Polish Civil War 1944-1946 have broken out?

[LAstry2]

If the UK had allowded more paratrooper and armored units to be smuggled into Poland in 1944 would the following have happened?

1) The Warsaw Uprising of August 1944 would not have been crushed....
2) The reestablishement of Polish goverment In exhile in London in warsaw....
3) A Ciil war breaks out between the Pro western Poles In exhile and the Pro eastern Poles...backed by Stalin

[gebhk]

1) Don't see why. A paratrooper brigade, even fully armed rather than 'smuggled in' would not have made a great deal of difference to the balance, so long the Soviets were not involved and it certainly would not have given them one to get involved. .
2) Can't see how. That would imply an area of Poland that had not yet been overrun by the Red Army could be captured from the Germans and held by the parachute brigade and armoured division. Given that an entire parachute DIVISION in addition to the Polish Parachute Brigade proved unable to capture and hold one end of a bridges for more than a week and within spitting distance of its supply bases, suggests this at the extreme range of aerial supply is pie in the sky. And even if, by some miracle, it could be achieved, the Soviets would steamroller over this tiny rump, hardly noticing it.
3) Not a chance. There would simply be a war between a Polish para brigade, a Polish armoured division sans any means of supply and a few thousand volunteers with hand guns at best, against the Red Army. The 'pro-eastern' puppets were merely a token in all of this.

[TZAL]

Warsaw Uprising would have been very successful but it was not in line with UK/Russian war aims.

During the uprising the British refused requests from the Home Army to send the independent brigades. Thousands of troops could have been sent in. This is on top of the limited air runs they were allowed. The Polish squadrons in England were running resupply missions to Warsaw, dropping gear, weapons, gold, paperwork, ammunition. But they could never ramp up the operations. They absolutely could have sent a wave of planes and men into Warsaw.

Russians sat on the other side of the river, and waited for the Home Army to be crushed. They 'resupplied' the Poles by air dropping supplies without parachutes, wrong ammunition, etc.

The Americans tried to help, Operation Fanatic was a limited trial of US Bombers landing in Ukraine from missions over Yugo/Romania (instead of turning back). They were to build a bomber force in Ukraine and start nailing the Germans in Poland and when the Uprising happened the Americans were not allowed to send their bombers from Ukraine to support.

Why did the British refuse to help so much?
1. Yalta, they had already agreed to screw over Eastern Europe to the Communists and Stalin
2. The war for England was about economic interests and destroying Germany for that European economic supremacy. Listen to what Churchill actually says about destroying Germany economically years before WWII even started.
3. The Mediterranean war was all about UK securing trade and shipping over the Suez canal. The Russians were furious and wanted UK to put everything into the Western invasion. Hitler was also glad because it was much easier to defend Italy and slow down allies to fight Russians, then if the US/UK went 100% into France first which would have required significantly more men to hold back, vs in Italy.
4.When General Ander's learned of the Yalta betrayal in Feb 1945 he asked for the 2nd Army to be withdrawn from the front line. Churchill's response, and I quote directly from that fat ***** mouth, "you [the Poles] are no longer needed". US commanders pleas kept the Polish troops there. Since now the Poles were no longer fighting for a free Poland but for UK interests in the Med...

There is more, so much more, but the Warsaw uprising could have been very successful, but the Polish "allies", mainly UK, repeatedly screwed them over. In 1939 and onwards. Churchill was as much of a bastard to Poland as Stalin.

[gebhk]

Hi Tzal

With respect, I think you are missing the most critical point - the only way the WU could have been successful was if the Soviets believed it was in their interests that it should do so. If that had been the case, they could have provided the support and force necessary to achieve that end without any need for Western Allied intervention. If they did not, the insertion of the Polish Parachute Brigade would have made little or no differece apart from adding thousands more young lives to Poland's butcher's bill for the war.

[TZAL]

Hi gebhk, actually I stated the Yalta conference which was how Stalin and Churchill carved up E. Europe. They did this on napkins and had percentages next to each country how much Communist influence they would have, and they passed it back and forth due to the language barrier. That was how Poland was decided by Stalin and Churchill, on a napkin.

Perhaps if people are not aware of the Yalta conference and how the allies betrayed all of Eastern Europe to Communism they wouldn't understand what I was referring to in my bullet points. Stalin needed a completely crushed Poland in order for this to happen. Stalin would never help any Poles and despised Poland for his own personal humiliation during the Polish-Bolshevik war of 1918-21 when he was the commander of the Sourther Forces. He deported 3 million of them to the Gulags when they invaded in 1939. He systematically began destroying Poland with the Germans in 1939. The Russians NKVD was more brutal then the Gestapo (Source: Captain Pilecki).

The WU was neither in UK or Russia interest because Stalin wanted bascially everything to be communist. He was the Red God wanting to conquer all.

I also stated several other groups that would bomb and support, it wasn't just a few thousands of the Ciochemni and parachute brigades. I mentioned Operation Frantic, but again, there were so many Polish groups that could have been divereted to the WU and they were denied by the UK.

The Russians were 'allies' in name only, not in actions.

In sum, the Polish leaders took a gamble that if they could liberate Warsaw themselves they had an incredible bargaining chip for a free Poland without Communism. And if the parachute brigades could have been sent in, that meant that all the other supporting groups would go too. US bombers from Ukraine & Italy, RAF bombers from UK. They could have landed thousands of Polish infantry behind the Soviet lines where the Russians had stopped and allowed them to go forward. Tens of thousands of Polish soldiers in Italy and England would have absolutely volunteered. But again, note what I said about Churchill.

If Churchill had been this great hero of liberty, he would have been forcing Stalin to accept all UK and Polish help for the Uprising.

But I will quote that fat bastard again: When General Ander's learned of the Yalta betrayal in Feb 1945 he asked for the 2nd Army to be withdrawn from the front line. Churchill's response, and I quote directly, "you [the Poles] are no longer needed".

Without the support of this supposed amazing UK ally, Poland could not move forward. The blame rests equally on Churchill as much as Stalin.

(quick edit, I know that Yalta was after the WU, but it gives an understanding of how they viewed Poland it was several years in the making. Roosevelt in Tehran refused to get involved in the border carvings with Church/Stalin because his 1944 election was coming up and there were many Polish American voters and he didn't want to impact getting their vote, until Potsdam).

[gebhk]

None of which, I'm afraid, contradicts what I said. The fundamental quandary is that if Stalin wanted the WU to succeed, no Western help was needed. If he did not, no Western aid, beyond gestures, was possible.

Incidentally, the napkin incident, as I recall, was not at Yalta but at an earlier Stalin-Churchill meeting and I don't think it involved Poland. However I would have to search out the relevant literature. Perhaps someone else has this info at their fingertips?

[Steve]

The following comes from a biography of Churchill by Clive Ponting. It is not the usual he was the best thing since sliced bread but did have a few faults type. It is in places excoriating of Churchill.

Churchill and Stalin met at the Kremlin on October 9 1944 at 10pm. Churchill wanted Stalin’s support against the Americans in getting back Britain’s Empire in the Far East. According to Ponting the following is only mentioned in the British ambassador’s diary not the official record. Churchill passed to Stalin what he described as “a naughty document”. The document proposed the division of Europe into spheres of influence. Rumania 90% Soviet Union, Greece 90% Britain, Bulgaria 75% Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Hungary 50% each. After the names were translated to Cyrillic script Stalin changed Bulgaria to 90% Soviet Union and ticked the document.

The discussion then moved to Poland and Pontins source seems to be documents from the Prime Minister’s Office. Churchill expressed satisfaction that the Warsaw uprising was over saying that the Home Army was now led by “some colourless man. He could not remember his name”. Moving the German population out of the German territory given to Poland and moving one and a half million Poles from east of the Curzon line was discussed. On the 13th Mikolajczyk attended a meeting with the two leaders, Churchill had already told Stalin that the London Poles should “be forced to settle”. It was clear that Poland was going to be in the 90% Soviet Union sphere of influence. What followed beats anything and by a long way what happened at Munich in 1938. For some reason whenever politicians mention appeasement it is always Munich and Chamberlain that are cited while Moscow October 1944 seems to have been completely forgotten about.

[gebhk]

Hi Steve

For some reason whenever politicians mention appeasement it is always Munich and Chamberlain that are cited while Moscow October 1944 seems to have been completely forgotten about.

It has always struck me as ironic that poor old Chamberlain who handed over a bit of one country to appease Hitler is villified while Churchill, who handed over neartly 1/3 of the countries of Europe in their entirety to appease Stalin, is considered a great hero.

[wm]

Still, it needs to be remembered that the countries (except Poland) were allies of Nazi Germany, not Britain, so Britain owed them nothing.

And Chamberlain didn't hand over a bit of Czechoslovakia; the Czechs did. Chamberlain, an outsider and an independent mediator, saved the Czechs from Hitler's invasion.
The Czechs had the last word, and they decided to surrender.
Czechoslovakia wasn't an ally of Britain, but Poland was.
In both cases, the final outcome was inevitable, i.e., Hitler and Stalin couldn't be stopped, so Britain correctly accepted the inevitable.
But in the case of Poland, Churchill not only accepted the inevitable but supported the aggressor in its conquest of Poland and demanded to be paid with spheres of influence and restoration of the empire.
The spheres of influence were unbelievably naive; Stalin didn't have any reason to adhere to such an agreement, and Britain didn't have any means to enforce it.

[gebhk]

Hi WM

While broadly I would concur that Chamberlain and Churchill did much the same thing by accepting the inevitable in what they believed to be Britain's best interest, it is still curious that they are viewed so very differently. Perhaps because the first is seen to have failed (feeding Chechoslovakia to the lions did not prevent the war) while the second is seen to have secured peace for Britain for a very long time? Perhaps because Hitler had to be painted as a very bad man to convince the British public that their sacrifices were necessary and thus letting him have his way was ipso facto a bad thing? Whereas Stalin became Britain's ally and had the support of the US, so had to be painted as being OK? Probably a combo of both these and more. But ironic nonetheless and very unfair to Chamberlain.

[Steve]

Churchill agreed to the incorporation into the Soviet Empire of most of Eastern Europe including a country that was a British ally. The argument in favour of Churchill is that he could do nothing to stop Stalin and it would have happened anyway. However, if you claim to be fighting for freedom surely you should not be agreeing with a tyrant that these countries could be taken over by him. That Britain was to have a 90% influence in Greece rather suggests that Churchill thought of Greece as a post war puppet state. The deal in Moscow has echoes of the Ribbentrop Molotov pact. Before anyone starts jumping up and down in front of their monitor I said echoes not that it was the same.

Once out of power and with relations between the Soviet Union and the west going rapidly downhill Churchill became a staunch ant communist. The following is from his famous Iron Curtain speech.

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone-Greece with its immortal glories-is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation. The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy."

Presumably when Churchill was agreeing in Moscow to many of the Eastern European countries coming under Soviet influence he had no idea that it would lead “not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow”. The bit about “mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place.” is quite funny. Churchill had agreed in Moscow to the expulsion of some five million Germans living east of the Oder River and there had been an agreement with the Czech government in exile that the three million Sudeten Germans could be expelled.

What the Sudeten Germans wanted never seems to get much of a look in when Munich comes up. In 1918 they had not wanted to be in Czechoslovakia but apparently wanted at first to stay with Austria and later to join Germany. If the Czechs had a right to self determination why did the Sudeten Germans also not have this right? Clearly Munich was bad for the Czech state but it was good for the Sudeten Germans. When you see them celebrating the German takeover it is surprising they are not waving pictures of Chamberlain who helped lift the yolk (a light yolk) of the Czech state from them. Admittedly Chamberlain did not set out to free the Sudeten Germans from Czech rule but he played a large part in it.

[gebhk]

Once out of power and with relations between the Soviet Union and the west going rapidly downhill Churchill became a staunch ant communist.

And, to be fair, he was one previously until 22 June 1941.

[LAstry2]

British indifference.......
viewtopic.php?f=114&t=250940
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=136000&p=1184785&hi ... o#p1184785

[ewest89]

A skewed history. The Soviets wanted as much land as they could get. At the end of the war, instead of a free and liberated Poland, General Patton saw it and other Eastern European countries in the hands of the Soviets. Churchill was very aware of the Soviet threat. He requested that his military planners draw up a plan to attack the Soviets. They concluded it would be a long and protracted war, and included reactivating parts of the German Army and Waffen SS. It was called Operation Unthinkable.

https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Unthin ... 8&qid=&sr=

Since this attack did not occur, British and American airmen flew reconnaissance missions close to the various Soviet Bloc states as soon as possible after the war to monitor troop and aircraft movements and to identify radar positions and anti-aircraft weapons.

[gebhk]

To be fair, a government would have to be nuts not to plan for such an eventuality.

British and American airmen flew reconnaissance missions close to the various Soviet Bloc states

Much the same was happening at the other end of the world, with US planes flying recon over the Kurile islands etc. One can hear history sniggering as US scout planes were being attacked by US-built King Cobras of the Soviet Air Force, even before the war had ended.