New Developments in Poland; Monte Cassino; Falaise; ‘Tempest’

Abstract

Three days before the Red Army entered Polish territory, on the night of 31 December, 1943–1 January 1944, Polish communists created the Polish National Council (Krajowa Rada Narodowa — KRN) in Warsaw. It was based on a very narrow political platform, for apart from the Polish Workers Party the signatories of the manifesto were virtually fictitious organisations of little more than a dozen or so members each. The Council was led by Bolesław Bierut (1892–1956), a long-standing member of Comintern and a confidant of Stalin, who found himself in occupied Poland in 1943 and in July entered the Central Committee of the PPR. As from November 1943, after the Gestapo had arrested Paweł Finder, the secretary of the Committee was Władysław Gomułka (1905–83) a pre-war ideological communist by conviction, who represented a line somewhat independent from that of Moscow.¹