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Both the German fascists and the Russian
communists imposed their order on the Poles, wiping out whole sections of
the polish population. Then
the Germans headed west, were defeated at Stalingrad, and then were pushed
back to Poland.
The Polish government in
exile, confused about soviet intentions and suspecting – rightly – the
worst, tried to gain western support for an independent Poland.
FDR, however, was canny enough to refuse to give fixed promises and
directed the Poles to Stalin, while Churchill was unable to give much help
without American support.
The Poles therefore took
a huge gamble. If the
resistance – those units that were not wiped out by the Germans or
disarmed treacherously by the soviets – was able to capture Warsaw
themselves, how could Stalin dislodge them?
The plan was daring in execution and thousands of Poles fought
bravely and heroically to take their city.
Treachery and
circumstances intervened. The
Germans gave the Russians a bloody nose just before the uprising began and
slowed any advance towards Warsaw. Then
Stalin and the Polish Reds denounced
the uprising and even obstructed (occasionally shooting down allied
planes) the minor attempts by the western allies to help by air.
The NKVD's behaviour on the ground made it clear that the Soviets
never had any intention of allowing Poles to decide their future
democratically. To the Moscow
line, the leaders of the rising were capitalist criminals run by the
imperialists in London.
More
practically, from Stalin’s viewpoint, this was a chance to allow the
Germans and Poles to kill each other off.
The Russians waited patiently in their lines for the Germans to
defeat the Poles, which they did in brutal fighting, blasting most of
Warsaw back to rubble. Therefore,
When the Red Army entered a virtually deserted Warsaw three months later,
the underground leadership, who would have been at the heart of any
democratic Poland, had been killed or exiled.
Poland’s fate had been decided by Stalin without western
objection; she was to be part of the Soviet bloc run by a group of
communists handpicked by Moscow.
Davies
describes how Churchill and Roosevelt failed to put any coherent pressure
on Stalin to help the Poles, particularly when the uprising stretched into
its second month. He argues
convincingly that Stalin was open to such pressure, although I tend to
suspect that any real pressure would have caused Stalin to break relations
with the allies’ altogether. The
west was unable to help the Poles on the ground or threaten Stalin unless
they accepted the possibility of a really long Third
World War.
Davies
describes the ghastly treatment of the Poles by the allies.
The exclusion of the Poles from Britain's 1945 victory parade in
contrast, may charitably be attributed to muddle.
Though the Polish government, our exiled wartime ally, was still in
London, invitations were sent to the communist regime in Warsaw.
When no response was forthcoming, Ernest Bevin saw the mistake and
sent a last-minute apology to Poland's General Anders, living in exile in
England. In any case, the Poles knew that for them the war had ended
in unmistakable defeat.
In
Poland, after the war, all public memory of the Warsaw rising was
suppressed in the Soviet bloc. The
last commander of the AK, General Okulicki, who had been flown into
occupied Poland by the RAF, ended up in a show trial in Moscow for
"illegal activities".
Davies
also sheds light on other questions.
For example, how large and far-reaching was the soviet penetration
of western powers? How did
they shape western opinion? If
all of Davies conclusions are true, it is a miracle that there was no Third
World War in 1950, for the west might well have lost it.
This
is a part of history that has been long forgotten, we must not forget
again.
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