AutumnBook Number

Third Quarter 1994Number 84

FINESTHOUR

Journal vtf TlTeMiiTe UK •Canada

Churchill andEastern EuropePart 2: Poland and GermanyThe Balancing ActBY STANLEY E. SMITH

jL Hied negotiations over the composition of the/ ^ P o l i s h government were accompanied through-

JL A. out the war by negotiations over the postwarborders of Poland.

The shock of the German invasion of Russia in 1941did not deter Stalin from wanting ultimately to reclaimthe land he had acquired under the notorious Nazi-So-viet pact of 1939.95 This territory included not only a siz-able chunk of Poland, but later also a "frontier secu-rity" area encompassing Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,Finland's Karelian isthmus, the Romanian province ofBessarabia, and Bukovina.96

The wishes of the Soviet government regardingPoland's frontiers were specific and definite as early asEden's visit to Moscow in December 1941, and theychanged little throughout the war. Stalin wantedPoland's eastern border to be based on a delineationknown as the Gurzon Line, which ran near the borderoccupied by the Red Army in 1940. Stalin said he con-sidered this frontier to be "ethnologically correct."97 Thewestern border was to expand westward at Germany'sexpense as far as the Oder River. The Moscow discus-sions of 1941 left the frontier question open. WhenMolotov visited London in May 1942, he offered to signa treaty with the Polish government-in-exile in Londonon the basis of the Curzon Line or the 1941 borderprior to the German attack on Russia. In exchange,Britain was to abandon the London Poles. Eden saidthis was impossible.98

The Curzon Line quickly became the center of at-tention in the debate over Poland's eastern frontier. Itsorigin dated to 1919, when it was recommended by theSupreme Council of the Allied Powers as the easternfrontier of Poland. On 12 July 1920, Lord Gurzon, thenBritish Foreign Secretary, had sent an official note tothe Soviet government proposing that the frontier linerun along Grodno, Jalovka, Nemirov, Brest-Litovsk,Dorohusk, Ustiling, east of Grobeshov, Krilov, and thenwest of Rava-Ruska east of Przemysl to the Carpathi-ans.99 The Soviets had spurned it but were soon forcedby the Poles to accept a more eastward line.

At the Teheran conference in December 1943,Stalin prohibited Poland from keeping any territory inthe Ukraine or in White Russia.100 He also asked that

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Sept 1939 frontiersPost-war variationsCurzon Line

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Russia be ceded the cities of Lvov and Konigsberg andthe northern part of East Prussia.101 The followingmonth, Churchill appeared to concede Estonia, Latviaand Lithuania to Stalin, noting in a memo to Eden thatStalin's claim to them "in no way exceeds the formerTsarist boundaries."102 (See also "Churchill and theBaltic," Finest Hour #53-54.)

The expectations of the London Polish government-in-exile about the postwar eastern frontier of Polandwere very different from those of Stalin. Before 1939,the eastern frontier of Poland had been defined by theRiga Treaty of 1921, concluded when Polish forces hadrepulsed a Russian attack and stood very well militarily.The Riga Treaty frontier therefore lay considerablyeastward of the Curzon Line. In the rapprochment be-tween Russia and the London Poles following theGerman invasion of Russia, General Sikorski, thenPolish Prime Minister, offered to sign an agreement onthe basis of a restored Riga Treaty frontier. The Soviet

42 / FINEST HOUR 84

Government refused, and in the agreement that wassigned at the end of July 1941, the frontier question wasleft open."13 As late as the time of the Teheran confer-ence, Mikolajczyk was telling Eden that the Polish peo-ple expected to emerge from the war with their easternprovinces intact.104

In a meeting with Eden in March 1943, Soviet Am-bassador Ivan Maisky argued that the Soviet-Polishborder should be the Gurzon Line with minor adjust-ments."15 On 10 January 1944, the Soviet governmentpublicly proclaimed the Gurzon Line as its border withPoland.1"' On February 4th, Stalin complained toChurchill that the Polish leaders had not yet publiclyabandoned the Riga Treaty frontier in favor of the Cur-zon Line.107 By the Moscow conference of October,1944, the London Poles were willing to accept the Gur-zon Line as "a line of demarcation between Russia andPoland," but the Soviet government insisted on regard-ing the line as "a basis of frontier." Neither side wouldbudge. By this time, Stalin was doing business with theLublin Poles and had no interest in accommodatingtheir London counterparts.108

Despite these continued difficulties between Stalinand the exiled Polish leaders, discussions of the easternfrontier of Poland among the three major Allies wentfairly smoothly. As early as March 1943, Roosevelt ex-pressed to Eden his opinion that, if granted concessionsin the west, Poland would gain by accepting the GurzonLine, and would in any case have to abide by the even-tual decision of the Big Three."109

JL he Polish frontier was discussed by the Big Threeat the Teheran conference. Stalin defended the 1939(Molotov-Ribbentrop) frontier as being "ethnologicallythe right one." Churchill proposed that Poland's fron-tiers be based on the Gurzon Line and the Oder (includ-ing East Prussia and Oppeln), but that the actual trac-ing of the frontier line be done only following a carefulstudy of the population questions involved. Stalin's at-tempt to treat the 1939 border and the Curzon Line asthe same did not succeed. Maps were produced, and thediscussion centered for a time on whether Lvov lay tothe east or to the west of the Gurzon Line. Stalin saidhe would gladly give up his claim to any district with aPolish population.110

Agreement was soon reached. Churchill said he was"not prepared to make a great squawk about Lvov."Stalin replied that, with Lvov and Konigsberg left in So-viet hands, he was prepared to accept Churchill's for-mula.111

Much more labored were the discussions betweenChurchill and Eden on the one side and the LondonPoles on the other following the Teheran conference.Acting initially through Eden because of a serious ill-ness, Churchill took a very hard line in urging the Polesto accept the Teheran formulation, at least in principle.

Noting that the Teheran agreement left the Poles with"a magnificent piece of country," Churchill warned thatif the Poles cast the agreement aside, "I do not see howHis Majesty's Government can press for anything morefor them..."112

The initial hostility of the London Poles to any re-duction of their eastern provinces angered Churchill,who felt that he had done all that could be done forthem under the circumstances. In a 7 January 1944telegram to Eden, Churchill said he was contemplatingtelling the world that Britain had never undertaken todefend Poland's pre-1939 borders. He noted that Russiahad a right to the "inexpungeable security" of her west-ern frontiers, and that Poland now owed its life to theRussian armies. Churchill threatened to withdraw helpand recognition from the London Poles, scoffed at theidea that Britain would consider going to war againstRussia over Poland's eastern frontier, and concludedpointedly that "[n]ations who are found incapable of de-fending their country must accept a reasonable measureof guidance from those who have rescued them andwho offer them the prospect of a sure freedom and inde-pendence.""3 Time and circumstances would not bearout his optimism.

On January 20th, Churchill met in London withMikolajczyk, Tadeusz Romer (Polish Foreign Minis-ter), and Edward Raczynski (Polish Ambassador inLondon) to discuss the frontier agreement. According toan aide, the Prime Minister "gave it to them hot andstrong.""4 He said the Curzon Line was the best Polandcould hope to obtain, and that valuable German landwould be awarded to Poland in return for the easternlands (including extensive marshland) that would go toRussia. In return for the agreement of the LondonPoles, Churchill said he would stoutly defend their legit-imacy against Russia. When Mikolajczyk replied thathe could not survive politically if he ceded any easternlands, let alone Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania) andLvov, Churchill urged him and his colleagues to make asettlement quickly. On January 28th he told Stalin thathe had advised the London Poles to accept the CurzonLine, and warned Stalin against setting up a rival Polishgovernment. As Martin Gilbert points out, Churchillhad thus acted against the deepest wishes both of theLondon Poles and of Stalin, and had begun a long andultimately futile effort to reconcile these wishes.115

More Anglo-Polish talks were held, but they weremarked by acrimony and little progress. At a February6th meeting at Chequers, Mikolajczyk reported thatthe Polish underground adhered firmly to the easternfrontier established by the Riga Treaty. Churchill, inreply, again defended the Gurzon Line and pointed outthat "...the people of Poland have been unable tomaintain their independence throughout the centuries,and even during their short period of freedom, had nothad a record of which they could be proud. Now theyhad a fine opportunity if they were prepared totake it."116

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A,Lt a February 16th meeting at Downing Street,Churchill told the Poles that "his heart bled for them,but the brutal facts could not be overlooked. He couldno more stop the Russian advance than stop the tidecoming in. It was no use saying something which wouldonly make the Russians more angry and drive themto...a puppet government in Warsaw.""7

On 20 February 1944, the Polish government re-lented to the extant of accepting the text of a note inwhich Churchill told Stalin that the Poles were ready torenounce the Riga Treaty frontier line, and that he hadtold them of the likely loss of Vilnius, Konigsberg, andLvov.118 Churchill followed up his message by announc-ing his support of the Curzon Line as a "reasonable andjust" border in the House of Commons on 22 Febru-ary."9 In his reply, Stalin sneered off the Polish conces-sions.120

The eastern frontier of Poland was further discussedat the (Anglo-Soviet) Moscow conference of October,1944. Churchill pressed Mikolajczyk to accept the Cur-zon Line as a de facto arrangement.121 On October 13th,Mikolajczyk met with Stalin, who asked that the Lon-don Poles publicly accept the Curzon Line, Mikola-jczyk was unable to agree to this. Later he offered toagree to the Curzon Line if Stalin would give up hisclaim to Lvov, but Stalin held fast.122 Mikolajczyk re-turned to London and, being unable to persuade his col-leagues to accept the Curzon Line, resigned in Novem-ber from the government-in-exile.123 This virtually endedthe influence of the London Poles on the frontier ques-tion.

At the Yalta conference in February 1945, relativelyquick agreement was reached on the eastern frontier ofPoland. In pressing the acceptance of the Curzon Line,Stalin argued that he could hardly claim less for the So-viet Union than Curzon and Clemenceau had offeredafter World War I.124 He also argued that the Soviet-Pol-ish border was a matter of vital security to Russia.125

Roosevelt noted that Polish-American opinion wasready to accept the Curzon Line, but he urged Stalin tocede Lvov and possibly some oil fields in compensationfor the annexation of Konigsberg. As Stalin was not es-pecially sensitive to the feelings of Polish-Americans,this suggestion went nowhere.'26

Churchill was of course quite willing to accept theCurzon Line as the frontier, though he too encouragedStalin to make the "magnanimous" gesture of cedingLvov. To him the frontier question was secondary tothe question of the Polish government.127 The Yalta De-claration stated that "the eastern frontier of Polandshould follow the Curzon Line with digressions from itin some regions of five to eight kilometers in favor ofPoland."128 Lvov and Konigsberg went to Russia; EastPrussia south and west of Konigsberg went to Poland.129

The Big Three agreed early in the war that Polandshould be compensated for the loss of its easternprovinces by territory in eastern Germany. Just how farto expand Poland's western border was, however, amatter of considerable dispute.

At the Teheran conference (1943), the "line of theOder" was proposed by Churchill as the western fron-tier of Poland. The Oder River ran south from theBaltic Sea less than a hundred miles east of Berlin. Be-tween Berlin and Dresden, the Oder divided into theWestern Neisse, which continued to run south, and theOder itself, which continued in a southeastern direction.Further south, the Oder was joined by the EasternNeisse, which ran to the southwest. The distinction be-tween the Western and the Eastern Neisse became veryimportant in the ensuing controversy.

At the Yalta conference, Stalin proposed that theOder and Western Neisse Rivers be designated thewestern border of Poland.130 Roosevelt objected to this.He was willing to extend Poland's territory as far as theOder in the northwest, but saw "little justification" inexpending Poland to the Western Neisse in the south-west. Churchill agreed with him.131 Though all agreedthat Poland should be compensated by German land inthe West, the Western allies preferred that the frontierfollow the Oder and the Eastern Neisse.132

The British position on this question was consistentwith the discussions between the British leaders andMikolajczyk the previous autumn. At that time theBritish had been willing to agree to a frontier up to theOder in order to strengthen the position of the LondonPoles, but, according to Eden, "there had never beenany question of our agreeing to the Western Neisse."'33

Churchill at Yalta argued that Poland should not beawarded more land in the West than the Poles couldreadily assimilate. "It would be a pity," he said, "to stuffthe Polish goose so full of German food that it gets indi-gestion."134 His principal objection to expanding thewestern frontier as far as Stalin proposed was that itwould require moving six million Germans. Stalin dis-puted that figure, and contended that most Germanshad already fled west of the Western Neisse. Churchillsaid that the British War Cabinet would not agree to theWestern Neisse, and suggested that the question be re-ferred to the new Polish government and deferred to thepeace conference.135

Stalin agreed to defer the question to the peace con-ference. The Yalta Declaration stated that Polandshould in principle receive compensatory territory to thenorth and west, that the new provisional government inPoland should be consulted, and that the delineation ofPoland's western border should await the peace confer-ence. So the matter rested, at least on paper.136

I,Ln reality, the war and its consequences crashed on.By the time of the next Big Three conference, held inPotsdam in July 1945, Roosevelt had died, Germany had

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surrendered, and Soviet forces had occupied all the landeast of the Western Neisse and turned it over to the pup-pet Polish government to administer. This effectivelysettled the question of Poland's western frontier.

At the Potsdam conference, Stalin again formallyproposed that the Oder and the Western Neisse be rec-ognized as the western border of Poland. President Tru-man protested the de facto creation of a Polish zone in apart of what had been eastern Germany without priorAllied agreement. Stalin replied that the Germans hadfled the area, and that he couldn't stop the Poles fromfilling the administrative vacuum. Churchill restated hisobjections to a Western Neisse frontier: the territorialcompensation was disproportionate, the food and fuelwere needed in other parts of Germany, millions of Ger-mans would have to be moved. The disputes over theGerman population in the territory and over the mean-ing of the "line of the Oder" phrase used at Teherancontinued.137

Churchill was forced from power in the GeneralElection held during the Potsdam conference, and socould not see the conference through to its conclusion.In his memoirs, he stated that he had planned to con-front Stalin at the end of the conference with the "un-finished business" of Poland, including the question ofthe western frontier. Rather than agree to the WesternNeisse border, he wrote, he would have made a publicbreak with Stalin.138

This intention was penned with the benefit of hind-sight, but no doubt with sincerity. Whether under differ-ent circumstances Churchill would indeed have seen fitto break with one of his principal allies over the disposi-tion of a relatively minor stretch of territory is perhapsless than certain. Even less certain is the prospect thatStalin might have yielded part of his newly won empirein Eastern Europe when confronted by a rupture withBritain. Truman had already made what Churchillcalled the "fateful decision" to withdraw the WesternAllied forces into the agreed-upon zones of occupation,so Churchill's real bargaining power was slight. Stalinheld the winning cards.

Clement Attlee replaced Churchill at the Potsdamconference. On August 2nd, he, Truman, and Stalinagreed to regard the line of the Oder and WesternNeisse as Poland's de facto western border.

On 16 August 1945, the Soviet and Polish govern-ments signed a treaty recognizing the Curzon Line,with minor adjustments, as the eastern border ofPoland. Poland's western frontier remained officiallyunresolved until June 1991, when a newly reunited Ger-many signed a treaty with Poland recognizing the Oder-Western Neisse line.

Churchill and the Fate of GermanyThe Allies began serious discussions about the man-

agement of postwar Germany shortly after the war took

a permanent turn in their favor in early 1943. Thatsummer, a British Cabinet committee chaired by Attleerecommended that Germany be occupied in three zonesof roughly equal size. Britain would occupy the north-west, the United States the southwest and south, andRussia the east. Berlin would be jointly occupied.139

The question of occupied Germany was discussed atthe Teheran conference in 1943, but no final decisionwas reached.140 At Quebec in September 1944,Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to the British proposal,with additional harbor arrangements for the UnitedStates. In September and November, representatives ofthe Big Three allies on the European Advisory Com-mission signed agreements along those lines.141 The ulti-mate disposition of the occupation zones was still notsettled. At their meeting in Moscow in October 1944,Stalin and Churchill discussed the possibilities of puttingthe Ruhr and Saar regions under international controland of forming a separate state in the Rhineland.142

Though secondary to the Polish question, the ques-tion of the occupation zones was discussed at the Yaltaconference. Churchill there proposed to allot an occu-pation zone to France. Stalin treated the idea skepti-cally, but Roosevelt assured Churchill privately that hewas prepared to give France a section of the Americanzone. Near the end of the conference, the Big Threeagreed to give France a seat on the German ControlCommission.143

By the time of the Yalta conference, General Eisen-hower had been urging Roosevelt for two years not toset up zones of occupation in Germany. He even senthis chief of staff, General Bedell Smith, to Yalta to seeRoosevelt and repeat the advice, particularly on thegrounds that the Western Allied forces now appearedlikely to penetrate further into Germany than earlier es-timates had predicted. FDR nonetheless stood by thezones idea.144

The agreed-upon zones came under further pressureas the armies of the Western Allies advanced throughGermany in the spring of 1945. Churchill urged Eisen-hower to push his forces as far eastward as possible, butthe general, for what seemed to him to be sound militaryreasons, instead diverted some of his forces southwardto the Leipzig-Dresden area.145 He also stopped short oftaking Prague.146

Though the western armies did not take Berlin, theydid advance over one hundred miles into what had beendesignated the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. Asnoted earlier, Churchill saw this advance as an impor-tant bargaining chip with Russia. He therefore arguedthat the western armies should not withdraw into theiroccupation zones until agreements were reached withRussia about Poland and other important political is-sues. As he noted to General Ismay nearly a month be-fore the German surrender, "we consider the matter isabove the sphere of purely military decision by a com-mander in the field."147

Churchill expressed his misgivings more fully in a

FINEST HOUR 84 / 45

May 4th note to Eden. He said the withdrawal of thewestern armies would mean the "sweeping forward" ofthe Soviet armies some 120 miles on a 300-400-milefront, which "would be one of the most melancholy[events] in history." In a foreshadow of his 1946 "IronCurtain" (or "Sinews of Peace") speech, he noted thatthe territory under Soviet control would include "theBaltic provinces, all of Germany to the occupation line,all Czechoslovakia, a large part of Austria, the whole ofYugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria [and] all thegreat capitals of Middle Europe, including Berlin, Vi-enna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia..."14*

On May 6th, he advised Truman to "hold firmly tothe existing position obtained or being obtained by ourarmies..."149 On June 4th, he told Truman that "I viewwith profound misgivings the retreat of the AmericanArmy to our line of occupation in the central sector,thus bringing Soviet power into the heart of WesternEurope and the descent of an iron curtain between usand everything to the eastward. I hoped that this re-treat, if it has to be made, would be accompanied by thesettlement of many great things which would be the true

foundation of world peace."15" On June 12th Truman re-jected Churchill's plea to postpone the withdrawal.151

Though generous to Truman in his memoirs,Churchill forever afterwards regretted this decision. Inconversation years later with his assistant, JohnColville, Churchill accused the United States of givingaway "vast tracts of Europe" to please Russia. He saidthat if he had been less occupied with the British Gen-eral Election, and if Roosevelt had been alive and well,matters might have worked out better.152

Keeping the western armies on the territory they oc-cupied at the end of the war would not have changedthe situation entirely, and Churchill probably realizedthis. The notion that Stalin might have relaxed his irongrip on Poland in order to advance further westwardbeyond Poland hardly seems plausible. Nonetheless, itwas the only realistic military leverage the West hadagainst Russia, and the rejection of what could reason-ably have been regarded as an obsolete occupation planwould at least have preserved in freedom the not incon-siderable territory that was ceded by the western with-drawal. $

FOOTNOTES95. Colville in Commentary, p. 44.96. Ibid.97. Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 1951), pp. 394-7; Gilbert, p. 589.98. Eden, pp. 335, 338, 342, 370, 380-1.99. Stalin, p. 391, n. 57; Gilbert, p. 589.100. Gilbert, p. 589.101. Eden, p. 496.102. Gilbert, p. 652103. Eden, pp. 314-16.104. Colville in Commentary, p. 44.105. Eden, pp. 429-30.106. Gilbert, p. 642.107. Stalin, p. 196.108. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 237.109. Eden, p. 432.110. Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 394-7; Gilbert,

pp. 589-93; Stalin correspondence.111. Gilbert, p. 590; Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp.

394-7; Stalin correspondence; Gilbert, p. 593.112. Gilbert, p. 615.113. Ibid., pp. 641-2, 648.114. Ibid., pp. 657-60.115. Ibid., pp. 657-60, 665.116. Ibid., pp. 672-5; Colville, Fringes of Power, p. 471.117. Gilbert, pp. 681-4.118. Stalin, pp. 201-4; Gilbert, pp. 686-88.119. Gilbert, p. 691.120. Stalin, p. 207.121. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 235.122. Eden, p. 563.123. Ibid., pp. 574-6.124. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 369-71;

Stettinius, pp. 154-6.

125. Stettinius, pp. 154-6.126. Ibid., p. 41; WSC, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 367.127. Ibid., pp. 367-9; Stettinius, pp. 152-3.128. Ibid, pp. 335-8.129. Churehill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 661-4.130. Ibid., pp. 373, 369-71; Stettinius, pp. 181-2.131. Ibid., pp. 209-10; Churchill, Triumph and

Tragedy, pp. 376-9.132. Ibid., pp. 647-8.133. Eden, p. 597.134. Stettinius, p. 184.135. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 374; Stet-

tinius, pp. 184-6: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp.385-6; Stettinius, p. 123.

136. Stettinius, pp. 301, 335-8.137. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 647-8, 654-

7, 659-60.138. Ibid., pp. 672-4.139. Ibid., pp. 507-510.140. Ibid., p. 351.141. Ibid., pp. 507-10; Stettinius, p. 37.142. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 240-1.143. Bishop, p. 323; Stettinius, p. 262.144. Bishop, p. 323.145. Stettinius, p. 299; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Cru-

sade in Europe (Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1948), pp. 396,400, 402; Colville in Commentary, p. 46.

146. Ibid.; Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 506-7.147. Ibid., p. 513.148. Ibid., pp. 502-3.149. Ibid., p. 501.150. Ibid., p. 603.151. Ibid., pp. 604-5.152. Colville, Fringes of Power, p. 658.

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