The Army, its prolonged but timorous flirtation with the
conspirators so abruptly terminated, now immersed itself in the
demands of professionalism. Guderian moved OKH headquarters back from
Zossen to East Prussia, built up a new and personal staff, drew off
the reserves Schörner had been collecting on the southern front,
and set about repairing the breach in the centre. And then a second
miracle, as far-reaching, it seemed, as the salvation of the Führer,
occurred. At the very moment when the Western front was on the point
of giving way, the Russian advance slowed down. Soon it became
apparent from the manner in which quite small German units were
succeeding in holding their positions that the impetus of the Red
Army had died away, absorbed by one more
tranche
(the last
one) of conquered territory.
There now occurs one of the most tragic episodes of the whole
Eastern campaign, the rising of the Warsaw Poles and their desperate,
hopeless, two-and-a-half-month-long bat-tle in the city streets. The
Warsaw uprising has a place in the purely military history of the
campaign. But its great importance is political—both as an
illustration of the plight of the Polish nation, that strange,
gifted, and romantic peo-ple, doomed forever to be crushed between
the callous mon-oliths of Germany and Russia—and as an
incident of immense significance in the shaping of postwar Europe.
In its essence "the Polish problem" can be simply
stated, for time has not altered it. The state of Poland is Western
Europe's traditional buffer against Russia, but its security in this
role is perpetually threatened by the greed and cruelty of the German
landowners in Prussia and Pomerania. It has never been possible for
the Poles to make a political deal with either of their neighbours,
for each covets their territory and prefers to assimilate rather
than to protect it. But in 1939 a disinterested protector appeared.
The British Government guaranteed Polish integrity simply because
its violation seemed to be the next step in the process of German
expansion, and the British were ready to make it a
casus belli
.
The Poles thus became the stake in a power game at which both the
players were determined to call their opponent's bluff. For Hitler
was eager "to blood the German nation," and believed that
as the British were strategically incapable of implementing their
guarantee they would accept a
fait accompli
; the British, even
more fatalistic, thought that their guarantee would stop Hitler by
itself—and if it didn't, well, that meant that they would have
to fight him sometime, so why not then and "with honour"?
In the result the Poles fought with great gallantry to the
end—which was itself accelerated by a Russian invasion of their
eastern border under terms agreed between Molotov and Ribbentrop that
August. By the end of 1939 the Polish state had once again been
extinguished by the predatory giants on its borders, and the men of
the Polish Army who had not died in battle languished in prison
camps. The Russians made some attempts to "indoctrinate"
those they had captured, but the officers proved intractable and were
moved to a camp in the Katyn forest, where, after a period, they were
all shot. The Germans never even bothered to start POW compounds—the
Poles were sent straight to concentration camps and liquidated. The
same differences are perceptible in the governments of the two
occupied halves of the country. The Russians made some effort to
assimilate the inhabitants into a Communist society; the Germans set
out, systematically, to exterminate the entire Polish population
and to substitute German immigrants.
But the seed of Polish nationhood, bred for centuries under
conditions such as these, has a Darwinian tenacity, and now,
scattered by default on the chilly soil in wartime Lon-don, it began
to flourish. London became the seat of the "Polish Government,"
the goal of
émigrés
and escapees, the focus of
all the energy and patriotism of this sad and gifted people.
Gradually the tenuous strands of underground communication, which can
operate under the most repressive alien regimes, were woven into a
chain of command and intelligence which retained its strength right
up until the tragic events of the autumn of 1944. The British
provided arms and training, a separate Polish Army was created;
Polish flyers flew in special squadrons; most important of all, they
returned to their own country by parachute, with arms, radios, and
instructions from the "Government."
But of course, nobody is so susceptible to the corruption of
doubt, the corrosive influence of personal jealousy and intrigue,
as a government in exile. And as the war progressed, its difficulties
grew no lighter, for with the metamorphosis of the Soviet Union,
first as ally then, by 1944 the most powerful army in the coalition,
and thereby in the world, an enforced change in the direction of its
host's policy threatened. By July 1944 the Red Army occupied all of
eastern Poland, the very boundaries, to the metre almost, which they
had seized in 1939. But why should they stop there? Indeed, there was
not the slightest likelihood that they would. The harsh impulses of
strategic necessity and the disintegration of the Wehrmacht would
combine, it seemed to the London Poles, to place their whole country
under the domination of one of its two traditional enemies. It was a
situation in which diplomacy was valueless, for diplomacy means
pressure (however gracefully concealed), and there were no longer
any pressures to which the Russians were susceptible. Their armies
were all-powerful; they had drawn their fill of aid from the West—and
in any case its delivery was an irreversible process, subject, like
the many other concessions the Soviet Union enjoyed since 1942, to a
powerful current of popular emotion in the democracies. For Russian
policy was now benefiting from a remarkable change of image,
sedulously fostered by the Communist parties of the West and
unwittingly promoted by the democracies' own propaganda services.
On an international level it was the counterpart of the new
emphasis of patriotism over Party loyalties which was inspiring the
citizens of the Soviet Union; class warfare and revolution were
played down, and in their place were depicted two fresh images: the
brave Red Army man, personification of a country steadfast in battle;
and that of "Uncle Joe," pipe in mouth, the epitome of
trustiness in conduct and negotiation.
In the diplomatic context the position of the London Poles was
still further prejudiced by the emergence of the United States as the
pre-eminent force in the Western coalition and the gradual shift of
the centre of power (for purposes, at any rate, of political intrigue
and lobbying) from London to Washington. For if the British leaders,
in contrast to the man in the street, had preserved a certain
cynicism in their assessment of the new Russian character, the
reverse was true in the United States, where politicians (and many
soldiers also) had fallen for the new Russian line. At Teheran,
when the first discreet British approaches attempted to warn
Roosevelt of the dangers of allowing too deep a Russian penetration
in the Balkans, the President had confided to his son Elliott:
I see no reason for putting the lives of American soldiers in
jeopardy in order to protect real or fancied British interests on the
Continent.
Indeed, American policy was already beginning the reorientation
which was to come out in the open at Yalta the following year,
whereby Russian "security" was backed against the
aspirations of Britain and the lesser nations of Eastern Europe.
[Roosevelt's betrayal of Eastern Europe, whether out of calculation or gullibility, is so notorious as to need no further
recapitula-tion. But two examples should be cited, in corroboration
of the worst fears of London Poles.
When he accepted the reimposition of the 1940 Russo-German
frontier (resurrected now as the "Curzon Line"), Roosevelt,
perhaps with one ear cocked to the reaction of his own people,
suggested that the town of Lvov should be "granted" to the
new Poland, "as this would have a salutary effect on American
public opinion." However, what slight weight this consideration
might have carried was discounted by the President's hurried
disclaimer that ". . . he was merely suggesting this for
consideration rather than insisting on it."
Two days later, when Churchill was fighting alone to prevent the
Russians from foisting the Lublin Committee, a puppet government of
Polish Communists which they had set up, on the country, Roosevelt
went behind the Prime Minister's back and sent Stalin a private
letter, asserting:
"The United States will never lend its support in any way to
any provisional government in Poland which would be inimical to your
interests."
However, to offset the impression that the Americans were universally affected by this attitude, we should remember the judgment
of Major General John R. Deane, head of the U. S. military mission
in Moscow, who had written to General Marshall in December 1944, "We
never make a request or proposal to the Soviets that is not viewed
with suspicion. They simply cannot understand giv-ing without
taking, and, as a result, even our giving is viewed with suspicion.
Gratitude cannot be banked in the Soviet Union. Each transaction is
complete in itself, without regard to past favours."]
Roosevelt was determined to get Russian co-operation in the war
against Japan; he was determined, too, that Russia be persuaded to
join a collective security organisation (the United Nations), which,
he believed, could "control" her. The effect was that what
the United States wanted from Stalin was of greater value to her than
what she was offering him—a state of affairs which the Russian
dictator saw and exploited earlier than he might have done on account
of Roosevelt's pathetic diplomatic
gaffes
.
In this situation the London Poles had to play their hand alone. A
clear indication of the climate in which they were going to operate
had come in 1943, when the Germans accidentally uncovered the grave
of four thousand Polish officers at Katyn. Stalin had refused an
independent inquiry by the Red Cross and, after a prolonged and
abusive diplomatic bombardment, had taken the opportunity to "sever"
relations. Matters had deteriorated steadily in the ensuing twelve
months, with attempted Communist subversion in the ranks of the
Polish forces in the West, coupled with a steady propaganda campaign
(in which certain British publications were not blameless) to the
effect that the London Poles were anti-Semitic—in the language
of fellow travellers, a recognised halfway stage to being
"Fascist"—and "unrepresentative." Then on
24th July, 1944, the Russians, well across the old Curzon Line and
the 1939 frontier, had captured Lublin and installed there a
"National Committee of Liberation"—an obvious
nucleus for a puppet Communist administration. If the London Poles
were to assert themselves, time was running out.
Stalin's classic rejoinder to some fulsome Western diplomat who
was holding forth about Catholic "good will" had been, "How
many divisions has the Pope?" And the same question could be
posed with almost as telling effect of the London Poles. Their
divisions were as few, as scattered, and as powerless to intervene
as had been those of the British five years before, at the time of
the German invasion. But they did have a widespread and
well-organised underground, responsible to them and controlled by
radio from London. This force—the "Home Army," or
AK—was centred on the capital, Warsaw; but its authority was
already being threatened as the hour, if not of liberation then of
change in occupation, approached, by various splinter groups. There
was the "Peo-ple's Army," (AL) of independent left-wing
sympathisers; the Communist-dominated PAL; and the "Nationalist
Armed Forces," (NSZ) an extreme right-wing force which had
broken away from the AK at the first sign of impending compromise
with Russian power.
It had become urgently necessary for the AK to show its strength,
so that the London Poles could at least assert some sort of armed
presence in their own country—they were already getting reports
that AK units which had co-operated with the advancing Russians were
being disarmed and their officers taken away. This opportunity seemed
to present itself in the last week in July, for as Rokossovski
approached Warsaw the German administration began to close down, and
many of its departments ceased to function. On 27th July the military
government issued a proclamation calling up a hundred thousand
civilians forthwith for work on fortifications, and still greater
dislocation of the Home Army was threatened by a Russian broadcast of
29th July, which spoke of the city's impending liberation and urged
the "workers of the Resistance" to rise against the
retreating invader. This last development led to great confusion,
because although the Home Army, which comprised 80 percent of the
armed Resistance, took its orders from London, premature action by
the AL and the PAL could well make it impossible for the AK to
control its own members. On 1st August, therefore, Bor-Komorowski,
the Polish Cavalry General who commanded the AK, issued a
proclamation, copies of which were scattered throughout the city.
Soldiers of the capital!
Today I have issued the orders so long awaited by all of you,
the orders for an open fight against the German invader. After nearly
five years of necessary underground struggle, today we are taking up
arms openly. . . .
At first the timing looked perfect. It seemed as if the AK would
be able to step into the vacuum caused by the German withdrawal and
precede Rokossovski in declaring the liberation of the capital. The
R.A.F. would then have flown in the London government, which would
have been able to install itself in the administrative centre of
its country with the prestige of military achievement and backed by a
powerful local force. But in fact the Russian offensive had reached
the end of its tether. At that very moment when Bor issued his call
to arms, the Russians' right wing in the Baltic states was being
roughly handled by a counterattack from East Prussia and Courland
which recaptured Tukums and Mitau (Jelgava), and which diverted
reinforcement from the centre. The customary difficulties of supply
and the exhaustion of men and machinery combined to dictate a halt
on the Vistula. From the Russians' point of view, the Warsaw uprising could not have come at a better moment (and thus as a
political threat it could be discounted). For it did not have the
strength to succeed without their help, yet it promised, while
burning itself out, to distract German attention and to deny to their
enemies the respite which the Russians themselves so badly needed.