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

The British Prime Minister (Churchill) to President Roosevelt ⁶¹

London, 31 March 1945.

929. Following is text of message I propose to send to Stalin. Please let me know what you think. I will not send it off till I hear from you. Text begins:

Prime Minister to Marshal Stalin. Personal and Top Secret.

1. You will by now I hope have received the message from the President of the United States which he was good enough to show to me before he sent it.

It is now my duty on behalf of His Majesty’s Government to assure you that the War Cabinet desire me to express to you our wholehearted endorsement of this message of the President’s, and that we associate ourselves with it in its entirety.

2. There are two or three points which I desire specially to emphasize. First, that we do not consider we have retained in the Moscow discussions the spirit of Yalta nor indeed, at points, the letter. It was never imagined by us that the commission we all three appointed with so much good will would not have been able to carry out their part swiftly and easily in a mood of give and take.

We certainly thought that a Polish Government “new” and “reorganized” would by now have been in existence, recognized by all the United Nations. This would have afforded a proof to the world of our capacity and resolve to work together for its future. It is still not too late to achieve this.

3. However, even before forming such a new and reorganized Polish Government, it was agreed by the commission that representative Poles should be summoned from inside Poland and from Poles abroad, not necessarily to take part in the government but merely for free and frank consultation.

Even this preliminary step cannot be taken because of the claim put forward to veto any invitation, even to the consultation, of which the Soviet or the Lublin Government do not approve. We can never agree to such a veto by any one of us three. This veto reaches its supreme example in the case of Monsieur Mikolajczyk who is regarded throughout the British and American world as the outstanding Polish figure outside Poland.

4. We also have learned with surprise and regret that Monsieur Molotov’s spontaneous offer to allow observers or missions to enter Poland has now been withdrawn. We are therefore deprived of all means of checking for ourselves the information, often of a most painful character, which is sent us almost daily by the Polish Government in London.

We do not understand why a veil of secrecy should thus be drawn over the Polish scene. We offer the fullest facilities to the Soviet Government to send missions or individuals to visit any of the territories in our military occupation.

In several cases this offer has been accepted by the Soviets and visits have taken place to mutual satisfaction. We ask that the principle of reciprocity shall be observed in these matters, which would help to make so good a foundation for our enduring partnership.

5. The President has also shown me messages which have passed between him and you about Monsieur Molotov’s inability to be present at the conference at San Francisco. We had hoped the presence there of the three Foreign Ministers might have led to a clearance of many of the difficulties which have descended upon us in a storm since our happy and hopeful union at Yalta. We do not however question in any way the weight of the public reasons which make it necessary for him to remain in Russia.

6. Like the President, I too was struck with the concluding sentence of your message to him. What he says about the American people also applies to the British people and to the nations of the British Commonwealth with the addition that His Majesty’s present advisers only hold office at the will of the Universal Suffrage Parliament.

If our efforts to reach an agreement about Poland are to be doomed to failure, I shall be bound to confess the fact to Parliament when they return from the Easter recess. No one has pleaded the cause of Russia with more fervour and conviction than I have tried to do. I was the first to raise my voice on June 22, 1941.⁶²

It is more than a year since I proclaimed to a startled world the justice of the Curzon Line for Russia’s western frontier,⁶³ and this frontier has now been accepted by both the British Parliament and the President of the United States.

It is as a sincere friend of Russia that I make my personal appeal to you and to your colleagues to come to a good understanding about Poland with the western democracies and not to smite down the hands of comradeship in the future guidance of the world which we now extend.

61. Copy of telegram obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.
62. For Prime Minister Churchill’s radio speech of June 22, 1941, following the German invasion of Soviet Russia, see Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: The Grand Alliance (Boston, 1950), pp. 371–373.
63. For text of Prime Minister Churchill’s speech in the House of Commons on February 22, 1944, publicly advocating the Curzon Line as the Polish eastern frontier, see Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 397, cols. 697–698.