Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (109 page)

Read Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw Online

Authors: Norman Davies

Tags: #Non-Fiction, #War, #History

Forty years later, when Churchill’s close associates were pondering what had gone wrong at the end of the war, Sir William Deakin pointed to the absence in Anglo-American circles of any concept of how to deal with Stalin. Speaking in Fulton (Missouri) in 1984, at the same location as Churchill’s famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, Deakin pointed to Poland as the first casualty of this weakness. ‘Poland’, he said, ‘became a grim test of the Anglo-Soviet alliance as a whole.’
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Sir John Slessor, the former deputy commander of Allied air forces in the Mediterranean, who had presided over the catastrophe of the Warsaw
Airlift, held similar views. He rated his involvement in the crisis as ‘the worst six weeks of my experience’:

‘[The Rising] is a story of the utmost gallantry and self-sacrifice on the part of our aircrews . . ., of deathless heroism on the part of the Polish Underground Army . . ., and of the blackest-hearted, coldest-blooded treachery on the part of the Russians. I am not a naturally vindictive man; but I hope there may some very special hell reserved for the brutes in the Kremlin, who betrayed [Boor]’s men and led to the fruitless sacrifice of [our fliers]. . . . It is generally considered easy to be wise after the event. But the events of Yalta and Potsdam came after the events of August and September 1944; and those of us who took part in those events may be excused if we fail to understand the attitude towards Stalin and the Russians exemplified in the later chapters of Robert Sherwood’s book on Harry Hopkins. How, after the fall of Warsaw, any responsible statesman could trust any Russian Communist further than he could kick him, passes the comprehension of ordinary men.’
¹¹

Western assessments of Soviet practices and intentions were grossly complacent. Neither London nor Washington grasped the absurdity of pressing their Polish ally to reach a settlement with Stalin at a juncture when Stalin’s security apparatus was killing and deporting the ally’s personnel and when they themselves were accepting all Moscow’s assurances at face value. Neither saw the point of intervening. Both the British and the American governments were troubled by the Soviet Army’s halt on the Vistula; and both were angered by Soviet obstructions over joint air operations and landing facilities. Yet no one in the upper reaches of government seems to have drawn the obvious conclusions. No one in particular seems to have comprehended the implications of the fact that Allied planes on their way to Warsaw were regularly fired on by Soviet artillery and fighters.
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As always, the sequence of events was important. 1944 was a year in which the shape of post-war Europe was still in the earliest stages of realization. Before Yalta, little had been finally decided. There was much to play for. Many key issues awaited a resolution. The crisis in Warsaw preceded the liberation of Paris. At the time, Stalin had not recognized the Lublin Committee as a provisional Government, just as the Western Governments had still not recognized de Gaulle’s Free French as the future rulers of France. Indeed, as late as December 1944, when de Gaulle
visited Moscow, Stalin attempted to trade Soviet recognition of his group in return for de Gaulle’s recognition of the Lublin Committee. All the indications were, that Soviet policy towards Poland in mid-1944 remained fluid. If a concerted Western scheme had been launched at the highest level to reach the desired compromise, it is possible that something might have been achieved. Regrettably, no such scheme was ever produced. No comprehensive compromise was ever floated. The longer a solution was delayed, the stronger Stalin’s hand grew. By the time that Roosevelt and Churchill travelled to Crimea in February 1945, all the trumps relating to Poland’s future were firmly in Stalin’s grip. After Yalta, it was too late to change anything.

The catalogue of shortcomings within the Allied Coalition is so long that it threatens to grow tedious in the telling. Allied intelligence about Warsaw, for example, was lamentable. And each of the major powers was as helpless as that of the others. The British were receiving conflicting information from Polish and from Soviet sources, but made no serious provision to resolve the dilemma. The abortive trip of Salamander wasted months of valuable time, ended in fiasco, and was not followed up. For its part, Soviet intelligence was locked in its ideological straitjacket, and was quite incapable of effective analysis. In the eighth week of the Rising, a lone Soviet agent was still wandering round Warsaw, talking to no one of importance, trying to work out the most elementary facts such as where the insurgent formations were located or who was in charge. American intelligence was no better. US military intelligencers were apparently responsible for passing on the catastrophic misjudgement about the fall of the Old Town which was used by Roosevelt’s entourage to reject Churchill’s pleas for joint action. In other words, and quite literally, poor Allied intelligence was fatal.

Military and political liaison was negligible. The British had placed scores of officers in Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece, but none in Poland. The British ‘Freston’ Mission to the Home Army, first requested in February 1944, did not land until Christmas – by which time the Rising had been crushed. Neither the Americans nor the Soviets bothered to establish a link with the Home Army leadership.

The inconsistences of Western policy were manifold. On several occasions, Churchill and Roosevelt failed to act in concert, with consequences of varying gravity. Yet on one issue – the Curzon Line – their persistent and shifty machinations can only be described as disgraceful. It was bad enough that they kept their discussions at Teheran secret. But
their subsequent pretence over many months that Polish–Soviet differences over territory were still open to discussion, was unforgivable. They had misled Stalin, by giving him to believe that his territorial demands had been fully accepted and would not be questioned. But they also misled their own diplomatic services, who continued to work on plans for territorial compromise. And they misled Premier Mick most horribly by urging him to negotiate with Stalin and to make proposals which were almost certain to be rejected. No other issue did so much to undermine trust within the Alliance; and it came to a head in the first week of August 1944, when Stalin’s cooperation over Warsaw was most sorely needed. It was not addressed again so long as the Rising lasted.

Interdepartmental friction arose at every turn. In the early years of the war, the British had granted the Polish Government a large measure of autonomy. But by 1944, the cross purposes of the Foreign Office and of SOE over Poland rendered them all but incapable of working together. The worst instance of their incompetence occurred at the most damaging moment, namely on the eve of the Rising when SOE was urging Churchill to adopt active measures which the Foreign Office had independently ruled out. Everything made for confusion and paralysis. It played straight into the hands of the most malevolent proSoviet element which was bound to get its way if no effective assistance to Warsaw was mounted. Philby & Co. were not obliged to torpedo a plan. There was no plan to be torpedoed.

Sad to say, Britain’s SOE, which was the main Allied agency for liaison with European Resistance movements, virtually abandoned its Polish clients in their hour of need. After priority was given first to Yugoslavia and then to France, the will and the means to help Poland were greatly diminished. (Western planners, if they thought at all, seem to have assumed that the main task of supplying Warsaw would be taken over by the Soviets.) Prior to August 1944, the head of SOE, Gen. Gubbins, had met with one of his Polish colleagues almost every single week. But on 13 August, at the height of the Warsaw emergency, he took off for France; and Gen. Tabor didn’t see him again for some three months. He left an operation that was near to collapse. There were no ready plans, few resources, and little equipment. It turned out that barely 10 per cent of the long-range aircraft intended for the ‘air-bridge’ to Poland had actually been delivered. Due to lapses in communication, no one had passed on details of the changing provisions of the British Chiefs of Staff; and Gen. Boor in Warsaw had been left to the very last moment with the false illusion that
both the Polish Parachute Brigade and the Polish squadrons of the RAF could somehow be made available. Everything deteriorated into an improvised scramble. Coordination between Warsaw, London, Washington, and Moscow was so fitful and slow that nothing approaching a common front or a joint response could be concocted.

A still more sinister scenario must be considered. Several commentators have noted that ‘an element of fantasy’ had entered into SOE’s relationship with Poland.
¹⁴According to one of SOE’s most senior officer, ‘[we] were so deeply committed to the Polish cause that we funked facing them with the realities of their situation’.
¹⁵Writing long after the war, Col. Peter Wilkinson admitted that preparations were not competently handled: ‘On Gubbins’ instructions,’ he wrote, ‘over the next twelve months I wasted hours in make-believe joint planning with the Polish General Staff, working out the logistics of a full-scale airborne invasion of German-occupied Poland which both they and I knew could not possibly take place.’
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If this account is correct, then the British as well as the Poles had been deluding themselves. And no one had cared to inform the Home Army.

The disaster, therefore, was a joint one. Any objective reviewer of these grave failings must judge every single member of the Allied coalition to hold a share of the responsibility. In essence, the tragedy of the Warsaw Rising resulted from a systemic breakdown of the Grand Alliance.

A parable may well be appropriate. A man wades into a river to grapple with a criminal gang. He does so because the criminals have been beating, murdering and humiliating his family for years, and because he belongs to a team that is dedicated to bringing them to justice. What is more, he has been assured by the team leaders that everyone will pull together; and he chooses a moment when ‘friends of friends’ appear in strength on the far bank and are expected to help. Then, everything goes wrong. The criminals do not flee, but turn to fight. They trap the man, and massacre his relatives. The ‘friends of friends’ hold back. The man begins to flounder. The team leaders call across the river, and plead with their friends for help. Their calls are confused and half-hearted. Their friends still hold back. Repeated pleas bring no response. Eventually only one would-be rescuer enters the water, and quickly gets into difficulties himself. After a long struggle, the criminals tighten their grip on the man’s throat, and push him under. The man drowns. Who is to blame? And who is to be commended?

APPENDICES
List of Appendices