Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (15 page)

Britain’s ‘First Alliance’ was also celebrated in one of the most popular films of the early war years.
Dangerous Moonlight
(1941) told the fictional story of a young pilot-pianist, Stefan, who is composing a concerto during the bombing of September 1939 and who then escapes to the West. It introduces a strong American theme when the hero leaves for a musical tour of the United States and falls in love with an American girl, Sally, before returning to fight in the Battle of Britain. Screened in the USA the following year, it conveyed the powerful message that all freedom-loving countries should bond to the common cause against Nazi Germany. Its storyline was well suited to the months preceding the USA’s entry in the war. But its most durable element proved to be the music. Specially composed by Richard Addinsell, the film’s concerto, which uses a number of Chopinesque and sub-Rachmaninovian effects, has remained a favourite of the piano repertoire ever since.
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Much confusion, however, arose from rival sources of information. Just as the First Ally had been forced to compete for its historical existence with two powerful neighbours, news and information put out by the First Ally’s Government during the war now had to compete with rival information deriving from German and Soviet sources. The influence of German sources had been immensely strong in the early part of the century, and continued on pre-war issues such as Silesia, Danzig, or ‘the Corridor’. But it declined precipitously with the outbreak of war. Russian and Soviet sources, in contrast, were growing rapidly in influence. And on
many issues, it was hard for the uninitiated to know who or what to believe.

The First Ally’s Ambassador spent much of his time contesting and correcting the misconceptions which flourished among British politicians, academics and opinion-makers. Unlike some of his compatriots, ‘the Count’ was immensely polite, and practised English-style understatement to masterly effect. But he crossed swords with many formidable adversaries, most of whom were blissfully unaware that their tendentious opinions on German, Russian, and sometimes Jewish matters did not necessarily represent the unadulterated truth. In 1939, he conducted a major controversy with David Lloyd George, against whose opinions he published a pamphlet. In 1941 he took on the historian Sir Bernard Pares and his views on the ethnic make-up of the Borders; and on numerous occasions he confronted Robert Barrington-Ward, the editor of
The Times
, and with various personages at the BBC. On 23 June 1944, he took on the Archbishop of York, who preaching in York Minster had pronounced in ineffable style that ‘the moral issues’ of the war were only now becoming apparent. In the fifth year of struggle against Nazi Germany, the Count judged this idea a trifle complacent. So he sent the Archbishop a poem:

CASUS BELLI

A sense of moral duty

Drove Britain into war,

When Hitler grabbed for booty

The Polish Corridor.

No man of honour doubted

That we were in the right.

When guarantees are flouted,

The guarantor must fight.

. . .

[For] ours is not the quarrel

By fleeting passion stirred.

For us the issue moral

Is – that we keep our word.
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The Count enjoyed excellent relations with Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s former secretary, and later Minister of Information. In March
1943, he had been particularly outraged by a brilliant but malicious cartoon by David Low in the
Evening Standard
. Entitled ‘The Irresponsibles’, it was manifestly inspired by Soviet propaganda, and did much to popularize the negative stereotype of the ‘First Ally’ in Britain. (See Appendix 15.) Bracken’s response was friendly, but not particularly helpful:

My dear Edward, . . . I regret very much that you should have reason to protest to me against the action of a British newspaper. I think that the cartoon by Low . . . was a deplorable piece of work, and I quite understand the difficult position in which your Government is placed . . .

I can assure you that this Ministry is doing its utmost to restrict polemics upon Polish–Soviet disagreements. . . . On the whole, our guidance has been followed, and this makes the action of the ‘Evening Standard’ all the more regrettable.

Immediately the Cartoon appeared, our chief Press Censor took the matter up with the editor of the paper and gave him the strongest possible warning to avoid inflammatory action of this kind. Under our present censorship regulations, we cannot, of course, prevent the publication of matter of this sort . . . but I am sure we shall be able to count upon their cooperation in avoiding . . . anything similar in the future.

(signed) Brendan Bracken
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In the later stages of the war, the Eastern Front did not arouse many major anxieties in the strategic calculations of the Western powers. It had been assigned by mutual consent as an undefined sphere of Soviet influence. So London and Washington were happy enough to leave the problems of Eastern Europe to their partners in Moscow. The Soviet Army was greatly admired for bearing the brunt of the fighting against the Wehrmacht and, as became increasingly clear, for making the most significant contribution to the defeat of the Reich. In Western eyes, the most worrying concern arose from the possibility that Stalin, having driven the Germans from Soviet territory, might then be tempted to make a separate peace, or still worse, to conquer a large slice of Central Europe.

Nonetheless, President Roosevelt, in particular, was well disposed to accept Soviet arguments and to leave Moscow to its own devices. The USA did not feel threatened by Soviet designs on Eastern Europe. If anything, Washington was impressed by the limited range of Soviet ambitions, which did not appear at the time to be directed against other
regions, such as Persia or China, in which the Americans were more directly interested. As regards the First Ally, Washington was generally sympathetic, but inclined to pass the buck to the First Ally’s formal protector – Britain.

One must always take account of the fact that in 1943–44 the ability of the Western powers to mediate in Polish–Soviet affairs was fast decreasing. Stalin’s break with the First Ally would not have been so serious if other negative factors had not come into play. For one thing, American diplomacy under the guidance of Roosevelt’s chief adviser, Harry Hopkins, moved steadily towards the conciliation of Moscow’s ambitions, and showed ever less patience for what it regarded as peripheral causes of friction. For another, Churchill was losing something of the stature which he had initially enjoyed. Stalin could not fail to notice the inexorable rise of American influence. Churchill’s discomfiture was further worsened by the departure of the former Soviet Ambassador, Maisky, with whom he had conducted frequent and friendly business for two years. His contacts with Maisky’s replacement were sparse and stiff. In sum, the Americans deferred Polish matters to the British, and the British tended to evade them by telling the Poles to talk directly to Moscow, even though Stalin had cut off the normal channels for talking. The climate of embarrassment that grew in proportion to the Western powers’ failure to open a second front did not provide the basis for effective problem-solving.

In the same phase of the war, the Western powers were faced with the tricky problem of Yugoslavia; and their decisions regarding the Yugoslavs reflected on their approach to Eastern Europe as a whole. From 1941 onwards, the West had supported the royal Yugoslav Government and its Serb-based Underground movement, the Chetniks. King Peter and his ministers were resident in London. But their grip on developments declined when rival elements in occupied Yugoslavia indulged in a multilateral and murderous civil war. The Chetniks appeared to be most concerned with fighting the Croat Fascists, the Ustasha, and, to assist their fight, to be willing to deal with the Italian occupiers. They were also challenged by a revolutionary partisan movement led by the Moscow-trained Josip ‘Broz’ Tito, who was thought to be determined both to fight the Germans and to keep Yugoslavia united. In consequence, the West switched clients. The Chetniks were abandoned. The partisans were lavishly supplied from Allied bases in Italy; and the King was pressured to reach an agreement with Tito. In February 1944, despite the protests of his ministers, the King made common cause with Tito’s Anti-Fascist Council
of National Liberation. It was a stop-gap measure which briefly helped the prosecution of the war, but which in due course led to the complete elimination of the King and his erstwhile adherents. It did nothing to enhance the West’s reputation for political probity; and it gave the concept of ‘compromise’ in Eastern Europe a distinctly opportunist colouring.

Greece, in contrast, was the one East European country where Churchill was adamantly opposed to any form of compromise. In April 1939, the British Government had issued a guarantee of Greece, similar to that of the First Ally, but had not proceeded to a formal alliance. In the spring of 1944, the exiled royal Government of Greece was lodged in Cairo. The Resistance movement, which was dominated by the Communist movement, was preparing to come down from the mountains and to take over Athens as soon as the Germans withdrew. Indeed it had created a Political Committee of National Liberation that clearly harboured intentions of becoming a provisional Government. Churchill would have none of it. When mutiny threatened among Greek soldiers in Cairo, he ordered it to be snuffed out, by force if necessary. And he would not countenance a division of power. Needless to say, he could afford to take this high-handed line towards the only East European country to which the Royal Navy and British troops enjoyed direct access.

Nonetheless, it would be wrong to assume that the Western powers were totally negligent of or indifferent to their First Ally. Churchill, in particular, was acutely aware of the implications of the Soviet Army’s relentless advance; and he was preoccupied by daily dealings with Polish matters. In the first half of 1944, detailed attention was paid to the political, territorial, and military issues.

On the political front, Churchill was anxious that some sort of deal be fixed up with Moscow before Stalin made his own unilateral arrangements. On 16 February 1944, he called in Premier Mick and warned him that if Stalin’s wishes were not met a proSoviet puppet Government would be set up by the Red Army and confirmed by rigged elections. He was angered by the exiled Government’s reluctance to comply. Yet he also knew that Stalin’s demands were provocative, and that some form of compromise might yet be reached. The First Ally was not in the same straits as Yugoslavia. There was no Tito in the Underground; there was little popular sympathy at home for Soviet-style politics; and the First Ally’s armed forces were everywhere fighting loyally for the Allied cause. What is more, there were signs that Stalin was playing a double game. Whilst demanding, outrageously, that the exiled Government purge its
allegedly ‘anti-Soviet’ members, starting with the President of the Republic, he was also keeping unofficial feelers open though the Soviet Embassy in London. So all was not yet lost. The optimists had reason to believe that with active Western involvement they might yet be able to forge a settlement before the crunch came.

For this reason, a compromise deal on the territorial issue seemed the best way forward. Here, the counsels of the Foreign Office were divided. One view, to which Eden had initially been inclined, held that Stalin’s demands would have to be met simply to keep him happy. This was the line which Eden had taken over the Baltic states in 1942 and which Churchill had favoured since Teheran, with the proviso that the First Ally must be generously compensated with land taken from Germany. But no final decision was judged to have been taken, and the Teheran discussions were kept strictly secret. The alternative view, which was not without support in London, held that the First Ally should not give way without securing some modest concessions. After all, she was being pressed to abandon the equivalent of Britain losing Scotland.

To this end, the Foreign Office put its best brains to work on the ethnic, historical, and political complexities of the First Ally’s eastern borders. Between November 1943 and July 1944, four detailed memoranda were produced. Two, dated 19 and 22 November 1943, preceded the Teheran Conference. The third, dated 12 February 1944, was prepared by the world-famous historian, Director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and Head of the FO’s Research Department, Professor Arnold Toynbee. The fourth, dated 25 July 1944, was drawn up by one of Toynbee’s assistants, Francis Bourdillon. The details of these memoranda will delight anyone who is fascinated by the delineation of the Suvalki Region, the location of the Borislav–Drohobich Basin, the distinction between the A and B variants of the ‘Curzon Line’, and the many spellings of Lwów, Lvov, L’viv, Leopolis, Lemberg, and ‘City of Lions’ (pronounced ‘Lvoof’ and here rendered as Lvuv). They are wonderful fodder for cartographic masochists. But the important fact is that all four memoranda agreed on one point – that the First Ally should at the very least retain control of Lvuv.
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In the minds of the British experts, these memoranda appear to have been based on the assumption of a two-stage solution: namely, that once the exiled Government had agreed to accept the Curzon Line in principle, Moscow could then be pressed to accept some relatively minor adjustments.
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In the eyes of the exiled Government, however, the memoranda encouraged intransigence. They gave the clear impression that the game
was not yet up, and that, given Western help, Lvuv represented the irreducible minimum of what could be saved.

A further distinction should be noted. The British memoranda of 1943–44, like Stalin’s territorial demands, had all referred to the permanent state frontiers which were to be put in place with international recognition at the end of the war. They should not be confused with the parallel discussions held in 1944 concerning the temporary ‘demarcation line’, which became an urgent necessity through the Red Army’s unexpectedly rapid advance. On 15 February 1944, the Premier of the exiled Government gave his consent to a demarcation line well to the east of the ‘Curzon Line’. He did so on the strict understanding that negotiations on the permanent frontier would not be jeopardized. Many of his colleagues, including the Commanderin-Chief, believed that he had made a serious tactical mistake.