Wavering support for Poland from the West

Mikolajczyk, when he returned to London, found that the majority of his government disapproved of the concessions he had felt compelled to make to the U. S.S. R. He therefore accepted the consequences, and resigned. He was succeeded by Tomasz Arciszewski, a militant social-democrat. But although he was more to the left than his predecessor, the new head of the exile government failed to move the Kremlin.

When he resigned on November 24, 1944, Mikolajczyk handed over two documents concerning the policy of the U. S.A. and Great Britain towards the future Polish state. In a letter after he had been re-elected. President Roosevelt defined the American attitude clearly and positively.

"The Government of the United States is, most determinedly, in favour of a strong Polish state, free, independent, and conscious of the rights of the Polish people, to run its internal politics as it sees fit, without any outside interference.”

Certainly the U. S.A. could not depart from their traditional policy and guarantee the frontiers of the future Polish state, but they were ready to play a very large part in its economic reconstruction.

Moreover, on the previous November 2, on Churchill’s instructions. Sir Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, wrote to Romer, the Polish Foreign Minister, a letter of which the following is an extract:

"Finally you ask if His Majesty’s Government will guarantee the independence and integrity of the new Polish state. On this point the reply of His Majesty’s Government is that they are ready to give this guarantee conjointly with the Soviet Government. If the Government of the United States also believed that it could associate itself in this guarantee, that would be so much the better, but His Majesty’s Government does not make this a condition of the guarantee, which it is ready to give conjointly with that of the Soviet Government.”

It is evident that Great Britain’s attitude in this declaration fell considerably short of the U. S.A.’s, as she made her guarantee of Polish independence subject to an agreement with the Soviet Union. What would happen if Stalin refused this guarantee - a guarantee that it was hardly in his interests to comply with?