Russia at war 1941-1945

The official repudiation of a Catholic priest who had consorted with the Devil naturally had the very opposite effect on the Polish and Lithuanian clergy to what Stalin and

Molotov had hoped for when they devoted so much of their time to their unusual visitor from the USA. This was no joking matter: for the attitude of the Polish clergy mattered greatly in a question like the recruitment of Poles into the "Moscow-made" Polish Army.

As we shall see, this Army, by the end of 1944, when part of Poland had already been liberated, consisted of about 300,000 men. With the active co-operation of the Church and the Armija Krajowa it might have been much larger.

Father Braun, the unofficial representative of the Vatican in the Soviet Union (and he was not going to do anything to help the Kremlin) thought the Orlemanski visit the biggest joke for years. Father Braun, of Alsatian origin, but American nationality, was the priest of the only Catholic church in Moscow. It happened to be next door to the NKVD

headquarters and was jokingly referred to as Notre-Dame de Lubianka. Father Braun had had a good deal of trouble with the Soviet authorities during the eight or nine years he had been in Russia; in return he was an unfailing source of information to many

foreigners, who had come to Russia with an open mind. During the earlier part of the war he had lived in two rooms at the French Embassy, till he was more or less turned out by the rather pro-Soviet and anti-clerical French Minister, M. Roger Garreau. The US

Embassy took him under its wing after that.

Professor Oscar Lange of Chicago University, who was to become a prominent

personality in post-war Poland, came to Moscow soon after Father Orlemanski, and was also photographed in the company of Stalin and Molotov, and made numerous speeches,

in which, more intelligently than Orlemanski, he advocated close bonds between Russian and the New Poland. The Russians publicised the eminent Professor's preference for the

"Moscow" Poles in order to make the maximum impression in the USA.

*

Throughout May, Poland continued to be front-page news. With obvious relish the Soviet press reported on May 19 that General Zeligowski, a popular Polish veteran then in

London, had more or less rebelled against the London Government by saying that the

alliance of the Slavs was the only salvation for Poland, and that, by refusing to adopt this slogan, the London Government was playing into the hands of the Germans. The

Russians gladly forgave Zeligowski the coup de force with which he had snatched Vilno away from Lithuania in 1920, and even the contemptuous remarks he now made about

the Lithuanians, whom he described as a nondescript alien body in the Slav world. In London many Poles tried to explain Zeligowski's change of heart by simply saying the poor old boy had gone gaga.

But the biggest surprise was still in store.

On May 24 the Union of Polish Patriots issued a statement saying:

A few days ago delegates of the People's Council of Poland (Krajowa Rada

Narodowa) arrived in Moscow... This Council was established in Warsaw on January 1, 1944, by the democratic parties and groups struggling against the

German occupants. The following are represented in the K.R.N.: The Opposition

groups of the Stronnictwo Ludowo (Peasant Party), the P.P.S. (Socialist Party), P.P.R. (Workers'—in fact, Communist—Party), the Committee of National

Initiative non-party democrats, the underground trade-union movement, the Youth

Struggle Movement (Walki Mlodych), groups of writers and other intellectual workers, artisan and co-operative groups, representatives of the underground

military organisations—the National Guard, the National Militia, the Peasant

Battalions, local military formations of the Armija Krajowa, etc.

These were alleged "dissidents" of that A.K. which was under the orders of the London Government. The statement went on: