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but the delegates from Lublin seem to be the greatest villains imaginable.” Between sessions, Churchill made desperate efforts to induce the London Poles to accept the proposed new frontiers for their country, which would cede territory to Russia in exchange for land carved from eastern Germany. Blandishments and threats alike failed to move Mikolajczyk and his colleagues, who remained obdurate. Stalin dismissed a compromise proposal advanced by the British. When the Polish leader returned to London and put the final Soviet offer to his colleagues, it was decisively rejected. He then resigned as prime minister. Churchill found himself accepting commiserations from Stalin, because “his” Poles had rejected a deal. It was apparent that, in these circumstances, Moscow’s appointees would rule the country.

It would have suited Stalin to gain Mikolajczyk’s acquiescence both in the new borders and in accepting a marginal role in the new government. But, since there was no possibility that non-Communists would be granted real influence, far less power, the London Poles lost nothing and preserved their honour by rejecting Stalin’s proposals. Churchill, however, was left to nurse despondency and failure. He thought the Poles almost demented in their refusal to make terms with Moscow. When General Anders, Polish corps commander in Italy, expressed hopes that the Allies would free Poland by force once Germany was beaten, Churchill said despairingly: “This is crazy. You cannot defeat the Russians.” In his perception, Mikolajczyk’s stubbornness had handed his country to Stalin. “The Poles’ game is up,”990 he said tersely to Moran. Better, he thought, to accept a Russian mess of pottage than nothing at all.

Posterity should surely be moved in recognising that Churchill cared so much about Poland, where Britain had no selfish interest whatever. He waged a long, thankless struggle on behalf of the nation which had become the victim of Nazi aggression at the outbreak of the Second World War. It seemed to him unbearably tragic that impending Allied victory should merely offer a new servitude to the people on whose behalf Britain had declared war on Germany. Yet this was the case, and would have been so even had Roosevelt entered the lists in support of Churchill. The Russians were on the Vistula, while the Anglo-Americans were not yet at the Rhine. “Far quicker than the British991 and also the Americans,” Sir William Deakin has written, “the Russians grasped the inner logic of the situation, namely that at the final victory the fate of the occupied countries of Europe … would be decided neither by the Resistance leaders themselves on the spot nor their representatives … in London and Moscow, but along a frontier between the armies of the Western Allies on the one hand and the Russians on the other.”

The Moscow visit ended with the usual round of banquets. Churchill told Stalin that he favoured some grouping of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia after the war, which the Russian leader cared for not at all. Stalin surprised Churchill by expressing a passionate hatred for Switzerland. But the Russians displayed no hostility to the British, as they had so often done in the past. On the contrary, Churchill and Stalin talked with freedom and, on the Russian side, unembarrassed mendacity. On October 18, Churchill addressed a press conference at the British embassy. The next morning, Stalin not only came to the airfield in the rain to see the prime minister off, but condescended to inspect the interior of his York aircraft. The two men parted with every evidence of cordiality. On the afternoon of October 22, Churchill landed back in Britain.

The world was allowed to suppose that his Moscow visit was merely a routine meeting of allies. It inspired in Churchill a brief surge of illusion, that he had forged an understanding with Stalin which might yield fruits such as he had failed to harvest from Roosevelt. The U.S. president, by contrast, was irked. He was in no doubt about Churchill’s purpose. Britain’s prime minister was attempting to achieve