Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [291]
Anglo-American leverage with Stalin derived solely from Lend-Lease supplies. Even had Roosevelt threatened to suspend shipments unless the Western powers gained satisfaction about Poland, the Russians would not have bowed. Stalin had shown himself implacable in imposing his territorial demands since 1941, when Western aid was much more important than in 1945. From start to finish, he grasped the fact that the Anglo-Americans needed Russia’s vast human sacrifice more than Russia needed Western supplies. Even had the president himself been willing to exercise such pressure—as, of course, he was not—neither the American nor the British people would have supported sanctions. Popular enthusiasm for a common front against the Axis still ran high. Attempts to impose Western wishes upon the heroic Russians would have commanded sympathy only with a small minority of people who grasped the reality of looming eastern European servitude.
At the fifth plenary session on February 9, Churchill said that diplomatic observers must monitor the Polish election. The Russians responded smoothly that this was perfectly acceptable to them, but the Warsaw government must be consulted: the presence of such observers might wound the Poles by implying that they were not trusted. Likewise, when Churchill said that a British ambassador should be sent to Warsaw, the Russians deferred the matter to Polish arbitration. With his usual serpentine skill, Stalin reminded the prime minister of his debt to Moscow by asserting that he had “complete confidence” in British policy in Greece.
Next day, the tenth, Roosevelt caused consternation to the British by announcing that he would leave Yalta on the following morning. When the president had cabled the prime minister back in January, asserting his intention to spend only five days at Yalta, Churchill expostulated to his staff that even the Almighty had allowed himself seven to make the world. Now, in British eyes, the summit had yet to achieve decisive conclusions. But the president was correct; even had he lingered, it was unlikely anything further would have been accomplished. The chasm between Russian intentions and Western aspirations in eastern Europe was unbridgeable. Nonetheless, an agreement had been reached about Poland which, if Stalin kept his word, might sustain some fig leaf of democracy. Churchill professed satisfaction. He could do little else. He spent February 12 as a tourist, visiting British battlefields of the Crimean War, and gazing on the ruins of Sebastopol. The next day, he rested aboard the British liner Franconia, anchored off the coast at his pleasure, then flew to Athens.
The contrast could not have been greater between his previous visit, amid gunfire, and the hysterical applause with which he was received on the afternoon of February 14. Vast crowds thronged the streets of the Greek capital, offering a vindication that was sweet to him. He elected to make a further brief stop in Cairo. “A wandering minstrel I,” he sang to himself, a ditty from his beloved Gilbert and Sullivan, “a thing of threads and patches.” He landed back in Britain on February 20. Beaverbrook was among those who offered extravagant congratulations on his alleged “success” at Yalta, which “followed so swiftly on the heels1066 of the Greek triumph, that you now appear to your countrymen to be the greatest statesman as well as the greatest warrior.”
Even by Beaverbrook’s standards, this was a travesty. In the House of Commons, there was profound anxiety about the outcome of Yalta, and its implications for the Poles. The concluding communiqué by the Big Three had asserted that Poland’s provisional government should be “reorganized on a broader democratic basis with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself