In time of Britain’s greatest need during World War II, no other nation helped Britain more than Poland. Yet, Britain’s most important ally later became enslaved under Soviet’s Iron Curtain, while Britain achieved total freedom. Poland, a predominantly Catholic nation, thus switched from being under Nazi Germany’s tyranny, to Communist Soviet’s tyranny – a brutal Godless ideology. Churchill’s role in this change outlined below was monumental, a tragedy which had major negative consequences for millions worldwide.
- First let us remember the 250,000 Polish soldiers who served in the British forces, amongst which there were 17,000 Polish airmen (of which 40% were casualties), who made a major contribution to the Royal Airforce’s victory in the Battle of Britain in 1940, with the most successful of all being the Polish formed Kosciuszko’s Squadron 303 – explained in “A Question of Honor – The Kosciuszko Squadron – Forgotten Heroes of World War II”- by Olson and Cloud – 2003.
- Also, let us remember Poland’s vital contribution to the Allies greatest intelligence coup, without which the Allies might not have won the war – deciphering in 1932 the German military codes generated by the Enigma machine. It was the Polish cryptographers, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Gwidon Karol Langer, who provided the initial breakthrough, and later realizing the looming danger of impending war with Hitler, handed over copies of the deciphering electro-mechanical device to both Britain and France, 5 weeks before the Germans attacked Poland in 1939. This allowed the British project Ultra to interpret German messages during the entire war of 1939-1945, without which the Invasion of Normandy would not have been possible. In 1999 American code expert David A. Hatch wrote, “…the breaking of the Enigma by Poland was one of the cornerstones of the Allied victory over Germany.”
- Let us remember that Britain, denied permission for all Polish war heroes to march in the Victory Parade of 1946 in London, e.g. excluded were the heroes of the Battles of Monte Casino, Tobruk and Arnhem, for fear of offending Stalin! Thus, none of the Polish were in the parade, and the Polish soldiers became the first victims of the Cold War, resulting in the British Imperium losing its worldwide prestige. Instead, they were told to celebrate the victory in Moscow – ruled under the Godless ideology of Communism. The displeasure felt at that time towards The House of Commons in Britain was summed up by fifteen Polish-American congressmen, who stated: “Nobody can wipe out Britain’s obligations to Poland from the conscience of the British people…No one can do this as long as the graves of Polish fliers killed in action over England are not removed from British soil”.
- Churchill promised Polish fighters that: “We shall conquer together or we shall die together”, and in 1941 assured the Polish government-in-exile that his government had no authority to redraw Poland’s frontiers, and that Britain recognized no changes in Poland’s borders made after August 1939. In spite of those promises to such a brave and trustworthy ally like Poland, let us remember that Churchill despicably, because of the grave consequences for millions of Poles, later betrayed Poland, Britain’s most important declared ally. He went back on his word and also broke international law, when he argued at the Tehran Conference in 1943 (with Stalin and Roosevelt attending), that the Poles give up the eastern part of their country to retain their independence. This was suspiciously reminiscent of Chamberlain’s insistence prior to Munich that the Czechs cede the Sudetenland to Hitler.
- Furthermore, let us remember Sir Owen O’Malley, the British ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile, who raised the same question about Poland that Churchill had raised about Czechoslovakia in 1938 – questions about the British government’s complicity in the annexation of another country’s territory, and the Soviet massacre at Katyn and surrounding areas, where 21,857 Polish officers and other elites were massacred in cold blood in 1940 by Stalin’s orders. In a note to the British war secretary Anthony Eden, he wrote: “the real choice before us …” is either “selling the corpse of Poland to Russia and finding an alibi to be used in evidence when we are indicted for abetting a murder”, or “putting the points of principle to Stalin in the clearest possible way”.
- Churchill’s government’s calculated passivity and indifference to Poland’s fate (similar to Roosevelt’s and Stalin’s strategies), is evident when one considers also the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, where let us remember 170,000 inhabitants perished, with very little help from their Allies – most notably Soviet’s, who stood by the city gates as the Germans massacred the population, and demolished 85% of the city – to the point of resembling Hiroshima after the atom bomb explosion.
Yes, Churchill was maybe good for Britain, but his legacy of betraying his most important ally Poland, especially after German Nazis annihilation of Poland where 33% of citizens were killed, about 11 million people, and his appeasement of Stalin allowed the scourge of communism to spread into Eastern Europe, especially Poland – resulting in 300,000 Soviet Red army men, NKVD and NKGB troops being stationed there in 1945. Similarly in Asia and elsewhere, after Stalin was appeased by major world leaders, other communist dictators were emboldened to flourish (e.g. Mao- in China, Kim-in North Korea and Castro- in Cuba), plunging millions more into an abyss of suffering, all under the evil ideology of communism.
Dr. Andrjez Caruk
September 17, 2024 – 85-th Anniversary of Soviet Invasion of Poland
Past member of Black Ribbon Day Committee (International)
Friends of Solidarity/Solidarnosc