concentration camp, so that the whole thing could be run on a sound industrial basis.
Now that the Jews had been wiped out, they could start on millions of Slavs.
Back in Warsaw. I talked to a Russian colonel who said: "There are a lot of AK and NSZ
[Polish Fascist] terrorists everywhere, especially in places like Cracow. The PPR [the Polish Communists] are having a very tough time; hundreds of their officials have been bumped off. One has to be very brave to be a Polish communist. In Czechoslovakia there is great enthusiasm for the Red Army, but not here in Poland. The Poles are difficult people; the only good thing is that they hate the Germans even more than they hate us; it may make things easier between us in the long run, especially with the Oder-Neisse
frontier, on which they are all very keen. Also, the Red Army is pulling out of Poland, except on the communication lines to Germany, and that may make them feel better and stop all their silly talk about the 'Russian occupation'."
Meanwhile, however, a little civil war was going on in Poland below the surface—and
not so very far below. It did not stop until 1947, and not without the help of the Army and a powerful police force, both built up with Russian advice and assistance. Mikolajczyk fled in 1948, Cyrankiewicz replaced Osöbka-Morawski, but, after several years of
"Stalinist" terror (though less violent in Poland than elsewhere) a different kind of Poland emerged, with Gomulka at its head—that very Gomulka whom Mikolajczyk regarded in
1945 as a criminal maniac. It was, however, wrong to assume that in 1945 there were no genuine socialists or communists in Poland, except those "sold" to the Russians, or that all Poles loved the West; just as there were very many Czechs, so there were also numerous Poles who remembered only too well that their country's alliance with the West had done them no good in 1939.
Not only among the working-class leaders, but also among a part of the intelligentsia there were many who were saying: "With our economy as devastated as it is, and with the Western Territories to settle and organise, only a centrally-controlled socialist economy can cope effectively with all these problems." But this was the "rational" approach and, emotionally, a large number of Poles, starting with the Church, were more or less hostile to Russia.
There were popular rhymes in 1945 on the early return of Lwow to Poland, in which
Lwowa (the genitive of Lwow) rhymed with bomba atomowa.
Chapter V POTSDAM
At the Potsdam Conference which met on July 17, the Soviet delegation was headed by
Stalin and Molotov, the American delegation by the new President, Harry Truman, and
the new Secretary of State, James Byrnes, and the British delegation, first by Churchill and Eden and from July 28, i.e. after the Labour victory in the General Election, by Attlee and Bevin, the new Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary.
At the end of the Conference, Pravda wrote in its editorial of August 3: "It points to a further strengthening of the co-operation between the Big Three, whose armed alliance brought about victory over the common enemy", and, during the days that followed, it angrily denounced as malicious slander any suggestion, for instance in the Swedish press, that "the seeds of the division of Germany and of Europe into two had been sown at Potsdam."
Yet, unfortunately, that is precisely what happened there, despite the long official communiqué which kept up the semblance of unity among the Big Three. But even this
document showed that no agreement had been reached on several questions, and that
many decisions had been postponed.
This twenty-page document was divided into the following fifteen sections: 1) Preamble; 2) Establishment of a Council of Foreign Ministers; 3) Germany; 4) German Reparations; 5) German Navy and Merchant Fleet; 6) Königsberg; 7) War Criminals; 8) Austria; 9)
Poland; 10) Peace Treaties and Admissions to UNO; 11) Territories under Trusteeship; 12) Revision of the Procedure of the Allied Control Commissions in Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary; 13) Transfer of German Populations; 14) Military Problems discussed by
the Heads of the General Staffs at the Conference; 15) List of Delegates.
It will be seen from this list alone how large a range of subjects was discussed during the thirteen plenary meetings of the Conference, besides the various committee and sub-committee meetings; and even this list is far from exhaustive: it makes no specific
mention of Japan, which held a very important place in both the political and military talks at Potsdam, or of such secondary subjects as Trieste and Yugoslavia, or Franco Spain. All three agreed that Spain was not to be admitted to UNO, but neither Britain nor the United States were prepared to break off diplomatic relations with her, as the
Russians had urged them to do. Nor was there any mention of Turkey in the
communiqué; the Russian demand for bases there was rejected.
One of the most important achievements of Potsdam was the setting up of the Council of Foreign Ministers, whose most urgent task was to draft the peace treaties with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland. The Council was also to deal, in due course, with a German peace treaty.
The long section on Germany was chiefly concerned with the numerous demilitarisation, denazification and démocratisation measures that would be applied to her. There was no mention of any partition of Germany, but the communiqué stated that, for the present, no central German government would be formed. There would, however, be certain central
German administrative departments, acting under the guidance of the Allied Control
Council.
The disposal of the German Navy and Merchant Fleet was referred to a committee of
experts. Britain and the United States agreed, in principle, to the transfer to the Soviet Union of Königsberg and the adjoining territory. Agreement was also reached on the
procedure which ultimately led to the constitution of the Nuremberg Tribunal for the trial of the major German war criminals and of other courts dealing with similar cases. The question of recognising the Renner Government set up by the Russians in Austria was
postponed until the entry of British and American troops into Vienna. The Russian
proposal that the Soviet Union be made a trustee of one of the former Italian colonies met with no favourable response from Britain and America, and the matter was referred to the Council of Foreign Ministers, who were to draft the Italian peace treaty. It was agreed that the transfer of Germans still in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary would
henceforth be carried out in an "orderly and humane" manner.
The official Russian line still was that all had gone well at Potsdam. In reality, the whole atmosphere at Potsdam was radically different from that at Teheran and Yalta. There was much angry recrimination on a wide range of subjects. Thus, the British and Americans treated the policy the Russians were pursuing, particularly in Bulgaria and Rumania, as a violation of the Yalta Declaration on Liberated Europe; the Russians counter-attacked by making similar charges about the British in Greece. Truman made great difficulties about recognising the Bulgarian, Hungarian and Rumanian Governments. There was also some
recrimination about British and American property—notably oil equipment—in Rumania
which had been confiscated by the Germans and had since been taken over by the
Russians. The Russians also charged that the Western Powers had set up an "Italian Fascist régime" in Trieste.
But all this, although indicative, was not yet fundamental. The two major differences were focused on Germany and Poland. It is true that all the demilitarisation,