Russia at war 1941-1945

The Manifesto then enumerated the various items of the reconstruction programme, and stressed the need for a general land reform. On nationalisation it was cautious; it said that the Polish State would take over large enterprises now run by the German State and

German capitalists, and, "as economic relations were being regulated, property would be returned to its owners." All this was still exceedingly vague.

The Manifesto said that comradeship-in-arms would strengthen Poland's friendship with Great Britain and the USA, and that Poland would strive to maintain her traditional bonds of friendship and alliance with France.

The personnel of the National Committee was a rather mixed bunch; Dr Drobner—head

of the Department for Labour and Health—for instance, was a right-wing Socialist; Witos was (like Mikolajczyk) a veteran leader of the Popular Peasant Party (he was soon to be eliminated); but the key positions were obviously held by men of the PPR (the

Communist Party)—to which Bierut, the President of the Krajowa Rada Narodowa, at that time also belonged. Osöbka-Morawski was made President of the Committee—not

perhaps because he was an outstanding personality, but because he was one of the few Socialists available. This was freely admitted (much later, it is true) by many of the PPR

men.

On July 23 a number of decrees were issued by the Rada Narodowa—one establishing a High Command of the Polish Army, another placing the Union of Polish Patriots under

the authority of the National Committee, and so on.

We now come to one of the most controversial episodes of the war in the East—the

tragedy of the Warsaw Rising of August-September 1944. The "London-Polish" version of what happened is too familiar to need recalling in detail. Bôr-Komarowski, the leader of the uprising, has told his story of "Russian treachery"; so has Stanislas Mikolajczyk in his Rape of Poland [ See his Chapter VI called "Betrayal".] Mikolajczyk's book in particular, keeps on referring to General Rokossovsky's headquarters as "only a few miles" outside Warsaw, and to the Red Army as being "in the suburbs of Warsaw from which it wouldn't budge." The fact that Warsaw and the Red Army were separated by a wide river, the Vistula, is only very incidentally referred to. His implication is that the Vistula was no serious obstacle and that, if they had wanted to, the Russians could easily have captured Warsaw, and so saved the city from destruction, and also saved many of the 300,000 Poles who were to perish in the two-months' fighting-cum-massacre inside the city. If the Russians did not capture Warsaw, it was not, according to Mikolajczyk, because they could not do it, but for purely political reasons: it did not suit them to have the Polish capital "liberated" by a popular rising, directed by Bör-Komarowski and other

"agents" of the London Government. Both Bor-Komarowski and Mikolajczyk make the most of the following facts: (1) a Moscow broadcast at the end of July specifically calling on the people of Warsaw to rise against the Germans; (2) the Russian refusal to allow planes from the west that had dropped supplies on Warsaw to land on Russian airfields, and (3) the lack of proper Russian support for the gallant attempt of the Polish troops under General Berling to force the Vistula in the immediate neighbourhood of Warsaw, and the disciplinary action taken against Berling for failing to hold the bridgehead, or rather, for making the attempt at all.

The Churchill-Stalin correspondence during the period of the Warsaw rising is marked by a tone of increasing exasperation on the part of Churchill about the Russians' unco-operative attitude, and by growing anger on the part of Stalin against the Warsaw

"adventurers" who had dragged the people of Warsaw into a senseless rebellion without co-ordinating their actions with the Red Army Command.

On August 4 (i.e. three days after the beginning of the rebellion) Churchill wired to Stalin:

At the urgent request of the Polish underground we are dropping, subject to the

weather, about sixty tons (on Warsaw)... They also say they appeal for Russian aid which seems very near. They are being attacked by one and a half German

divisions.

On August 5 Stalin replied:

I think the information given you by the Poles is greatly exaggerated and

unreliable... The Polish émigrés claim that they have all but captured Vilno with Home Army units... This has nothing to do with the facts. The Home Army consists