with the Polish Government.

This government, then headed by General Wladyslaw Sikorski, was willing to forget the painful experience of Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in the interest of the common struggle against Nazi Germany. So the British-Soviet agreement of July 12, 1941, pledging the two powers to support each other and not to conclude a separate peace or armistice, was followed by the Soviet-Polish agreement of July 30. The Soviet Government recognized that the Soviet-German treaties of 1939 dealing with territorial changes in Poland had lost their validity. There were assurances of mutual support and it was agreed that a Polish army should be raised in the Soviet Union and that there should be an amnesty for Poles detained in Russia.

There were significant omissions in this instrument. There was no specific Soviet recognition of the 1939 Polish frontier. Sikorski tried hard to obtain this, but in vain. Several members of his cabinet felt so strongly on this subject that they resigned. There was strong British pressure to get the agreement signed and Foreign Secretary Eden, in a note of July 30, assured Sikorski that “His Majesty’s Government do not recognize any territorial changes which have been effected in Poland since August 1939.” This was to prove a very brittle and short-lived assurance.

Sikorski went to Russia at the beginning of December 1941. Stalin gave him a hospitable reception. After discussing the common war effort and the details of forming the Polish Army in Russia, Stalin raised the question of the Polish eastern boundary. He suggested that he would be satisfied with “very slight” alterations. Sikorski flatly refused to discuss any change and the subject was dropped.

Both Churchill and Eden, quickly forgetting the British official assurance that no territorial changes in Poland were recognized, were Inclined to yield to Stalin’s demand. But this was one of the very few occasions when the United States Government took a strong line in defense of the Atlantic Charter. A State Department memorandum, prepared by James C. Dunn and Ray Atherton, and approved by Secretary Hull, flatly rejected the proposed Soviet annexation of Polish territory. To yield to the Soviet demand, so stated the memorandum, “would affect the integrity of the Atlantic Charter.”

The British might well have given way if the State Department had not interposed an attitude of uncompromising opposition. Hull suggested that if the treaty contained the proposed territorial provisions, the United States might issue a separate statement of repudiation. The British then altered their viewpoint. The treaty, a twenty-year alliance, was signed on May 26 without territorial commitments.

The subsequent political history of the war might have been different if Roosevelt and Hull had maintained this firm attitude. This they conspicuously failed to do. But the American position, as stated by the President and the Secretary of State at this time, is the most decisive condemnation of the subsequent surrenders at Teheran and Yalta. Obviously Soviet demands which were considered inadmissible and inconsistent with the Atlantic Charter in 1942, did not become more justified with the passing of years.

But the American attitude steadily weakened, curiously enough, as American military power increased. Both in Washington and in London there was fear that Stalin might make a separate peace with Hitler. This fear was unwarranted, because Stalin’s interest in smashing German military power was far greater than America’s. The United States was safe from any danger of overseas invasion as soon as it had built up its wartime air and naval power. Had Stalin made a separate peace with Hitler and thereby broken his alliance with the West, he would have exposed himself to another devastating onslaught from the German war machine.

So there was little reaction to the secret killing by the Soviet police of two prominent Polish Jewish Socialist leaders, Henryk Ehrlich and Viktor Alter. These men, arrested during the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, were released under the amnesty for Polish citizens in the summer of 1941. They were engaged in organizing an international Jewish antifascist committee when both disappeared in Kuibyshev, the temporary Soviet capital, in December 1941. Inquiries about their fate remained unanswered until Litvinov in December 1942 informed William Green, President of the AFL, that they had been shot by order of a Soviet tribunal “for collaboration with the Nazis and for their work among the Red Army and among the Soviet population on behalf of Hitler.”

The Polish Government in the years before the war was authoritarian. Anti-Semitism existed in Poland. Yet Ehrlich and Alter sat in the Polish parliament, attended international socialist congresses, carried on fairly free political activity. The Soviet Union, professing to bring liberation to eastern Poland, shot them without public trial and on a fantastically improbable accusation.

Strengthened by the victory at Stalingrad, conscious that little serious opposition was to be feared in Washington and London, the Soviet leaders pushed ahead with their plans for the territorial mutilation and political subjugation of Poland.

The plight of the million or more Poles who had been deported to Russia was desperate. Almost all were destitute of food and clothing. Many were in the last stages of exhaustion and disease. In December 1941 the Polish Government, by agreement with the Soviet Government tried to furnish relief through agencies which were set up in various Soviet cities. But in the summer of 1942 these agencies were closed and many of their personnel were arrested.

A further step in the same direction was taken on January 16, 1943, when the Soviet Government extended its earlier ruling that Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Jews born in the eastern provinces of Poland were Soviet citizens, to include people of Polish ethnic origin. All these provocations were hushed up by the Polish embassies abroad under strong pressure from the American and British governments.

The final blow fell on April 25, 1943, when the Soviet Government cynically used the discovery of a crime, almost certainly committed by its own agents, as an excuse for breaking off relations with the Polish Government. This action followed a German statement that thousands of bodies of Polish officers, killed by shots in the back of the head, had been discovered in the Katyn Forest, near the town of Smolensk in western Russia.

The Polish Government, in a declaration of April 17, asked for an International Red Cross investigation of the affair. This declaration emphasized that the Germans themselves had committed many atrocities and denied the right of the Germans “to pose as the defenders of Christianity and western civilization.”

The appeal for a Red Cross investigation was used by the Soviet Government as an excuse for breaking off diplomatic relations. This cleared the way for building up a puppet government for Poland, recruited from refugee Communists and other Poles willing to accept Soviet dictation.

Behind the Polish request for an investigation lay almost two years of unsuccessful effort to penetrate a very sinister mystery. There were about one hundred eighty thousand prisoners of war in Russia in 1939, including some ten thousand officers. Only a few hundred of these officers were found among the masses of Poles who were released after Hitlers invasion of Russia. Many thousands had vanished without a trace.

Prime Minister Sikorski, General Anders, commander of the Polish Army which was raised in Russia and later transferred to the Near East, and Ambassador Kot all raised the question of the fate of these officers in talks with Stalin. They received only evasive, noncommittal replies, varied with suggestions that were merely ridiculous, such as that the officers might have escaped to Manchuria. Stalin talked with Kot on November 14,1941, and called up the headquarters of the NKVD to inquire what had become of the officers. He put down the receiver after receiving a reply, and changed the subject.

There were many Polish official inquiries. There was no Soviet official reply to the effect that the officers had been left in a prison camp, abandoned at the time of the German invasion. This version was only thought of when the corpses were discovered.

There were apparently no survivors of the massacre. The Germans held an inquiry, attended by medical experts from a number of European countries. They reached the conclusion, on the basis of letters, newspapers, and diaries found on the bodies and other circumstantial evidence, that the killings took place in March and April 1940. After the Red Army retook the area, there was a Soviet investigation which ended in the conclusion that the slaughter occurred in the autumn of 1941.

(1) The Soviet Government never took the opportunity to place responsibility for the fate of the officers on the Germans by stating that the prison camp had been abandoned until the bodies were discovered. Soviet replies to repeated Polish inquiries were invariably evasive.

(2) All letters from the imprisoned officers to their families ceased not in 1941, but in the spring of 1940.

(3) Neither the Soviet Government nor the Communist-dominated regime in Poland made any attempt to establish German responsibility for this crime after the end of the war.

(4) It is most improbable, if not impossible, that all the Polish officers would have waited passively to be captured by the Germans if the camp had been abandoned, according to the Soviet version. The completeness of the massacre suggests that there was no confusion, no opportunity for some of the victims to escape.

General Sikorski lost his life in an airplane accident in July 1943. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, leader of the Peasant party.

The tendency in Washington and London to sacrifice Poland’s territorial integrity and national independence proceeded at an accelerated pace during 1943 and 1944. Eduard Beneš, leader of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile found the United States Government ready to throw over Poland as early as May 1943. As he wrote in retrospect:

Beneš himself displayed great energy in getting his country accepted as the first Soviet satellite. He broke off discussions with Poland about a Central European federation because this would displease Stalin. He was the first representative of an East European state who signed a special treaty of friendship and alliance with the Soviet Union. He lived long enough to realize the value of this treaty, especially of the clause which stressed the principle of mutual noninterference in internal affairs. The first Soviet satellite enjoyed only the dubious privilege of being the last to be devoured.

Sensing the attitude of weakness on the part of the western powers, the Soviet Government became more and more truculent in its diplomatic manners and methods. America and Britain on August 11, 1943, submitted a joint proposal to Moscow. They suggested a resumption of Soviet-Polish diplomatic relations and such elementary humanitarian measures as the evacuation of Polish refugees to the Near East, recognition of the Polish nationality of ethnic Poles and permission for other Polish refugees to opt for Polish or Soviet citizenship.

The Soviet reply was delayed until September 27 and was aggressively un-co-operative in tone. The Soviet note alleged that the American and British proposals

A stoppage or suggestive slowing down of lend-lease shipments would probably have produced more courteous language and a more accommodating attitude. But this, as Hull tells us, was a suggestion which neither he nor the President entertained for a moment. The psychology of the rabbit vis-à-vis the boa constrictor continued to prevail. The more Stalin insulted the western leaders, the more they endeavored to placate him.

Hull gave Ciechanowski some encouragement before he left for the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers, but very little after he returned. And there was a still more significant occurrence. When Sikorski visited Washington in March 1943, plans had been worked out for parachuting munitions and supplies to the Polish patriot underground army. After the Moscow conference, these plans were canceled. Stalin might be displeased. The Poles, who had been fighting when Stalin and Ribbentrop had been exchanging toasts of friendship and co-operation against the “decadent democracies”, were left defenseless at the moment when their unequal struggle against two totalitarian oppressors was reaching its climax.

There is still no full and authoritative account of the highly secret Teheran conference, although it is fair to assume that much that was put in written form at Yalta was predetermined at Teheran. However, Churchill, in speeches before the House of Commons, has given a frank, realistic picture of the roles which he and Roosevelt played in the betrayal of Poland. Churchill apparently took the initiative in proposing to give away Polish territory. He told the House on February 22, 1944: “I took occasion to raise personally with Marshal Stalin the question of the future of Poland.”

According to an American participant in this conference, Churchill shifted match sticks about to show how Poland’s frontiers were to be shifted from east to west. Churchill let more light into the dark places of Teheran when he informed the House on December 15,1944, that Poland would gain in the west and north territories more important and highly developed than what would be lost in the east.

That many millions of persons, Poles in eastern Poland, Germans in the ethnically German regions of Silesia, East Prussia, and other areas east of the Oder-Neisse boundary line would be driven from their homes under conditions of terrible misery did not disturb Mr. Churchill.

“These ideas”, said Churchill, “arose at the Teheran conference.” And in the same speech the British Prime Minister gave a clear characterization of the President’s silent complicity in this colossal repudiation of the Atlantic Charter, to which Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin continued to pay lip service.

The President is aware of everything that has passed and of all that is in the minds both of the Russians and of the British. . . . I am particularly careful not ever to speak in the name of any other power unless so directed beforehand, and I hope the House will make allowance for the care with which I pick my words upon this point. All I can say is that I have received no formal disagreement in all these long months upon the way in which the future of Poland is shaping itself,—or being shaped.

Here is a clear indication of the distribution of roles. Churchill was the outright executioner of Poland’s territorial integrity and political independence. Roosevelt was the Pontius Pilate who tried to wash his hands of the whole affair. The President avoided any blunt statement or direct commitment that might have alienated the important Polish-American vote in the United States. But the spirit of 1942, when there was outspoken and successful American opposition to the recognition of Soviet annexationist claims, was gone.

The venerable Hull hopefully told a joint session of Congress on November 18, 1943, after his return from Moscow:

“There will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, for balance of power, or any other of the special arrangements through which, in the unhappy past, the nations strove to safeguard their security or to promote their interests.”

The kind of settlement for Poland envisaged at Teheran became clear on January 22, 1944, when Churchill and Eden proposed a five-point solution to the Polish Government. The five points were*, acceptance of the Curzon Line frontier; assignment to Poland of East Prussia, Danzig, and Upper Silesia as far as the Oder River; removal of the entire German population from the newly annexed territory; return to Poland of Poles living east of the new frontier; American-British-Soviet approval of the new boundaries.

Prime Minister Mikolajczyk found it impossible to accept these proposals. More than territorial dismemberment was at stake. For when the United States Government, on January 19, 1944, offered mediation with a view to restoring Soviet-Polish diplomatic relations, the Soviet reply, which rejected mediation, offered the following insidious suggestion:

“The exclusion of all profascist imperialist elements and the inclusion in the Polish Government of democratic elements would be a fundamental improvement and would create a favorable basis for the re-establishment of Soviet-Polish relations and the settlement of the border question.” In Soviet terminology, later to find illustration not only in Poland, but in many other countries, “profascist imperialists” were men who stood for the independence of their countries. “Democratic elements” were either Communists or individuals who were willing to accept Communist dictation. The Soviet reply was a veiled demand that Poland accept the status of a vassal state.

Mikolajczyk placed his hopes in American support. During the first months of 1944 the American attitude was vague and noncommittal. Expressions of abstract sympathy with Poland’s cause were not accompanied by any steps calculated to check the trend which had set in since Teheran.

When Mikolajczyk, after some delays, was invited to America in June 1944, Roosevelt received him very graciously and talked with him five times in ten days. The President promised to use his influence with Stalin in favor of leaving the important city of Lwow and the economically valuable Galician oil wells to Poland. He thought possibly Wilno might also be saved. Mikolajczyk was soon to learn the value of these assurances.

The Red Army advanced deep into Poland during the first half of 1944. Polish underground forces harassed the Germans and rendered considerable help in the capture of Lwów and Wilno. At first the leaders of these units were thanked, praised, and sometimes decorated by the Red Army commanders. Later they were usually arrested, deported, shot, or hanged. There was a vast and ruthless purge of all known enemies of communism.

Late in July the Red Army was within a few miles of Warsaw. A considerable detachment of the Home Army (the Polish underground force) was in the Polish capital under the command of General T. Bor-Komorowski. His radio picked up on July 30 a Polish-language broadcast from Moscow ending with the names of Molotov and Edward Osubka-Morawski, a leading figure in the Moscow-organized Polish Committee of National Liberation. The broadcast was a call to immediate revolt:

On the following day London picked up a similar appeal, broadcast from Moscow. At the same time it was announced from London that Mikolajczyk was going to Moscow to see Stalin. Believing that Soviet military aid was certain and that the signal for action had been given, Bor gave the order for revolt.

What followed was one of the most heroic and tragic episodes of the war. For two months this guerrilla army, with the enthusiastic support of the Warsaw population, without tanks, airplanes, or heavy artillery, fought against strong and well-equipped German units. The city of Warsaw was completely demolished in the process.

During the first two weeks the insurgents won remarkable success and held a considerable part of the city. But the Soviet advance abruptly stopped. During the decisive days of the struggle for Warsaw the Soviet Government refused even to allow American and British airplanes to use near-by Soviet bases in order to drop desperately needed munitions and supplies to the insurgents.

Mikolajczyk refused this offer and left Moscow for London on August 9, still hoping that Soviet military aid would be forthcoming for Warsaw. He dispatched another plea for this aid to Stalin. But Tass, the official Soviet news agency, issued a statement on August 14, which revealed the true design of the Soviet Government with brutal frankness:

Tass is in possession of information which shows that the Polish circles in London responsible for the Warsaw uprising made no attempt to coordinate this action with the Soviet High Command. In these circumstances the only people responsible for the results of the events in Warsaw are the émigré circles in London.

When the revolt was almost completely crushed, the Soviet Government permitted one shuttle flight, on September 18, and the Red Army dropped some supplies from its own airplanes. By this time it was too late for such assistance to be of any value. By first provoking, then abandoning the insurrection, the Soviet Government had procured the exposure and destruction of a large part of the Home Army. It was in line with the deportations of 1939-40, designed to eliminate or greatly reduce the Polish ethnic population east of the Curzon Line, and with the Katyn massacre, which deprived Poland of patriotic trained officers.

With the endorsement of his Cabinet in London Mikolajczyk offered counterproposals to Stalin’s inacceptable suggestions in Moscow. Some modification of the eastern frontier, without giving up Lwów and Wilno, was admitted. It was also proposed to admit three representatives of the Communist party, along with three delegates from each of the four main political parties, into a Polish provisional government.

The British approved this scheme; and there was a last attempt to reach agreement with Stalin in October. Churchill and Eden took part in the negotiations, along with Mikolajczyk, Stalin, Molotov, and the American Ambassador Harriman.

The emptiness of Roosevelt’s assurances to Mikolajczyk during the latter’s visit to Washington was dramatically exposed. When the Polish Prime Minister argued that Poland deserved a better eastern frontier than the Curzon Line, Molotov suddenly broke in:

“But all this was settled at Teheran. We all agreed at Teheran that the Curzon Line must divide Poland. You will recall that President Roosevelt agreed to this solution and strongly endorsed the line.” According to Mikolajczyk’s account, he looked at Churchill and Harriman, hoping for a denial. But Harriman looked silently at the rug and Churchill replied:

Later Churchill bullied Mikolajczyk almost as ruthlessly as Hitler had bullied the Czechoslovak President Hacha on the eve of his march into Prague. A painful and extraordinary scene occurred. The Polish representative held out as best he could for his country’s independence and territorial integrity—the very issue for which the war was ostensibly being fought. Churchill tried to impose the deal he thought he had made with Stalin by threats and abuse.

The climax was reached when Churchill told Mikolajczyk that he would personally guarantee freedom from Russian interference for what was left of Poland. This was too much for the normally patient and rather phlegmatic Pole. He bluntly retorted that he would rather die fighting with the underground than “be hanged later in full view of your British Ambassador.”

This was what almost literally happened later to Nikola Petkov, leader of the Bulgarian opposition. Mikolajczyk most probably escaped a similar fate only by a timely and successful flight from Poland.

Harriman met Mikolajczyk in London and offered to intercede with Stalin for Lwów. In view of the Soviet dictator’s unbending attitude there was little prospect that such intercession would succeed. A break between Mikolajczyk and the majority of his Cabinet occurred on the question of whether to use Harriman’s good offices. The majority argued that this would constitute a recognition of the Curzon Line as the frontier, except in the Lwów area and was, therefore, unacceptable. Mikolajczyk, impressed by the absence of American and British support and fearing the complete isolation of Poland, was in favor of making greater concessions.

The desertion of the western powers placed Poland’s patriots before an agonizing dilemma. Honorable difference of opinion was possible because of the unpromising nature of the two alternatives between which a choice had to be made. An attitude of refusing to yield an inch of the prewar frontier was logical and consistent. Poland’s moral case was unanswerable. But, with the visible American and British willingness to try to appease Stalin at Poland’s expense, an uncompromising policy meant, in all probability, that the government-in-exile would never be able to return to Poland.

On the other hand, given the Soviet record, the deportations, the Katyn massacre, the incitation and betrayal of the Warsaw uprising, the growing support for a puppet communist regime, there was little chance that Poland’s independence could be saved by the sacrifice of its eastern provinces. However, Mikolajczyk and some of his political associates in the Peasant party believed that the chance, however slight, must be grasped, that they should return to Poland at any price.

Despite pleas for delay from Roosevelt, Stalin recognized his own creation, the Polish Committee of National Liberation, as the provisional government of Poland on January 5, 1945. From this time the Soviet Government took the position that this regime, which was completely dependent on Moscow for its support and its very existence, was the legitimate government of Poland.

The Polish issue figured prominently in the discussions at the Yalta Conference of the Big Three. This conference is described in more detail in Chapter 10. The agreement on Poland conceded the substance of Stalin’s demands, while it contained a few face-saving phrases, designed to win the approval of western public opinion. The text of this agreement was as follows:

A new situation has been created in Poland as a result of her complete liberation by the Red Army. This calls for the establishment of a Polish Provisional Government which can be more broadly based than was possible before the recent liberation of the Western part of Poland. The Provisional Government which is now functioning in Poland should therefore be reorganized on a broader democratic basis with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad. This new government should then be called the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity.

M. Molotov, Mr. Harriman and Sir A. Clark Kerr are authorized as a commission to consult in the first instance in Moscow with members of the present Provisional Government and with other Polish democratic leaders from within Poland and from abroad, with a view to the reorganization of the present Government along the above lines. The Polish Provisional Government of National Unity shall be pledged to the holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot. In these elections all democratic and anti-Nazi parties shall have the right to take part and to put forward candidates.

When a Polish Provisional Government of National Unity has been properly formed in conformity with the above, the Government of the USSR, which now maintains diplomatic relations with the present Provisional Government of Poland, and the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the USA will establish diplomatic relations with the new Polish Provisional Government of National Unity, and will exchange Ambassadors by whose reports the respective Governments will be kept informed about the situation in Poland.

The three Heads of Government consider that the Eastern frontier of Poland should follow the Curzon Line with digressions from it in some regions of five to eight kilometers in favour of Poland. They recognize that Poland must receive substantial accessions of territory in the North and West. They feel that the opinion of the new Polish Provisional Government of National Unity should be sought in due course on the extent of these accessions and that the final delimitation on the Western frontier of Poland should therefore await the Peace Conference.

Signed: Winston S. Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, J. V. Stalin

One of the most striking features of this agreement, which dealt with the most vital problems of Poland’s future, is that no Pole had a word to say about it. The Big Three proceeded to carve up Poland, to take away land that was historically and ethnically Polish, to assign to Poland land that was historically and ethnically German, without even listening to any representative of the Polish people. No conquered enemy nation could have received more contemptuous treatment.

The tragic drama of Munich was re-enacted at Yalta with startling fidelity. Only the personalities changed; the atmosphere of appeasement was the same. For Czechoslovakia substitute Poland. For Hitler read Stalin. Roosevelt and Churchill played the parts of Chamberlain and Daladier. One difference, however, may be noted. American and British moral obligations to Poland, in view of that country’s war sufferings, were far greater than British and French obligations to Czechoslovakia.

The phrases about free and unfettered elections, universal suffrage, and secret ballot looked well on paper. But with the Red Army in military occupation of Poland and Soviet secret police operatives all over that country, there was only one chance of assuring that these phrases would bear any relation to realities. This would have been the presence of numerous American and British observers. But every effort was made to exclude such observers during the decisive period when the new regime was consolidating its power.

The meetings of the commission composed of Molotov, Harriman, and Clark Kerr ended in deadlock. The American and British members argued that representatives of the three groups mentioned in the Yalta Declaration (the Soviet-sponsored provisional government, democratic Poles in Poland, and Poles abroad) should be included in the new government. But Molotov insisted that the existing puppet regime should be the nucleus of the new government and refused to accept any names not approved by this regime. It was a preview of how the Soviet veto would work in the United Nations. Molotov also rejected a proposal that American and British observers should be permitted to visit Poland on the ground that this would “sting the national pride of the Poles to the quick.”

There was soon to be a dramatic illustration of the Soviet attitude toward “democratic Poles in Poland.” Sixteen prominent Polish underground leaders, relying on the “word of honor” of a Soviet police officer, Colonel Pimenov, who assured them safe conduct, came out of hiding for consultation with the Soviet authorities. They were promptly arrested and taken to Moscow for trial on charges of having carried on diversionist activities in the rear of the Red Army.

This incident gives the impression of having been contrived as a deliberate insult to the western powers, as a sign that the Soviet authorities were able to do as they pleased in Poland. It was a patent contradiction of the spirit of the Yalta Agreement. Inquiries from Washington and London about the fate of the Poles were left unanswered for weeks.

But the American and British appetite for appeasement was still insatiable. The arrests were casually announced by Molotov at the San Francisco conference for the organization of the United Nations. There was a mild protest from Anthony Eden, who might well have felt some personal responsibility for the fate of the Poles, since the British Government had advised them to reveal their whereabouts. There was a feebler statement from the American Secretary of State, Stettinius, who probably did not know what it was all about.

And the man who, after Roosevelt, was most responsible for the policy of giving in to Stalin on every disputed point, Harry Hopkins, was sent to Moscow to straighten things out. Hopkins fulfilled this mission in his usual fashion, by accepting all Stalin’s assurances at face value and giving the Soviet dictator everything he wanted.

As a State Department official said to Ambassador Ciechanowski: “The Polish problem had to be settled because it had become an impossible headache.” And on July 5, 1945, the great betrayal was finally consummated. The United States Government withdrew its recognition of the Polish Government in London and formally recognized Stalin’s regime in Warsaw.

The United States sent to Poland as ambassador an able career diplomat, Arthur Bliss Lane. But he was handicapped by a timid and wavering policy in Washington. By extending recognition before the new government had held an election or possessed any mandate from the Polish people, the western powers had lost any means of pressing for the observance of the Yalta assurances.

The men who held key positions in the new regime, Bierut, Berman, Radkiewicz, were politically unknown in Poland before the war. They were Moscow-trained Communists. The armed forces and the security police, headed by Radkiewicz, were heavily infiltrated with Russians. Complete Soviet control of the new state was emphasized in 1949 when the Soviet Marshal Constantine Rokossovsky, a Pole by origin, but a Soviet citizen for thirty years, was appointed head of Poland’s defense forces.

Despite the abandonment of Poland by the western powers, there was a prolonged guerrilla struggle during 1946 and 1947, with substantial losses on both sides. Several Polish underground organizations kept up the fight during these years and Ukrainian partisans were active in southeastern Poland. This guerrilla movement later subsided because of the impossibility of getting arms from abroad.

The “free, unfettered elections” promised at Yalta took place on January 19, 1947, after two years of terrorist repression which became intensified as the day of voting approached. The main issue was between a bloc of government parties, dominated by the Communists, and Mikolajczyk’s Peasant party. The American Government on January 5, 1947, sent the following note to the Soviet and British Governments, as cosignatories of the Yalta Agreement. Its indictment of the bankruptcy of this agreement was worded as follows:

The methods used by the [Polish] Government in its efforts to eliminate the participation of the Polish Peasant Party in the election include political arrests and murders, compulsory enrolment of Polish Peasant Party members in the “bloc” political parties, dismissal of PPP members from their employment, searches of homes, attacks by secret police and members of the Communist Party on PPP premises and party congresses, suspension and restriction by government authorities of PPP meetings and suspension of party activities in twenty-eight districts, suppression of the party press and limitation of circulation of party newspapers, and arrest of the editorial staff of the party bulletin and of the Gazeta Ludova.

The crusade for Polish independence and territorial integrity which began with a bang ended in a pitiful whimper. Ambassador Lane reported after his arrival in Poland:

Legal opposition of any kind became virtually impossible after the fraudulent election of 1947. Mikolajczyk escaped from Poland in October. In all probability he narrowly escaped the fate he had foreseen in his argument with Churchill three years earlier. Poland, so far as its government could achieve this purpose, became a thoroughly antiwestern country. Its delegates in the United Nations voted invariably as the Kremlin dictated. Its human and material resources were at Stalin’s disposal.

I do not believe the weight of evidence supports this view. Naturally Stalin’s aggression knew no bounds when it met with co-operation or only the feeblest opposition in Washington and London. But suppose the American and British Governments from the outset had taken a clear, uncompromising stand for Poland’s rights under the Atlantic Charter. Suppose they had exacted specific pledges of renunciation of the spoils of the pact with Hitler when the Soviet Union was hard pressed in 1941. Suppose they had made it clear, not only by unequivocal words, but by deeds, by slowing down lend-lease shipments, for instance, that the restoration of an independent Poland within the boundaries of 1939 was a war aim which would not be compromised.

Who can say with certainty that Stalin would not have respected this attitude and pursued a more conciliatory policy, looking to the establishment in Poland of a regime that would be on good terms with Russia without being a subservient vassal? And if Stalin had overrun Poland with military force, the situation would surely have been better if the western powers had refused to recognize the legitimacy of this action. What was perhaps most demoralizing to the Polish people was the positive co-operation of America and Britain with the Soviet Union in according full recognition to a Soviet puppet regime.

The same pattern was repeated, with minor variations, in Yugoslavia and in Albania. With almost incredible blindness, Roosevelt and Churchill helped to build up Stalin’s Eurasian empire, abandoning their natural friends in Eastern Europe. And the whole political sense and purpose of the war in the Far East were lost when Roosevelt handed Stalin the key to China at Yalta.

It is not true that Roosevelt and Churchill had no alternative to appease Stalin by sacrificing Poland and on other issues. But if this hypothesis were accepted as valid, what a revealing light is shed upon the futility and hypocrisy of the whole crusade, supposedly for freedom and international righteousness!

Was it really worth while to fight a destructive war so that Poland might be the victim not of Hitler but of Stalin, so that there might be a Soviet empire, not a German empire, in Eastern Europe, so that we should face not Japan but Stalin’s henchman, Mao Tse-tung, in the Orient? War and postwar emotionalism have inhibited a frank facing of these questions. But the tragic factual record of what happened to Poland, set down in this chapter, surely suggests that there is a case for a negative answer.

1 F. A. Voigt, “Poland”, The Nineteenth Century and After, 35 (February 1944), 63.

2 For details of the Soviet reign of terror in Eastern Poland see Elma Dangerfield, Behind the Urals (British League for European Freedom), Ann Su Cardwell, Poland and Russia (Sheed, 1944), The Dark Side the Moon (Scribner, 1947), a collection of narratives of Polish deportees, and Jerzy Gliksman, Tell the West (New York, Gresham Press, 1948). The barbarous character of Soviet rule places an especially dark blot on all transfers of territory to Soviet possession.

3 Raymond Gram Swing was especially zealous in giving this misrepresentation wide publicity through his radio broadcasts.

4 Many of these Polish Ukrainians fought with the Germans in the hope of achieving a free Ukrainian state. Disillusioned with the Germans, Ukrainian nationalists carried on a two-front war, both against the Nazis and against the Soviet Communists. There are authentic reports of guerrilla activity in Ukrainian regions long after the end of the war.

5 This was a small group of Poles who acted as a mouthpiece for Soviet policy. It is doubtful whether the word “patriot” was ever so conspicuously misused.

6 For the text of this note see Polish-Soviet Relations, 1918—1943, issued by the Polish Embassy in Washington, pp. 165-66.

7 The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, II, 1166-67.

8 Ciechanowski, op. cit., p. 100.

9The Polish Ambassador in Washington was a shrewd, well-informed diplomat, with many good contacts in Washington. Describing the Quebec conference of 1943, he writes: “According to the President, pro-Soviet sentiment in America was superficial and, as a matter of fact, it had to be artificially fed” (Defeat in Victory, p. 201).

10 Polish-Soviet Relations, pp. 178-79.

11 The exception was Professor François Naville, of the University of Geneva. He has maintained his conviction that the Russians were responsible for the Katyn massacre. The International Tribunal at Nürnberg showed a rather undignified inclination to run away from the danger of discovering the truth about Katyn. It refused to call Professor Naville or General Anders as witnesses and failed to find the Germans guilty of this crime or to indicate who was guilty.

12 I have never found a Pole who did not believe that the Soviet Government was responsible for the Katyn slaughter. And I have discussed the question with many Poles who were bitter in their resentment over German cruelties and certainly would have felt no desire to whitewash any Nazi atrocity.

13 See the part of Beneš’s abridged memoirs published in the Nation of July 17, 1948, p. 70.

14 One wonders whether Halifax was naive or cynical in this inquiry. Acceptance of the Curzon Line meant for Poland the loss of almost half its territory, of rich agricultural areas, and of its only domestic source of oil.

15 This language is omitted in Hull’s account of the incident (Memoirs, II, 1271), but it is included in a report which Arthur Bliss Lane submitted to the State Department on June 1, 1945. Mr. Lane placed a copy of this report at my disposal.

16 This estimate was considerably exaggerated.

17 See The Nation, July 24, 1948.

18 See “The Unconquerables” by General T. Bor-Komorowski in Reader’s Digest for February 1946.

19 See The Rape of Poland by Stanislaw Mikolajczyk (New York, Whittlesey House, 1947), p. 77.

20 All this information, based on State Department documents, is to be found in the report of Arthur Bliss Lane, submitted on June 1, 1945.

21 See The Rape of Poland, pp. 96 ff.

22 The American reply was probably deliberately held back until after the election, in which Roosevelt was elected President for the fourth time.

23 Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 907.

24 Ciechanowski, op. cit., pp. 382-83.

25 Full details of repression and fraud are described in I Saw Poland Betrayed, by Arthur Bliss Lane (Indianapolis, Bobbs, 1948) and The Rape of Poland, by Stanislaw Mikolajczyk.

26 I Saw Poland Betrayed, p. 160.

27 This line of argument is heavily overworked in the concluding chapters of Roosevelt and the Russians: The Yalta Conference, by Edward R. Stettinius (Garden City, Doubleday, 1949).

• 1Governments and individuals conformed to this rhythm of the tragedy and swayed and staggered forward in helpless violence, slaughtering and squandering on ever increasing scales, till injuries were wrought to the structure of human society which a century will not efface, and which may conceivably prove fatal to the present civilization. . . . Victory was to be bought so dear as to be almost indistinguishable from defeat. It was not to give even security to the victors. . . . The most complete victory ever gained in arms has failed to solve the European problem or to remove the dangers which produced the war.
• 2The German leaders, however, did not anticipate the good fortune that was awaiting them in the East. They decided to stake everything on the submarine card. Wilson promptly broke off diplomatic relations. Then there was a pause, a period of waiting for some “overt act”. Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador in Washington, was praying for “the destruction of an American ship with American passengers.”
• 3One reason for growing skepticism about the success of this crusade was Wilson’s inability to inspire the majority of his countrymen with enthusiasm for, or even understanding of, his great design for future world peace. One wonders how many Americans carefully studied the Fourteen Points, laid down by the President as America’s peace aims, or the supplementary statements of principle which amplified these points.
• 4Wilson did not obtain Allied endorsement of his peace conditions without a severe diplomatic struggle behind the scenes. Colonel House went so far as to intimate that if the Fourteen Points were not accepted the negotiations with Germany would be wiped off the slate and America might then conclude a separate peace with Germany and Austria. This firm tone led to satisfactory results in this instance, but it was seldom employed when the practical details of the settlement were being worked out.
• 5“Given the atmosphere of the time, given the passions aroused in all democracies by the four years of war, it would have been impossible even for supermen to devise a peace of moderation and righteousness.”
• 6There were two insoluble dilemmas in this attempted financial settlement. First, a weak Germany could not produce such a surplus, while a strong Germany would be inclined to balk at payment. Second, the only feasible method of transferring wealth on this scale, the use of German labor and material on reconstruction projects, was ruled out. And, in times of unemployment and failing demand, foreign countries were unable or unwilling to purchase German goods on a scale that would make possible the desired surplus of exports over imports.
• 7Germany did not plot a European war, did not want one and made genuine, though too belated efforts to avert one. ... It was primarily Russia’s general mobilization, made when Germany was trying to bring Austria to a settlement, which precipitated the final catastrophe, causing Germany to mobilize and declare war. . . . The verdict of the Versailles Treaty that Germany and her allies were responsible for the war, in view of the evidence now available, is historically unsound.
• 8Wilson was partly reconciled to the sacrifice of his ideals of political and economic justice by the hope that the newly formed League of Nations, with the United States as a member, would be a force for reform and reconciliation. This hope was not fulfilled. The President experienced his final tragedy when, after his nervous and physical breakdown, the Versailles Treaty, in which the League Covenant had been incorporated, failed to win ratification in the Senate. There was an unbreakable deadlock between the President’s insistence that the Covenant be accepted with, at most, minor changes and Senator Lodge’s insistence on strong reservations. A majority was not to be had for either proposition and the United States remained outside the League of Nations.
• 9I for one have never admitted this. I have always felt that the United States was amply able to take care of herself, that we were never afraid of the Germans and would not have been afraid of them even if France and England had gone under.
• 10Is this old world as safe for democracy as it was before all those lives were lost?
• 11Did American influence contribute to this British decision to take a step which, as Winston Churchill, himself a vehement critic of Munich, remarks in retrospect “meant in all human probability a major war in which we should be involved”? Churchill further comments on this decisive step on the British road to war:
• 12“Here was decision at last, taken at the worst possible moment and on the least satisfactory ground, which must surely lead to the slaughter of tens of millions of people.”
• 13“It is as childish as it is criminal to hold Poland responsible for war or peace . . . a great deal of blame for this falls on England and France whose insensate or ridiculously weak policy has provoked the situation and events which are now transpiring.”
• 14They have the moral assurance that the United States will leave the policy of isolation and be prepared to intervene actively on the side of Britain and France in case of war. America is ready to place its whole wealth of money and raw materials at their disposal.
• 15One can foresee right from the beginning the participation of the United States in the war on the side of France and Britain, naturally after some time had elapsed after the beginning of the war.
• 16It is improbable that the expansive Bullitt concealed these opinions in his talks with French and British officials, and these opinions, coming from a man known to possess the President’s confidence, would naturally have carried considerable weight. We do not know whether or how far this or that step of British and French policy was influenced by representations or hints from Washington. It seems safe to say that the whole direction of Anglo-French policy would probably have been different if the occupant of the White House had been known as a firm and sincere opponent of American involvement in European wars.
• 17The Poles were no more fortunate in their French allies than in their British. The Polish War Minister, General Kasprzycki, arrived in Paris in May to work out the practical application of the Franco-Polish alliance. He received an assurance from General Vuillemin, commander of the French Air Force, that “the French Air Force can from the outset act vigorously with a view to relieving Poland.” He also signed a protocol with the French Commander in Chief, Marshal Gamelin, promising a French offensive in force against Germany, to begin on the sixteenth day after the French mobilization. Neither of these promises was kept.
• 18Litvinov as Soviet spokesman in the League of Nations had identified himself for years with a crusading attitude against fascism and aggression. He had argued that peace is indivisible.
• 19The fuss raised by the British, French and North American press about the Soviet Ukraine is characteristic. ... It looks as if the object of this suspicious fuss was to raise the ire of the Soviet Union against Germany, to poison the atmosphere and provoke a conflict without any visible grounds for it.
• 20And on April 17, the very day when the Soviet Government was openly proposing a triple alliance with Great Britain and France, the Soviet Ambassador in Berlin, Merekalov, made a secret tentative overture for Soviet-Nazi rapprochement. Calling on the German Secretary of State, von Weizsäcker, Merekalov let drop the following very broad hints:
• 21Ideological differences of opinion had hardly influenced the Russian-Italian relationship, and they did not have to prove a stumbling block with regard to Germany either. Soviet Russia had not exploited the present friction between Germany and the Western democracies against us, nor did she desire to do so. There exists for Russia no reason why she should not live with us on a normal footing. And from normal the relations might become better and better.
• 22Stalin also included Poland in his web of deception. The Soviet Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Potemkin, paid a special visit to Warsaw on May 10 and assured the Polish Government that it had nothing to fear from Russia in case of a German attack. On the contrary, Poland could count on Russian friendliness and supplies of munitions and other war materials.
• 23Like Lenin, Stalin had always regarded war as a factor favorable to communist revolution. He told the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist party, in 1934, that a new imperialist war “will surely turn loose revolution and place in jeopardy the very existence of capitalism in a number of countries, as happened in the case of the first imperialist war.” The inevitability of war and the close relation between war and social revolution are themes which recur over and over again in the writings and speeches of the Soviet dictator.
• 24Like Lenin, Stalin had always regarded war as a factor favorable to communist revolution. He told the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist party, in 1934, that a new imperialist war “will surely turn loose revolution and place in jeopardy the very existence of capitalism in a number of countries, as happened in the case of the first imperialist war.” The inevitability of war and the close relation between war and social revolution are themes which recur over and over again in the writings and speeches of the Soviet dictator.
• 25This is a question of principle for us. We neither have nor wish to have a military agreement with the Soviet Union. We concede to no one, under any form, the right to discuss the use of any part of our territory by foreign troops.
• 26Ribbentrop also foreshadowed the character of Nazi and Soviet propaganda for the next two years. The “capitalistic Western democracies” were represented as “the unforgiving enemies both of National Socialist Germany and of the U.S.S.R.”, trying to drive the Soviet Union into war against Germany. Finally Ribbentrop proposed to come to Moscow “to set forth the Führer’s views to Herr Stalin.”
• 27Molotov raised his glass to Stalin, declaring that it had been Stalin who “through his speech in March of this year, which had been well understood in Germany, had brought about the reversal in political relations.”