Yalta
and the Polish Question:
Why
the West Lost
Part V: The London Poles
By the
time the Great Powers met at Yalta, the Polish government in London had
been reduced from the representatives of the Polish nation to a sort of
faint, nagging voice of conscience that Churchill and Roosevelt found it
necessary to avoid. Four years of relations with the Great Powers
had shown the government in exile to be out of touch with the geopolitical
realities the war had created. As a result – and as a result of Stalin’s
rigid refusal to deal with them as the legitimate representatives of the
Polish nation – the role they played at Yalta was minor. Their battle
was lost long before.
The modus
operandi of the London Poles was characteristic of their lack of perspective.
Throughout the war, and especially in the days leading up to Yalta, they
issued ultimatums and directives to the British and American delegations
that laid out demands on positions the allies had long before discarded.
An excellent example is the London government’s last letter to the Secretary
of State before Stettinius left for Yalta. The letter would have
made Stalin laugh, and in light of Roosevelt’s “breath of fresh air” comment
it seems the American delegation didn’t take it too seriously either.
“Forseeing that matters concerning the Polish government will be discussed
at [Yalta], and having full confidence in the intentions of the President
of the United States of ensuring the Polish State real independence and
the guarantee of its rights, the Polish Government would like to take this
opportunity to express certain views,” the letter begins. Some excerpts
from the body:
...territorial questions
should be settled only after the termination of hostilities. ... Under
no circumstances will the Polish Government recognize unilateral solutions,
mindful of the fact that Poland ... has made enormous sacrifices of her
most important values and has lost practically one-fifth of her population
fallen in battle ... The Polish Government trusts that the United States
Government will not take part in any decisions concerning the Allied Polish
State without the participation and consent of the Polish Government...
Churchill’s
comment about the little birds singing springs to mind. As the conference
proved, the eagles weren’t listening.
For the
London Poles, the idea that they might not be returning to power after
the war never seems to have been a major fear. Instead, they focused
their attention on territorial questions, namely the debate over the Curzon
line versus the 1939 Polish borders, which represented significant territorial
gains made after the peace settlement of WWI drew the new Polish borders.
Stalin, concerned with the Soviet Union’s security, was determined to push
the borders back far enough to give the USSR a buffer against any future
German aggression.
The London
Poles were under pressure to compromise more than a year before Yalta.
As Soviet forces entered Polish territory in January 1944, Churchill met
with Mikolajczyk to present what amounted to an ultimatum. “Churchill
reminded him that Britain had gone to war to defend Poland’s independence,
not its frontiers. ... If the London Poles agreed to the Curzon Line as
a basis for negotiation, he believed Stalin would deal with them as the
official Polish government. Speed was essential, as the Red Army
was advancing daily ... and Stalin could set up his own Polish government.”
Mikolajczyk couldn’t accept the Line, and so lost the initiative early
on.
As far
as the Allies were concerned, Stalin won on this point well before Yalta.
At Teheran, the consensus was that Stalin’s demands for territory in the
east should be met, and that the Poles should be compensated for the loss
by a western expansion to the Oder river. When Mikolajczyk traveled
to Moscow in October 1944 to negotiate with Stalin months later, he was
shocked when Molotov rebuffed his insistence on the 1939 borders by saying
Roosevelt had already agreed to the Curzon line. A dismayed letter
to Averell Harriman conveyed his anger.
I learned with the shock
of surprise from Mr. Molotov’s statement at the meeting on October 13 that
at the Teheran conference the representatives of all the three Great Powers
had definitely agreed that the so-called Curzon Line should be the frontier
between Poland and the Soviet Union. ... The President said that at the
Teheran conference he had maid [sic] it clear that he held the view that
the Polish-Soviet conflict should not be settled on the basis of the so-called
Curzon line ...
This same
Moscow meeting, arranged at Churchill’s urging, was pretty much the last
time Stalin agreed to deal with the London Poles, and hence was the last
time the London Poles could be presented by the western allies as a viable
alternative to the Lublin government. Mikolakczyk was in a terrible
position. As a representative of the London government, he had no
authority to compromise on the Curzon line issue. This put him at
odds with both sides. “[Mikolajczyk] said flatly that he could not
agree with either Stalin or Churchill and could not accept the Curzon Line
... he had not realized that he had come to Moscow to partition Poland.”
This difference
in attitudes was fundamental. Churchill viewed the territory in question
as something open to discussion and compromise; the London Poles saw it
as an inviolate part of their nation and state. Stalin just wanted the
land. The clash of mindsets meant that no compromise could be reached;
worse, Churchill viewed the Poles’ rigidity as obstinacy or even arrogance
while the Poles saw their stand as principled. The misjudgement on
both sides presaged the London government’s loss of control in the months
leading up to Yalta and the western allies’ willingness to set their demands
aside when it came time to bargain with Stalin. Mikolajczyk was trying
to make a stand. Churchill and Roosevelt just wanted to make a deal.
The final
disadvantage the London Poles faced as the war drew to a close was their
location – they remained the London Poles by the time of Yalta, and Stalin’s
favorites were in Warsaw. That the London Poles would have been arrested
had they returned to Poland was beside the point. Stalin made much
of their absence in a plenary session at Yalta:
I can assure you that
[the Lublin Poles] are really very popular. ... They are the people who
did not leave Poland. ... The Polish people consider these three as those
who have stayed ... The population is surprised, even astounded, that the
people of the London government do not take any part in this liberation.
Members of the provisional government they see there, but where are the
London Poles? These two circumstances produce the fact that the members
of the Warsaw government, though they may not be great men, enjoy great
popularity.
Though
this was less than a half-truth, Roosevelt and Churchill had no way of
verifying Stalin’s claims. They had to take his word at face value,
and agreed, immediately after this speech, to let him conduct unmonitored
elections using the Lublin Poles as the kernel of a provisional government.
<<Back Next>>
Part I: Prologue
Part II: Roosevelt
Part III: Churchill
Part IV: Stalin
Part VI: Aftermath
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