Poland constituted the most intractable and profound dilemma facing Soviet-U.S. relations. As Secretary of State Edward Stettinius observed in 1945, Poland was "the big apple in the barrel." Unfortunately, it also symbolized, for both sides, everything that the war had been fought for. From a Soviet perspective, Poland represented the quin-tessence of Russia's national security needs. On three occasions, Poland had served as the avenue for devastating invasions of Russian territory. It was imperative, given Russian history, that Poland be governed by a regime supportive of the Soviet Union. But Poland also represented, both in fact and in symbol, everything for which the Western Allies had fought. Britain and France had declared war on Germany in September 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland, thus honoring their mutual defense pact with that victimized country. It seemed unthinkable that one could wage war for six years and end up with another totalitarian country in control of Poland. Surely if the Atlantic Charter signified anything, it required defending the right of the Polish people to determine their own destiny. The presence of 7 million Polish-American voters offered a constant, if unnecessary, reminder that such issues of self-determi-nation could not be dismissed lightly. Thus, the first issue confronting the Allies in building a postwar world would also be one on which compromise was virtually impossible, at least without incredible diplo-matic delicacy, political subtlety, and profound appreciation, by each ally, of the other's needs and priorities.

Roosevelt appears to have understood the tortuous path he would have to travel in order to find a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Given his own commitment to the Atlantic Charter, rooted in both domestic political reasons and personal conviction, he recognized the need to advocate an independent and democratic government for the Polish people. "Poland must be reconstituted a great nation," he told the country during the 1944 election. Yet the president also repeatedly acknowledged that the Russians must have a "friendly" government in Warsaw. Somehow, Roosevelt hoped to find a way to subordinate these two conflicting positions to the higher priority of postwar peace. "The President," Harry Hopkins said in 1943, "did not intend to go to the Peace Conference and bargain with Poland or the other small states; as far as Poland is concerned, the important thing [was] to set it up in a way that [would] help maintain the peace of the world."

The issue was first joined at the Tehran conference. There, Church-ill and Roosevelt endorsed Stalin's position that Poland's eastern border, for security reasons, should be moved to the west. As Roosevelt had earlier explained to the ambassador from the Polish government-in-exile in London, it was folly to expect the United States and Britain "to declare war on Joe Stalin over a boundary dispute." On the other hand, Roosevelt urged Stalin to be flexible, citing his own need for the Polish vote in the 1944 presidential election and the importance of establishing cooperation between the London Poles and the Lublin government-in-exile situated in Moscow. Roosevelt had been willing to make a major concession to Russia's security needs by accepting the Soviet definition of Poland's new boundaries. But he also expected some consideration of his own political dilemma and of the principles of the Atlantic Charter.

Such consideration appeared to be forthcoming in the summer of 1944 when Stalin agreed to meet the prime minister of the London-Polish government and "to mediate" between the two opposing governments-in-exile. But hopes for such a compromise were quickly crushed as Soviet troops failed to aid the Warsaw Polish resistance when it rose in massive rebellion against German occupation forces in hopes of linking up with advancing Soviet forces. The Warsaw Poles generally supported the London government-in-exile. As Red Army troops moved to just six miles outside of Warsaw, the Warsaw Poles rose en masse against their Nazi oppressors. Yet when they did so, the Soviets callously rejected all pleas for help. For eight weeks they even refused to permit American planes to land on Soviet soil after airlifting supplies to the beleaguered Warsaw rebels. By the time the rebellion ended, 250,000 people had become casualties, with the backbone of the pro-London resistance movement brutally crushed. Although some Americans, then and later, accepted Soviet claims that logistical problems had prevented any assistance being offered, most Americans endorsed the more cynical conclusion that Stalin had found a convenient way to annihilate a large part of his Polish opposition and facilitate acquisition of a pro-Soviet regime. As Ambassador Averell Harriman cabled at the time, Russian actions were based on "ruthless political considerations."

By the time of the Yalta conference, the Red Army occupied Poland, leaving Roosevelt little room to maneuver. When one American diplomat urged the president to force Russia to agree to Polish independence, Roosevelt responded: "Do you want me to go to war with Russia?" With Stalin having already granted diplomatic recognition to the Lublin regime, Roosevelt could only hope that the Soviets would accept enough modification of the status quo to provide the appearance of representative democracy. Spheres of influence were a reality, FDR told seven senators, because "the occupying forces [have] the power in the areas where their arms are present." All America could do was to use her influence "to ameliorate the situation."

Nevertheless, Roosevelt played what cards he had with skill. "Most Poles," he told Stalin, "want to save face. ... It would make it easier for me at home if the Soviet government could give something to Poland." A government of national unity, Roosevelt declared, would facilitate public acceptance in the United States of full American participation in postwar arrangements. "Our people at home look with a critical eye on what they consider a disagreement between us. ... They, in effect, say that if we cannot get a meeting of minds now . . . how can we get an understanding on even more vital things in the future?" Although Stalin's immediate response was to declare that Poland was "not only a question of honor for Russia, but one of life and death," he finally agreed that some reorganization of the Lublin regime could take place to ensure broader representation of all Poles.

In the end, the Big Three papered over their differences at Yalta by agreeing to a Declaration on Liberated Europe that committed the Allies to help liberated peoples resolve their problems through democratic means and advocated the holding of free elections. Although Roosevelt's aide Admiral William Leahy told him that the report on Poland was "so elastic that the Russians can stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without ever technically breaking it," Roosevelt believed that he had done the best he could under the circumstances. From the beginning, Roosevelt had recognized, on a de facto basis at least, that Poland was part of Russia's sphere of influence and must remain so. He could only hope that Stalin would now show equal recognition of the U.S. need to have concessions that would give the appearance, at least, of implementing the Atlantic Charter.

The same basic dilemmas, of course, occurred with regard to the structure of postwar governments in all of Eastern Europe. As early as 1943, Roosevelt had made clear to Stalin at Tehran that he was willing to have the Baltic states controlled by the Soviets. His only request, the president told Stalin, was for some public commitment to future elections in order to satisfy his constituents at home for whom "the big issues . . . would be the question of referendum and the right of self-determination." The exchange with Stalin accurately reflected Roose-velt's position over time.

Significantly, Roosevelt even sanctioned Churchill's efforts to divide Europe into spheres of influence. With Roosevelt's approval, Churchill journeyed to Moscow in the fall of 1944. Sitting across the table from Stalin, Churchill proposed that Russia exercise 90 percent predominance in Romania, 75 percent in Bulgaria, and 50 percent control, together with Britain, in Yugoslavia and Hungary, while the United States and Great Britain would exercise 90 percent predominance in Greece. After extended discussion and some hard bargaining, the deal was made. (Poland was not even included in Churchill's percentages, suggesting that he was acknowledging Soviet control there.) At the time, Churchill suggested that the arrangements be expressed "in diplomatic terms [without use of] the phrase 'dividing into spheres,' because the Amer-icans might be shocked." But in fact, as Robert Daliek has shown in his superb study of Roosevelt's diplomacy, the American president accepted the arrangement. "I am most pleased to know," FDR wrote Churchill, "you are reaching a meeting of your two minds as to international policies." To Harriman he cabled: "My active interest at the present time in the Balkan area is that such steps as are practicable should be taken to insure against the Balkans getting us into a future international war." At no time did Roosevelt protest the British-Soviet agreement.

In the case of Eastern Europe generally, even more so than in Poland, it seemed clear that Roosevelt, on a de facto basis, was prepared to live with spheres-of-influence diplomacy. Nevertheless, he remained constantly sensitive to the political peril he faced at home on the issue. As Congressman John Dingell stated in a public warning in August 1943, "We Americans are not sacrificing, fighting, and dying to make permanent and more powerful the communistic government of Russia and to make Joseph Stalin a dictator over the liberated countries of Europe." Such sentiments were widespread. Indeed, it was concern over such opinions that led Roosevelt to urge the Russians to be sensitive to American political concerns. In Eastern Europe for the most part, as in Poland, the key question was whether the United States could somehow find a way to acknowledge spheres of influence, but within a context of universalist principles, so that the American people would not feel that the Atlantic Charter had been betrayed.

The future of Germany represented a third critical point of conflict. For emotional as well as political reasons, it was imperative that steps be taken to prevent Germany from ever again waging war. In FDR's words, "We have got to be tough with Germany, and I mean the German people not just the Nazis. We either have to castrate the German people or you have got to treat them in such a manner so they can't just go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past." Consistent with that position, Roosevelt had agreed with Stalin at Tehran on the need for destroying a strong Germany by dividing the country into several sectors, "as small and weak as possible."

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