740.0011 European War 1939/19956
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State (Berle)
The Polish Ambassador came in to present his Foreign Minister; likewise to discuss things in general.
I said I was glad to see him, because I had followed with great attention the Russian declaration of December 4th26 and the more recent [sic] Russian-Polish pact,27 which in turn was followed by the Polish-Czech pact.28
The Foreign Minister thereupon launched into a considerable discussion of their relations with Russia. He said that they had taken considerable heart from the Declaration of December 4th. Again, the Russo-Polish Pact had been a perfectly self-respecting document, implying as it did the respect for the sovereignty and way of life of Poland, and presumably it suggested a pattern for other countries. But, the Minister confided, he was worried whether these were not merely words designed to conceal an imperialistic intention, citing as examples the Baltic states. He said they were particularly interested in Lithuania, since a seizure of Lithuania would encircle Poland, much as the German East Prussian holding had done. He said that the Russian press had not acclaimed the Polish-Czech accord, but had father indicated a slight dissatisfaction with it.
I said that I, of course, could not discuss these matters officially. Speaking strictly personally, I had been turning the whole problem over in my mind. It seems to me that we had perfect ground to agree with the Russians in their desire for security, and that we must completely recognize the Russian right to run their own affairs in their own way. It seemed to me that American public opinion really would be met if, within this frame of perfect recognition of their entirely legitimate interests, respect for the cultural and social entities of other peoples could be scrupulously maintained. We had found relatively little difficulty in coming to such an arrangement in the American hemisphere, and while the circumstances were not parallel, somewhat of the same spirit might be worked out in eastern Europe.
[Page 112]The Polish Foreign Minister seemed genuinely delighted to find someone who had ever had any contact at all with the problems of eastern Europe. He said that he had been worried by the tone of Stalin’s last speech29 and wondered if we had the full text. I told him I had not seen it. He said he had been bothered by the statement that Russia fought alone, without allies; likewise by the fact that Stalin had receded radically from his previous position declaring that he hoped to crush the Germans; and now apparently were merely indicating his dislike of the present rulers of Germany, and not of the German people, and in words that would not exclude an agreement with them. He wondered if Stalin were trying to put pressure on the Allies to give him more support.
I told him that without careful examination of the text I could not comment. Quite irrespective of anything that was said, we were committed to supporting Russia and proposed to do so to the limit, both as a matter of keeping our given word, and as a matter of obvious common interest.
- The Polish-Soviet Declaration of Friendship and Mutual Assistance was signed at Moscow, December 4, 1941. A text was sent to the Department in telegram No. 2018, December 6, 1941, from the Chargé in the Soviet Union, Foreign Relations, 1941, vol. i, p. 266.↩
- Allusion is presumably to the Polish-Soviet Agreement of July 30, 1941; see footnote 6, p. 102.↩
- An agreement signed at London on January 23, 1942, for postwar economic, political, and military cooperation; for text, see the London Times, January 24, 1942, p. 3.↩
- For a summary of Stalin’s speech on February 23, 1942, see telegram No. 163, February 24, from the Chargé in the Soviet Union, p. 416.↩