propaganda amongst the population, etc.) but declined responsibility for the killing of Russian officers and soldiers. Since he had taken command of the A.K., he had been in the part of Poland still under German occupation, and he had had no control over eastern Poland or Lithuania, where the Russians were murdered; when the Russians penetrated
into western Poland, nothing like that happened.
When he was asked by the Second Public Prosecutor, General Rudenko, why he had not
surrendered the A.K.'s armaments, radio transmitters, etc., to the Red Army, the following exchange took place:
Okulicki: I intended to keep them for the future.
Rudenko: For what purpose?
Okulicki: To fight for Poland should she be threatened.
Rudenko: Fight against whom?
Okulicki: Against anyone threatening Poland.
Rudenko: What country did you have in mind?
Okulicki: The Soviet Union.
Rudenko: So what you had in mind was a war against the Soviet Union, with this qualification: "if the Soviet Union threatens the independence of Poland". In such an eventuality what allies, what bloc were you thinking of?
Okulicki: A bloc against the Soviets.
Rudenko: That meant Poland, and who else? What other states?
Okulicki: All other states.
Rudenko: Will you enumerate the states mentioned in your letter to Colonel
"Slawbor"? [one of his subordinates].
Okulicki: I mentioned England.
Rudenko: And whom else?
Okulicki: The Germans.
Rudenko: So you were thinking of a bloc with the Germans, with Germany, the enemy of all freedom-loving countries, notorious for its cruelty and barbarity...
Okulicki: I meant a bloc, not with the Germans, but with Europe.
(Laughter.)
[Sudebnyi otchet po delu... polskogo podpoliya (Report of the Trial of the Polish Underground) (Moscow, 1945), pp. 141-2.]
On the last day of the trial, in his "last words" before the verdict, Okulicki admitted that he had been mistaken in distrusting the Soviet Union and in trusting the Polish
Government in London; this had not accepted the Yalta Agreement on Poland, and that
was a mistake, which he had recognised at once. Nevertheless, he had maintained the
Polish Underground, complete with arms stores and radio equipment, because he had
continued to distrust Russia. He remembered that Tsarist Russia had oppressed Poland for 123 years, and he had not been convinced that Poland's independence would be
respected by the victorious Russians; he did not know at the time what changes had taken place in Russia. He had fought the Germans, but said that there was nothing in his
directives to the AK to show that he had ordered acts of terrorism against the Russians, and if these took place without his knowledge (and they did take place) it was deeply regrettable. As for his ideas about an alliance with "Europe", including England and Germany, these related to the future and were purely "hypothetical".
That was as far as he would go. But the official Russians were fairly satisfied; in their eyes the trial had shown up the London Government and, indirectly, Churchill, with his cordon sanitaire.
As Stalin had already foretold to Hopkins, the sentences were relatively lenient. The Public Prosecutor, no doubt acting on instructions from above, did not demand the death sentence, not even for Okulicki. The latter was given ten years, the three members of the
"underground government" between five and eight years, the others much shorter sentences, and three were acquitted.
Even so, there was something distasteful about the whole thing, not only to Western
observers, but also to many Russians who remembered the Purge Trials in the late '30's.
Just before the trial there had also been a particularly nauseating article by Zaslavsky in Pravda calling all the accused murderers, bandits, etc., in the worst style of 1937. To many it also seemed a confession of weakness to have these men tried by a Russian, and not a Polish, court. Would there have been too much sympathy for them in Poland? After all, many of them had fought for years against the Germans, and the main charge that they were directly responsible for the deaths of many Russian officers and soldiers had not been proved.
Although, on the face of it, the trial looked fair enough, many Russians wondered, as they looked at this same court room and the same sinister Judge Ulrich, whether some
pressures had not been brought to bear on the defendants.
Soon afterwards in Poland I found that even pro-Soviet Government Poles were a little embarrassed about the whole thing, and many Poles wondered, of course, what would
actually happen to Okulicki and the three other principal prisoners.. .
[The evidence here is conflicting. According to the US Ambassador in Warsaw, Arthur
Bliss Lane (/ Saw Freedom Betrayed, London, 1947), Okulicki and the others still in Russian prisons were amnestied in 1946, though a few (not Okulicki) were later
prosecuted by the Polish authorities. Poles, both in Warsaw and in England, have assured me that Okulicki died in Russian captivity in 1947.]
As a result of Harry Hopkins's prodding, the Molotov-Harriman-Clark Kerr Committee at last managed to bring about the formation of a Polish "Government of National Unity".
Only a small number of "London Poles", though none of them members of Arciszewski's Polish Government there, entered this government. The most prominent among them was
Mikolajczyk, who had resigned from the London Government some months before, and
had, albeit reluctantly, accepted the Yalta Agreement on Poland. Despite the great
hostility shown him by the "Lublin Poles", Churchill had insisted that he join the new Polish Government. The final negotiations which ended in the formation of this
government took place in Moscow between June 17 and 24, thus coinciding, by a grim—
and perhaps intentional—irony, with the trial of Okulicki and the other Underground
leaders. Both before and after the trial Mikolajczyk had pleaded with the Russians that the Underground leaders be released; he argued with Molotov that such an act of
magnanimity on the Russians' part would have a wonderful psychological effect in
Poland; but it was of no avail. Bierut, whom Mikolajczyk begged to support his plea, refused to do so, saying it would merely annoy Stalin. "Besides, we don't need these people in Poland just now."
[Mikolajczyk. Le viol de la Pologne, p. 158.]
The Polish Government that was finally formed, and in whose honour Stalin gave a