Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1945, Europe, Volume V

The British Prime Minister (Churchill) to President Roosevelt ¹¹

London, 13 March 1945.

910. 1. Your numbers 713, 714 and 715.

I thank you for your full and considerate replies to my various messages on Poland. We can, of course, make no progress at Moscow without your aid, and if we get out of step the doom of Poland is sealed.

A month has passed since Yalta and no progress of any kind has been made. Soon I shall be questioned in Parliament on this point and I shall be forced to tell them the truth. Time is, of course, all on the side of Lublin, who are no doubt at work to establish their authority in such a way as to make it impregnable.

2. I am willing to defer addressing Stalin directly for the time being on this subject. But, in that case, I must beg you to agree that the instructions to our Ambassadors should deal with the points which I have proposed to put to Stalin in (a) to (e) of paragraph 7 of my number 905.¹³

You say that some of these might have the opposite effect to what we intend. I wonder which you have in mind. We might be able to improve the working [wording?]. But I am convinced that unless we can induce the Russians to agree to these fundamental points of procedure, all our work at Yalta will be in vain.

3. When the discussions following Yalta began at Moscow, we had a perfectly simple objective, namely, to bring together for consultation representative Poles from inside Poland and elsewhere and to promote the formation of a new re-organized Polish Government sufficiently representative of all Poland for us to recognize it.

A test case of progress in this direction would be the inviting of Mikolajczvk and two or three of his friends who have resigned from the London Polish Government because they realize that a good understanding must be reached with Russia.

4. I fear that your present instructions to Averell will lead to little if any progress on all this, as the only definite suggestion is that there should be a truce between Polish parties. Here we should enter ground of great disadvantage to us both. The Russians would almost at once claim that the truce was being broken by the Anti-Lublin Poles and that Lublin therefore could not be held to it.

I have little doubt that some of the supporters of the Polish Government in London and more particularly the extreme right wing underground force, the so-called N.S.Z.,¹⁴ are giving and would give the Russians and Lublin ground for this contention.

As we are not allowed to enter the country to see what the truth is, we shall be at the mercy of assertions. After a fortnight or so of negotiations about the truce, we shall be farther back than in the days before Yalta when you and I were agreed together that anyhow Mikolajczyk should be invited.

5. At Yalta also we agreed to take the Russian view of the frontier line. Poland has lost her frontier. Is she now to lose her freedom? That is the question which will undoubtedly have to be fought out in Parliament and in public here.

I do not wish to reveal a divergence between the British and the United States Governments, but it would certainly be necessary for me to make it clear that we are in presence of a great failure and an utter breakdown of what was settled at Yalta, but that we British have not the necessary strength to carry the matter further and that the limits of our capacity to act have been reached.

The moment that Molotov sees that he has beaten us away from the whole process of consultations among Poles to form a new government, he will know that we will put up with anything. On the other hand, I believe that combined dogged pressure and persistence along the lines on which we have been working and of my proposed draft message to Stalin, would very likely succeed.

6. We are also in presence of the Soviet memorandum of March 9 about inviting representatives of the Lublin Poles to San Francisco.¹⁵ This would amount to a de facto recognition of Lublin. Are we not both pledged not to recognize the Lublin Government until it has been re-organized in accordance with the declaration and spirit of Yalta, and consequently to continue to recognize the London Polish Government as the only one in existence.

The only possible course if no agreement is reached is to invite neither of the present Governments. This is in fact the line agreed upon between us. On the other hand, this very invitation question is well-suited to bring matters to a head at the Moscow conference and make the Soviets see that they must reach a fair and honourable conclusion in accordance with the decisions of Yalta.

7. I trust Harry is progressing. It is very disappointing that he should have had so serious a setback. When he first arrived in London he was better than I had seen him for years.

Kind regards.

11. Copy of telegram obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.
13. Dated March 8, p. 147.
14. Narodowe Sily Zbrojne (National Armed Forces).
15. For documentation regarding the United Nations Conference on International Organization, San Francisco, California, April 25–June 26, 1945, see vol. i, pp. 1 ff.; for the Soviet memorandum of March 9, see ibid., p. 113.