Thus, having tipped his hat to Stalin by registering his own preference for dismemberment—a position that placed FDR at odds with the official position of his own State and War Departments—while at the same time concurring with Churchill’s observation that the question of dismemberment required “further study,” FDR suggested the matter be turned over to the three foreign ministers, who were tasked with reporting back to the three leaders later in the week. The practice of turning over major disagreements to the three foreign ministers became a habit of the three leaders at the conference, with mixed results.17
Indeed, FDR took this approach to the contentious question of what role France should play in Germany after the war. Here, even though the three leaders quickly came to the agreement that France should be granted a zone of occupation, the question of a French seat on the Allied Control Commission that would govern postwar Germany was largely worked out during the Foreign Ministers meetings that followed in the days ahead.
In many respects the dissension over France among the Big Three was linked to each leader’s perceptions of the French nation. Both FDR and Stalin still tended to view France as a lesser power, or even perhaps as the most significant of the “smaller powers.” Thus the discussions over France were linked to the discussion of how the Allies should treat the other “small powers.” This connection was particularly strong for Stalin, whose opposition to granting France a role equal to that of the other Great Powers was based on his fear of the impact that elevating France’s status might have on the aspirations of other “small” states, particularly over the question of reparations.18
As Stalin noted at the outset of the political discussions over Germany, the Soviet Union regarded the question of reparations as absolutely vital. He acknowledged that the final dollar amount would be difficult to determine, but the Soviets proposed a formula based on the concept that the countries that had made the greatest contribution to the war effort and had suffered the highest material losses should receive the highest level of reparations. Moscow estimated the total value of the reparations due to the Allies for “direct material losses” to be roughly $20 billion (equivalent to about $265 billion in 2017) and, based on the Soviet Union’s own internal assessments, determined that Russia should expect to receive no less than half this amount.19
As Ivan Maisky, the former Soviet ambassador to Great Britain, then explained, the Soviets envisioned the extraction of reparations payments from Germany for Russia by two principal means: first, through the removal of “Germany’s national wealth” (the factories, machine tools, rolling stock, and other components of German heavy industry) and, second, through annual payments-in-kind that were to last for ten years. Overall, the Soviets envisioned removing all but 20 percent of Germany’s heavy industry, including the country’s electrical and pharmaceutical plants.20
Once again, Churchill objected to the Soviets’ proposals. He admitted that no country had suffered more than Russia in this war, and that it therefore deserved reparations, but based on the experience of Versailles he was “quite sure” Russia would never be able to get “out of ruined Germany” the amounts that Maisky was suggesting. “We named astronomical figures in the last war,” he noted, “and it turned out to be a disappointment.” Churchill also asserted that, even though there was “no victorious country that will come out of the war so burdened financially and so stricken economically as Great Britain,” he remained doubtful that the British economy would benefit from reparations.
“If our treatment of Germany’s internal economy is such as to leave 80 million people virtually starving,” he continued, “are we to sit still and say, ‘It serves you right?’ Or will we be required to keep them alive? If so, who is going to pay? I am sorry to ask these questions, but they occur to me. If you have a horse and you want him to pull a wagon, you at least have to give him fodder.” Stalin remained unimpressed, retorting, “Care should be taken to see that the horse did not turn around and kick you.”21
Again, FDR mediated. He, too, did not want to see a repeat of the mistakes of the last war, and of the 1920s more generally, when the United States had lent more than $10 billion to Germany for little in return. Roosevelt agreed that Germany should retain enough industry to keep the German people from starving, but he also insisted that they should not have a higher standard of living than the people of the USSR. The US objective, he went on, is to see Russia “get all it can in manpower and factories” and the United Kingdom “get all it can in exports to former German markets.” But owing to the challenge of determining the best means of securing compensation—and in keeping with his practice of pushing troublesome issues into the future—FDR suggested that the time had come to set up a reparations commission, which, given the importance the Soviets attached to this issue, should be centered in Moscow.22
Churchill concurred with this idea, but he continued to argue that the expected level of reparations was too high—and he refused to endorse a specific dollar amount. With the three parties unable to agree on a total figure or on the precise charge to the proposed reparations commission, FDR once again argued that the matter should be turned over to the three foreign ministers for further consideration. With that, the second day’s plenary session came to an end.
FDR MAY HAVE BEEN ABLE TO TAKE SATISFACTION IN THE FACT THAT there had been no open breach on any of the issues the three powers confronted as they wrestled with how best to bring the war against Germany to a close. But it was also the case that, after two days of wrangling, the three leaders had managed to settle only one of the remaining political questions facing them as they contemplated the future of Germany—namely, granting France a zone of occupation. Moreover, even though the military discussions of the day before had gone reasonably well and the question of granting France a seat on the Allied Control Commission would be settled in France’s favor by the end of the week, the lack of agreement on repatriations—coupled with the somewhat discouraging disposition of the Anglo-American forces on the battlefield, along with the all-important revelation that there was still no agreement about the possible dismemberment of the German state after the war—meant that for all intents and purposes “the German problem” remained unresolved. Given that it was the threat of a resurgent Germany that, above all else, drove Soviet foreign policy—a threat that not only necessitated the need for a series of friendly states on Russia’s western frontier but also informed the Kremlin’s desire for cooperation with the West after the war—the inability of the three powers to come to a settled policy on postwar Germany had important consequences. It made the question of Poland all the more important in Soviet calculations, significantly decreasing the likelihood that Stalin and Molotov might show a measure of flexibility on the matter. This harsh reality became eminently clear as the three powers turned their attention to the two issues that the circumstances of the war seemed to have joined at the hip: the critical need to secure Soviet support for the United Nations and the coming to terms with the future of Poland.
Chapter 7
The Polish Quandary
TO FDR AND HIS ADVISERS, THERE WERE THREE CRITICAL ISSUES that had to be settled at the Yalta conference: orchestrating the final defeat of Germany, obtaining Soviet participation in the war against Japan, and securing Soviet support for the United Nations Organization. This is not to say that the United States had no interest in the future dispensation of Poland or other parts of Central and Eastern Europe. But just as military expediency often took precedence over political considerations, diplomatic expediency necessitated the subordination of certain issues. That was certainly the case with Poland. On this matter—and on the question of the future of the Baltic States—FDR regarded himself as “a realist.” He was quite willing to try to ameliorate the situation in which the Poles found themselves in the wake of the Soviet advance, but he pursued this aim within the context of larger objectives, and was unwilling to allow the “Polish question” to stand in the way of Great Power cooperation or Soviet
participation in the new world body.1
Still, it was impossible for FDR to ignore the increasing interest that the American people had begun to show about the Soviet treatment of the Poles, which by January 1945 was widely viewed as a litmus test of the Kremlin’s willingness to adhere to the values articulated in the Atlantic Charter. The issue of Poland was further complicated by the fact there were now two Polish governments in place: the London-based Polish government-in-exile, recognized by the Anglo-Americans, and the Lublin-based Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland, which had been granted recognition by the Kremlin a mere four weeks before the start of the Yalta conference. Keenly aware of their public’s perception that the Soviet-backed Lublin regime was little more than a puppet of Moscow, both FDR and Churchill had arrived in the Crimea determined to orchestrate the creation of a new, interim Polish government—one that at the very least, as one Foreign Office official put it, was “sufficiently respectable in the eyes of the world… to be recognized.” Indeed, without some means to show that the two sides had agreed to replace the Lublin status quo with a more democratic or otherwise inclusive alternative, both men feared that the entire conference might be regarded as a failure—with untold consequences for the future. This rendered the settlement of the Polish question one of the most daunting and controversial issues at Yalta.2
That Poland should take up such a large part of the conference deliberations must have come as a surprise to many members of the US delegation. Indeed, American policy with respect to Poland in the years prior to Yalta might best be described as purposeful noninvolvement. Far more important, after all, was the defeat of the Axis and the establishment of the world organization. Secretary Hull preferred not to even discuss Poland—“that Pandora’s box of infinite trouble”—at the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers in October 1943, while FDR pretended to fall asleep when the discussion of Poland came up at the Tehran conference a month later. As the president said, “Wake me up when we talk about Germany.”3
FDR recognized what a full-scale confrontation with the Soviets over the future of Poland might entail. When pressed by Arthur Bliss Lane, the newly appointed US ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile, to take a strong stand against the Soviets in November 1944, FDR responded by asking, “Do you want me to go to war with Russia?” And when the two men turned to the eastern-boundary dispute between the London Poles and the Soviets—at that time, a critical matter—FDR observed that perhaps the best way to settle the question was to organize a plebiscite in the disputed regions in ten or fifteen years’ time. He urged Bliss Lane to greet the Czech leader, Dr. Eduard Benes—who had managed to establish amiable relations with Moscow—once the ambassador arrived in London. And as if to remind Bliss Lane that the interwar Polish government was not without sin, FDR closed the conversation by noting: “I have never forgiven the Poles for having taken Teschen after Munich in [19]38”—or, for that matter, for invading Vilna, Lithuania, during the same year, a move that FDR described as “unfair… and very ill-advised.”4
FDR’s reference to a future plebiscite hints at his expectation that the Soviet Union was inching its way toward a more tolerable form of socialism. As FDR explained to Richard Law in a conversation held near the end of December 1944, “There were many varieties of Communism, and not all of them were necessarily harmful.” Nor did the president harbor the same apprehension as others about the possibility of communist agitation in the shattered economies of Europe once the war was over. He himself had lived through such a troubled period. When he first became president at the height of the Great Depression, “there was a great deal of fear of communism and some danger of it,” he told Law, “but he knew that as soon as the conditions of 1932 had been changed, the fear and the danger would pass.”5
FDR’s reference to Eduard Benes and his comments about a possible war with Russia, meanwhile, fly in the face of later accusations that FDR’s dealings with Stalin were founded on naïveté. Soviet power was a reality, and war with Russia over Stalin’s ambitions in Eastern Europe was unthinkable—particularly with Germany still at war and with FDR’s own military chiefs insisting that it was vital to secure Russia’s help in the defeat of Japan. The only alternative was to seek a compromise solution, such as the kind Dr. Benes had successfully achieved through the negotiation of the Czechoslovak-Russian Treaty of Friendship that was signed in Moscow on December 12, 1943.6
Well aware of the background of the negotiations that led to the signing of this treaty—which included language calling on each state to act “in accordance with the principles of mutual respect for the independence and sovereignty” of the other state—FDR saw the highly popular Czech leader’s determination to pursue a settlement with Stalin as a potential model for the type of agreement that the Poles might achieve. This impression was further strengthened in the spring of 1944 when the Czechs signed a subsequent understanding with Moscow that placed territory liberated by the Russians under Soviet military command, but with a Czech administration governing the area once it no longer remained a combat zone.7
Under more pressure to take up the Polish cause as the end of the war approached, both FDR and Churchill had urged the London Polish government-in-exile to negotiate a similar understanding with Moscow. For example, in a June 1944 meeting with Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, the then–premier of the London Poles, FDR insisted—in a remark that presaged his comments to Ambassador Bliss Lane—that the Poles “must find an understanding with Russia,” as, on their own, they’d have no chance to beat them, “and the British and the Americans have no intention of fighting Russia.”8
Two months later—under further pressure from both London and Washington—Mikolajczyk agreed to travel to Moscow to meet with Stalin. The workmanlike nature of these conversations, which included a frank discussion of Stalin’s insistence that the Curzon Line form the eastern border of Poland, seemed encouraging, particularly as both sides seemed willing to embrace some flexibility on the border question. But this relatively warm atmosphere was soon shattered by the decision of the London-sponsored Polish resistance in Warsaw to try to liberate the capital in advance of—or in conjunction with—its capture by the Red Army, which, after four weeks of intense fighting, suddenly found itself on the east bank of the Vistula River on the outskirts of the city. Both Churchill and Eden had strongly advised the Polish government-in-exile not to proceed with the uprising without first obtaining the full collaboration of the Soviet Union. The Polish underground leadership in Warsaw refused to heed this advice, however, and on August 1, 1944, the Home Army (as the resistance was called) launched a full-scale assault on the German forces in the city without informing the Kremlin.9
The Warsaw uprising was a disaster for all concerned. It resulted in the destruction of the Polish Home Army and the deaths of upwards of 200,000 civilians. It also led to serious tensions within the Grand Alliance over Stalin’s indifference to the plight of the Home Army—whose leadership was intensely anti-Soviet—and initial refusal to airdrop supplies to the insurgents or offer any assistance to the British and American air forces that wished to do the same. The disaster also weakened the ability of the London-based Poles to influence events in Poland both during and after the war, and—thanks to the bitter recriminations that emerged on both sides of the Vistula about who was to blame for the catastrophe—all but destroyed any chance that the talks initiated among the London Poles and Moscow in early August would lead to a rapprochement and the restoration of diplomatic relations.10
In his October 1944 percentages meeting with Stalin, Churchill tried to revive this effort, going so far as to arrange a face-to-face meeting between Mikolajczyk and the Soviet leader. But these talks soon failed over the continued refusal of Mikolajczyk’s colleagues in London to even discuss Stalin’s demand that the Curzon Line form the eastern border of Poland. Frustrated at his inability to make progress, and by the lack of support he received from the Polish government-in-exile in London, Mikolajczyk resigned as prem
ier at the end of November 1944. Both Churchill and Roosevelt regarded this as a serious setback.11 Then came the news about the Soviet recognition of the Lublin regime in early January and the equally disturbing news from Greece, all of which led Secretary Stettinius to report that public “confidence that Britain and Russia can be trusted to cooperate with the United States after the war had reached its lowest point since the [1943] Moscow conference.” Ever fearful of the reemergence of American isolationism, and the possibility that the American people might repeat the mistakes of the past and reject the United Nations, FDR could not afford to ignore these ominous signs, particularly over Poland. A solution to the Polish problem thus became the sine qua non upon which the success or failure of the entire effort to establish the world body now seemed to rest, rendering the discussions over Poland the most protracted and difficult of the Crimean conference.12
OF COURSE, THE ISSUE OF POLAND WOULD BE IMMATERIAL IF FDR failed to secure Soviet participation in the United Nations. To date, however, the prospects that the Soviets would embrace the US formula on voting in the Security Council were far from encouraging. As Andrei Gromyko had put it during the last discussion he had with Leo Pasvolsky on the matter, the Soviets’ demand for an unlimited veto (as opposed to the limited veto proposed by Washington) was their final word, “and would not be changed regardless of whether the conversations [on the question] were prolonged a week or a year.”13 Fully aware of what was at stake, FDR spent the morning of Tuesday, February 6, in his room, going over the December 5 proposal that Pasvolsky had so assiduously drafted in an effort to break the deadlock. He also instructed Secretary Stettinius to be ready to present the plan at the plenary session that afternoon—a request that Stettinius regarded as perhaps the most important assignment he had ever received from the president.14
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