Triumph and Tragedy (The Second World War) (127 page)

Bierut said his Government did not want to stop people expressing political views, but they were anxious to avoid a lot of small parties. As many small parties as wished could take part in the elections, but normally there would be only a few large groups, probably not more than four or five.

Such was the present trend. Elections in Poland would be even more democratic than English ones, and home politics would develop more and more harmoniously.

In reply I said there was no question of our standing in the way of Poland’s future, but the frontier question was Triumph and Tragedy

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entangled with the problems of reparations and supply. We had had a great mass of Germans thrown upon our hands, while the Poles had the rich territories from which they had been fed. They were asking too much. We and the Americans might pursue one policy and the Russians another. That would have serious consequences.

My appeal came to nothing. The world has yet to measure the “serious consequences” which I forecast.

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21

The End of My Account

Frustration — Social Contacts — I Give a Final
Banquet, July
23 —
Stalin is Told About the Atomic
Bomb, July
24
— His Reaction — IAttend the
Conference for the Last Time, July
25 —
More
Discussions on Poland — My Policy at Potsdam

— I Fly to London — The Result of the General
Election — My Farewell Message to the British
People, July
26, 1945.

F
RUSTRATION was the fate of this final Conference of “the Three.” I have not attempted to describe all the questions which were raised though not settled at our various meetings. I content myself with telling the tale, so far as I was then aware of it, of the atomic bomb and outlining the terrible issue of the German-Polish frontiers. These events dwell with us today.

It remains for me only to mention some of the social and personal contacts which relieved our sombre debates. Each of the three great delegations entertained the other two.

First was the United States. When it came to my turn I proposed the toast of “The Leader of the Opposition,”

adding “whoever he may be.” Mr. Attlee, and indeed the company, were much amused by this. The Soviets’ dinner was equally agreeable, and a very fine concert, at which leading Russian artists performed, carried the proceedings so late that I slipped away.

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It fell to me to give the final banquet on the night of the 23d.

I planned this on a larger scale, inviting the chief commanders as well as the delegates. I placed the President on my right and Stalin on my left. There were many speeches, and Stalin, without even ensuring that all the waiters and orderlies had left the room, proposed that our next meeting should be in Tokyo. There was no doubt that the Russian declaration of war upon Japan would come at any moment, and already their large armies were massed upon the frontier ready to overrun the much weaker Japanese front line in Manchuria. To lighten the proceedings we changed places from time to time, and the President sat opposite me. I had another very friendly talk with Stalin, who was in the best of tempers and seemed to have no inkling of the momentous information about the new bomb the President had given me. He spoke with enthusiasm about the Russian intervention against Japan, and seemed to expect a good many months of war, which Russia would wage on an ever-increasing scale, governed only by the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Then a very odd thing happened. My formidable guest got up from his seat with the bill-of-fare card in his hand and went round the table collecting the signatures of many of those who were present. I never thought to see him as an autograph-hunter! When he came back to me I wrote my name as he desired, and we both looked at each other and laughed. Stalin’s eyes twinkled with mirth and good-humour. I have mentioned before how the toasts at these banquets were always drunk by the Soviet representatives out of tiny glasses, and Stalin had never varied from this practice. But now I thought I would take him on a step. So I filled a small-sized claret glass with brandy for him and another for myself. I looked at him significantly. We both drained our glasses at a stroke and gazed approvingly at

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one another. After a pause Stalin said, “If you find it impossible to give us a fortified position in the Marmora, could we not have a base at Dedeagatch?” I contented myself with saying, “I will always support Russia in her claim to the freedom of the seas all the year round.”

Next day, July 24, after our plenary meeting had ended and we all got up from the round table and stood about in twos and threes before dispersing, I saw the President go up to Stalin, and the two conversed alone with only their interpreters. I was perhaps five yards away, and I watched with the closest attention the momentous talk. I knew what the President was going to do. What was vital to measure was its effect on Stalin. I can see it all as if it were yesterday. He seemed to be delighted. A new bomb! Of extraordinary power! Probably decisive on the whole Japanese war! What a bit of luck! This was my impression at the moment, and I was sure that he had no idea of the significance of what he was being told. Evidently in his intense toils and stresses the atomic bomb had played no part. If he had had the slightest idea of the revolution in world affairs which was in progress his reactions would have been obvious. Nothing would have been easier than for him to say, “Thank you so much for telling me about your new bomb. I of course have no technical knowledge.

May I send my expert in these nuclear sciences to see your expert tomorrow morning?” But his face remained gay and genial and the talk between these two potentates soon came to an end. As we were waiting for our cars I found myself near Truman. “How did it go?” I asked. “He never asked a question,” he replied. I was certain therefore that at that date Stalin had no special knowledge of the vast process of research upon which the United States and

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Britain had been engaged for so long, and of the production for which the United States had spent over four hundred million pounds in an heroic gamble.

This was the end of the story so far as the Potsdam Conference was concerned. No further reference to the matter was made by or to the Soviet delegation.

On the morning of the 25th the Conference met again. This was the last meeting I attended. I urged once more that Poland’s western frontier could not be settled without taking into account the million and a quarter Germans who were still in the area, and the President emphasised that any Peace Treaty could only be ratified with the advice and consent of the Senate. We must, he said, find a solution which he could honestly recommend to the American people. I said that if the Poles were allowed to assume the position of a fifth occupying Power without arrangements being made for spreading the food produced in Germany equally over the whole German population, and without our agreeing about reparations or war booty, the Conference would have failed. This network of problems lay at the very heart of our work, and so far we had come to no agreement. The wrangle went on. Stalin said that getting coal and metal from the Ruhr was more important than food. I said they would have to be bartered against supplies from the East. How else could the miners win coal? “They have imported food from abroad before, and can do so again,” was the answer. And how could they pay reparations? “There is still a good deal of fat left in Germany,” was the grim reply. I refused to accept starvation in the Ruhr because the Poles held all the grain-lands in the East. Britain herself was short of coal. “Then use German

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prisoners in the mines; that is what I am doing,” said Stalin.

“There are forty thousand German troops still in Norway, and you can get them from there.”“We are exporting our own coal,” I said, “to France, Holland, and Belgium. Why should the Poles sell coal to Sweden while Britain is denying herself for the liberated countries?”“But that is Russian coal,” Stalin answered. “Our position is even more difficult than yours. We lost over five million men in the war, and we are desperately short of labour.” I put my point once again. “We will send coal from the Ruhr to Poland or anywhere else providing we get in exchange food for the miners who produce it.”

This seemed to make Stalin pause. He said the whole problem needed consideration. I agreed, and said I only wanted to point out the difficulties in front of us. Here, so far as I am concerned, was the end of the matter.

I take no responsibility beyond what is here set forth for any of the conclusions reached at Potsdam. During the course of the Conference I allowed differences that could not be adjusted either round the table or by the Foreign Ministers at their daily meetings to stand over. A formidable body of questions on which there was disagreement was in consequence piled upon the shelves. I intended, if I were returned by the electorate, as was generally expected, to come to grips with the Soviet Government on this catalogue of decisions. For instance, neither I nor Mr. Eden would ever have agreed to the Western Neisse being the frontier line. The line of the Oder and the Eastern Neisse had already been recognised as the Polish compensation for retiring to the Curzon Line, but the overrunning by the Russian armies of the territory up to and even beyond the Triumph and Tragedy

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Western Neisse was never and would never have been agreed to by any Government of which I was the head.

Here was no point of principle only, but rather an enormous matter of fact affecting about three additional millions of displaced people.

There were many other matters on which it was right to confront the Soviet Government, and also the Poles, who, gulping down immense chunks of German territory, had obviously become their ardent puppets. All this negotiation was cut in twain and brought to an untimely conclusion by the result of the General Election. To say this is not to blame the Ministers of the new Government, who were forced to go over without any serious preparation, and who naturally were unacquainted with the ideas and plans I had in view, namely, to have a “showdown” at the end of the Conference, and, if necessary, to have a public break rather than allow anything beyond the Oder and the Eastern Neisse to be ceded to Poland.