Yalta
and the Polish Question:
Why
the West Lost
Part VI: Aftermath
The Polish
question was the most difficult the Allies faced at the Yalta conference.
For Britain and America, no compromise would please their domestic constituencies
or the London Poles. For Stalin, the issue was how to preserve the
status quo while giving the impression that he was willing to cooperate
with the western allies, something he did masterfully. For the London
Poles, the tunnel vision that had crippled their diplomacy during the war
likewise prevented them from recognizing the difficult situation the British
and American delegations were in. The Yalta discussions ranged all over
the spectrum, with compromises on one issue used as leverage to extract
gains on another.
Yalta’s
many interlinked issues turned the Livadia Palace into the essence of the
international system for one intense week. This was a reality the
Polish government in exile never seemed to grasp. Their communiques
discussed the negotiations over Poland as if they were occurring in a vacuum,
divorced from the greater geopolitical realities as well as from the strategic
and military realities the Soviets were unafraid to use as bargaining points.
But Poland had suddenly became an integral part of the international system.
Equally
important, the Polish government failed to acknowledge the tremendous importance
of human relations and frailty in the Great Power alliance. Yalta
was one of the last times personality would play such a vivid and open
role in the conduct of international affairs, and the conduct of the negotiations
at Yalta shows that the baggage the participants brought with them -- and
their respective views of how the post-war world should look -- was as
important as the issues on the table. The conference brought years
of wartime diplomacy, observation and negotiation to a climax.
The three
participants went in with different goals. Churchill brought both
a deep sense of pragmatism and the realization that Britain’s primacy on
the world scene was a thing of the past; his conduct recognized his status
as the least influential of the three but also his energy and skill as
a statesman. Roosevelt came to the Crimea with some distinctly American
ideals, namely the vision of a United Nations-type organization that would
unite the Great Powers (and China) in a peace-keeping alliance. It
was a dream that had inspired Woodrow Wilson more than two and a half decades
earlier, and as his health failed Roosevelt showed a willingness to put
almost every other concern aside in a push to hammer out his legacy.
The conference’s
big winner was Stalin. For the Soviet delegation, the crushing destruction
the Soviet Union had suffered at the hands of the Germans made security
guarantees a top priority. Stalin used every means at his disposal
to answer the Polish question in a way that would accomplish this goal
while at the same time extending the Soviet sphere of influence deep into
the heart of Europe. Skilled, savvy and – to the members of the two
other delegations – sphinx-like, Stalin’s answer to the seemingly insoluble
problem of Poland set in motion a cycle of mistrust, recrimination and
betrayal that made the Cold War a virtual certainty.
<<Back
Part I: Prologue
Part II: Roosevelt
Part III: Churchill
Part IV: Stalin
Part V: The
London Poles
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