The Road to Berlin (55 page)

The Prime Minister sent his message, with the amended draft, through the British Ambassador on 21 February: the Polish government were ready to discuss with the Soviet government ‘a new frontier between Poland and the Soviet Union’, together with future frontiers in the north and west; until the Polish government returned to Poland it could not ‘formally abdicate its rights in any part of Poland as hitherto constituted’, but the vigorous prosecution of the war in collaboration with Soviet armies would be greatly assisted by the Soviet government facilitating the speedy return of the Polish government to liberated territory ‘at the earliest possible moment’, there to take up the reins of civil administration in areas west of the Curzon line; the Polish government had ordered the full collaboration of the Polish underground with Soviet commanders, and the Polish government ‘can … assure the Russian government that by the time they have entered into diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union’ this government would include ‘none but persons fully determined to co-operate with the Soviet Union’. The settlement the Prime Minister proposed would be supported ‘at the Conference after the defeat of Hitler’ and would be guaranteed ‘in after years to the best of our ability’. The day after this was sent, Churchill made his own statement in the House of Commons, supporting the Soviet stand on the Curzon line. To the growls of Poles and the anguished reception of this speech among the Polish underground, was added the blast of German propaganda aimed at Polish troops fighting in Italy and at the population in occupied Poland. Nor could the Polish government derive much comfort from information in the reports from its
ambassador in the United States, to the effect that American passivity was due in no small degree to a deliberate policy of allowing the Prime Minister to handle the Soviet–Polish dispute. And if the British Prime Minister could not therefore be shifted by an appeal to the American President, there was less to be expected of Stalin who, according to the Soviet Ambassador to the Czech government in London, had laid down in 1941 (at the time of the first Polish–Soviet negotiations) ‘directives’ for dealing with the Polish question which were still operative: Stalin wanted an immovable grip on Belorussians and Ukrainians, the latter in particular, and aimed to cure their separatist tendencies by sealing them into the USSR.

At the end of February Stalin gave the British proposals for a settlement short shrift. During the night of 28–29 February, when he received the British Ambassador and discussed the Prime Minister’s message of 20 February, all he could muster for the Polish government was ‘a snigger’ and a burst of sarcasm at being told that the Poles would not go back on the proposals presented by the British—‘How handsome of them.’ Stalin refused to admit that the Poles wanted a settlement, that the Polish government could not presently accept the Curzon line and that the ‘reconstruction’ of the government might best be done once it was back in Warsaw. For all practical purposes the British proposals were rejected, a point Stalin made unpleasantly plain in his reply of 3 March—‘the time is not yet ripe for a solution of the problem of Soviet–Polish relations’, a view he had also communicated to President Roosevelt, and ‘the soundness’ of which he was ‘compelled to re-affirm’. The rejoinder from the Prime Minister on 7 March was almost as terse: the proposals gave the Russians
de facto
possession of the Curzon line ‘as soon as you get there’, with the promise of British support for it and most probably that of the Americans at the peace conference, while we should regret if ‘nothing can be arranged’ and the Soviet Union cannot enter into relations with the government we recognize. The British Ambassador in Moscow was carefully instructed to emphasize the danger of a divergence in policy between the Soviet and the Western powers, but to convey neither the hint of threats nor the suggestion of a change in policy towards the Soviet Union. The Ambassador’s request for an interview with Stalin, however, went unanswered.

On 16 March Stalin acknowledged receipt of the Prime Minister’s message of 7 March only to complain of leakages in the press of their ‘secret and personal correspondence’. Five days later Churchill replied that the fault lay with the Soviet Ambassador, but that now he must announce to the Commons that negotiations for a Polish–Soviet settlement had broken down, that ‘we will continue to recognize the Polish government’ and that now all question of territorial change must ‘await the armistice or peace conferences of the victorious powers’. The result of this, and of the British Ambassador’s statement on 19 March to Molotov, was a furious retort from Stalin on 23 March: the statements from the British side ‘bristle with threats against the Soviet Union’, and threats ‘may lead to opposite results’. Stalin was incensed that the Prime Minister should go back on his undertaking made at Teheran about the Curzon line, but ‘as for me and the
Soviet government, we still adhere to the Teheran standpoint and we have no intention of going back on it’: by his references to
‘forcible
transferences of territory’ the Prime Minister makes it appear that the Soviet Union is ‘being hostile to Poland’.

To be sure, you are free to make any statement you like in the House of Commons—that is your business. But should you make a statement of this nature I shall consider that you have committed an unjust and unfriendly act in relation to the Soviet Union.
[Perepiska
… , vol. 1, no. 257, p. 255.]

A first reaction to this message was to consider the dispatch of a reply ‘in the name of the British government’ to the effect that the British position was not a rejection of the Teheran stipulations; that the Prime Minister had pressed the Poles to accept the Curzon line, while the British proposals embodied a working arrangement in the absence of a public declaration on the part of the Polish government, an arrangement made necessary to secure the co-operation of the Polish underground. Soviet rejection of the proposals meant a withdrawal of British mediation but no calumny of ‘our Russian ally’.

That this mesage was never sent owed something to the situation in Poland itself, where Red Army units and Polish underground forces in Volhynia had each met in some strength. The
Armija Krajowa
and the Soviet command concluded an agreement towards the end of March, which—as Count Raczynski reported to Eden on 7 April—‘did not bode so ill as had first been feared’. The Polish underground forces came under the local operational command of the Soviet military but were to be organized into the 27th Volhynian Infantry Division which would remain under the authority of the Polish underground commander (and thence to the Polish C-in-C in London): the new division, to be fitted out from Soviet stocks, would remain operationally subordinated to the Soviet command until such time as a ‘mutual Polish–Soviet agreement’ altered the arrangements. This came as more welcome news after earlier reports of men of the Polish underground being discovered, or revealing their identities, only to be shot out of hand, a state of affairs the Polish government hoped to circumvent by seeking the aid of British and American liaison officers who might be seconded to the Polish underground and also to ‘the Polish Army within the Soviet lines’. And well ahead of regular Soviet military formations went Soviet partisan units, who were under instructions to push on regardless of frontiers; once on the frontier lines (according to partisan commanders operating from the Ukraine), the unit commander opened a sealed envelope given him by the Ukrainian Partisan Staff which advised him to ‘act independently according to the existing conditions and the conscience of a Soviet citizen’. Soviet partisan units crashed into the underground forces of the London-led
Armija Krajowa
, and then the killing started: while the Soviet partisan groups flushed out the
Armija Krajowa
they also helped the small Communist-led
Gwardija Ludowa
to start to its feet. In the spring of 1944 Poles serving in three Soviet partisan brigades were moved out and sent to a
special training camp run by Soviet officers, then assigned to a Polish partisan brigade, a programme much intensified in the summer and run under the auspices of the Ukrainian Staff of the Partisan Movement. In April 1944 the Polish Staff of the Partisan Movement was set up with control over all guerrilla units operating on Polish territory—three brigades and a detachment, with a total strength of 1,863 men. The training school attached to the Polish Partisan Staff went on to train over 1,500 men by July, while the Ukrainian Partisan Staff sent thirty experienced instructors to run courses in demolition and radio work; this school in Volhynia disposed of over fifty lorries, five aircraft and large quantities of weapons.

The establishment of communist-led Polish armed forces also included the raising of 1st Polish Corps to the status of 1st Polish Army, announced by the Soviet government on 18 March 1944. On the orders of the Soviet General Staff, 1st Corps was already on the move to the area of Berdichev and Zhitomir, where an army staff, staff services and arms commands, supply services and specialist units were built on to the burgeoning corps, now officially designated 1st Polish Army under the command of Brigadier-General Berling, with Brigadier-General Swierczewski as his deputy and Colonel Zawadzki the deputy commander for political affairs. On 29 April 1st Polish Army consisting of three infantry divisions was put under the operational command of Rokossovskii’s 1st Belorussian Front, while at Suma—the base for recruiting and fitting out Polish divisions—the organization for setting up a ‘Polish army’ was rapidly expanded. In March the
Krajowa Rada Narodowa (KRN)
sent a delegation to Moscow from Poland—Osobka–Morawski, Spychalski, Sidor and Haneman—all of whom passed safely through the Front lines and arrived in Moscow on 16 March, not only to report on themselves but also to make requests for arms, ammunition and equipment—all of which they got, plus their own ‘agreement’ on the form of co-operation between the Red Army and the
Armija Ludowa
. This delegation also spent some time with the British Ambassador (and with Ambassador Harriman); Sir Archibald Clark Kerr questioned the members of the
KRN
about the general situation in Poland, on the relations between the
KRN
and the London government, on their attitude to the eastern frontier and on the position of the
Armija Krajowa visà-vis
the Red Army. Like the Polish army units, the guerrillas of the
Armija Ludowa
had to be rushed into existence and into action; the
Armija Ludowa
used the
Gwardija Ludowa
(the People’s Guard) as the foundation on which to build and to expand, a process vastly speeded up by the establishment of the Polish Partisan Staff which worked from Rovno and which came under the control of Zawadzki, deputy commander of 1st Polish Army, a former officer of the
NKVD
and a party member reportedly sentenced after 1936 to ten years’ imprisonment.

During the night of 9-10 February Maj.-Gen. Vershigora’s 1st Ukrainian Partisan Brigade, a Soviet partisan force some 2,500 strong, crossed the Bug and pushed on to the west, penetrating as far as the river San. The presence of Soviet
partisan units—not only Vershigora’s, but those of Prokopyuk, Yakovlev, Nadelin, Sankov and many more—acted as a fillip for the
Armija Ludowa (AL)
, which issued its first main operational orders on 26 February. Soviet partisan units and men of the
Armija Ludowa
fought under ‘joint command’ (Soviet–Polish), a notable instance of which was Mieczyslaw Moczar’s action with his
AL
detachment against
SS Wiking
in the Rembluv area in May. Soviet transport aircraft now began dropping arms, uniforms and equipment in systematic flights over eastern Poland, and the
Armija Ludowa
filled out from its first brigade in February to eleven within a few months (a dozen brigades having been initially planned). Soviet partisan commanders—who, even without specific orders, seemed to understand well enough what was required of them in the name of their ‘liberation mission’—reported on the growing support for the guerrillas. In addition to its military significance, the Soviet command had never been blind to the role of the partisan movement as a means of winning political influence, not only for themselves but for their communist
protégés
, who were more immediately important. Partisan activity was a powerful means of ‘radicalizing’ the masses; it was also a means of uncovering the sources of anti-Soviet activity by forcing the hands of opponents.

The Polish underground led from London was the largest and the most powerful in Europe: the Polish national
Armija Krajowa (AK)
thus represented a special obstacle to Stalin, unlike anything he had so far encountered in the war. Though there were instances of ‘agreements’ between the
Armija Krajowa
and the
Armija Ludowa
, as well as between the
AK
and the Red Army, a savage fight was already on, with each side hunting down the other. The nature of the early agreements between the
AK
and the Red Army suggested that the Soviet military command found it useful to co-operate with Polish underground units in fighting German troops, not least because the
AK
could provide invaluable local support and local knowledge. But once the area was cleared of enemy troops, and the
AK
men were all revealed, they were wholly at the mercy of Soviet security forces. Sporadic, ragged fighting between Soviet or pro-Soviet groups and Polish guerrillas of extreme nationalist conviction—the
Narodowe sily zbrojne
, an ultra-rightist organization—had gone on for some time, as the Soviet command parachuted its own men behind the lines on sabotage assignments, quite separate from
AK
operations. The
Narodowe sily zbrojne
, itself unconnected with the
AK
, also took on organized Soviet partisan detachments and fought it out with them. Meanwhile Stalin rushed to get ‘the true Polish resistance’ led by the
KRN
installed and operational on Polish soil, while the
Armija Krajowa
pleaded for more air-lifts to drop arms (since only 28 flights had materialized out of a planned 301 in the period from October 1943 to March 1944).