Poland

The question of Poland came closer than any other to uncovering what the Yalta conferees, each for his own reason, did not want to face: the gulf that separated Communist Russia from the democracies. Serious consideration of postwar Germany could be postponed. The Far East could be settled by thrusting concessions upon Stalin. The deeply symbolic differences in the U.N. Charter could be bridged by words never destined to bear the stress of reality. But Poland was immediate and concrete, already the subject of angry public debate. How the fate of Poland was settled at Yalta is a story that contains, in a small-scale model, all the elements of the larger story of how the West lost the peace.

The Background. A fiercely independent people without natural east or west frontiers, the Poles had been four times partitioned among their stronger neighbors. Their anti-Russian feeling had been fanned anew by the fourth partition, the German-Russian Pact of 1939, which started the war. In addition, as Roman Catholics, the Poles were strongly opposed to Communism.

Britain had entered the war in defense of a free Poland. The U.S. and Britain in the Atlantic Charter had again emphasized, as a principle of world order, the right of self-determination for such distinct but relatively weak peoples as the Poles. When Stalin's returning armies drove the Germans out of Eastern Poland, he set up at Lublin a "provincial government" of Poland in rivalry to the Polish government, which had fled to London after the Hitler-Stalin invasions. The London Polish government was not a creature of Britain; it derived from the Poland created after World War I by Patriots Paderewski and Pilsudski. The Lublin government, though made up of Poles, was a creature of the Communist Party, the Russian secret police and the Red army.

The Issues. Out of this background issued two questions for Yalta: 1) the Polish boundaries, and 2) the even more important question of whether Poland would have its own government or be ruled by Russian stooges.

The boundary question arose from Stalin's insistence on annexing part of Eastern Poland. Before Yalta, it was understood that the Poles would be compensated by giving them German territory in the West. U.S. policy, as defined by the State Department in preparation for Yalta, was to hold down the size of Stalin's grab, thus minimizing the cruel displacement of population on both of Poland's borders.

On the political question, the U.S. wanted an independent Poland, friendly to Russia and open to diplomatic and commercial intercourse with the West. In practice, this meant a provisional government formed around the London government and including leaders from among the anti-Nazi Polish patriots. Such a government would preside over free Polish elections in which the Poles would pick their own postwar leaders.

As the Yalta Conference opened, it was obvious that the Red army would take the rest of Poland, and within a matter of weeks. Stalin did not need a Yalta agreement to give him the real estate; his motive at Yalta was political, not geographic. Nobody knew better than the Russians that the Poles would not make docile slaves. With Germany and France out of the future great-power picture (as Roosevelt and Stalin agreed), Britain and the U.S. were the only ones to which Polish patriots could look for help. Stalin needed to destroy this hope--to show the Poles that the Western powers would in practice throw the principles of the Atlantic Charter overboard. The first step must be to get the U.S. and Britain to abandon the London Polish government.

Favors & Flattery. Right at the start of the polemical sham battle over Poland Roosevelt exposed the poverty of the Anglo-American effort. There were two related avenues for a strong U.S. approach: the high principles of self-determination for even the smallest state, and the heavy pressure of such practical measures as Russia's stake in the future of West Germany. Instead, Roosevelt and (sometimes) Churchill couched their main plea to Stalin in terms of petty politicians asking favors. At that level Stalin inevitably bested them.

"There are six or seven million Poles in the U.S.," began Roosevelt. ". . . It would make it easier for me at home if the Soviet government would give something to Poland." Stalin could not have cared less how Roosevelt's popularity rating fared in Buffalo's Sixth Ward. To such arguments the Soviet dictator had a bland counter: "What will the Russians say?" Without the Polish territory he coveted, said Stalin, "I cannot return to Moscow."

Roosevelt and Churchill stooped to wheedling flattery. Be magnanimous, they said. At least, said Roosevelt, give Poland the oil province of Lvov (it lay east of the Curzon line, which the Allies of World War I had proposed as the fairest ethnic frontier between Poland and Russia). Churchill lifted the appeal to an oratorical height: "This is what is dear to the hearts of the nation of Britain . . . that Poland should be free and sovereign . . . mistress in her own house and in her own soul . . . [Our] interest is only one of honor."

Stalin cut them down. "Throughout history," he said, "Poland has always been a corridor for attack on Russia ... It is not only a question of honor but of life and death for the Soviet State . . ." And it was not a question of magnanimity alone. The Curzon line, he explained pedantically (for he had learned his homework much better than the other two of the Big Three), had been "invented not by Russians but by foreigners ... by Curzon, Clemenceau and the Americans in 1918-1919." How could he be "less Russian than Curzon and Clemenceau?"

Lublin Doesn't Answer. In a written message, apparently ghosted by Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt proposed that two Lublin Poles and two others from within Poland (but nonCommunist) be summoned to Yalta. Maybe they could work out a new provisional government agreeable to all. Added Roosevelt: if the four Poles succeeded, he was "sure" the U.S. and Britain would "disassociate themselves" from the London Poles.

Scenting capitulation by the Anglo-Americans, Stalin moved in quickly. He was trying, he said, all possible ways to locate the top Lublin Poles by phone. So far, they had not been found. "I am afraid we have not sufficient time." He could not go ahead with Roosevelt's proposal until he consulted them. After all, as he observed before, "I am called dictator and not a democrat, but I have enough democratic feeling to refuse to create a Polish government without the Poles being consulted."

While they were waiting for the phone calls to come through, Stalin added, there was a counterproposal. Molotov would read it.

The counterproposal became, with some minor changes, the substance of the Yalta agreement on Poland. It ignored Roosevelt's four Poles project. It drew Stalin's frontiers for Poland, including on the west a deep wedge of Germany to the Oder-Neisse line. It held fast to the Lublin Poles as the base for a provisional government. It pledged the Big Three to recognize this government before elections for a permanent government.

The next day Roosevelt accepted. Stalin seemed unwilling to believe it. He asked: "Does this mean that you would withdraw recognition from the London [Poles]?" Said Roosevelt: "Yes."

Even Caesar's Wife. Churchill still had misgivings. There were seeds of future trouble in turning so much of Germany over to Poland--"I do not wish to stuff the Polish goose until it dies of German indigestion." The Prime Minister visualized a mass deportation of Germans. Was this not inhumane? "I ... feel conscious of the large school of thought in England which is shocked at the idea of transferring millions of people." He added: "Personally, I am not shocked."

At that level, Stalin was Churchill's master. Said the Russian: "There will be no more Germans there, for when our troops come in the Germans run away, and no Germans are left."

How free and unfettered would the future Polish elections be? The principle involved in this was the political key to the future of Eastern Europe. But it was not argued on principle or bargained from strength. Roosevelt thought of the 6,000,000 American-Polish voters. "The matter is not only one of principle," he said, "but of practical politics ... I want this election ... to be ... like Caesar's wife. I did not know her, but they said she was pure."

Stalin cracked back as heavily: "They said that about her, but in fact she had her sins."

Churchill worried: "In Parliament I must be able to say that the elections will be held in a fair way." Perhaps it was his frustration that led him then to an incredibly inept remark: "I do not care much about Poles, myself."

Stalin quickly countered: "There are some very good people among the Poles. They are good fighters." He tossed in a consolation bone: to show how fair the Polish elections would be, he would see to it that Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, sturdy Polish Peasant Party leader and chief hope for a free Poland, would be allowed to return to Poland and electioneer.

The Sequel. Not until two years later (January 1947) did the provisional Polish government recognized by the Big Three hold its elections. They were rigged to insure Communist control. Washington and London denounced them and U.S. Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane resigned in protest over them. Mikolajczyk, who was allowed no effective voice in the provisional government or in the elections, was forced to flee abroad for safety.

The Yalta agreement gave Stalin no territory his armies did not take. But it gave him what he wanted. So shocked were the Poles at the action of the Western powers that the Communists were able to fasten their grip on Poland without meeting dangerous resistance. By now, most of the original Russian stooges have been liquidated, and Poland (pop. 26,200,000) is run by Marshal Rokossovsky of the Red army.

The Polish lesson was not lost on the Hungarians, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Rumanians and Czechs. If the Poles, Eastern Europe's stoutest fighters for freedom, could not count on the West, what hope for the others? Inexorably, the Communist grip upon all of them tightened.

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