In 1943 a second front in France instead of an Allied landing in Italy was perhaps possible. But this time, political considerations came into play, particularly the desire to prevent the USSR from reaching the Balkans, a region which Britain still considered vital to its interests. The landing in Italy could have led to a successful Allied offensive in the Balkans, but this did not come about. At the same time a new question confronted the Allies: Had the USSR built up enough strength to win the war on its own without their assistance? This possibility could not be ruled out and had ominous implications for Britain and the United States.
In November 1943 the Soviets officially announced their peace program. The main points were as follows: liberation of the European peoples from Nazi occupation; assistance to them in restoring their independence; free choice of government for the liberated peoples; severe punishment of those responsible for the war; implementation of the necessary measures to prevent any new German aggression; lasting economic, political, and cultural collaboration among the European peoples.102 No doubt the program was very appealing. The problem was knowing how to guarantee free elections in practice.
Starting in mid-1943 the foreign and domestic policies of the Soviet Union seemed to pursue more clearly defined goals. Inside the country an effort was made to strengthen the prewar system and reestablish the authority the party had lost since the beginning of the war. The techniques of propaganda and repression needed to achieve this end were brought to bear. In terms of foreign policy, the Soviet Union skillfully took advantage of President Roosevelt's suspicious attitude toward British imperial policy. Roosevelt was counting on firm and lasting collaboration with Stalin. American politicians and experts avidly sought the least sign of what was being called in the West the transformation of communism into Russian nationalism. These hopes increased after May 1943, when Stalin ordered the dissolution of the Communist International, which for a long time had been a rump organization. At the same time the Soviet Union began to strengthen its contacts with the resistance and national liberation movements, especially in Southeastern Europe, cleverly exploiting the natural desire of the Eastern European peoples for a change in the previously existing systems, which had turned their countries into satellites of Germany. This extremely skillful maneuver on Stalin's part provided the Soviet Union with immense possibilities for expansion in the postwar period.
Great Britain and the United States, on the contrary, supported parties and political figures linked in one way or another to the collaborationist regimes or the remnants of the old cliques. Neither the British nor the Americans made timely efforts to find and consolidate centrist and liberal forces in the countries about to be freed from the Germans. This stemmed, on the one hand, from a total lack of understanding of the nature of the Soviet regime and an organic inability by the Western statesmen to assess correctly the thinking of the Soviet leadership and, on the other, from their inability to understand and accept the fact that change was unavoidable, since it was the outgrowth of the struggle against totalitarian nazism.
The American leaders understood the problems of India and the Near East better because the latter involved oil and the former the dismemberment of the British empire, which, as they saw it, would open the doors of the British possessions to American business. Lastly, the Americans, concerned with their war against Japan, overestimated their need for the
Soviet Union in the war. In general, they did not quite understand Europe; its spirit was foreign to them and its problems too complex, dangerous, and irritating.
As a rule, therefore, the United States and Britain continued to support the conservative elements in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, thus playing into the hands of the Communist parties, which were often controlled and led by the Soviet Union. The Communists did what Britain and the United States had been unable to do: from the start they put forward a program of national renewal, by which they won support not only from the working class but from the urban and rural middle classes as well. The policies of the Western Allies were vulnerable: they lacked a concrete, positive program to present to the liberated peoples of Europe. The Communist parties soon filled the void with their programs for action.
Starting in 1943 the Soviet government began to play a leading role in the policies of the anti-German coalition. Stalin himself attended the Teheran conference, held November 28 to December 1, 1943. Cleverly playing on the differences between the United States and Britain, he obtained a firm promise that a second front would be opened in France no later than May 1, 1944. Churchill's plan for another front in the Balkans was rejected. Stalin's second victory at Teheran, which would be confirmed and reinforced at the Yalta conference in February 1945, was the official recognition by the Allies of the Curzon line as Poland's future eastern border. His third victory was the recognition of his claim to Koenigsberg, which historically had never belonged to Russia. For his part, Roosevelt also won a victory with Stalin's agreement to declare war on Japan no later than three months after the end of the war in Europe.
By the end of 1943 the world political and military situation had changed radically. The Allies had settled the great strategic and political questions in Teheran. Intensive preparations for the landing in France began, and in Germany a plot against Hitler by senior officers was ripening. On the German—Soviet front, the Soviet command firmly held the strategic initiative. The Soviet armed forces outnumbered the Germans by 1,259,000 (6,165,000 to 4,906,000). The USSR had 2.5 times as many planes (8,500 to 3,000) and 1.4 times as much artillery (90,000 batteries to 54,000), and so on.103
In January 1944 a new Soviet offensive began, resulting in the final breaking of the Leningrad blockade on January 27, 1944, after a siege of 870 days. Novgorod was likewise liberated. Thus the front was moved westward between 150 and 280 kilometers from Leningrad. On the Southwestern Front in the spring of 1944 all of the Ukraine west of the Dnepr was liberated, including Krivoi Rog, Nikopol, Nikolaev, and Odessa. In
April and May came the Crimea's turn. In the south, Soviet troops reached the prewar border along a front 400 kilometers long.
On June 6, 1944, Allied troops landed in Normandy. Germany was caught in the pincers of a two-front war.
On June 10, Soviet troops began a second offensive on the Leningrad Front, occupying Vyborg and reaching the Soviet—Finnish border. On June 23, an offensive on three fronts started toward the west. On July 3, Minsk was liberated, and the next day Soviet troops crossed the old Polish border. During the summer of 1944 most of the territory of the Baltic states was cleared of Germans.
In July and August the Red Army entered Poland and occupied almost one-fourth of its territory, with a population of 5 million. The Soviets were accompanied by Polish troops organized in the USSR. A Polish National Liberation Committee was formed in Lublin in opposition to the Polish government in exile. It had the advantage of being in Poland and of enjoying full military and political support from the Soviet Union. The government in exile was far away, in London, but it had the trust of the overwhelming majority of the country's population.
At the beginning of August 1944 Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, prime minister of the Polish government in exile, arrived in Moscow to hold discussions with Stalin. The talks collapsed. Stalin wanted a government in Poland which recognized the new border and would bow unconditionally to Moscow's political aims. As for the government in exile, it hoped to reestablish an independent Poland whose eastern border would be the same as before September 17, 1939; Britain and the United States helped resolve this dispute in the USSR's favor.