World War II Behind Closed Doors by Laurence Rees Read Free Book Online

could have avoided much of the trouble of the world today?’ Welles replied unequivocally: ‘As it has turned out, the answer to your question, I think, is clearly “Yes”’. 33
    But just what would this ‘more firm policy’ towards the Soviet Union have consisted of in practical terms in 1943? An outright confrontation with Stalin over the issue of the borders of eastern Poland might well have been immensely damaging to the war effort. By now it was unlikely in the extreme that Stalin could possibly make a separate peace with Hitler, but the potential of the Soviet Union to cause problems over a range of issues – not least refusing to come into the war against Japan once Germany was defeated – was huge. But there was, perhaps, a middle way onoffer that Roosevelt spurned. He could have refused to make any commitments on borders until the end of the war, when a peace conference could be convened with the participation of all the parties involved, crucially the Poles themselves. This had been the position of both the Americans and British earlier in the war, but they altered their policy, as they saw it, because circumstances had changed. At such a post-war conference the Poles might well still have objected to the border changes, but at least the matter would have been dealt with honestly and in the open.
    What would Stalin have done if the Western Allies had kept to their original line and postponed any commitment on borders until the war was over? There were other things that Stalin wanted from the United States and Britain at this stage in the war apart from firm agreement on borders – most particularly, of course, the second front. Would he have thrown away all cooperation with Churchill and Roosevelt merely because they would not – without the consent of the Poles – agree to move the borders of the whole country? That is surely unlikely.
    But, it might be argued, what would have been the point in causing this angst when Stalin would shortly have possession of all this territory and could do what he liked anyway? There was never any serious chance of the West fighting the Red Army to get this land back.
    However, there is a clear difference between recognizing that one country has occupied another country by force majeure , and legitimizing that occupation. Maybe it is naive to expect politicians to stick to the principles they have freely signed up to – like those enshrined in the Atlantic Charter – but the corrosive cynicism that results when they don't is often worse.
    In Tehran, after Roosevelt's private chat with Stalin in which he said he wouldn't cause trouble over the Soviet demand to keep eastern Poland – a conversation the British didn't find out about until long after the conference was over – the American President then expressed ‘officially’, once representatives of the three governments had all sat down together, the hope that Stalin might reach some accommodation with the Polish government in exile in London.Stalin quashed this notion at once – even suggesting, shamefully, that the London Poles were ‘in contact’ with the Germans and had ‘killed the partisans’. 34 He went on to say that ‘the day before yesterday (when Churchill had his “matchstick” conversation with him about the shifting borders of Poland) there had been no mention of re-establishing relations with the Polish government. It had been a question of prescribing something to the Poles’. Significantly, neither Churchill nor Roosevelt uttered a word in defence of the Polish government in exile. There was no evidence to support Stalin's ludicrous charge that ‘the Polish Government and their friends in Poland were in contact with the Germans’. Yet the British Prime Minister and the American President did not protest.
    Churchill did try to explain to Stalin, with great patience, how important the fate of Poland was to the British. ‘We felt very strongly about it’, he said, ‘because it was the