World War II Behind Closed Doors (47 page)

CHURCHILL MEETS ANDERS

While the battle for Warsaw raged, Winston Churchill met with General Anders at Polish military headquarters in northern Italy. In the context of the controversy over the future of Poland, this meeting, on 26 August, was one of the most revealing of the war. Churchill, who knew that this would be – at the very least – an awkward encounter, began by congratulating Anders on the performance of the Polish II Corps during the campaign in Italy
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and enquired about the ‘mood’ of the soldiers ‘given what they are going through at the moment’.

Anders replied that the spirit of his men was ‘excellent’, but that their ‘one great concern is the future of Poland, and at the moment, the current situation in Warsaw’.

‘I realize this too’, said Churchill. ‘Together with President Roosevelt I asked Stalin to help those fighting in Warsaw: our first request was met with no answer at all, our next request met with a negative response…. We are not ready for action over Warsaw, but we are currently doing everything in our power to provide aid via the air route’.

Churchill then referred to his ‘speech last winter’ when, in the House of Commons, immediately after the Tehran Conference, he had said that the Poles must be prepared to negotiate away some of
their eastern territory in exchange for an agreement with the Soviet Union.

‘We were and still are upset with you about this, Prime Minister’, said Anders.

‘In entering into a pact with Poland’, replied Churchill, ‘Great Britain never guaranteed Polish borders; we guaranteed and made a pledge to Poland as to its existence as a free, independent state, totally sovereign, strong, large, that the citizens living within it might live happily and with the possibility of free development without any foreign influences threatening from the outside’. (This was certainly disingenuous, since Churchill himself had written to Eden in 1942 that the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland was contrary to the ‘principles of freedom and democracy set forth in the Atlantic Charter’.)
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The Prime Minister then expressed to Anders the same view he had voiced at Tehran, that the Poles would receive ‘much better lands in the west’ in exchange for the eastern territories of the ‘Prypet marshes’.

Anders replied that ‘the issue of borders can be definitively sorted out only at a Peace Conference, after the war is completely over’. Churchill agreed that ‘these issues can only be decided at a peace conference’ and assured Anders that he would be invited to that conference, adding: ‘You must trust us. Since Great Britain entered this war to defend your independence, then I can assure you that we will never abandon you’.

These words were similar to those that Churchill had spoken to Anders at their last meeting in Cairo, straight after the Tehran Conference. And once again Anders reiterated his warning about the Soviet Union – a warning given with the authority of a man who had tasted Soviet injustice first hand in the cells of the Lubyanka. ‘We cannot trust Russia’, said Anders, ‘since we know it well, and we know that all of Stalin's declarations that he wants a free and strong Poland are lies and fundamentally false…. As they enter Poland, the Soviets arrest and deport our women and children deep into Russia as they did in 1939; they disarm the soldiers of our Home Army, they shoot dead our officers and arrest our civil administration, destroying those who fought the Germans
continuously since 1939 and fight them still. We have our wives and children in Warsaw, but we would rather they perish than have to live under the Bolsheviks. All of us prefer to perish fighting than to live on our knees’.

The minutes record that Churchill was ‘very moved’ by these words and emphasized once again that Britain would never abandon Poland, before adding: ‘I know that the Germans and Russians are destroying all of your best elements, especially intellectual spheres. I sympathize deeply. But you must trust – we will not abandon you and Poland will be happy’.

Anders, not surprisingly, was somewhat suspicious of Churchill's words. He reminded the British Prime Minister that the Soviet Union would be immensely strong after the war; but then Churchill, in a curious answer, talked of the ‘capabilities of Britain and the United States’ being ‘unlimited’ and that after the war ‘the United States and Britain will have vast supplies of planes, guns and tanks’. He was not saying directly that the Western Allies would go to war with the Soviet Union, once Germany was defeated, if Stalin refused to allow for a free and independent Poland; but his reply certainly implied the possibility of military action – something that Churchill had explicitly ruled out earlier in the year.

THE END OF THE UPRISING

Stalin may have decided at the latest by the middle of August that the Soviet Union would not support the Home Army in Warsaw, but his policy towards the uprising was still not completely coherent. On 18 September the Soviet authorities surprisingly allowed one flight of American bombers en route to Warsaw to refuel on Soviet territory. In addition, for two weeks, between 14 and 28 September, the Soviets themselves dropped supplies on Warsaw. But since the drops were conducted without parachutes, much of the 50 or so tons that the Soviets provided was destroyed on landing.

It appears that Stalin, as he must have been during the 9 August meeting with the Polish Prime Minister in exile, was once
again concerned about the effect on world opinion of Soviet inaction in the face of the destruction of Warsaw. His solution to this propaganda problem seems to have been to demonstrate public support to the Home Army but without offering any effective assistance.

And then there was the most curious action of all. On the night of 14 September several patrols from the 1st Polish Army, serving with the Red Army and commanded by the Polish collaborator General Zygmunt Berling, landed on the western bank of the Vistula in the suburbs of Warsaw, and then made contact with Home Army soldiers. Several more landings were attempted on successive nights until around three thousand men of the 1st Polish Army were in contact with the Poles fighting in Warsaw. Fewer than one in three of Berling's men ever made it back across the Vistula.

Zbigniew Wolak was one of the Home Army soldiers who watched as Berling's men tried to establish a bridgehead on the riverbank. His emotions were mixed. Although he appreciated any help from whatever source, he was shocked to see that a number of the officers of this ‘Polish’ army were Russian. He felt a ‘strong feeling of humiliation’ at the sight. ‘Making such a parody! You dress up a Russian who doesn't even speak Polish…. They were unruly. They were not elegant. They had no discipline. They looked more like riff-raff…. You see, a few months earlier he was a forestry worker and [now] has to pretend he's a captain, a major, a colonel! And they would address themselves “comrade,” stressing the political character of the army. Just imagine someone in a British uniform, and he is a staunch enemy of the British. Just imagine such a person, and he is a superior of the Polish officers!’

It proved impossible for Berling's men to hold the bridgehead, and by the last week of September those who were still able retreated across the river. This was the only attempt made on the ground to help those fighting the Germans in the Warsaw Uprising, and it was a costly failure. It was clear that only a massive and coordinated assault by the Red Army could shake the Germans – something that was clearly not going to happen. That autumn Marshal Rokossovsky, commanding the Red Army outside Warsaw, didn't
even bother to reply to the increasingly desperate requests for help from the Polish insurgents inside the capital.

The troops of the 1st Polish Army, fighting with the advancing Red Army, were themselves devastated by the fate of Warsaw. ‘We waited. It was very tense’, says Jan Karniewicz,
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then a young soldier in Berling's army. Like many ordinary Poles, he had ended up fighting with the Red Army by accident rather than intention. He had been deported from eastern Poland along with the rest of his family in February 1940. Then, after the German invasion in June 1941 and the subsequent armistice, he had wanted to join Anders' army but had been too young, and so a year later he joined Berling's men. He had joined the Polish unit that fought with the Red Army not out of political commitment to the Communist or Soviet cause – he describes himself at the time as a ‘simple soldier, a marksman’ – but because it was the only way he could fight to liberate his native land. Now he watched as ‘the Germans set fire to buildings, all autumn…there was an aura over Warsaw in the evening – a red aura, a pink aura…. I felt like the capital is burning. If the capital is not liberated, it will be burnt down at any minute…. Warsaw is dying. National culture – Polish culture – is dying. You feel all this will be lost and destroyed and won't be regained’.

On 2 October General Tadeusz Bór, commander of the Home Army, signed an instrument of surrender with General von dem Bach-Zelewski, and the Warsaw Uprising was over. In order to end the bloody house-to-house fighting, the Germans had been forced to concede that any Home Army prisoners they took would be regarded as captured combatants, not ‘bandits’, and that they would treat the civilians with humanity – a promise that was, most certainly, not universally kept. The Germans then proceeded to destroy Warsaw, brick by brick, until when, early in 1945, Jan Karniewicz finally entered the city he found that ‘Warsaw was just a lot of rubble. There were some walls and the burnt-out skeletons of buildings the Germans hadn't bothered or hadn't had time to dynamite. It was terrible…. You know there must be sacrifices – there's no war without sacrifices and without victims. Warsaw made the sacrifice. I felt like a person does when he sees a boat go
down in the open sea and there is nothing you can do. You can't help. The same with Warsaw. Warsaw was being destroyed and there was nothing we could do, because there was no order and that's why we couldn't help’.

Without support from the Red Army, the Warsaw Uprising was always doomed. And despite his promise to help, given on 9 August, and despite the equivocal and limited Soviet actions in September, it is clear that Stalin had decided he was going to stand back and let the Home Army be destroyed by the Germans. Churchill described the Soviet behaviour at the time as ‘strange and sinister’,
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but it was nothing of the kind. It was purely – and brutally – pragmatic. The Soviets had already shown by their arrest of Home Army officers their feelings about this powerful and independent partisan force, and now Stalin simply seized the opportunity to have one enemy, the Germans, eliminate another, the Polish Home Army. This cynical political decision had been demonstrated in the form of military action when, towards the end of August, the Red Army under Marshal Tolbukhin moved to attack Romania rather than Warsaw. Militarily, it was obvious that the Soviets had decided to leave the Polish capital for another day – when the opposition inside, both Polish and German, was spent.

As for the decision to launch the uprising without first obtaining a commitment from the Soviet Union to coordinate an attack, that turned out to be, as the Polish commander in chief back in London had feared, a terrible mistake – though it was an understandable mistake. Even if the uprising had not occurred the Home Army would almost certainly have been subsequently eliminated by the NKVD. But the cost of the decision to try to take the Polish capital was immense. Around 220,000 Poles died (200,000 of them civilians) as a result of the uprising, and all that was accomplished – in practical, if not romantic, terms – was the destruction of both Warsaw and the Home Army that sought to liberate their capital.

It is hard not to agree with the judgement of General Anders, expressed in a letter in the autumn of 1944: ‘It [the Warsaw Uprising] didn't have the slightest chance of success, and exposed all parts of the country still under German occupation to new and
appalling repressions. No one who is not dishonest or blind could have had the least illusion that everything which had happened was always going to happen: i.e. not only that the Soviets will refuse to help our beloved heroic Warsaw but also that they will watch with the greatest pleasure as our nation's blood is drained to the last drop’.
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The practical attitude of the Soviet authorities in the aftermath of the uprising can be seen in their treatment of Halina Szopińska,
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then twenty-four years old. She had fought with the Home Army in Warsaw and, as the moment neared for their capitulation, had felt betrayed by the Soviets. Not only had the Red Army not come to their rescue, but she and her comrades believed that the air drops organized by the Soviets in the last days of the uprising had been a sham: ‘They had these small planes and would throw dry bread without a parachute and when it fell down it would just break into powder…. They would drop guns without a parachute – ammunition as well. There was no way we could repair it. So they pretended they were helping. They were doing it in such a way that it wouldn't really help us’.

Once the uprising was over, Halina, who had served both as a fighter and then as a nurse for the Home Army, pretended to be a civilian and left the city amongst the non-combatants. She then managed to escape and made her way home to her mother-in-law's house. But a few weeks later one of her Home Army superiors ordered her to move back towards Warsaw. It was there, by the frozen Vistula, that she was captured by the Red Army. She was taken to a nearby house and interrogated by an NKVD officer in his early twenties.

By the end of August the NKVD had been told to detain and interrogate all Poles who had taken part in the fight for Warsaw and who had managed to ‘escape’ into the Soviet part of occupied Poland.

‘What were you doing in the uprising?’ the NKVD officer asked her. ‘If you lie, then I'll prove you are lying because I know everything’.

Halina said nothing ‘concrete’ to him. And as a result: ‘He would hit me, beat me…. He called me “whore”. “Bloody whore” in Russian. “You'll die,” he said…. He kicked me and I fell off [the chair] on to the floor and then he kicked me and beat me [again]. He hit me in the back of the head [but] he kicked first and foremost…. He had hatred – hatred, hatred – to Poles. That's how he was brought up’.