The British Prime Minister (Churchill) to President Roosevelt 1

907. 1. I have now read the instructions to Mr. Harriman which were shown to our Ambassador today. I need not say how cordially I agree with all the first part of these instructions, but I am distressed at the conclusion which I fear may lead us into great difficulties.

I do not know what the answer of the London-Polish Government would be to a request for a political truce. They continue to assert, with a wealth of detail, that their friends in Poland are being arrested, deported and liquidated on a large scale. At the best they would make conditions of an impossible character.

2. As to the Lublin Poles, they may well answer that their government can alone ensure “The maximum amount of political tranquility inside”, that they already represent the great mass of the “Democratic Forces in Poland” and that they cannot join hands with émigré traitors to Poland or fascist collaborationists and landlords, and so on according to the usual technique.

3. Meanwhile we shall not be allowed inside the country or have any means of informing ourselves upon the position. It suits the Soviet very well to have a long period of delay so that the process of [Page 154] liquidation of elements unfavorable to them or their puppets may run its full course.

This would be furthered by our opening out now into proposals of a very undefined character for a political truce between these Polish parties, (whose hatreds would eat into live steel) in the spirit and intent of the Crimea decision and might well imply the abandonment of all clear-cut requests such as those suggested in my last telegram to you. Therefore I should find it very difficult to join in this project of a political truce.

4. I have already mentioned to you that the feeling here is very strong. Four ministers have abstained from the divisions and two have already resigned.

I beg therefore that you will give full consideration to my previous telegram number 905 and will suspend the delivery of the latest Harriman instructions till I have received your reply and can reply to it.2

  1. Copy of telegram obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.
  2. In telegram 555, March 10, 1945, 3 p.m., to Moscow, the Department requested that no action be taken on the instructions contained in its telegrams 537, March 8. 7 p.m., and 548, March 9, 8 p.m., until the British Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Clark Kerr) had received his instructions (860C.01/3–1045).