Brzezinski Research Polish London Govt Extremist General S

1944-09-16

Warsaw Debacle Blamed on Poles Seeking to Cause Rift Among
Allies

By CARROLL BINDER
Foreign News Analyst for The Binghamton Press and the Chicago
Daily News

BEHIND POLITICAL MOVES IN EUROPE:

Warsaw Debacle Blamed on Poles Seeking to Cause Rift Among Allies

When victorious Russian and Polish troops parade through the
streets of liberated Warsaw a great many folks some say 250,000 who ought to be
on the sidewalks cheering the cessation of five years torture will not be among
those present.

They are the Warsaw patriots who sacrificed their lives in a
premature, ill-conceived and foredoomed uprising early in August because
certain Polish politicians in London mistakenly thought it would help their
personal political fortunes and embarrass Poland's allies.

Even sorrier is the fate of an undisclosed number of British
and Polish aviators who perished in a desperate effort to try to fly assistance
to the Warsaw patriots as a result of the pleadings of the Polish politicians
responsible for the disaster. The Polish politician chiefly to blame then
had the bad taste to sneer that not enough Allied aviators and planes had been
sacrificed to retrieve his miscalculations.

Since there are other capitals yet to be liberated and since
the Polish situation is being used to create friction and distrust between
the Allies and within the American democracy it may not be unprofitable to
set forth some of the major factors thus far revealed.

In a situation so confused by not always honest propaganda
it is not possible to speak categorically. What follows is based on a careful
study of the available data and, I believe, will not be substantially modified
by subsequent disclosures.

As victorious Russia pushes the German invader back across
Polish territory it is apparent, that the Kremlin will not tolerate jockeying
by any neighboring countries which will jeopardize Russian security after
Germany's collapse.

Russia is determined, and appears sufficiently strong, to
surround itself with governments whose foreign relations and domestic behavior
it can trust. Since the United States and Great Britain would like to do the
same in their spheres, they are in no position to challenge the Russians in
this respect and couldn't successfully challenge them if they wished to.

A good many Poles realize this and have been trying to
evolve a political arrangement, with Russia which will restore to Poland as
much as possible of its territory and power.

Other Poles, many of them prominent in the Polish Government
in Exile in London and in the Polish forces serving in Italy and France, hate
Russia so bitterly that they have not hesitated to jeopardize their country's
welfare and the Allied interests in their anti-collaborationist activities.

The outstanding diehard among these anti-Russian Poles is
Gen. Kazimierz Sosnkowski, commander-in-chief of the Polish armed forces loyal
to the Polish Government in Exile.

Inasmuch as the American and British governments have
recognized the Polish Government in Exile as the legitimate custodian of Polish
authority General Sosnkowski s attitude and maneuvers have been more
troublesome than otherwise would be the case.

General Sosnkowski's titular chief, after the Polish
president, is Prime Minister Mikolajczyk. General Sosnkowski, however, so
ardently opposes Mr. Mikolajczyk's attempts to save the Polish Government in
Exile from extinction by an agreement with the Polish government recognized by
Russia and, therefore, with Russia itself that thus far Mr. Mikolajczyk has been
unable to effect an agreement. Each day the status of the Polish government
in Exile grows weaker and the Russian-fostered Polish government now domiciled
on Polish soil grows stronger.

General Sosnkowski and the Poles sharing his views seem to
believe that if they hold out long enough the United States and Great Britain
somehow can save them and Poland from close relations with Russia. Their
partisans seek to introduce their anti-Russian sentiments into American
politics in the hope that American official pressure may prove helpful to their
maneuvers.

It is impossible to determine what proportion of Poles in
Poland favor extremist General Sosnkowski, what proportion favor the middle
ground of Prime Minister Mikolajczyk and what proportion favor "the Polish
republic" whose president, a Communist named Boleslaw Bierut and whose
parliament the London Poles say is illegal.

The Bierut group, however, with the Russian-recognized
Polish Committee of National Liiberation is exercising authority on the spot,
It has accepted the Curzon line as the eastern frontier of Poland and on Sept.
9 concluded an agreement at Lublin with the Ukrainian and White Russian Soviet
republics whereby populations will be ex changed wholesale for the political
and ethnic happiness of the peoples and governments concerned

The Union of Polish patriots in the U. S. S. R. (whose
relations with the National Liberation regime now at Lublin are not clear)
proposes to annex from Germany both Lower and Upper Silesia as well as East
Prussia and Pomerania as far west as the River Oder. This, the Union says, will
make -a "strong Poland" such as Marshal Stalin desires.

Some Poles in London are afraid that such annexations would
eventually prove a serious embarrassment to Poland. They say that even if
Hitler's precedent in wholesale transplantation of population should be
employed to the extent of moving 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 Germans out of this
territory to make way for Poles trouble would eventually arise from a resurgent
Germany.

The Poles working with the Russians base their
legality on the 1921 Polish constitution whereas the Poles in London base their
legality on the 1935 constitution which the first group says was illegally
imposed on the nation by a dictatorship.

If Prime Minister Mikolajczyk and some of his London
colleagues should fuse with the Russian-recognized Poles the latter's claim to
legitimacy would be more potent and General Sosnkowski and his fellow
die-harders would be left holding the bag. The United States and Great Britain
probably would lose what remaining interest they have in the Polish London
government and this intra-Polish quarrel over legitimacy and sovereignty.

When Prime Minister Mikolajczyk with American-British
encouragement was in Russia early in August for conferences with his fellow
Poles and Marshal Stalin, General Sosnkowski and his fellow anti-Russian Poles
fought desperately to prevent an agreement.

General Sosnkowski's critics attribute his order to
"General Bor," General Soskowski's lieutenant in the Warsaw
underground, to revolt against the German rule in Warsaw beginning Aug. 1 to a
determination to break up the Mikolajczyk negotiations in Moscow and to
embarrass Russian relations with the Allies.

General Sosnkowski seems to have thought that it would be
better for his cause to have the capital of Poland liberated by a Polish
patriot uprising just as the Russians were entering the city than to have
Warsaw liberated, as other parts of Poland had been liberated by Russian
military operations.

***

General Sosnkowskis propagandists alleged on Aug. 14 that
"Premier Stalin as well as the British and American high com mand in
London had promised to send aid to the ill-armed Polish forces and that
detailed plans for the delivery of arms, and the bombing of German strongholds
had been dispatched to Moscow."

The Russians lost no time in saying that this was an
outright lie. The Russian military authorities were not notified of General
Sosnkowski's intentions to stage such a rising and General Sosnkowski had no
reason to believe that the Russians would modify their strategy to come to the rescue
of his dupes, Moscow officially announced. His charges have not to my knowledge
been confirmed by American and British military authorities.

The strategy of the Russians, like that of General Eisenhower
in Italy and France, was not to make early and head on attacks on such key
positions as Rome, Paris or Warsaw but to make those positions untenable to the
Ger mans by encirclement. This is far less costly and more effective;

The Russians went right on with their operations to the
north and south of Warsaw and in Romania and Bulgaria despite General
Sosnkowski's cries for an immediate attack on Warsaw. They are said to have
refused to permit their bases to be used for makeshift Allied attempts to help
General Sosnkowski's victims out of their agony as the Germans shot down poorly
armed, poorly led patriots and burned an estimated third of Warsaw.

British and Polish fliers in the R. A. F. thus had to fly
900 miles to drop arms to the doomed Warsaw Partisans. The Germans were so
strongly entrenched there that they brought down at least 27 planes. At least
half of the planes engaged in this politically necessitated mission failed to
return to their bases.

General Sosnkowski showed his ingratitude by issuing a
statement Sept. 4 accusing the Allies of abandoning his followers. Sneering
at Allied "arguments about gains and losses' in the Warsaw relieving
operation, General Sosnkowski said "the loss of 27 planes o

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