Encouraged by FDR, Prime Minister Mikołajczyk set off to Moscow on July 29 for discussions with Stalin.12 With the fighting already under way in Warsaw, Stalin agreed to see him on August 3 at nine-thirty P.M. in the Kremlin, having let him stew a full forty-eight hours, and then sent the inflexible Molotov to soften up their guest. Stalin was even colder to a request for immediate aid, as Mikołajczyk put it, “to our men in their pitifully unequal battles with the Germans.”13 The Soviet Boss scoffed: “But you’re not taking into consideration the agreement that has been reached between the Soviet Union and the Lublin Committee.” Stalin never mentioned the excuse he gave his allies—that it was technically impossible to aid the resistance fighters.14
He toyed with Mikołajczyk, saying he had no intention of imposing a Communist regime on Poland, and asked him to talk things over with leaders of the Lublin Committee. They promptly declared that they would be pleased to have him as prime minister in a Communist-controlled government. Stalin said that anyway he doubted much of an uprising was under way in Warsaw or had the slightest chance of victory.15
On August 5, in response to Churchill’s appeal, the Soviet leader repeated his disbelief regarding any real uprising. However, three days later, according to a recently discovered order, Marshal Zhukov reported that all units could be at the Vistula (on the eastern side of the river from the city) and ready by August 25 to move forward, link up with Polish forces, and occupy Warsaw. In his message to Moscow, he said he would await approval to proceed.16 There is no mention of this plan even in Zhukov’s later memoirs. The report indicates that the Red Army could have done more, even if by the time they arrived, many in the resistance would already have been killed. Zhukov must have been told to stand his ground.
With the Kremlin continuing to play dumb, the British military mission in Moscow and the British embassy confirmed repeatedly that the Poles were most certainly fighting and desperately in need of arms and ammunition. Then, on August 14, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow sought permission for Anglo-American planes to land in Soviet-held territory after they had dropped supplies to the fighters.
The distance from Italy was long (815 miles or so) and involved terribly dangerous stretches of enemy territory. The Royal Air Force managed to get some supplies through during August, at the staggering cost of about one downed plane for every ton of supplies that was delivered to Warsaw. The other option was to use American bombers flying out of Britain or Italy and landing at bases in Ukraine. In this way, they were able to reach bombing targets in eastern parts of the German Reich, including Poland. Although Stalin agreed to let the bombers land and refuel after their bombing missions, he was reluctant and even hostile when Churchill or Roosevelt sought permission for flights bound for Warsaw with supplies to land in Ukraine. There is no documentation at present that permits us to determine exactly what Stalin’s motives were, but there can be little doubt that he wanted nothing to do with rescuing the uprising.17
On August 15, Molotov informed the British ambassador that the Soviet government wished to dissociate itself from “the purely adventurist affair” in Warsaw. Henceforth, Stalin said, he would work only through the Polish Committee of National Liberation (the PKWN) in Lublin. He continued to reject requests from Roosevelt and Churchill.18 The Soviet claim was that the material dropped “necessarily” fell into the hands of its “enemies.”19
Stalin soon began calling the uprising an attempt by a “handful of power-seeking criminals” and decided to let the Germans finish his dirty work for him.20 Marshal Rokossovsky would add to the mythology by saying in his memoirs that the insurgents were politically motivated and aimed to take over Warsaw before the Red Army arrived. He had been arrested in 1937 during the Great Terror and spent nearly three years in prison, and so knew what was expected when he reached the gates of Warsaw. Zhukov came to agree with him that it was prudent to wait. Soviet troops stayed on the east bank of the Vistula until early January 1945.21
To this day, some Western scholars continue to suggest that, far from the Red Army “stopping” on purpose to let the Germans destroy the Polish underground, capturing Warsaw had never been in the original Soviet plans.22 The Soviet interpretation was that the Warsaw underground, led by the Polish émigré movement in London, tried to seize power in order to prevent the Red Army from taking the capital.23 Yet a collection of newly released Soviet documents suggests that Stalin’s attitude “was not as straightforward as previously presented in Soviet literature.” Although the record is still clouded, it now appears even to some Russian historians that the decision at the Vistula was not based on military considerations but was “in all likelihood taken for political reasons.”24
Polish contemporaries knew the bitter truth: that Moscow looked at their “underground state” and the (London-based) Polish government-in-exile as standing in the way of creating a new Soviet-friendly order. The Kremlin had other arrangements in mind, and “behind the lines of the Red Army a different Polish government, appointed in Moscow, was already in office.”25
The Warsaw Uprising, as famed Polish writer Czesław Miłosz put it, was “the revolt of the fly against two giants.” It was crushed by one as the other looked on from across the river.26 Heinrich Himmler jumped at the chance for vengeance and boasted that he would solve the Polish problem for all time.27 The sixty-six days of hell ended when what remained of the insurgents surrendered on October 2.28 The Polish capital, home to a million or more, was systematically reduced to rubble. Somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 were killed, while 15,000 of the Home Army died or were missing. German losses were significant, with around 26,000 casualties.29
CONCEDING EASTERN EUROPE TO UNCLE JOE
Stalin’s hope was to attain his political goals without risking confrontation with the West. He responded positively on September 30, 1944, when Churchill, no doubt bothered by the ongoing horror in Warsaw, asked for direct talks. Roosevelt would not be there because he was in the middle of an election, but his ambassador to the USSR, Averell Harriman, went along.30
What Stalin regarded as the “real” second front in the West began only on June 6, 1944, when Operation Overlord opened with the landing at Normandy. The troops were pinned along the coast and finally broke out on July 25 at Saint-Lô. Another landing, originally conceived to occur simultaneously with Overlord, hit southern France on August 15 along the Riviera. There a combination of American, Canadian, and the Free French Forces went ashore. The next day Hitler authorized the withdrawal of most of his armies from southern France, leaving only blocking units in some areas. On Friday, August 25, General Dietrich von Choltitz, the German commander in Paris, surrendered and gave up the city.31 In Italy meanwhile the fighting had been bitter, but Rome had been freed on June 4, though the campaign in northern Italy was far from over. FDR wrote to Churchill in Moscow on October 16 to say that the campaign in Italy already had cost 200,000 Allied casualties and there was little hope of further advances there that year.32
Although Churchill’s trip to Moscow is well known, we need to remind ourselves just how far he went in trying to satisfy Stalin. As it was, Eastern Europe was falling into Soviet hands, and his visit only confirmed it. He landed in Moscow on October 9 and, after a short rest, was whisked away to the Kremlin for talks at ten P.M. The prime minister must have been exhausted. Perhaps that explains why, in classic British understatement, one historian said that Churchill then committed “the central indiscretion” of the talks.33