The Soviets set as a condition for settling the Polish question the disarmament and dissolution of all formations of the Home Army, which was loyal to the government in exile. In August Soviet troops occupied the Praga suburb of Warsaw on the right bank of the Vistula. The Polish capital was on the left bank, several hundred meters away. The offensive was cut short because, according to a later official version, it was necessary to reorganize and regroup after a very rapid advance.
The Polish government in exile decided to call for an insurrection in Warsaw to liberate it before the arrival of Soviet troops. On August 1, 1944, underground units of the Home Army, under the command of General Bor- Komarowski, began an insurrection which was joined by many of Warsaw's inhabitants. The Polish command in Warsaw counted on support from the Soviet troops. According to one version of the events, a Captain Kalugin from Soviet field headquarters reached Warsaw and established links with the Polish command. However, his report to his superiors that a Soviet landing on the western bank of the Vistula was possible received no reply. What became of Kalugin after that is not known.
The British and American governments begged Stalin to support the insurgents. Stalin refused, arguing that the insurrection had begun without any prior coordination with the Soviet command and that it was an adventure for which the London Poles were to blame.104
On October 2 the insurgents capitulated. Hitler ordered the population removed from the city, the insurgents disarmed and taken prisoner, and most of Warsaw destroyed.
The Warsaw uprising was in the last analysis beneficial to Stalin's political goals. Its failure proved to be fundamentally detrimental to the Polish government in exile. A new trip by Mikolajczyk to Moscow, at a time when Churchill was also there, was futile. Churchill had often warned Mikolajczyk that he would not support him unless he made concessions to Soviet demands.105 Roosevelt, who had never really involved himself in Polish affairs, stated that he would defer to the Soviet and British governments on the question.He told Mikolajczyk that if a mutual satisfactory agreement would be reached, American government "would offer no objection."106
Meanwhile, the Polish armed forces under Soviet command had reached the size of 286,000. On December 31 the Polish National Liberation Committee became a provisional government and was immediately recognized by Moscow. On November 24 Mikolajczyk resigned and a new government was established in London, headed by Tomasz Arciszewski, a leader of the Polish Socialist party and a stubborn opponent of any concessions to Moscow.
This was the situation when Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill met once more, this time on Soviet territory, at Yalta.
YALTA: THE BLESSING OF THE SOVIET EMPIRE
After the Normandy invasion in June 1944 and the attempt on Hitler's life in July, it was clear that the end was only a matter of time, making a summit meeting inevitable.
In the summer and fall of 1944, Soviet armies knocked Finland out of the war, occupied Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, and a large part of Hungary, and approached Warsaw. They played a major role in deposing governments that had collaborated with Germany and Italy.
In October 1944 Churchill, trying to secure the flanks of the British empire, made a "gentleman's agreement" with Stalin, with Roosevelt's consent, to apportion the influence of Great Britain and the Soviet Union in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. (To this day the Soviet side has denied the authenticity of this agreement.) According to Churchill, Britain recognized that Romania and Bulgaria were in "the sphere of natural Soviet interests" and that "Great Britain will fully respect Russian action." Soviet influence in Hungary was also recognized.107 Later, in the last days of the war, Churchill tried to snatch Czechoslovakia and urged Eisenhower to occupy Prague before the Soviet army. Eisenhower's refusal, backed by Truman, thwarted Churchill.108 Only in Greece did the Soviet Union recognize the primacy of British interests. The United States, of its own accord, virtually withdrew from the affairs of Central and Eastern Europe, maintaining an interest only in Poland and of course in Germany and Austria.
Several months before the Yalta conference, the Soviet Union already controlled the fate of Eastern Europe and the Balkans and to a significant degree that of Central Europe. The presence of 6.5 million Soviet soldiers buttressed Soviet claims. This was simply a fact of life, which both Roosevelt and Churchill understood and accepted.
At the end of 1944 and beginning of 1945, Soviet military production had reached its highest point, accounting for 51.3 percent of total industrial production in the USSR.
By October 1944 all the territory of the prewar Soviet Union, except for part of Latvia, had been liberated. The Red Army entered non-Soviet Europe. Romania and Bulgaria were soon out of the war. Bucharest and Sofia fell as the Red Army marched into the Balkans.
Well before their entrance into Europe, Soviet authorities had trained foreign Communist cadres to lead the new pro-Soviet regimes in the nations of Southeastern Europe, where the arrival of the Red Army was soon followed by radical social and economic change. Many of these new government leaders had been officials in the Comintern; others had taken part in the underground Communist movements in their respective countries during the war. The Soviet leadership preferred those who had served in the Comintern, survivors of the purges, whose servility was beyond question. The same tactic was applied everywhere: first of all, unification of all opponents of the old regime, including representatives of the old ruling classes; then the gradual, systematic elimination of all opponents of the Communist party in the given country, all sympathizers of the Communists being recruited to the new regime, all others being suppressed; and finally, an open takeover by the Communists, backed by the armed forces and secret police. In the first stage, the industrial workers and farm workers and part of the peasantry tended to support the program of social reforms put forward by the Communists because it promised to rid the nation of corrupt government and exploitation by capitalist and feudalistic landowners and to give power to the people. Once they realized the new power was worse than the old, it was too late.
In Bucharest on August 23, two days after the beginning of the Soviet offensive, King Michael reached an agreement with the Romanian Communists to oust the dictator, Antonescou. On August 24 Communist units took over all strategic points in the capital. On August 31 Soviet tanks entered the city. King Michael was awarded the highest military honor, the Soviet Order of Victory. Soon afterward he was forced to flee because the Soviet government had decided to put an end to the masquerade and place its cronies in power.
Things went well for the Soviets in Bulgaria from the start, undoubtedly because the revolution had been led by veterans of the Comintern. On September 9 the Communist-led Patriotic Front came to power. Several hundred politicians and parliamentarians were executed; others either fled or pledged allegiance to the new government. Veteran Comintern leader Georgy Dimitrov returned to Sofia.
In Yugoslavia the government was practically in the hands of the Communists, headed by Josip Broz Tito. His was the only party that had led a continuous armed struggle against the invaders from July 1941 on, creating a huge insurrectional army. Final victory was obtained with help from the Red Army, which participated in the taking of Belgrade.