Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1943, The British Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, the Far East, Volume III

760C.61/2119¾: Telegram

The Ambassador to the Polish Government in Exile (Biddle) to the Secretary of State

London, November 27, 1943—9 p.m.
[Received 11:59 p.m.]

Polish Series [No.] 86. I conveyed the substance of the second paragraph of your 38, November 25, 1 p.m., to Prime Minister Mikolajczyk this morning.

I also stressed the importance of a calmer attitude on the part of interested Polish circles regarding the Moscow Declaration. Mikolajczyk assured me he had sought to make it clear to leaders of Polish opinion that anything other than a calm attitude at this point would only be embarrassing to the Polish Government.

However, with regard to the attitude of the Polish language press in the U.S., he said the problem was complicated. Reda Polonia⁵⁷ regarded the Polish Government favorably and as recently as September 17 had declared its support of the Government. There was on the other hand a group identified with Nowy Swiat⁵⁸ which was opposed to the Polish Government. Thus, when the latter group raised questions which engaged the sympathetic interest of all categories of Americans of Polish extraction and origin, this put the former group in an embarrassing position and produced a situation that was difficult to control.

As regards your fourth paragraph, I recently conveyed to Mikolajczyk a message contained in letter from the President dated November 8 to effect that the President would be glad to receive Mikolajczyk about January 15. The President’s letter was in reply to my letter of October 18 in which I said that Mikolajczyk hoped the President could receive him before Christmas. As regards the more recently expressed desire of Mikolajczyk to visit the President and British Prime Minister, as quoted in my 82, November 17, 6 p.m., Mikolajczyk told me this morning that the British Foreign Office had said it believed that the President and Mr. Churchill would be so engaged in the discussion of military matters that it would be difficult for the Prime Minister to receive him.

In this connection, Mikolajczyk said he and his associates considered that the matter of instructions to the Polish underground was a military question and further that military decisions taken at the present Conference⁵⁹ would undoubtedly decide the political future. He added that they regarded American Army policy in a totally different light from that of the Russian Army. They felt that the Americans would hope to go home at the earliest moment whereas the Russians would more than likely take a different view. He and his associates felt that as far west, as the Russian armies marched, just so far would Russia’s western frontier develop. They were inclined to look for this issue to be raised for decision at the present Conference.

With regard to the final paragraph of your telegram, please refer to my despatches Nos. 437 of October 14, and 463 of November 16⁶⁰ for the Polish Government’s instructions to the “underground” in Poland regarding rising against the Germans. Mikolajczyk remarked to me this morning that those instructions had been issued notwithstanding the fact that the British authorities here had discontinued the aerial despatch of munitions and other supplies to the “underground” in Poland. The British, he said, had explained that this was due to bad weather and to a lack of planes. He could not, however, escape the impression that the discontinuance was attributable to “political reasons”. He went on to say that the Polish underground had little alternative other than to rise against the Germans. The position, however, was one of the greatest difficulty in view of the apparent Russian game vis-à-vis the Polish underground. The following facts would illustrate his meaning. The Soviet Embassy here had recently launched Trybuna Polska, a Communist paper in the Polish language, which incidentally was being played up by Izvestiya and Pravda. It had already attacked the Polish Government on the alleged grounds that the Polish underground had been instructed to shoot the Communists in Poland. At the same time, Mikolajczyk continued, the Russians were dropping pamphlets in Poland threatening the Poles with reprisals from the Russian forces on their entrance into Poland because of the “underground’s” failure to rise when the Russians had urged them to do so. This, he said, was clearly a case of preparing public opinion and creating justification for eventually shooting down these Poles. In the circumstances, the Polish underground found itself in a most unhappy predicament.

[Biddle]

57. The Rada Polonii Amerikanskiej (“Polish Council”), located in Chicago, Illinois, was composed of representatives of Polish organizations in the United States.
58. New York Polish-language daily newspaper.
59. i.e., the Tehran Conference; the records of this Conference are printed in Foreign Relations, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943.
60. Latter not printed, but see footnote 50, p. 482.