University of Kentucky UKnowledge International Relations Political Science 1982 Bitter Legacy: Polish-American Relations in the Wake of World War II Richard C. Lukas University of South Florida Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Lukas, Richard C., "Bitter Legacy: Polish-American Relations in the Wake of World War II" (1982). International Relations. 7. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_political_science_international_relations/7 Bitter Legacy This page intentionally left blank BITIER LEGACY POLISH-AMERICAN RELATIONS IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II Richard C. Lukas THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright © 1982 by The University Press of Kentucky Paperback edition 2009 The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8131-9273-4 (pbk: acid-free paper) This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses Contents Preface Vll I The Road to Potsdam 1 II Postwar Poland 20 III From Potsdam to Kielce 41 IV Credits and Elections 60 v Denouement 79 VI Relief and Repatriation 96 VII Polish Americans and the Polish Question 119 VIII Conclusions 135 Notes 139 Bibliography 170 Index 183 Map 12 To My Father, Franciszek Preface For a long time there has been a need for a detailed account of United States-Polish relations in the years immediately following World War II, the crucial period during which Poland became a Soviet satellite. This book not only deals with the political and economic relations between the United States and Poland but also explores the impact of these relations on such postwar issues as relief, repatriation, Polish American opinion, and most importantly the origins of the Cold War. Many people have helped with this book, and it is a pleasure for me to thank them here for their assistance. To B.F. Jones, Richard Fraser, Wallace Prescott, and Arliss Roaden-all at Tennessee Tech­ nological University-! am indebted for the reduction in my teaching load and for some of the funds that enabled me to travel to the depositories where most of the research material for this book is located. I owe a special debt to Tim Callahan, Pat Eggleston, Betty Huehls, Andrew Sorokowski, and Steve Williams for helping me with some of the research that has gone into this study. Daniel Buczek was especially kind in providing me with material from the files of the Rev. A.A. Skoniecki. James Bochan, Waclaw Jedrejewicz, B.B. Kopecki, Stefan Korbonski, Pelagia Lukaszewska, Wanda Rozmarek, and Paul Zaleski shared their knowledge and personal experiences with me, greatly enriching my understanding of important aspects of the subject. I am indebted to the librarians and archivists of the many institu­ tions I visited to gather material for this study. Without exception they were efficient and unfailingly kind to me. Linda Ogletree, who acquired material through interlibrary loan services for me, was most helpful. My thanks to Lois Richardson, who typed the rough draft of the manuscript, and Linda McDearman, who did the final copy. I am grateful to Nolan Fowler for helping me read proof, and also to Harry Lane for drawing the map. Without the financial aid of the Kosciuszko Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Science Re­ search Council, this book would not have been a reality. To be sure, the findings and conclusions presented here do not necessarily repre­ sent the view of these donors. My gratitude to my wife, Marita, can not be adequately expressed in words. This page intentionally left blank I The Road to Potsdam Recent events in Poland have reawakened considerable American interest in that country. One of the questions often raised today is how did Poland become a communist state. This study, which focuses on Poland from the Potsdam Conference through the elec­ tions of 1947, is an attempt to fill a major gap in the historical literature by offering a detailed account of why United States policy was unable to reverse the process begun at the Yalta Conference that transformed Poland into a Soviet satellite. American policy toward postwar Poland was based upon the un­ realistic belief that the United States would be able to exert some political" influence in an area that had been written off as a Soviet sphere of influence by the Roosevelt administration. Largely through economic diplomacy, the United States expected to maintain a presence in Poland and to insure that the Polish Peasant party of Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, the former premier of the Polish government­ in-exile who took a seat in the provisional government in Warsaw, would have a place in the political life of Poland. On their part, Mikolajczyk and his supporters were just as unrealistic as the Ameri­ cans in insisting upon free elections which the communists could not allow because an open expression of opinion by the Polish people would have expelled them from power. The failure of the communist­ dominated block and Mikolajczyk's party to reach a modus vivendi doomed the hopes and expectations of the American and Polish peo­ ple and underscored the limitations of American policy in an area where the Soviets were dominant and were determined to exclude American influence. The Polish question, which had dominated so many of the discus­ sions of the leaders of the Big Three during the war, continued to occupy a major place at Potsdam, the last meeting of the leaders of the victorious anti-German coalition. Although Poland's eastern fron­ tier had already been decided and the Allied powers had supervised the establishment of a communist-dominated Polish provisional gov­ ernment of national unity, two major questions remained to be settled -the implementation of the Yalta Conference pledge that the War­ saw regime conduct "free and unfettered elections" to establish a permanent government in Poland and the settlement of Poland's boundary with Germany. 2 BITTER LEGACY The long and tortuous road to Potsdam was not an easy one. After the ill-fated September campaign of 1939, the Polish government fled into exile and eventually found its permanent wartime home in Lon­ don, from which it maintained contact with underground political and military authorities in Poland. The London Poles, as they were called, were recognized by the United States, by Great Britain, and -after Hitler unleashed Operation Barbarossa in June 1941-by the Soviet Union as the legal political representatives of the Polish state. Preoccupied with its own survival during the early months of the Russo-German conflict, the Kremlin could not afford to alienate its western Allies over issues which had not been satisfactorily resolved by the Polish-Soviet Treaty of July 1941. But as Soviet military for­ tunes improved, the Kremlin established a position of strength that enabled it to deal more independently, and even arbitrarily, with Polish authorities in resolving such questions as the supply and re­ cruitment of a Polish army on Soviet soil, the relief and evacuation of Polish refugees, and most importantly the postwar boundary be­ tween the two nations. One of the most divisive issues between Poland and the Soviet Union was the controversial question of what should be their future boundary. The London Poles insisted that the Riga Line be reestab­ lished. This line had been drawn by the Treaty of Riga after the Russo-Polish War of 1920 and constituted the boundary between Poland and the Soviet Union during most of the interwar years. The Soviets favored the Curzon Line which came close to the line agreed upon by the Kremlin and Berlin when they partitioned Poland by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939. Polish-Soviet relations deteriorated to the point that by the spring of 1943 almost anything could have triggered a final break. In April the Germans discovered the mass graves of thousands of missing Polish officers in the forest of Katyn and charged the Soviets with the atrocity. The Polish government in London headed by General Wla­ dyslaw Sikorski, long suspecting Soviet culpability, asked the Red Cross to investigate the German allegations. That was enough for Stalin to cut off diplomatic relations with the London Poles. Western sympathy for the Poles, and there was a great deal of it especially during the early years of the war, never was translated into strong political support because the United States and Great Britain believed that their alliance with the Soviet Union was absolutely essential to win the war against Germany and Japan. This preoccupa­ tion with military matters, coupled with the growing awareness that Soviet armies would eventually be in a position to determine the The Road to Potsdam 3 political future of Poland, placed the United States and Great Britain in the role of mediators between Poland and the Soviet Union rather than partisans for Polish interests.