Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Eastern Europe; Finland; Greece; Turkey, Volume X, Part 2

85. Memorandum of Conversation⁰

Washington, October 6, 1959.

PARTICIPANTS

• U.S.
  • Mr. Robert Murphy, Under Secretary of State
  • Mr. F.D. Kohler—EUR
  • Mr. E.S. Glenn—LS/I
• Poland
  • Mr. Edward Ochab, Minister of Agriculture¹
  • Ambassador Romuald Spasowski
  • Dr. Marian Dobrosielski, Minister Counselor for Economic Affairs of the Polish Embassy

The conversation took place at a reception of Under Secretary Murphy. It was interrupted several times by various guests and by newspapermen trying to interview Mr. Ochab; in particular, Mr. Kucherov of the “U.S. News and World Report”, interviewed Mr. Ochab in Russian about the question of agricultural cooperatives in Poland.

Mr. Ochab directed the conversation towards the question of Polish-German relations and of the Western borders of Poland. He spoke of the great sufferings of the Polish people during the war.

Mr. Murphy said that he had seen the destruction of Warsaw when he accompanied General Eisenhower, whose political adviser he was at the time.

Mr. Ochab said that the Poles were well aware of the part played by the U.S. in the war. He himself had often cheered the advances of the U.S. Army and mourned its temporary setback in the Ardennes at the time when he was a member of the first Polish Army.

Mr. Murphy stated that the time had come to look towards a future different from what the past had been.

Mr. Ochab said that the Poles had great misgivings in regard to West German policies. It is not that they are unfriendly towards all Germans. On the contrary they greatly admire German culture and feel that men like Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller and Heine belong to all humanity.

Mr. Ochab considers Mr. Murphy as an expert on German affairs. How can Mr. Murphy explain that the nation which produced such great thinkers and authors should have voted for Hitler? (The latter remark was not interpreted into English because of interruptions.)

Mr. Ochab returned to the subject and complained about the activities of German revisionist groups, statements in the German press and the fact that Chancellor Adenauer has posed for a photograph dressed in the mantle of the medieval Teutonic Knights of the Cross, an Order which had done great harm to Poland and initiated the German push to the East. He enumerated various anti-Polish activities of the Germans in the recent and more distant past and said that German youth was being educated in the same anti-Polish way which had led to the activities of the HKT (a German organization aiming at the settlement of the Polish Province of Prussia by ethnic Germans).

Mr. Murphy said that he felt that the situation had greatly changed. We do not live in a static world. Mr. Murphy mentioned that he was from Milwaukee which at the time of his boyhood was more than 50% German. It is now more than 60% Polish and the change, great as it was, took place without any bloodshed. Didn’t Mr. Ochab feel that the situation had changed?

Mr. Ochab said that the policies of the West German Government were dangerous and encouraged the spirit of revenge among the German people. Anyone with some political experience could not fail to understand that the question of the Polish-German borders is closed, since it could be reopened only by war. Yet Chancellor Adenauer, in spite of his great political sophistication, failed to make this clear to the German people.

Mr. Murphy asked what Mr. Ochab would have done, as a practical politician, if he had been in Mr. Adenauer’s place with 9 million voters transplaced from the former German territory taken over by Poland.

Mr. Ochab said that the attitude of the German Government lacked frankness and that it would have been better for everybody, Germany included, if it had been otherwise. For instance, the question of Lwow and Wilno² was also a disturbing political question in Poland ten years ago. It is no longer so because of the frankness with which the Polish Government told the Polish people that the question of the borders had to be considered as closed.

Mr. Murphy suggested that the Polish Government had more powerful means of political persuasion at its disposal than did the German Government. Didn’t Mr. Ochab think that the situation had changed, if it did not and if the future was to be only a repetition of the past, then statesmen might as well give up.

Mr. Ochab agreed that the situation had changed:

1. Because the Polish border was now on the Oder and the Neisse, along a line easy to defend;

2. Because of the existence of East Germany;

3. Because of the existence of the Warsaw Pact; and

4. Because of some changes in West Germany (these remarks were not fully interpreted because of interruptions).

Mr. Murphy said that he was glad that Mr. Ochab agreed that the situation had changed.

Mr. Ochab took his leave of his host shortly thereafter.

0. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 748.13/10–659. Confidential.
1. Minister of Agriculture Edward Ochab arrived in New York on October 1 for a 2-week visit to the United States at the invitation of the U.S. Government under the leader program of the International Educational Exchange Service of the Department of State. He visited several areas of the country for the purpose of observing agricultural production, research, and education. He was accompanied by two other leader grantees, Jan Stanislaw Gucwa, Under Secretary of State in the Ministry of Agriculture, and Felicjan Dembinski, Chairman of the Scientific and Technical Council of the Ministry of Agriculture. Ochab also met with officials in Washington on October 2, 3, and 14; see Documents 87–90
2. The cultural centers of Lwow and Wilno in eastern Poland remained outside the frontiers of Poland after World War II when the border was shifted 150 miles to the west. These cities were incorporated into the territory of the Soviet Union.