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Britain and the Polish Government-in-Exile, January 1944 to June 1945

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British Policy Towards Poland, 1944–1956

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Abstract

This chapter charts the origins of the British commitment to support the Polish government-in-exile in re-establishing a free and sovereign Polish state after the end of the Second World War. Churchill and Eden initially pledged their support to the exile government in exchange for the significant Polish military contribution to the allied war effort. Beyond a crude bargain, however, the commitment to Poland was linked to conceptions of Britain’s continuing global power and prestige after the war: there was an expectation that Britain would possess sufficient strength to exert influence in determining the Polish political settlement. Further, the future of Poland was wrapped up in the broader vision of the shape of postwar Europe, in which Anglo-Soviet cooperation would be ongoing. The chapter analyses the way in which these expectations conditioned British policy towards Poland, in particular the decision to urge the former Polish prime minister, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, to return to Poland to participate in the communist-dominated provisional government after the war.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, for instance, Dilks, Epic and Tragedy, 29–30; Ostrowski, ‘To Return to Poland’, 164–168; Hope, Abandoned Legion, 14; McGilvray, Military Government In Exile, 133, 144–145; Michael Alfred Peszke, The Polish Underground Army, the Western Allies, and the Failure of Strategic Unity in World War II (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2005), 7; Jonathan Walker, Poland Alone: Britain, SOE and the Collapse of the Polish Resistance, 1944 (Stroud: The History Press, 2010), 49, 213.

  2. 2.

    Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Volume VI: Triumph and Tragedy (London: Cassell, 1954), 367–368, 373. Other British leaders and policymakers offered similar accounts. For example, Anthony Eden [Earl of Avon], The Eden Memoirs: The Reckoning (London: Cassell, 1965), 465; Frank Roberts, Dealing with Dictators: The Destruction and Revival of Europe, 1930–1970 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991), 75–77. A substantial number of secondary works take their cue from these early memoirs in arguing that the British tried their best against impossible odds to secure a satisfactory agreement before the Red Army had established complete control over Poland but were simply overtaken by the course of events. For example, Barker, Churchill and Eden at War, 247, 260; Victor Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War 1941–1947 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982), 358, 361; Martin Kitchen, British Policy Towards the Soviet Union (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 272–273; Geir Lundestad, ‘The United States, Great Britain and Eastern Europe: The Period from Yalta to Potsdam’, in Yalta: un mito che resiste; relazioni e comunicazioni presentate al convegno internazionale organizzato dalla Provincia di Cagliari, 23–26 aprile 1987, ed. Paola Brundu Olla (Rome: Ateneo, 1987), 191; Sean Greenwood, Britain and the Cold War, 1945–91 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 8.

  3. 3.

    John Charmley, Churchill: The End of Glory. A Political Biography. (London: John Curtis, 1992), 558–561, 591, 614–615; Norman Davies, Rising’44: ‘The Battle for Warsaw’ (London: Macmillan, 2003), 160–161; Sean Greenwood, Titan at the Foreign Office: Gladwyn Jebb and the Shaping of the Modern World (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2008), 189.

  4. 4.

    Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 1–3.

  5. 5.

    Ibid., 6. Melvyn Leffler argues that Truman and some of his closest advisors, including Averell Harriman, were also ‘favorably disposed’ towards Stalin at the end of the war. ‘Bringing it Together: The Parts and the Whole’, in Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory, ed. Odd Arne Westad (London, 2000), 43.

  6. 6.

    Between 1772 and 1795, Poland was partitioned in three stages between Russia, Prussia, and Austria.

  7. 7.

    Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919–20 and ‘The Miracle on the Vistula’ (London: Pimlico, 2003), 25–27.

  8. 8.

    Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 62–64; Alexander V. Prusin, The Lands Between: Conflict in the East European Borderlands, 1870–1992 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 80–84.

  9. 9.

    Poland and the Soviet Union did conclude a non-aggression pact in January 1932, although Piłsudski remained doubtful about Stalin’s sincerity about the agreement. John S. Micgiel, ‘In the Shadow of the Second Republic’ in Polish Foreign Policy Reconsidered: Challenges of Independence, eds. Ilya Prizel and Andrew A. Michta (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), 7. On Polish–Soviet interwar relations see Antony Polonsky, Politics in Independent Poland, 1921–1939 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 219–220, 380–382. On the legacy of the war of 1919–1921 on Polish–Soviet relations, see: Anita J. Prażmowska, Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Second World War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 4; Anita J. Prażmowska, Ignacy Paderewski: Poland (London: Haus Publishing, 2009), 157; Gregor Thum, Uprooted: How Breslau became Wrocław during the Century of Expulsions, trans. Tom Lampert and Allison Brown (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003), 30; Jonathan Haslam, Russia’s Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 19; Micgiel, ‘In the Shadow of the Second Republic’, 2; Macmillan, Peacemakers, 238–239.

  10. 10.

    There were three Polish peasant parties during the interwar period. In 1931, they came together to form the Stronnictwo Ludowe.

  11. 11.

    Polonsky, Politics in Independent Poland, 428–429.

  12. 12.

    The division of Poland took place according to the terms of the ‘Boundary and Friendship Treaty’ concluded between Germany and the Soviet Union on 28 September 1939, which modified the territorial division agreed in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In exchange for a boundary further to the east, Lithuania fell to the sphere of the Soviet Union.

  13. 13.

    Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (London: Penguin, 2009), 71, 96–97; Jan T. Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), xiii, 35–40; Victor Zaslavsky, Class Cleansing: The Massacre at Katyn, trans. Kizer Walker (New York: Telos Press, 2008), 1, 34–35; Natalia Sergeevna Lebedeva, ‘The Deportation of the Polish Population to the USSR, 1939–41’, in Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939–1950, ed. Alfred J. Rieber (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 28; Halik Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War (London: Penguin, 2013), 120–121; Prusin, The Lands Between, 128–131.

  14. 14.

    Documents on Polish–Soviet Relations, 1939–1945 (hereafter DOPSR), (London: Heinemann, 1961) vol. 1, doc. 106. On the transfer of Polish soldiers and their families out of the Soviet Union in the spring of 1942, see Prażmowska, Britain and Poland, 126–134.

  15. 15.

    Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed, 328–329, 334–335, 339; Prażmowska, Britain and Poland, 120–121; Gross, Revolution from Abroad, xiv.

  16. 16.

    The graves of approximately one-third of the missing officers were found. The bodies of the remaining 10,000 were never found. Gross, Revolution from Abroad, 244, fn. 3.

  17. 17.

    Prażmowska, Britain and Poland, 166–168.

  18. 18.

    TNA: FO 954/19B/587, Eden to Churchill, 24 December 1943.

  19. 19.

    See for example, Ostrowski, ‘Return to Poland’, 216; Davies, Rising’44, 161.

  20. 20.

    Folly describes this inclination in the historiography to dismiss statements of trust or confidence by British leaders and policymakers in the Soviet Union as purely cosmetic, intended only for the purpose of keeping the alliance together, and not sincerely meant. Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 3, 6.

  21. 21.

    The southern section of the border was not clearly defined. The Oder River has two tributaries, the Western Neisse, which runs more or less due south to the border of the Czech Republic (at the time Czechoslovakia), and the Eastern Neisse considerably further to the southeast. At the Potsdam conference in the summer of 1945, the Soviet Union and the Polish provisional government insisted that the Western Neisse should form the southern section of the border, which meant Poland would gain all of Lower Silesia. The British and the Americans agreed reluctantly that this should become the provisional border.

  22. 22.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/7, Churchill to Eden, 12 January 1944.

  23. 23.

    TNA: CAB 65/45, WM(44)11th CA, 25 January 1944; Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 114. Mikołajczyk observed Churchill’s desire to ‘gain the trust’ of the Soviet Union. PISM PRM/121, 6 March 1944.

  24. 24.

    Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers. The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943 (hereafter FRUS Tehran) (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1961), 604; Llewellyn Woodward, British Foreign Policy in the Second World War, vol. 2 (London: HMSO, 1971), 650.

  25. 25.

    TNA: CAB 66/43/28, WP(43)528, 22 November 1943.

  26. 26.

    FRUS Tehran, 598.

  27. 27.

    Oliver Harvey, Eden’s private secretary, recorded in his diary that Stalin had been ‘bearish but mellowed’ in a meeting with Eden on the issue of supply convoys, which had been a long-running source of Anglo-Soviet discord. John Harvey, ed., The War Diaries of Oliver Harvey (London: Collins, 1978), 311. On the convoy issue see Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941–1945 (London: Heinemann, 1989), 289–290, 311–312.

  28. 28.

    For example, Clark Kerr attributed the more cooperative Soviet attitude at the conference to the sense that they were included for the first time on an equal basis by their British and American counterparts. Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 96, 89.

  29. 29.

    Ibid.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., 104–105.

  31. 31.

    Reynolds describes, for instance, how Stalin moderated his negotiating style from Tehran onward. In 1941–1942, visitors including Harriman, Beaverbrook, Eden, and Churchill ‘were all subject to the one, two, three treatment, in which a bruising middle meeting was sandwiched between cordial opening and closing sessions’. This tactic was less in evidence after Tehran. David Reynolds, From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 240.

  32. 32.

    Vojtech Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 132.

  33. 33.

    Reynolds, World War to Cold War, 114, 118.

  34. 34.

    Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 135.

  35. 35.

    TNA: FO 371/34590/C15105/258/55, Churchill to Eden, 20 December 1943.

  36. 36.

    Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 91; Reynolds, World War to Cold War, 237.

  37. 37.

    After Stalingrad, the Red Army had managed—slowly and with staggering losses—to reverse the German advance and begin to regain the territory lost in 1941–1942. By the autumn, Soviet victory over Germany in Eastern Europe appeared imminent. Soviet troops crossed the prewar Polish frontier on the night of 3–4 January 1944. John Erickson, The Road to Berlin: Stalin’s War with Germany (London: Cassell, 2003), 38, 141–142, 148–149.

  38. 38.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/7, Churchill to Eden, 12 January 1944.

  39. 39.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/7, Churchill to Eden, 4 January 1944.

  40. 40.

    Eden had held meetings with Mikołajczyk, Romer, and Raczyński on 20 and 24 December 1943, and 11 and 13 January 1944. He met separately with Raczyński on 4 and 17 January and with Romer on 5 January. Raczyński, In Allied London, 178–190.

  41. 41.

    Mikołajczyk later changed the name of the wartime SL to Polish Peasant Alliance (PSL). Anita J. Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 1942–1948 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 137–138.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., 70–71; Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed, 350.

  43. 43.

    TNA: FO 954/19B/587, Eden to Churchill, 24 December 1943; PREM 3/355/7, Eden to Churchill, 6 January 1944.

  44. 44.

    On the importance of the city of Lwów in Polish history see: Robert Traba, The Past in the Present: The Construction of Polish History, trans. Alex Shannon (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015), 89–91.

  45. 45.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/7, Eden to Churchill, 8 January 1944; Eden to Churchill, 24 December 1943; Eden to Churchill, 9 January 1944; Eden to Churchill, 12 January 1944.

  46. 46.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/7, Churchill to Eden, 12 January 1944.

  47. 47.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/7, Churchill to Roosevelt, 6 January 1944; Record of a meeting attended by Eden, Cadogan, Mikołajczyk, Romer, and Raczyński, 20 January 1944.

  48. 48.

    Reynolds, World War to Cold War, 238.

  49. 49.

    Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 134–135.

  50. 50.

    The ZPP issued a statement referring to the need to replace reactionaries with new leaders. Then, Oskar Lange, the Polish economist who had acted as Roosevelt’s envoy to Stalin in 1943, expressed support for the ZPP. TNA: FO 371/39385/C424/8/G55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 10 January 1944.

  51. 51.

    The Soviet Union issued this statement in response to a Polish statement of 5 January, which was intended to signal the Polish government’s desire for improved relations with the Soviet Union. Sargent had rearranged the Polish statement ‘to avoid any suggestion of a challenge’ and Eden removed the last sentence, which appealed to the allied governments to uphold the principles of international law. TNA: FO 371/39387/C995/8/G55, Declaration of the Polish Government, 5 January 1944; Soviet Statement of 11 January 1944; Edward Raczyński, In Allied London (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962), 181.

  52. 52.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/7, Eden to Churchill, 15 January 1944.

  53. 53.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/7, Moscow to Foreign Office, 16 January 1944.

  54. 54.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/7, Foreign Office to Moscow, 17 January 1944; CAB 65/45, WM(44)7th Conclusions, Minute 2, Confidential Annex, 17 January 1944.

  55. 55.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/7, Moscow to Foreign Office, 17 January 1944.

  56. 56.

    TNA: CAB 65/45, WM(44)11th CA, 25 January 1944.

  57. 57.

    TNA: CAB 65/45, WM(44)11th CA, 25 January 1944.

  58. 58.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/8, Churchill to Stalin, 28 January 1944.

  59. 59.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/8, Stalin to Churchill, 4 February 1944.

  60. 60.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/8, Eden to Churchill, 5 February 1944.

  61. 61.

    TNA: FO 371/39392/C2567/8/55, Foreign Office to Moscow, 13 February 1944.

  62. 62.

    TNA: FO 371/39385/C409/8/G55, Foreign Office Minutes, 11 January 1944; FO 371/34589/C14592/258/55 Memorandum submitted to the War Cabinet by Eden: ‘Possible Lines of a Polish-Soviet Settlement’, Annex, WP(43)528, 22 November 1943.

  63. 63.

    TNA: FO 371/39392/C2793/8/G55, Foreign Office to Moscow, 23 February 1944.

  64. 64.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/8, Eden to Churchill, 5 February 1944.

  65. 65.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/8, Record of a Meeting Held at Chequers, 6 February 1944; Raczyński, In Allied London, 193–194.

  66. 66.

    TNA: PREM 3/355/8, Record of a Meeting Held at 10 Downing Street attended by Churchill, Eden, Cadogan, O’Malley, Mikołajczyk, Romer, and Raczyński, 16 February 1944; Foreign Office to Chequers, 19 February 1944; Colville to Foreign Office, 20 February 1944.

  67. 67.

    TNA: FO 371/39392/C2793/8/G55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 28 February 1944; Foreign Office Minutes, 29 February 1944.

  68. 68.

    TNA: FO 371/39392/C2884/8/G55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 29 February 1944.

  69. 69.

    Soviet Union Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Stalin’s Correspondence with Churchill, Attlee, Roosevelt and Truman, 1941–45. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1958, vol. 1, docs. 249–250.

  70. 70.

    TNA: FO PREM 3/355/8, Record of a Meeting Held at 10 Downing Street, 16 February 1944; TNA: PREM 3/355/7, Eden to Churchill, 22 January 1944.

  71. 71.

    The Foreign Office had a sharper awareness of the situation: ‘The Polish Ministers … are showing realism and courage in enabling us to proceed on the present basis despite the contrary view held by large sections of the Polish Government and population in Poland’. TNA: FO 371/39392/C2793/8/G55, Foreign Office to Moscow, 20 February 1944.

  72. 72.

    TNA: FO 371/39392/C2793/8/G55, Foreign Office to Moscow, 20 February 1944.

  73. 73.

    Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. 1, docs. 249–250.

  74. 74.

    TNA: CAB 65/45, WM(44) 28th Conclusions, Minute 1, Confidential Annex, 6 March 1944.

  75. 75.

    TNA: WO 214/54, General Alexander to CIGS, 8 March 1944.

  76. 76.

    TNA: FO 371/39397/C4302/8/G55, 27 March 1944.

  77. 77.

    TNA: CAB 65/46, W.M.(44) 47th Conclusions, Minute 2, Confidential Annex, 11 April 1944.

  78. 78.

    TNA: FO 371/39397/C4302/8/G55, Minute by Roberts, 27 March 1944.

  79. 79.

    Lange was a University of Chicago economist who had acted as Roosevelt’s envoy to Stalin in 1943 and later returned to Poland to join the provisional government in 1945.

  80. 80.

    Both the Moscow embassy and the Central Department considered Lange to be a reliable source. Allen referred to Lange as ‘shrewd’. TNA: FO 371/39400/C6694/8/G55, Foreign Office Minutes, 20–21 May 1944. Similarly, Clark Kerr commented that both he and a colleague had been ‘much struck by [Lange’s] quiet good sense’. Lange offered to stop in the UK to visit Mikołajczyk and discuss his meetings with Stalin and Molotov. Clark Kerr supported this plan, commenting that he was ‘convinced that nothing but good could come from such a visit by a patently sincere and level-headed observer who has been able to gain insight into the situation as it looks from here’. TNA: FO 371/39400/C6755/8/G55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 19 May 1944; FO 371/39400/C6766/8/G55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 19 May 1944.

  81. 81.

    TNA: FO 371/39400/C6758/8/G55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 19 May 1944; FO 371/39400/C6755/8/G55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 19 May 1944; FO 371/39400/C6694/8/G55, Foreign Office Minutes, 20–21 May 1944.

  82. 82.

    TNA: FO 371/39400/C6694/8/G55, Minute by Allen, 20 May 1944; FO 371/39400/C6694/8/G55, Foreign Office Minutes, 20–21 May 1944; WO 214/54, Allied Force Headquarters, Office of the Supreme Allied Commander-in-Chief to Commander-in-Chief, Allied Armies in Italy (AAI), 9 June 1944.

  83. 83.

    Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum (PISM), PRM 124, 15 May 1944.

  84. 84.

    TNA: FO 371/39400/C7370/8/G55, Minute by Roberts, 30 May 1944; FO 371/39402/C8476/8/G55, Foreign Office Minutes, 30 May 1944.

  85. 85.

    TNA: FO 371/39402/C8477/8/G55, Record of Meeting at No. 10 Downing Street on Wednesday, 31 May 1944.

  86. 86.

    Eden, The Reckoning, 439–440; TNA: FO 371/39402/C8479/8/G55, Eden to Churchill, 6 June 1944; Churchill to Eden 11 June 1944; FO 371/39403/C8860/8/55, Foreign Office to Moscow, 8 July 1944.

  87. 87.

    TNA: FO 371/39403/C8860/8/55, Foreign Office to Moscow, 8 July 1944; FO 371/39404/C9097/8/G55, ‘Record by O’Malley of a Conversation at Dinner at the Foreign Office on the 29th June [1944]’; FO 371/39404/C9172/8/G55, Eden to O’Malley, 11 July 1944.

  88. 88.

    TNA: FO 371/39436/C11513/62/55, Minute by Allen, 4 August 1944.

  89. 89.

    TNA: FO 371/39435/C5598/62/55, Foreign Office Minutes, May–June 1944; ‘Correspondence with the Polish Government Concerning the Anglo-Soviet Negotiations for a Political Agreement’ and Foreign Office Minutes, May–June 1944; FO 371/39435/C9311/62/55, Foreign Office Minutes, July 1944; FO 371/39436/C11513/62/55, Foreign Office Minutes, 4–6 August 1944; Memorandum submitted to the War Cabinet by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 10 August 1944.

  90. 90.

    TNA: CAB 66/53, WP(44)436, 9 August 1944.

  91. 91.

    Roosevelt proposed the idea during Mikołajczyk’s visit to the US; Mikołajczyk asked Churchill to act as intermediary and suggest the idea to the Soviets. TNA: FO 371/39404/C9289/8/G55, Report by O’Malley, 13 July 1944; Foreign Office Minutes, 13–14 July 1944; Eden to Churchill, 17 July 1944; Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. 1, doc. 299.

  92. 92.

    In Wołynia, the Red Army had already disarmed the local AK units and arrested their leaders. Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 98.

  93. 93.

    Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 98–100.

  94. 94.

    Harvey, ed., War Diaries of Oliver Harvey, 349.

  95. 95.

    ‘Uncle Joe’ was Churchill and Roosevelt’s nickname for Stalin. Eden, The Reckoning, 466.

  96. 96.

    Warren F. Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence. vol. 3: Alliance Declining, February 1944—April 1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), doc. C-740.

  97. 97.

    PISM, A/48/2/C4, 5 August 1944.

  98. 98.

    Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. 1, doc. 321.

  99. 99.

    FRUS: Diplomatic Papers, 1944. The British Commonwealth and Europe, vol. 3 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1965), 1374–1377.

  100. 100.

    Over 63 days of fighting, 15,000 insurgents and between 120,000–200,000 civilians were killed; 17,443 AK fighters were taken prisoner, along with their commander-in-chief and five generals. Once the Germans had retaken Warsaw, all its remaining residents were rounded up and forcibly removed or executed, and the Germans began to systematically raze the city to the ground. Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 102–106; The Oxford Companion to Military History, s.v. ‘Warsaw Uprising’ (by Christopher Bellamy) http://www.oxfordreference.com [accessed 4 January 2014].

  101. 101.

    The following historians put forward the argument that Soviet lines were overstretched: Jan Ciechanowski, The Warsaw Rising of 1944 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 250–251; Antony Polonsky, ‘Stalin and the Poles, 1941–7’, European History Quarterly 17 (1987): 469; Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 3, 280–281. Others contest this conclusion, asserting that the Red Army rebuilt the railway lines quickly enough to facilitate the delivery of supplies to the troops: Alexandra Richie, Warsaw, 1944: The Fateful Uprising (London: William Collins, 2013), 490–493; Davies, Rising’44, 298, 301–302.

  102. 102.

    Up until mid-September.

  103. 103.

    DOPSR, vol. 2, doc. 189.

  104. 104.

    Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 97; Woodward, British Foreign Policy, vol. 3, 203.

  105. 105.

    The Polish second armoured division under General Stanisław Maczek numbering 25,000 men (at the time of the Normandy landings) was in action in France at the time of the uprising; in May, the Second Polish army corps under Anders had succeeded in capturing the monastery at Monte Cassino, suffering such high losses in the process that it was virtually wiped out. Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 94.

  106. 106.

    The British eventually used it in a poorly planned operation at Arnhem in September, which ended in retreat and the loss of nearly a quarter of the brigade. Ibid., 95–96.

  107. 107.

    Woodward, British Foreign Policy, vol. 3, 204; Raczyński, In Allied London, 303–304, 320–321; Ciechanowski, Warsaw Rising, 67; Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 95–96.

  108. 108.

    TNA: WO 214/54, ADV HQ AAI to AFHQ, 1 August 1944.

  109. 109.

    Kitchen argues that the ‘British Government was determined to give every possible help to the insurgents’ but this contention does not correspond to the evidence in the Foreign Office files, which suggests that it was the Polish threat to withdraw military cooperation that persuaded the British government to override the objections of the chiefs of staff. Harvey, for instance, noted that two sorties were made from Bari ‘as a result of Polish appeals and pressure’. Kitchen, British Policy Towards the Soviet Union, 221; TNA: CAB 121/454, Foreign Office to Central Mediterranean, 8 August 1944.

  110. 110.

    FRUS, 1944, vol. 3, 1374–1377; Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. 1, docs. 321, 311, 316, 317.

  111. 111.

    Woodward, British Foreign Policy, vol. 3, 221.

  112. 112.

    Roosevelt deemed the dispatch of a second message disadvantageous ‘to the long-range general war prospect’ given Stalin’s strenuous objections to the use of the airfields and ‘in view of the current American conversations in regard to the subsequent use of other Soviet bases’. In view of the American objection, the British government chose not to send the proposed message. F.L. Lowenheim, ed., Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1975), docs. 424, 426; Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 3, doc. C-760.

  113. 113.

    The Foreign Office persuaded Churchill that this step would be counterproductive. Woodward, British Foreign Policy, vol. 3, fn. 215.

  114. 114.

    Secret Wartime Correspondence, doc. 431.

  115. 115.

    Woodward, British Foreign Policy, vol. 3, 218–221.

  116. 116.

    For example, Kitchen, British Policy Towards the Soviet Union, 232.

  117. 117.

    TNA: FO 371/39410/C11186/8/55, Foreign Office Minutes, 25 August 1944.

  118. 118.

    TNA: FO 371/39410/C11277/8/G55, Minute by Warner, 29 August 1944.

  119. 119.

    TNA: FO 371/39499/C12788/1077/G55, Eden to Churchill, 13 September 1944.

  120. 120.

    In his memoirs, Churchill records that the Soviets halted in Praga because they ‘wished to have the non-Communist Poles destroyed’. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 127. Harvey, on the other hand, records that at the time Churchill accepted Stalin’s assurances about the purely military considerations behind Soviet inaction. ‘P.M. accepted this and said he had never believed the reports to this effect.’ Harvey, ed., War Diaries of Oliver Harvey. 360.

  121. 121.

    Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 136.

  122. 122.

    Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 3, doc. C-760.

  123. 123.

    Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 137.

  124. 124.

    TNA: CAB 66/53, WP(44)436, 9 August 1944.

  125. 125.

    TNA: FO 371/39499/C12788/1077/G55, Eden to Churchill, 13 September 1944.

  126. 126.

    TNA: PREM 3/434/2, ‘Record of Meeting at Spiridonovka House’, 13 October 1944; CAB 121/454, Eden to Sargent, 12 October 1944; Eden to Foreign Office, 14 October 1944.

  127. 127.

    DOPSR, vol. 2, doc. 241; Stanisław Mikołajczyk, The Pattern of Soviet Domination (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1948), 108–111. The Polish record of this conversation is borne out, minus the more colourful language, by Eden’s account of the same meeting to the Foreign Office. Harvey includes a summary in his diary, which also corresponds, albeit with far less detail, to the Polish version. TNA: CAB 121/454, Eden to Foreign Office, 16 October 1944; Harvey, ed., War Diaries of Oliver Harvey, 361. Both Martin Gilbert and Roy Jenkins quote directly from the Polish record. Gilbert, Road to Victory, 1015; Roy Jenkins, Churchill (London: Pan Macmillan, 2001), 762. In his memoirs, Moran recalls asking Churchill in 1953 if Mikołajczyk’s account was accurate. According to Moran, Churchill replied: ‘“You see we were both very angry”’. Lord Moran, Churchill at War 1940–45 (London: Robinson, 2002), 244.

  128. 128.

    TNA: CAB 121/454, Eden to Foreign Office, 16 October 1944; Churchill to War Cabinet, 17 October 1944; Eden to Foreign Office, 17 October 1944; Eden to Cadogan, 19 October 1944;.DOPSR, vol. 2 docs. 239, 245; Raczyński, In Allied London, 239.

  129. 129.

    Jenkins, Churchill, 762. John Charmley equates Churchill’s treatment of Mikołajczyk in October 1944 with the pressure to which the Czech president Hacha was subjected in 1939. Charmley, Churchill, 590–591.

  130. 130.

    Churchill, quoted in Jenkins, Churchill, 762.

  131. 131.

    Churchill reported back to the War Cabinet that he and Stalin had ‘talked with an ease, freedom and beau geste never before attained between our two countries. Stalin has made several expressions of personal regard which I feel sure were sincere’. As Folly notes, Churchill’s tests of Stalin’s sincerity were ‘sometimes trivial’, and he took Stalin’s conviviality in Moscow as a sign that he was prepared to reach a fair settlement. TNA: CAB 121/454, Churchill to War Cabinet, 17 October 1944; Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 138.

  132. 132.

    DOPSR, vol. 2, doc. 239.

  133. 133.

    TNA: CAB 121/454, Eden to Foreign Office, 14 October 1944.

  134. 134.

    A.H. Birse, Memoirs of an Interpreter (London: Joseph, 1967), 172.

  135. 135.

    Churchill summarises the Polish–Soviet negotiations in Moscow in his memoirs but does not make specific reference to this particular meeting.

  136. 136.

    Mikołajczyk, Pattern of Soviet Domination, 111.

  137. 137.

    Moran, Churchill at War, 245.

  138. 138.

    Anthony P. Adamthwaite, ‘British Diplomacy Before the Conference in the Crimea’, in Yalta: un mito che resiste, ed. Olla, 46; Prażmowska, ‘Churchill and Poland’, 117.

  139. 139.

    Lord Halifax, then foreign secretary had been the first choice of Chamberlain, the king, and the Conservative party. David Reynolds, ‘Churchill and the British “Decision” to Fight On in 1940: Right Policy, Wrong Reasons’, in Diplomacy and Intelligence During the Second World War: Essays in Honour of F.H. Hinsley, ed. Richard Langhorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 148.

  140. 140.

    Important members of the government, including Halifax and David Lloyd George, believed Britain ought to seriously consider a negotiated peace. Ibid., 149–150.

  141. 141.

    Prażmowska, ‘Churchill and Poland’, 117.

  142. 142.

    Mikołajczyk diary, 16 December 1944, Stanisław Mikołajczyk Papers, Box 13, Folder 17, Hoover Institution Archives; DOPSR, vol. 2, docs. 248, 250, 259; TNA: CAB 121/454, Foreign Office to Moscow, 24 November 1944; FRUS, 1944, vol. 3, 1335–1336.

  143. 143.

    TNA: CAB 121/454, Churchill to Roosevelt, 16 December 1944.

  144. 144.

    TNA: FO 371/39418/C16777/8/G55, Churchill to Eden, 26 November 1944; Eden to Churchill, 26 November 1944.

  145. 145.

    Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. 1, doc. 362.

  146. 146.

    TNA: FO 371/47576/N568/6/55, Soviet Communiqué of 5 January 1945.

  147. 147.

    DOPSR, vol. 2, doc. 797, fn. 293.

  148. 148.

    TNA: FO 371/47575/N198/6/G55, Foreign Office, Minutes, 8 January 1945.

  149. 149.

    Eden approved this memo, requesting that a copy be sent to Churchill and that another be brought to Yalta. TNA: FO 371/47577/N1038/6/G55, ‘Brief on Poland’, 27 January 1945.

  150. 150.

    Warren F. Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 169; Eduard Mark, ‘American Policy Toward Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1946: An Alternative Interpretation’, Journal of American History 68 (1981): 316–317.

  151. 151.

    Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 135; Reynolds, World War to Cold War, 67, 238–239.

  152. 152.

    Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed at Malta that the Polish government should be entirely reconstituted. Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 3, doc. C-910.

  153. 153.

    FRUS: Diplomatic Papers. The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1955), 508–509, 716–721, 842–843, 846–848, 850–854, 869–871, 973–974; Woodward, British Foreign Policy, vol. 3, 252–271.

  154. 154.

    TNA: FO 371/N1745/6/G55, Foreign Office to Moscow, February 18 1945.

  155. 155.

    TNA: WO 106/3973, VCIGS to Field Marshal Alexander, 13 February 1945; General Harding to Alexander, 14 February 1945; WO 214/54, General Paget to VCIGS, February 1945; Alexander to CIGS, February 1945; FO 371/47579/N1884/6/55, Record of a meeting between Churchill and Anders, 21 February 1945.

  156. 156.

    For example, Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed, 507–508.

  157. 157.

    Polonsky, ‘Stalin and the Poles’, 472. Kimball puts forth a similar argument. Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 3, 585–587.

  158. 158.

    Churchill referred to ‘misunderstandings … about the interpretation of the Yalta decisions’ in a message to Roosevelt in late March, 1945. Similarly, he complained that Stalin ‘persists in his view that the Yalta Communique merely meant the addition of a few other Poles to the existing administration of Russian puppets’. Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 3, docs. C-925, C-926.

  159. 159.

    FRUS: Diplomatic Papers, 1945, Europe, vol. 5 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1967), 123–124, 134, 142–144, 147–150; Woodward, British Foreign Policy, vol. 3, 490.

  160. 160.

    Messages to Stalin were sent on 29 March by the Americans and on 31 March by the British. Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 3, docs. R-730, C-929.

  161. 161.

    Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, vol. 3, docs. C-925, C-926; FRUS, 1945, vol. 5, 123–124, 134, 142–144, 147–150.

  162. 162.

    The underground leaders went voluntarily to meet with NKVD representatives. According to Prażmowska, they hoped to secure the legalisation of the underground, so that it could take part in the political life of the liberated territories. The leaders included Jan Stanisław Jankowski and the chairman of the Council of National Unity, Kazimierz Pużak. On 27 and 28 March, they went to Pruszków, from where they were immediately taken to Moscow. Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 115–116.

  163. 163.

    TNA: FO 371/47590/5247/6/55, Foreign Office Report, 7 May 1945; DOPSR, vol. 2, doc. 353.

  164. 164.

    Stańczyk was the former minister of Labour and Social Welfare in the exile government.

  165. 165.

    This list consisted of Adam Sapieha, archbishop of Kraków or Wincenty Witos, leader of the Peasant Party in Poland, Zygmunt Żuławski, Stanisław Kutrzeba, President of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Letters who had been imprisoned in Sachsenhausen, Henryk Kołodziejski, director of the Sejm Library and Adam Krzyżanowski, professor of economics at Jagellonian University.

  166. 166.

    TNA: FO 371/47592/N6293/6/55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 1 June 1945 [first telegram]; Foreign Office to Washington, 2 June 1945; Churchill to Truman, 2 June 1945; N6381/6/55, Foreign Office to Moscow, 4 June 1945; FRUS, 1945, vol. 5, 299–317.

  167. 167.

    TNA: FO 371/47592/N6293/6/55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 1 June 1945 [second telegram]; N6369, Moscow to Foreign Office, 3 June 1945.

  168. 168.

    TNA: FO 371/47592/N6293/6/55, Churchill to Truman, 2 June 1945.

  169. 169.

    TNA: FO 371/47592/N6535/6/55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 6 June 1945.

  170. 170.

    Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 114.

  171. 171.

    TNA: FO 371/47593/N6696/6/55, Richard Law to Churchill, 8 June 1945; Foreign Office to Moscow, 9 June 1945; 10 Downing Street to Foreign Office, 9 June 1945; N6840/6/55, Foreign Office Minute, 13 June 1945.

  172. 172.

    TNA: FO 371/66090/N658, Annex to ‘British Policy Towards Poland—Mr Churchill’s Conversation with M. Mikołajczyk, 15 June 1945’.

  173. 173.

    Mikołajczyk also secured a promise that Karol Popiel, leader of the Labour Alliance (Stronnictwo Pracy—SP), which had been excluded from the talks at Soviet insistence, would be able to join the government at a later date. The National Alliance (Stronnictwo Narodowe—SN), which had also been excluded from the Moscow negotiations, was not represented in the new government. TNA: FO 371/47594/N7298/6/G55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 21 June 1945; N7299/6/G55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 22 June 1945; N7310/6/55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 22 June 1945; FO 371/47595/N7537/6/G55, Foreign Office to Moscow, 25 June 1945.

  174. 174.

    The MBN’s nominal head was the minister for public security, Stanisław Radkiewicz. He was considered ineffective, hence Serov’s appointment as advisor. Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 121.

  175. 175.

    John Micgiel, ‘“Bandits and Reactionaries”: The Suppression of the Opposition in Poland, 1944–1946’, in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949, eds. Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibianskii (Oxford: Westview, 1997), 94.

  176. 176.

    Osóbka-Morawski belonged to the Workers’ Party of the Polish Socialists (RPPS—Robotnicza Partia Polskich Socalistów)—a splinter group of the PPS which had allied itself with the PPR. He was leader of the PKWN, 1944–1945.

  177. 177.

    Bierut and Osóbka-Morawski made this statement to Mikołajczyk. Osóbka-Morawski repeated it to Clark Kerr directly. TNA: FO 371/47594/N7295/6/G55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 21 June 1945; N7297/6/G55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 21 June 1945.

  178. 178.

    TNA: FO 371/47595/N7312/6/55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 22 June 1945; Polonsky, ‘Stalin and the Poles’, 475; Prażmowska, Civil War in Poland, 142, 148.

  179. 179.

    TNA: FO 371/47595/N7312/6/55, Moscow to Foreign Office, 22 June 1945; N7508/6/55, Foreign Office Minutes, 2 July 1945.

  180. 180.

    TNA: FO 371/47596/N7711/6/55, Churchill to Osóbka-Morawski, 5 July 1945.

  181. 181.

    For a summary of the evolution of the ‘Yalta myth’ in the British historiography of the origins of the Cold War see Donald Cameron Watt, ‘Britain and the Historiography of the Yalta Conference and the Cold War’, in Yalta: un mito che resiste, ed. Olla, 411–455.

  182. 182.

    Warren Kimball, for instance, argues that the immediate post-Yalta period was a key juncture for Churchill. He argues that March 1945 was the point at which Churchill’s ‘ambivalence’ towards the Soviet Union ‘disappeared’. As evidence, Kimball cites Churchill’s calls for the US and Britain to ‘confront’ the Soviets. Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman, 174, 181.

  183. 183.

    Folly, Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 142–143, 158–159.

  184. 184.

    Ibid., 148–150, 160–161, 166.

  185. 185.

    Sargent specifically referred to Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. He noted that ‘perhaps for the moment Roumania and Hungary [are] beyond our reach’. TNA: FO 371/50912/U5471/5471/70, ‘Memorandum by Sir O. Sargent’, 11 July 1945.

  186. 186.

    Although Eden did begin to worry that the assumption that the Soviet Union was counting on Western assistance for its reconstruction needs had begun to be taken for granted. TNA: FO 371/50912/U5471/5471/70, Minute by Cadogan, 11 July 1945.

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    Andrea Mason

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Mason, A. (2018). Britain and the Polish Government-in-Exile, January 1944 to June 1945. In: British Policy Towards Poland, 1944–1956. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94241-4_2

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