British Policy Towards Poland, 1944–1956

Andrea Mason

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319942407
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319942414
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This book examines the outcome of the British commitment to reconstitute a sovereign Polish state and establish a democratic Polish government after the Second World War. It analyses the wartime origins of Churchill's commitment to Poland, and assesses the reasons for the collapse of British efforts to support the leader of the Polish opposition, Stanis?aw Miko?ajczyk, in countering the attempt by the Polish communist party to establish one-party rule after the war. This examination of Anglo-Polish relations is set within the broader context of emerging early Cold War tensions. It addresses the shift in British foreign policy after 1945 towards the US, the Soviet Union and Europe, as British leaders and policymakers adjusted both to the new post-war international circumstances, and to the domestic constraints which increasingly limited British policy options. This work analyses the reasons for Ernest Bevin's decision to disengage from Poland, helping to advance the debate on the larger question of Bevin's vision of Britain's place within the newly reconfigured international system. The final chapter surveys British policy towards Poland from the period of Sovietisation in the late 1940s up to the October 1956 revolution, arguing that Poland's process of liberalisation in the mid-1950s served as the catalyst for limited British reengagement in Eastern Europe.

© The Author(s) 2018

Andrea MasonBritish Policy Towards Poland, 1944–1956Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary Worldhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94241-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Andrea Mason¹

(1)

LSE Department of International History, London, UK

Andrea Mason

End Abstract

In June 1945, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, the former prime minister of the London-based Polish government-in-exile left for Moscow to participate in the negotiations for the establishment of a new Polish government under the auspices of a commission composed of representatives of Britain, the US, and the Soviet Union. Mikołajczyk harboured doubts as to the viability of the negotiations, partly because the Soviet government had allowed very limited representation from the parties affiliated to the government-in-exile. He agreed to go on the strength of a promise of support from the British government and with the understanding that Britain would continue to actively assist in the establishment of a democratic system of government in Poland. The British prime minister, Winston Churchill, assured Mikołajczyk that the British government would be prepared to bring its influence to bear on the Soviet Union in order to secure this outcome.¹

This book offers an analysis of the origins and outcome of Churchill’s June 1945 promise to Mikołajczyk. It assesses the extent to which Britain was able to determine the postwar political settlement in Poland and considers the constraints which ultimately diminished British influence. The final phase of the Second World War and the immediate postwar years saw the extension of increasing Soviet influence in Poland and across Eastern Europe. Through its wartime commitment to Poland, Britain was drawn into protracted negotiations with the Soviet Union over the Polish question. A study of this process therefore helps to elucidate the broader issues of British expectations regarding the shape of postwar Anglo-Soviet relations, British hopes for ongoing Anglo-Soviet cooperation in Eastern Europe, and the British response to its gradual exclusion from the region as relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated and then collapsed.

This work begins with a study of the relationship between the British government and the London-based Polish government-in-exile during the last year and a half of the war. Britain’s involvement in Poland in the immediate postwar period was part of a continuous process which began with the British guarantee of March 1939 to protect Poland against German aggression, and was extended and deepened by a series of political commitments to the restoration of a free and independent Polish state in return for the significant Polish military contribution to the allied war effort.² From the time of its arrival in London after the fall of France in June 1940, the Polish government-in-exile had extended to Britain all of its available military resources. In August 1940, the conclusion of the Anglo-Polish military agreement formalised the commitment of the Polish armed forces to the allied war effort and brought the Polish air force under the direct command of the Royal Air Force. In the spring of 1942, the Polish government augmented its military contribution with the addition of almost 80,000 Polish troops evacuated from the Soviet Union. Although Polish leaders had intended for the troops to participate in the liberation of Poland, they consented to their gradual dispersal across several theatres of war, according to the needs and strategic priorities of the British high command. Over the course of the war, Polish troops under British command fought in campaigns in the Middle East, Italy, and northwestern Europe, as well as in the Battle of Britain. These troops represented a valuable source of manpower for Britain, especially during the precarious time between the fall of France and the German invasion of the Soviet Union, when Britain was without European fighting allies and desperately short of resources.³

While the Polish military contribution was a significant reason for Britain’s involvement in the negotiations over Poland’s future, the extent of that involvement is still surprising: Poland was a relatively minor ally; Britain had no particular strategic interests in Eastern Europe; the British government did not involve itself to the same extent in the affairs of the other European exile governments based in London during the war.⁴ Nor had Anglo-Polish relations been close during the interwar period. On the contrary, Britain had generally kept a disdainful distance from Eastern Europe: the multitude of territorial wars and the rapid collapse of democratic governments in the late 1920s and early 1930s seemed to confirm the British impression shaped at the Paris Peace Conference that the region was inherently unstable, populated by quarrelsome, politically immature leaders who were too easily inclined to resort to violence to settle disputes.⁵

Yet Churchill and the foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, persisted in their efforts to secure a settlement for Poland even when negotiations with the Soviet Union became mired in discord. Apart from the sense of obligation engendered by the Polish military contribution, there were two main reasons which explain their focus on the Polish issue. First, the defence of Poland was the reason for Britain’s declaration of war against Germany; failure to secure a satisfactory postwar settlement would amount to a public admission of defeat and an acceptance of diminished British influence. Second, the future of Poland was wrapped up in Britain’s broader conception of the shape of postwar Europe, which was based on an assumption of ongoing Anglo-Soviet cooperation. Thus, a satisfactory agreement over Poland was equated with confirmation that this outcome would be feasible.

The sincerity of the British commitment to postwar Poland has been subject to much doubt because of the decision in the summer of 1945 to accept Soviet conditions as a basis for the formation of Poland’s provisional government: the cession of Polish territory east of the Curzon line⁶ and the participation of only a small number of leaders from outside the Polish National Committee of Liberation (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego—PKWN), the Soviet-sponsored rival to the London-based exile government.⁷ This decision has been cast in the existing literature either as a cavalier discarding of an ally whose importance had diminished, or as an example of British naïveté about Soviet postwar intentions vis-à-vis Eastern Europe, or as a regrettable but unavoidable consequence of Soviet military dominance throughout Central and Eastern Europe.⁸ All three of these interpretations neglect to consider the analysis and assumptions which formed the basis of the British decision. This work argues that British acceptance of the Soviet terms in the summer of 1945 was based on two main considerations. First, the British expectation was that the inclusion of Mikołajczyk in the provisional government would allow him to establish a secure foothold in the leadership of the country, given the overwhelming support for his party among the Polish population. Second, the British proceeded on the basis that Anglo-Soviet cooperation would endure beyond the end of the war, allowing Britain to exert influence over the final composition of the Polish government and the structure of the country’s political system. Further, when Churchill urged Mikołajczyk to return, he did so with a clear sense that Britain continued to bear responsibility for the satisfactory outcome of the negotiations. Churchill’s sense of obligation was shared by the rest of the British political leadership and the officials of the Foreign Office. It was not a commitment that expired with the end of hostilities.

After the war, the new Labour government struggled to fulfil the British commitment to Poland in the midst of the rapid realignment of the international system. The foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, presided over a process of gradual British disengagement from Poland, during which time the Polish communist party, with the support of the Soviet Union, moved to establish one-party rule in the country. At first glance, the rapid decline of British influence in Poland seems to support the orthodox interpretation of the Labour foreign secretary as a committed cold warrior from the time he took office. This interpretation holds that Bevin instantly recognised the gravity of the Soviet threat to Western interests, understood that any attempt at cooperation with the Soviets would be futile, and instead skilfully persuaded an initially reluctant US that an American-backed Western European bloc was the only means of ensuring Western security. The crowning success of Bevin’s ‘grand design’ was the announcement of the Marshall Plan and the establishment of NATO.⁹ In order to stave off Soviet interference in Western Europe, it was necessary to concede Soviet dominance over Eastern Europe, implying that Bevin concluded immediately that Poland would fall into the Soviet orbit, beyond the reach of British influence.¹⁰

Far from following a ‘grand design’, however, British policy towards Poland during the two years after the war unfolded as a series of ad hoc decisions which were often intended as short-term compromises, made in the context of progressively narrowing policy options rather than as part of a predetermined plan founded on a vision of a rigidly divided Europe. This work builds on revisionist scholarship, which shows that Bevin was preoccupied above all with the maintenance of Britain’s status as a first rank global power, and was loath to see the pattern of British dependence on the US, which had arisen during the Second World War, become a permanent feature of the postwar reality. Rather than seeking to align Britain with the US, at least until early 1948, Bevin hoped to establish Britain as a “Third Force” in the international system, which would be able to match both the US and the Soviet Union in power and influence, creating the basis for a relationship between equals. Although ill-defined and destined never to come to fruition, this plan formed an important component in Bevin’s thinking about Britain’s place in the postwar world.¹¹ Rather than being founded on a vision of a divided Europe, it depended for its success on the maintenance of stable Anglo-Soviet relations. Further, Bevin was deeply sceptical about the longevity of the American commitment to Europe after the war. Facing the possibility of Britain confronting the Soviet Union alone in Europe strengthened Bevin’s inclination to keep Anglo-Soviet relations on an even keel. Bevin’s response to the sudden deterioration in relations with the Soviet Union after the war was therefore to remove as many sources of tension as possible. He concluded that the Polish issue, which gave rise to such acrimony, would have to be extricated at least temporarily from Anglo-Soviet relations. Bevin’s intention when he took office had been to maintain strong British support for Mikołajczyk’s Polish Peasant Alliance (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe—PSL). By early 1946, however, Bevin was considering other means of establishing political plurality in Poland apart from exclusive British support for Mikołajczyk, whose party was increasingly falling out of favour with the Soviet Union.

Domestic political pressure also exerted an influence on Bevin. The prime minister, Clement Attlee, and other members of the Cabinet, as well as the parliamentary party, expected that a Labour government would establish friendly relations with the Soviet Union on the basis of shared socialist principles. Bevin’s policy options were further circumscribed by Britain’s rapidly deteriorating economic situation after the war. Almost as soon as the war had ended, Bevin was subject to increasing pressure to scale back Britain’s costly overseas commitments. The financial imperative dovetailed with Attlee’s preference for an internationalist approach to foreign policy and his desire for better relations with the Soviet Union. Attlee was willing to make major concessions—including ceding imperial possessions to international control in key areas such as the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean—to accommodate Soviet geostrategic objectives and divest Britain of responsibilities it could no longer afford. Bevin, on the other hand, refused to accept such a high price for good relations with the Soviet Union. This underlying tension between the prime minister and the foreign secretary reinforced Bevin’s inclination to prevent a proliferation of disputes with the Soviet Union. The Polish issue was not one which affected Britain’s vital strategic interests, and it could not be allowed to further damage Anglo-Soviet relations. Finally, Britain’s straitened economic circumstances led to ever greater reliance on the US for assistance, which forced Bevin to adhere more closely to the American line in foreign policy. Although he resented this limit on British independence, increasingly he accepted the American preference for a less interventionist policy in Poland.¹²

Bevin was often at odds with his officials over policy towards Poland. There was almost complete continuity between the pre- and postwar periods in the Foreign Office personnel. Officials who had been deeply involved in the wartime negotiations for a Polish settlement were very reluctant to withdraw support from the Polish democratic opposition. The two years following the end of hostilities saw a growing divergence between Bevin and his officials. As a result, far from a seamless withdrawal from Polish affairs, British policy was characterised by an overall inconsistency: sporadic interventions followed by quiet lulls; support for Mikołajczyk which waned and then resumed. Britain’s struggle to fulfil its responsibilities towards Poland—with different sections of the policymaking establishment approaching the problem with often incompatible methods and objectives—reflects the wider problem of how the British government managed its overstretched commitments after the war in straitened circumstances and in the context of a rapidly changing, highly unstable international environment.

The late 1940s saw a British withdrawal from involvement in Poland as tension with the Soviet Union spiked sharply. Even at this high point of tension, however, Britain was generally not as rigidly anti-Soviet as the US and some other NATO member states. Economic decline coupled with a determination to maintain Britain’s global position meant that détente with the Soviet Union was widely regarded as desirable as a means of easing the problem of Britain’s perpetual scarcity of resources by reducing the scale of the British defence commitment in Europe. Particularly for Churchill, who returned to office as prime minister in 1951, achieving a breakthrough in the Cold War conflict was seen as a mark of both personal prestige and an affirmation of Britain’s international status.¹³ These early détente initiatives reveal the extent to which British thinking and objectives were circumscribed by the parameters of the Cold War. They were explicitly predicated on the basis of a policy of non-intervention in the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. The British objective was limited to achieving a rapprochement with the Soviet Union, which would bolster Britain’s international position and ease the pressure on increasingly scarce resources. The aim was not to fundamentally alter the rigidly divided, oppositional structure that had come to define the international system by the early 1950s. In the middle of the decade, however, Poland underwent a liberalisation process which culminated in the October revolution of 1956. The Polish challenge to the Soviet system served as the catalyst for the beginning of a significant shift in British thinking. Rather than treating the East European satellite states as an indistinct...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Britain and the Polish Government-in-Exile, January 1944 to June 1945
• 3. From Potsdam to the Moscow Council of Foreign Ministers, July to December 1945
• 4. The Electoral Bloc to the Polish Referendum, January to June 1946
• 5. From the Referendum to the Elections, June 1946 to January 1947
• 6. Mikołajczyk’s Escape, January to November 1947
• 7. From High Cold War to Early Détente, 1948–1956
• 8. Conclusion
• Back Matter