The Road to Berlin (57 page)

Polish representatives on the
CCS
had been struggling since July 1943 to win more supplies for the
AK
and a specific recognition of the need for operations ‘co-ordinated with the military operations of the Allies’; British support had been contingent on the availability of suitable aircraft and on the start of operations on the Continent on a large scale. For its own planning purposes the Polish General Staff set the period during which the insurgent forces could hold on until the arrival of substantial outside assistance at twenty days, though Polish political leaders, weighing the consequences of the break in Soviet–Polish relations, thought Soviet assistance very problematical. The Joint Secretary of the
CCS
, Brigadier Redman, had talked in rather general terms to Colonel Mitkiewicz at the beginning of September 1943 about the Polish plans: in addition to the intrinsic military difficulties, the British Special Operations Executive (
SOE
) had reservations about the proposed Polish operations and the Soviet attitude, as well as doubts on the score of the Poles keeping to the 1939 frontier line. When the
CCS
convened on 19 September 1943 (with Colonel Mitkiewicz in attendance), to the consternation of the Polish representative, the Polish submissions about the
AK
were simply not discussed. All that Brigadier Redman could offer by way of explanation the next day to Colonel Mitkiewicz was the British opinion that ‘the Russian snag’ had obtruded itself. The official
CCS
reply of 23 September
pleaded lack of aircraft and the absence of direct land or sea communications with the theatre, but no particular reason was given for cutting back the expansion of the
Armija Krajowa
. In mid-October the Poles tried again, only to receive a formal reply from the
CCS
on 20 January 1944 that the requisite equipment for the
AK
would not be forthcoming and that the
CCS
could only refer the Polish suggestion for joint American–British strategic responsibility over Polish territory to ‘the Chiefs of State’.

The Polish submissions of June 1944 to the
CCS
again went unanswered (though the reception was sympathetic), and it was left to Colonel Mitkiewicz to dig out the subterranean details, part of which he managed to his own satisfaction in his talk with Brigadier Redman on 7 July. On the strength of this conversation, supported apparently by some documentary evidence produced by the Brigadier, Colonel Mitkiewicz concluded that no supply of arms by air sufficient for a general uprising could be expected, such a supply depending on land/sea links and integration within the context of Soviet operations. The timing of the rising was the responsibility of the Polish government, who in turn should co-ordinate with the Soviet Union as the ally directly interested; and the same requirement existed for operations aimed at the dislocation of German communications passing through Poland, for again this affected the Soviet forces most immediately. This was how Colonel Mitkiewicz construed the evidence that he encountered. Somewhat later in July General Kopanski, in a signal to the Polish C-in-C (then in Italy), intimated that as a result of a letter from the British
CIGS
there was no likelihood of any co-ordination of
Armija Krajowa
operations in Poland on an ‘inter-Allied basis’. Whatever the basis of Colonel Mitkiewicz’s conclusions, whether intuitive or rationally perceived, they proved correct; while Stalin expanded his
Armija Ludowa
(and Berling’s regular formations) at top speed, the
AK
was left at an increasing disadvantge.

In mid-June Mikolajczyk returned to London, optimistic to a degree that the Foreign Office thought dangerously misplaced: the Polish Prime Minister referred to President Roosevelt’s own conviction that the Soviet–Polish frontier should run east of Lvov and added that the President seemed to entertain hopes of retaining Vilno. In his account to the Delegate of the Government in Poland dated 21 June, Mikolajczyk underscored the President’s opposition to the Curzon line but his approval for changes in government personnel which might facilitate a settlement: ‘America would like the restoration of Polish–Soviet relations, the postponement of controversial matters and creation of a military and administrative
modus vivendi
. …’ Though Mikolajczyk informed his colleagues in Poland that ‘Roosevelt considers his own influence with Stalin … as greater than Churchill’s,’ this was scarcely apparent from Stalin’s reply on 24 June to the President’s message of 17 June, in which he played his role of ‘moderator’. Stalin laid down massive conditions: one such ‘vital condition’ was the ‘reconstruction’ of the Polish government in London, plus recognition of the Curzon line—while at the present Stalin found it ‘hard to express an opinion about a visit to Moscow by M.
Mikolajczyk’. The Soviet Ambassador Lebedev had already taken up where he left off on the eve of Mikolajczyk’s journey to America. On 20 June both men met again to discuss ‘principles of collaboration’, defined by Mikolajczyk as a resumption of relations, co-ordination of the Soviet forces and the
AK
, joint Polish–Soviet administrative measures in liberated territory and territorial changes to be postponed until the end of war. Lebedev used a second meeting on 22 June to ‘elucidate’ the point about postponement of territorial settlements: Mikolajczyk explained that he was distinguishing between a demarcation line and a future frontier line. The next day Lebedev brought down the axe: he had ‘no instructions’ about a demarcation line, but he did have the Soviet terms—before any resumption of diplomatic relations, four men (President Raczkiewicz, General Sosnkowski, and the ministers Kot and Kukiel) were to be removed from ‘posts enabling them to influence the policy of the Polish government’; the ‘reconstructed’ Cabinet was to include Poles from London, the USA, the USSR and the
Rada Narodowa
in Poland, whereupon this ‘new’ government would condemn its predecessor for its ‘mistake in the Katyn affair’; and, finally, the Curzon line would mark the new Soviet–Polish frontier. It was to be all or nothing, at which Mikolajczyk terminated the talks.

As Operation
Bagration
ground Army Group Centre to pieces in early July, the likelihood of Poland becoming ‘the theatre of fierce warfare’ grew apace. With three Soviet fronts—1st, 2nd and 3rd Belorussian—on the move, General Sosnkowski on 7 July dispatched specific and revised instructions to General Bor-Komorowski on the proposed ‘war preparations against the Germans’ involving “intensified diversionist action” ‘under the code-name
Tempest (‘Burza’)
. General Sosnkowski ruled out ‘a general armed rising of the Nation’ and ‘resolutely opposed’ any description of
Tempest
as an ‘insurrectionist movement’; yet, if by ‘happy conjunction of circumstances’ as the Germans fell back, and before Soviet troops moved in, the
AK
could take even temporary possession of Vilno and Lvov, or any other important centre or ‘small part of land’, then this should be done so that the Poles appear as ‘the rightful masters’. Before the dispatch of this instruction, Mikolajczyk, General Sosnkowski and General Kukiel tried to thrash out just what was involved. Mikolajczyk, in what looks like an excess of optimism, declared for intensifying
AK
activities, submitting proposals to Soviet commanders for co-operation in local administration and settling for this arrangement while postponing the main issues. General Sosnkowski wanted a direct assumption of administrative authority by
AK
representatives, intensification of ‘diversionist action’ but on no account an ‘armed rising’ without a previous understanding with the Soviet Union—any rising without ‘the sincere and genuine co-operation of the Red Army’ meant only an ‘act of despair’. General Kukiel asked whether there was not a case for calling ‘a rising’, to which General Sosnkowski responded by admitting that
Tempest
could ‘for political purposes’ be defined as ‘insurrectionist’.

The pressure from the British side upon the Polish government to make immediate and substantial concessions did not abate during these critical days:
a draft document covering the territorial issues, the composition of the government and the position of the Polish C-in-C was submitted by Ambassador O’Malley on 13 July, only to be rejected by Mikolajczyk. If these proposals were transmitted to Stalin by the Prime Minister (and it has been reported that they were), the fact of Mikolajczyk’s dissent was evidently deleted from the message, since the only published signal dated 13 July deals with the Prime Minister’s request to the Russians to seek out the German experimental base for flying-bombs in the area of Debica lying ‘in the path of your victorious advancing armies’. Churchill’s signal of 20 July did mention the possibility of Mikolajczyk asking ‘to come to see you’ and made a special point of emphasizing that nothing had been said previously ‘because I [Churchill] trust in you [Stalin] to make comradeship with the underground if it really strikes hard and true against the Germans…’. The Foreign Office meanwhile nurtured growing fears that without some definite step by the Polish government the Russians would simply and inevitably take unilateral action, a view propounded within the State Department, where the Director of the Office of European Affairs (in a paper submitted on 20 July) predicted Soviet dealings with ‘some rival Polish organization as the provisional representative of the Polish people’, in all probability the ‘National Council of Poland’. In such an eventuality the only possible American policy must be to avoid ‘being stampeded by any propaganda campaign’ into a hasty recognition of the ‘new’ government, but at the same time to avoid ‘any positive statement’ which bound the American government to irrevocable support of the ‘Polish government in exile
per se’
. This depressingly realistic paper wound on: the danger of civil war was obvious and real, with one side—‘and probably the losing one’—fighting with the moral support (but little else) of the Western powers, and the other side receiving the active support of the Soviet Union.

That forecast was confirmed within forty-eight hours. Shortly after 8 am on the morning of 22 July Moscow Radio announced the establishment in Chelm, a small town in eastern Poland, of the ‘Polish Committee for National Liberation’
(Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego)
, which the
Krajowa Rada Narodowa
had actually brought into existence the day before. On 27 July this new Polish committee signed an agreement with the ‘government of the Soviet Union’ at a ceremony in which Stalin, Molotov and Zhukov participated, with Witos, the Polish vice-chairman, Morawski (in charge of the ‘Foreign Affairs Department’) and General Rola-Zymierski, the new C-in-C of the ‘United Polish Armed Forces’. The
Rada Narodowa
had already made detailed provisions for the Polish armed forces: the
Armija Ludowa
was to be ‘unified’ with the Polish army formed in the Soviet Union. The unified armies would assume the designation ‘the Polish Army’ with its own supreme Command (a C-in-C, two deputies and two members of the Command); generals’ ranks would be conferred by the presidium of the
Rada Narodowa
, but nothing enacted under these provisions would prejudice ‘the operational subordination of the Polish army to the Supreme Command of the Red Army operating on the Soviet–German front’. In London the Polish government
in its memorandum of 25 July to the Prime Minister demanded an immediate British disclaimer of this
fait accompli
and a restatement of the British declaration of 24 May. Events, however, were moving with even greater rapidity, and the agreement of 27 July concluded between the Russians and the Poles—members of the new committee, which came to be known as the ‘Lublin Committee’ and its adherents the ‘Lublin Poles’—whittled away any chance of a diplomatic counter-stroke. General Bulganin, whose talent lay in discerning his master’s real desires, was simultaneously appointed Soviet plenipotentiary to the new Polish committee. The stage was all but set.

On 23 July Stalin furnished the Prime Minister with a very plausible explanation of Soviet moves and motives in Poland; it was precisely because ‘we do not want to, nor shall we, set up our own administration on Polish soil’ that the Russians were in touch with the Polish Committee of National Liberation, which ‘intends to set up an administration on Polish territory, and I [Stalin] hope this will be done’. The underground forces, ‘so-called underground organizations led by the Polish government in London’, have proved to be ‘ephemeral and lacking influence’. At this moment Stalin was not prepared to consider the new Polish committee ‘a Polish government’, but in time it might form ‘the core of a provisional Polish government made up of democratic forces’. ‘As for Mikolajczyk,’ it would be better if he approached the Polish national committee ‘who are favourably disposed towards him’, though Stalin would ‘certainly not refuse to see him’—hardly an effusive welcome, a point Mikolajczyk made to Eden on 25 July in discussing Stalin’s latest message. Indeed, it did not amount to ‘a proper invitation’ at all, though Eden urged the Polish Prime Minister to follow up this first sign of Stalin’s readiness to meet him ‘without asking him first to fulfil certain conditions’. In fact, by expressly excluding conditions, Stalin had imposed one major proviso, that the approach should be made through the Polish national committee. On the evening of 25 July Churchill saw Mikolajczyk for the second time that day and ‘strongly insisted’ on the Polish Prime Minister’s ‘speedy flight to Moscow’ to discuss Soviet–Polish relations and to ‘find a way out from the present blind alley’. Prime Minister Mikolajczyk, Minister Romer and Professor Grabski left the next night by air via Cairo for Moscow. Churchill sent Stalin a further message once the Polish party had departed, emphasizing that ‘the Western democracies recognizing one body of Poles and you recognizing another’ would be a disastrous turn of events.