Triumph and Tragedy (The Second World War) (125 page)

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amount of time, and Stalin had undertaken to drop any of his proposals which would complicate the issue. The best thing was for the Foreign Secretaries to discuss these points; but he hoped the Yalta agreement would be carried out as soon as possible.

Stalin then suggested referring the whole matter to the Foreign Secretaries.

“Including elections,” I said.

“The Provisional Government have never refused to hold free elections,” Stalin replied.

This ended the second meeting.

The third and fourth meetings of the Potsdam Conference were occupied with a variety of questions, none of which was pushed to any definite conclusion. Stalin wanted the United Nations to break off all relations with Franco “and help the democratic forces in Spain” to establish a régime

“agreeable to the Spanish people.” I resisted this suggestion and eventually the subject was dismissed. The disposal of the German Navy and Merchant Marine, peace terms for Italy and the Allied occupation of Vienna and Austria also raised discussion without reaching any result.

Most of the problems were remitted to our Foreign Secretaries for examination and report. My own policy was to let these points accumulate and then bring matters to a head after the result of our election was known. We did not recur to Poland till our fifth meeting, on July 21. The Soviet delegation wanted Poland’s western frontier to run to the west of Swinemünde, as far as the Oder river, leaving Stettin on the Polish side, then up the river Oder to the Triumph and Tragedy

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estuary of the Western Neisse, and from there along its course to Czechoslovakia.
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Mr. Truman recalled that we had agreed to divide Germany into four zones of occupation, based on her 1937 frontiers.

The British and the Americans had moved their troops back into their new zones, but apparently the Soviet Government had given the Poles a zone of their own without consulting us. Unless this zone counted as part of Germany how could we settle reparations and all the other German questions?

Stalin denied giving the Poles a zone of their own. He declared that the Soviet Government had not been able to stop them. The German population had retreated westward with the German armies. Only the Poles remained. The Soviet armies needed someone to administer their rear areas. They were not accustomed to fight and clear territory and set up their own administration at the same time. Why not let the Poles do it?

“We ought to keep to the zones we agreed at Yalta,” said the President. “If we don’t reparations and all sorts of other matters will be difficult to settle.”

“We are not worried about reparations,” said Stalin.

“The United States will get none anyhow,” answered Mr.

Truman, “but they will also try to avoid paying anything.”

“Nothing definite was fixed at Yalta about the western frontier,” said Stalin. “None of us is bound.”

This was true. The President said he did not think we could settle the matter now. It would have to wait for the Peace Conference.

“It will be still more difficult,” said Stalin, “to restore a German administration.”

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“You can use a Polish one in your own zone of occupation in Germany,” said the President.

“That is all very well,” was Stalin’s answer, “but the Germans have fled and the natural and indeed the only solution is to set up a friendly administration of Poles. This does not commit us to any particular boundary, and if the Conference cannot agree about one it can remain in suspense.”

“Can it?” I interrupted. “These are very important areas for feeding Germany.”

“Who will produce the grain?” countered Stalin. “There is nobody left to plough the land except Poles.”

“What has become of the Germans?” we both asked.

“They have fled.”

I had taken little part in these interchanges, but now I spoke.

How, I asked, were we to feed the Germans who had fled?

A quarter of Germany’s arable land would be lost. If the area suggested by Britain and America was given to Poland about three or four million Poles would have to be moved; but the Soviet plan would mean shifting more than eight million Germans. Would there be room for them in what was left of Germany? I was not even sure that Stalin was right that all the Germans had fled. Some people thought that more than two millions were still there.

Stalin thereupon challenged my figures, saying that the Germans had called up many men from these regions. The rest had fled. Not a single German remained in the area which he proposed to give to the Poles. The Germans had quitted their lands between the Oder and the Vistula. The Poles were cultivating them, and they were not likely to let the Germans come back.

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The President still wanted us to leave the western frontier to the Peace Conference, but I persisted.

Poland, I said, deserved compensation for the land east of the Curzon Line which she was going to lose to Russia, but she was now claiming more than she had given up. If there were three or four million Poles east of the Curzon Line then room should be made in the west. So considerable a movement of population would shock the people of Great Britain, but a move of eight and a quarter millions would be more than I could defend. Compensation should bear some relation to loss. It would do Poland no good to acquire so much extra territory. If the Germans had run away from it they should be allowed to go back. The Poles had no right to risk a catastrophe in feeding Germany. We did not want to be left with a vast German population who were cut off from their sources of food. The Ruhr was in our zone, and if enough food could not be found for the inhabitants we should have conditions like the German concentration camps.

“Germany has always had to import food,” said Stalin. “Let her buy it from Poland.”

“His Majesty’s Government,” I answered, “can never admit that East German territory overrun in the war has become Polish.”

“But Poles inhabit it,” said Stalin, “and cultivate the land.

We can’t compel them to produce bread and give it away to the Germans.”

I protested that these were not normal times. The Poles were apparently selling Silesian coal to Sweden while Great Britain was having the worst fuel shortage of any time during the war. Food and fuel from the Germany of the 1937 frontiers should be available for all Germans within Triumph and Tragedy

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them, irrespective of the zone in which they lived. Stalin asked who was to produce the coal. The Germans were not producing it, but the Poles were. The German proprietors of the Silesian coalfield had fled. If they came back the Poles would probably hang them. I reminded him of his remark at a previous meeting about not allowing memories of injuries or feelings of retribution to govern our policy, and I asked him to realise what we were faced with, namely, a large number of Germans dumped in our zone who could only be fed from the area which the Poles had occupied.

Stalin said that his remarks before did not apply to war criminals.

“But not all the eight and a quarter millions who have fled are war criminals,” I answered.

He then said he meant the German owners of the Silesian coal-mines. Russia herself was short of coal and was buying it from Poland. Here Mr. Truman supported me. It seemed, he said, to be an accomplished fact that East Germany had been given to Poland, but it could not be treated separately when it came to reparations and supplies. He was quite ready to discuss Poland’s western boundary, even though it could only be settled at the Peace Conference, but he was not prepared to see sections of Germany given away piecemeal. Stalin persisted that only the Poles could cultivate these areas. The Russians were short of labour and there were no Germans. We could either stop all production or let the Poles do it. The Poles had lost a valuable coal basin to Russia, and had taken the Silesian one in its place. I pointed out that Poles had always worked in the Silesian mines, and I did not object to their doing so as agents of the Russian Government, but I did object to Silesia being treated as though it were already part of Poland. Stalin persisted that it was impossible to

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upset the present state of affairs. The Germans themselves had been short of labour. As the Russians advanced into Germany they had found industries employing forcibly deported Italians, Bulgarians, and other nationalities, including Russians and Ukrainians. When the Red Army arrived these foreign labourers had gone home. Enormous numbers of men had been mobilised in Germany, and most of them were either killed or captured. The vast German industries had had few German workers, but depended on foreign labour, which had now melted away. They must either be closed down or the Poles must be given a chance to run them. What had happened was not the result of deliberate policy, but a spontaneous course of events. And only the Germans were to blame for it. He agreed that the Polish Government’s proposals would make difficulties for Germany.

“And for the British as well,” I interjected.

But Stalin said he did not mind making difficulties for the Germans. It was his policy, and it would stop them starting another war. It was better to make difficulties for Germans than for Poles, and the less industry in Germany the more markets for Britain.

When we met next day, on Sunday, July 22, we were no nearer agreement. I repeated and emphasised the more important reasons why His Majesty’s Government could not accept the Polish demands, and I set them forth as follows:
(i) The final decision on all boundary questions could
only be reached at the Peace Conference. (Stalin said
he agreed with this.)

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(ii) It would not be advantageous for the Polish
nation to take over so large an area as they were now
asking for.

(iii) It would rupture the economic unity of Germany,
and throw too heavy a burden on the Powers
occupying the western zones, particularly as to food
and fuel.

(iv) The British had grave moral scruples about vast
movements of population. We could accept a transfer
of Germans from Eastern Germany equal in number to
the Poles from Eastern Poland transferred from east of
the Curzon Line — say two to three millions; but a
transfer of eight or nine million Germans, which was
what the Polish request involved, was too many and
would be entirely wrong.

(v) The information about the number of Germans in
the disputed areas was not agreed. The Soviet
Government said that they had all gone. The British
Government believed that great numbers, running into
millions, were still there. We of course had not been
able to check these figures on the spot, but we must
accept them until they were shown to be wrong.

Stalin still insisted that Germany could get enough fuel from the Ruhr and the Rhineland and that there were no Germans left in the territory which the Poles had occupied.

Considerable discussion followed about referring the whole matter to the Council of Foreign Ministers. The President said he could not understand why it was so urgent. It could not be finally settled till the Peace Conference. We had had a most useful and helpful discussion, and the best course was to remit the question to the Foreign Ministers. I protested that it was very urgent. Grievances would remain unremedied. The Poles who had assigned to themselves or had been assigned to this area would be digging themselves in and making themselves masters. The Conference ought to make some sort of a decision, or at least we should know where we stood. It was no use asking Triumph and Tragedy

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the Poles to a discussion with the Council of Foreign Ministers in London if the three Powers could not agree now. In the meantime the whole burden of fuel and food problems would remain, and would fall particularly on the British, whose zone had poor food supplies and the largest population.

Suppose the Council of Foreign Ministers, after hearing the Poles, could not agree — and it appeared unlikely that they would — the winter would be coming on with all its difficulties and it would be impossible to settle the matter without another meeting of the heads of Governments. I was most anxious to tackle the practical difficulties which Stalin had explained the day before, difficulties which sprang from the movement of armies and the march of events. Why not have a line which the Polish authorities could provisionally occupy as Poles, and agree that west of that line any Poles would be working as the agents of the Soviet Government?

We agreed that the new Poland should advance its western frontier to what might be called the line of the Oder. The difference between Stalin and myself was how far this extension should reach. The words “line of the Oder” had been used at Teheran. This was not an exact expression, but the British delegation had a line which could be considered in some detail by the Foreign Secretaries. I pointed out that I had only used the words “line of the Oder”