Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [290]
The U.S. president and British prime minister have often been criticised for agreeing at Yalta to transfer to Stalin all Soviet subjects detained in Europe. Of those who returned, even from German captivity, some were shot and most were dispatched to labour camps. Almost all who had served in enemy uniform were liquidated. Yet, on the repatriation issue, it is impossible to see how the Anglo-Americans could have acted otherwise. The Soviet Union had borne the overwhelming burden of the land war against Hitler. The Western Allies were still soliciting the assistance of the Red Army, to complete the defeat of Japan. The price of Soviet military aid, of so much Russian blood spilt while so much American and British blood was saved, was acquiescence in a large measure of Soviet imperialism. Churchill expressed to the Soviet warlord his anxiety for the return of British POWs, whom the Russians were liberating in increasing numbers. In a world which, as Churchill so vividly described, was consumed by suffering, it was hard for the Anglo-Americans to demand much priority of sympathy for Soviet subjects who had served the Nazi cause. The integrity of Allied purposes in the Second World War was inescapably compromised by association with the tyranny of Stalin, to defeat that of Hitler. Once this necessary evil was conceded, lesser ones remorselessly followed. Among them was the surrender of hundreds of thousands of perceived Soviet renegades.
The foremost business of Yalta, above all in Churchill’s eyes, was the future of Poland. Stalin wanted recognition of its new frontiers—the so-called Curzon Line in the east, the Oder-Neisse in the west. Churchill made plain that he was now less concerned with territory than with the democratic character of the new Polish government. He sought to exchange Western recognition of the frontiers Moscow wanted for some shreds of domestic freedom for the Poles. He could not, he said, accept that Moscow’s “Lublin Poles” represented the will of the nation. Stalin riposted that the new Warsaw regime was as representative of the Polish people as was de Gaulle’s new government of France. Roosevelt sought to adjourn the session, but Churchill insisted that the Polish issue must be resolved. The president observed impatiently that “Poland had been a source of trouble for over 500 years.” The prime minister said: “We must do what we can1065 to put an end to the trouble.” Here was another exchange sorely damaging to British purposes. Roosevelt’s apparent indifference was once more flaunted before Russian eyes.
Overnight, however, some reinforcement was secured for the Polish cause. Roosevelt signed a letter to Stalin, saying that the United States—like Britain—could not recognise the Polish government as then composed. At the conference’s third plenary session on February 7, the president described the Polish issue as of “very great importance.” There was more talk of occupation zones in Germany. Agreement was reached about respective states’ voting rights at the proposed new United Nations. On February 8, Churchill reasserted the urgency of settling the Polish question. Molotov said that the new communist government had been “enthusiastically acclaimed by the majority of the Polish people.” Churchill pressed for immediate free elections, which prompted Stalin to again raise comparisons with France, where no poll was scheduled. Then, however, the Russian leader conceded that an