October 11, 1944: President Roosevelt greets PAC delegation headed by Rozmarek
(right) for Pulaski Day ceremonies while Polish uprising in Warsaw is being obliterated
Posted on 09/27/2004 5:11:39 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
In 1944 anxious Polish ethnic leaders formed the Polish American Congress, an umbrella organization of twenty thousand Polish fraternal lodges, parishes,cultural associations, sports and youth groups, veterans’ posts, newspapers, and fraternal insurance companies. The Congress dedicated itself to winning American support for a free and independent Poland within its prewar boundaries, which included the half of Poland which Stalin had annexed. The call for the founding convention stated that, “the Congress will declare the wholehearted cooperation of support of Americans of Polish descent of the declarations of our President pertaining to the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter, that nations, large or small, might exist by themselves free of all interference and aggression.”
Polish voters were among the New Deal’s most loyal constituencies, with many Polish districts habitually turning in 70 percent or better Democratic majorities. Any disquiet that might reduce these majorities was was a major political problem. During the 1944 presidential campaign, Roosevelt held two highly publicized meetings with the Polish American Congress, one in the White House and one in Chicago. The president promised the anxious Poles that the Atlantic Charter would be upheld and, though refusing top formally commit himself on the question of Poland’s borders, he held his Washington meeting in front of a huge wall map of Poland showing its prewar boundaries. Based on these meetings, Charles Rozmarek, head of the Polish American Congress, endorsed Roosevelt for reelection In the 1944 election Polish precincts turned in their usual overwhelming Democratic majorities. While these assurances served Roosevelt’s and the Democratic party’s short-term political purpose, they were not fulfilled.
Although Roosevelt told Polish American leaders that he had made no concession to Stalin on Poland at the Teheran Conference of Allied leaders, in fact he had. Roosevelt agreed to the Soviet annexation of Eastern Poland (with German land given in partial compensation) but explained that the deal must not be formally announced because, as he told Stalin and Churchill, “there were in the United States from six to seven million Americans of Polish extraction, and as a practical man, he did not want to lose their vote.”
During 1944 Roosevelt met with Prime minister Stanislaw Mikolajczyk of the Polish exile government. roosevelt urged Mikolajczyk to drop anti-Soviet members from his cabinet and assured them that the Soviets did not intend to interfere with Poland’s internal governance if Polish foreign policy accommodated Soviet security needs. On the margins of the memorandum describing Mikolajczyk’s meeting with Roosevelt, Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, wrote, “The President will do nothing for the Poles, nothing more than [U.S. Secretary of State] Cordell Hull did in Moscow or the President did himself in Teheran. The poor Poles, it is sad that they delude themselves if they believe in those vague and lavish promises. Later the President will not keep them at all.”
In 1944 Stalin set up the Polish Committee of National Liberation run by Communists, with nominal non-Communist figureheads, as an alternative to the government-in-exile. Although the United States officially recognized the government-in-exile, Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, met with the Committee of National Liberation, thus signaling American willingness to treat it as a legitimate force.
In January 1945 the Soviet Union ignored the Polish government-in-exile and recognized the Polish National Liberation Committee as the provisional government of Poland. In February 1945 at the Yalta Conference of Allied leaders the only concessions Stalin would make were vague promises to include members of the government-in-exile in the Communist-dominated provisional government and to hold free elections. Even then Roosevelt did not prepare Americans for what was to come. Instead he told the American people that the Yalta Conference assured a peace “based on the sound and just principles of the Polish state.” Privately, William Leahy, the president’s chief of staff, told Roosevelt that Stalin’s promise was “so elastic that the Russians can stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without even technically breaking it.” Roosevelt replied, “I know, Bill – I know it. But it’s the best I can do for Poland at this time.”
In January 1947, after a campaign of terror, intimidation, and blatant fraud, the provisional government announced that the people of Poland had voted overwhelmingly for Communist rule. Stanislaw Mikolajczyk fled into exile. Poland remained a tyranny for another forty years until the regime was overthrown Atlantic Charter” and called the accord “the most hopeful agreement possible for a free, independent, and prosperous by the Solidarity labor movement.
A bitter representative John Lesinski (Democrat, Michigan), who appealed to Polish Americans to support Roosevelt in 1944, announced that at Yalta the president had betrayed the Atlantic Charter for which American soldiers had died. Charles Rozmarek, head of the Polish American Congress, had endorsed Roosevelt in the 1944 presidential campaign: in 1948 and 1952 he pointedly endorsed the Republican presidential nominees. Also endorsing the Republican candidates in 1948 and 1952 was was the former ambassador to Poland, Arthur Bliss Lane. Lane had served as American ambassador after World War II and had observed firsthand the methods used to establish Communist rule. deeply embittered by his experience, Lane resigned in 19947 as a protest against the bankruptcy of America’s Polish policy.
Several previously safely Democratic districts with large Polish American constituencies swung to the Republicans when the local Democrats did not switch to an anti-Communist stance swiftly enough. In 1950, for example, Republiacn Timothy Sheehan, campaigning on the betrayal of Poland at Yalta and promising to investigate the Katyn massacre, won election in a heavily Polish and usually Democratic Chicago congressional district.
Democrats reacted to the anti-Soviet anger among Polish-Americans by embracing it and making it their own. In 1948 President Truman, like FDR before him, met with Polish-American leaders at the White House in front of a huge map of Poland with its prewar boundaries. President Truman supported the House’s Katyn hearings and instructed executive agencies to assist in the investigation. This largely succeeded in turning Polish-American rage about Katyn away from the Democrats and Roosevelt. Even so, the hearings produced evidence to reinforce the belief that some American officials had acted with duplicity by covering up evidence about the massacre. In its official report the House Katyn Committee concluded that during the war, the U.S. government had collected evidence of Soviet guilt for Katyn but had “brushed aside” the information for fear that the truth would “hinder the prosecution of the war to a successful conclusion.”
Perhaps you’re right. But if you read “Stalin’s Secret Agents,” by Romerstein & Evans, you may reach a different conclusion.
Moreover, the time to have exercised good judgment was when the Soviets invaded Poland in 1939, two weeks after Hitler did.
FDR should have told France & Britain to call off their declaration of war on Hitler, & sue for peace.
Hitler & Stalin were destined to fight, but not us. We wormed our way into a fight we could’ve avoided.
I could not agree more. Today in Hungary the people thank America for 60 years of Stalinist terror and death. The Arsenal of Democracy “gave” Hungary and other central European states to their Uncle Joe.
Do you have any conception of the combat power of the Red Army in May, 1945?
US troops were NOT going to fight against the Russians for Poland. It just wasn’t going to happen. They’d been pegged as allies for the prior 4 years!
The only stick the US had against the Russians was Lend Lease , but that had to continue at least until the 90 days after VE day that Stalin had promised to join in the war against Japan - which saved lots of American soldiers lives as the Japanese might not necessarily have quit after the A bombs.
Going to war over the Poles was just not going to happen.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.