World War II Behind Closed Doors Read Free Page A

Tehran Conference in November 1943. This – not Yalta – was the most decisive Allied meeting of the war.

    The remains of Tadeusz Ruman's plane, which he just managed to crash-land back at his RAF base in southern Italy after a tortuous trip to Warsaw to provide aid during the uprising.

    Zbigniew Wolak (bottom left) with friends in Britain immediately after the war. Shortly after this picture was taken he decided to return to Soviet-controlled Poland.

    Soviet forces in front of the ruins of the German parliament, the Reichstag, in May 1945.

    Halina Szopińska, a member of the Polish underground Home Army, who was captured and tortured by the NKVD in December 1944. She then served ten years in prison.

    John Noble and his father. Both of them were imprisoned by the Soviet authorities after the war in ‘Special camp Number 2’ – the Soviet name for the former Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald.

    Two soldiers of the Red Army during the Battle for Budapest in the early weeks of 1945. The behaviour of some of the Soviet troops in the aftermath of this battle would become infamous.

    Dinner at the Yalta Conference, February 1945. Churchill is flanked by Molotov (far right) and a sick-looking President Roosevelt. The latter's poor condition was remarked on by many who attended the conference.

    VE (Victory in Europe) Day in London, May 1945. These happy scenes were far removed from the reality that prevailed in much of Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, where, under the Soviet occupation, there was a good deal less to celebrate.

    The Victory Parade held in London on 8 June 1946. Notable by their absence from this vast celebration were the fighting forces of Poland. The Polish soldiers who had fought with the British were not invited to participate.
    At Tehran, straight after their tête-à-tête, Roosevelt and Stalin moved on to the first plenary session of the conference, which opened at 4.30. Here the stark difference in political styles between the Western Allies and Stalin became immediately evident. Roosevelt remarked that ‘the Soviets, the British and the United States were sitting round the table for the first time as members of the same family’; Churchill added portentously that ‘the meeting probably represented the greatest concentration of worldly power that had ever been seen in the history of mankind. In their hands almost certainly lay victory: in their hands beyond any shadow of a doubt lay the happiness and fortunes of mankind’. He added that he ‘prayed that they might be worthy of this wonderful God-granted opportunity of rendering service to their fellow-men’. 12 Stalin, who in his entire life would never make a speech like the one he had just heard from Churchill, contented himself with thanking the President and Prime Minister for their remarks and said merely that he hoped that the three of them would ‘make good use of this opportunity’.
    At this first full meeting, Stalin made an immediate concession. Instead of berating the Western Allies for the lack of a second front or insisting on the 1941 borders with Poland – the two subjects that, as we have already seen, were highest on his personal agenda – he announced that he ‘would first address himself to the question of the Pacific’. He said that ‘unfortunately it was impossible for the Soviets to join in the struggle against Japan at the present time, since practically all their forces were required to be deployed against Germany’. However, Stalin went on, ‘the moment for their joiningtheir friends in this theatre would be the moment of Germany's collapse: then they would march together’. It was a clever tactic. Stalin immediately placed the Americans in his debt. But what, in practical terms, had he conceded? Only an agreement in principle to attack Japan once the war in Europe had been won. And what was crucial, in Stalin's mind, to help the war in Europe to be over swiftly? Why, the second front of course.
    It was