Russia at war 1941-1945

Independence), still with General Okulicki at its head. After the collapse of the Warsaw Rising, Okulicki had been appointed to replace General Bör-Komarowski as head of the Armija Krajowa. The new Underground, which had "inherited" the military and radio equipment of the Armija Krajowa, continued its activities after the Russians had overrun the whole of Poland. So in March the Soviet Government decided to decapitate this "anti-Russian resistance movement".

General Okulicki and fifteen others were invited—in two lots—to meet a number of

Russian officers, ostensibly with a view to discussing the Yalta decisions on Poland and a modus vivendi. The meetings were a trap, Okulicki and the others, among them three members of the "Polish Underground Government" (Jan Jankowski, Adam Ben and Stanislaw Jasiukowicz), and Puzak, socialist president of the "underground parliament", were arrested and taken to Moscow. On April 28 Churchill anxiously inquired, in a letter to Stalin, about the "fifteen Poles" who were rumoured to have been "deported". On May 4, Stalin replied that he had no intention of being silent about the sixteen—not fifteen—

Poles. All, or some of them, depending on the outcome of the investigations, would be put on trial.

[They are] charged with subversive activities behind the lines of the Red Army. This subversion has taken a toll of over a hundred Red Army soldiers and officers; they are also charged with keeping illegal radio transmitters behind our lines... The Red Army is forced to protect its units and rear-lines against saboteurs.

He described Okulicki as a person of "particular odiousness".

[ Churchill-Stalin Correspondence, p. 348]

The arrest of these Poles—and the whole Polish question—were right in the centre of the Stalin-Hopkins discussions between May 26 and June 6. These six meetings took place

during the "last mission" that Hopkins—a very sick man who was to die only a few months later—was to perform at the request of the new President, Harry Truman. At the very first meeting with Stalin, Hopkins recalled how, on his way back from Yalta,

Roosevelt had frequently spoken of "the respect and admiration he had for Marshal Stalin"; but the fact remained that "in the last six weeks deterioration of [American]

public opinion had been so serious as to affect adversely the relations between the two countries."

In a country like ours [Hopkins said] public opinion is affected by specific incidents, and the deterioration ... has been centred on our inability to carry into effect the Yalta Agreement on Poland.

Time and again he returned to this question, saying that, in the public view in the United States, "Poland had become a symbol of our ability to work out problems with the Soviet Union." He urged Stalin to speed up the formation of the "new" Polish Government and also, purely and simply, to release the leaders of the Polish Underground now under

arrest.

Stalin would not yield on this point; not only had this Underground committed grave

crimes against the Red Army, but these people represented that cordon sanitaire policy so dear to Churchill's heart; the British conservatives did not want the new Poland to be friendly to the Soviet Union. In reply to Hopkin's long plea in favour of allowing Poland all the necessary democratic freedoms, as America understood them, Stalin said that (a) in time of war these political freedoms could not be enjoyed to the full extent and (b) nor could they be granted without reservations to Fascist parties trying to overthrow the government. It was obvious that, in Stalin's mind, the word "Fascist" applied to the Armija Krajowa and all other Polish elements hostile to Russia.

However, a virtual agreement was reached about including Mikolajczyk and a few others in the Polish Government, and, after his fourth meeting with Stalin, Hopkins was able to report to Truman:

It looks as though Stalin is prepared to return to and implement the Crimea

decision and permit a representative group to come to Moscow to consult with the

[Molotov-Harriman-Clark Kerr] commission.

In the course of the six Hopkins-Stalin meetings several other important questions were, of course, discussed.

[ Sherwood, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 872-906.]

Hopkins urged Stalin to appoint without delay the Russian member of the Control

Council in Germany, since Eisenhower had already been appointed its American