Confounding good sense, the British prime minister tried to make a political “arrangement” for all of liberated Eastern Europe. He wondered “how it would do for you to have ninety per cent predominance in Romania, for us to have ninety per cent of the say in Greece, and go fifty-fifty about Yugoslavia?” He showed Stalin a scrap of paper on which he had scribbled the various countries and what he deemed the appropriate percentages of influence:
Romania,
• Russia 90%
• The others 10%
Greece
• Great Britain 90% (in accord with U.S.A.)
• Russia 10%
Yugoslavia 50-50%
Hungary 50-50%
Bulgaria
• Russia 75%
• The others 25%
Stalin glanced at it quickly and with a blue-colored pencil put a tick at the top and pushed it back to Churchill.34 The “agreement,” if it can be called that, cut the feet from under all those trying to resist Communism. The West as good as gave them up for lost, and the prime minister, who thought over what he had done, began to have doubts and suggested they burn the document.35
Stalin appeared nonchalant, when in fact, he took the deal very seriously. The understanding they would reach, as he likely sensed, would become a matter of great importance in the immediate postwar years.36 The very next day Molotov began badgering Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, who was with Churchill, to increase the Russian percentages in Bulgaria and Hungary. In both cases Soviet influence was finally bumped up to 80 percent, and in Yugoslavia to 60 percent. Stalin calculated the poor prospects of the Communists in Greece, which the British regarded as important to their Middle East interests. So he yielded there to seem conciliatory. Foreign Secretary Eden was right to say that the Soviets “had already grabbed the territory they wanted.” They would continue to seek more, until the British and Americans found their political will.37
Roosevelt was against mapping out spheres of influence, particularly when the other two leaders met without him. Even though Averell Harriman was there to keep an eye on things, the British managed to keep this agreement from him until October 12, when he learned of it by chance. Finding Churchill in the middle of drafting a letter to Stalin to formalize the deal, Harriman said that Roosevelt would never accept it, and the prime minister left well enough alone.38
The agreement, such as it was, said nothing at all about the urgent question of Poland’s future, and while Churchill was determined to solve this matter, he was in no position to do so. Nevertheless, he was bold enough to ask the head of Poland’s government-in-exile to fly to Moscow. There, on October 13, Mikołajczyk had to face the collective opposition of Stalin, Molotov, Churchill, and Eden, who pressured him to open talks with the Lublin Committee and to accept the Curzon Line as Poland’s eastern boundary. Churchill wanted to preserve “the good atmosphere” between himself and Stalin and promised the Polish leader “a nice big country,” if not the one created in 1919. He said “we will see to it that for the land you lost in the east, there will be compensations in Germany, in East Prussia, and Silesia. You’ll get a nice outlet to the sea, a good port in Danzig, and the priceless minerals of Silesia.”
When the Polish leader held his ground, Molotov dropped the bomb: “But all this was settled at Tehran!” Looking around the table, he said, “If your memories fail you, let me recall the facts to you. We all agreed at Tehran that the Curzon line must divide Poland. You will recall that President Roosevelt agreed to this solution and strongly endorsed the line.”39 Churchill nodded. In fact FDR had not “strongly endorsed” the new boundaries; he had agreed with the principle of moving them and, where necessary, transferring populations into and out of annexed territories.
Mikołajczyk refused to go along. In a separate meeting, Churchill roared that he agreed with Stalin and would be telling Parliament just that. He flatly stated: “Our relations with Russia are much better than they have ever been. I mean to keep them that way.” Mikołajczyk would not budge even after the English bulldog barked that “unless you accept the frontier you’re going out of business forever! The Russians will sweep through your country, and your people will be liquidated. You’re on the verge of annihilation.”40
Then the British prime minister met with Bolesław Bierut and Edward Osóbka-Morawski, leaders in Moscow of the “Lublin Poles”—that is, the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN). Anthony Eden whispered of the two, “The rat and the weasel.” Bierut said firmly: “We are here to demand on behalf of Poland that Lvov shall belong to Russia.” By this statement, he meant that city should go to the Ukrainian Republic of the USSR. He added: “This is the will of the Polish people.” Churchill looked at Stalin while these servile remarks were being translated. The Kremlin Master flashed his amusement, but he took these issues very seriously.41
To the disheartened Mikołajczyk, Roosevelt later wrote with hollow words about his support for “a strong, free and independent Polish state.” However, while FDR would not object to changing the borders as Stalin suggested, he still refused to commit to the “specific frontiers.”42
Churchill told Roosevelt that he had wrested an agreement and that Stalin was willing to have the “London Poles” and the “Lublin Poles” share power in a new government led by Mikołajczyk. The truth is that Stalin offered a mere facade to help them salve their consciences. Ambassador Harriman was also quite wrong to judge that the talks had “produced a hopeful glow within the alliance” and to conclude that “with time and effort the matter could be worked out.” That was precisely the impression the Kremlin wanted to convey to allay Western concerns about Communist plans for postwar Poland.43
At this very moment, Stalin was personally orchestrating political events there. On December 31 his “Lublin Poles” (the PKWN) declared a provisional government. The Soviet Union recognized it five days later, even though Churchill and Roosevelt specifically asked Moscow to hold off doing so until they all met. All they got was Stalin’s absurd claim of being “powerless” to delay the process because on December 27 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet had agreed to recognize the Polish government “the moment it was set up.” In fact, the Presidium did exactly as he told it to do.44
Churchill had once opposed appeasing Hitler, but he became noticeably soft on Stalin. In his defense, it could be said that Britain was no longer the power it once was and that he was not in a position to be more forceful. However, that explanation cannot account for the affection and respect he apparently came to have for the Soviet leader. By late 1944 the otherwise sagacious prime minister indulged in the fantasy that, on a personal level, he had a good relationship with Stalin, and that their mutual respect for each other boded well for their talks. He wrote his wife to say that he had a very “nice meeting with the old Bear. I like him the more I see him. Now they respect us here and I am sure they wish to work with us.”45 The British leader believed, even when he wrote his memoirs years later, that Stalin had been “sincere” and that the two of them had “talked with an ease, freedom, and cordiality never before attained between our two countries.”46 He was not facing up to the facts.