Western betrayal
Western betrayal is the view that the United Kingdom, France, and sometimes the United States failed to meet their legal, diplomatic, military, and moral obligations with respect to the Czechoslovak and Polish states during the prelude to and aftermath of World War II. It also sometimes refers to the treatment of other Central and Eastern European states at the time.
The term refers to several events, including the treatment of Czechoslovakia during the Munich Agreement and the resulting occupation by Germany, as well as the failure of France and the UK to aid Poland when the country was invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. The same concept also refers to concessions made by the United States and the United Kingdom to the Soviet Union during the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam conferences and to their passive stance during the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation, and post-war events, which allocated the region to the Soviet sphere of influence and created the communist Eastern Bloc.
Historically, such views were intertwined with some of the most significant geopolitical events of the 20th century, including the rise and empowerment of Nazi Germany, the rise of the Soviet Union as a dominant superpower with control of large parts of Europe, and various treaties, alliances, and positions taken during and after World War II and continuing on into the Cold War.
Poland
World War I aftermath
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, a complex set of alliances was established among the nations of Europe, in the hope of preventing future wars (either with Germany or the Soviet Union). With the rise of Nazism in Germany, this system of alliances was strengthened by the signing of a series of "mutual assistance" alliances between France, Britain, and Poland (Franco-Polish Alliance). This agreement with France stated that in the event of war the other allies were to fully mobilise and carry out a "ground intervention within two weeks" in support of the ally being attacked.[20][21][22] The Anglo-Polish agreement stated that in the event of hostilities with a European power, the other contracting party would give "all the support and assistance in its power."[23]
According to Krzysztof Źwikliński, additionally representatives of the Western powers made several military promises to Poland, including such fantastic designs as those made by British General William Edmund Ironside in his July 1939 talks with Marshall Rydz-Śmigły who promised an attack from the direction of Black Sea, or placing a British aircraft carrier in the Baltic.[24] However, the Anglo-Polish Alliance did not make that commitment, and the British commitment to France was for four divisions in Europe within 30 days of the outbreak of war, which was met.[25]
Beginning of World War II, 1939
On the eve of the Second World War, the Polish government tried to buy as much armaments as it could and was asking for arms loans from Britain and France. As a result of that in the summer of 1939 Poland placed orders for 160 French Morane-Saulnier M.S.406 fighters, and for 111 British airplanes (100 light bombers Fairey Battle, 10 Hurricanes, and 1 Spitfire).[26] Although some of these planes had been shipped to Poland before 1 September 1939, none took part in combat. Shipments were interrupted due to the outbreak of war. The total amount of the loan from British government was also much smaller than asked for. Britain agreed to lend 8 million pounds, but Poland was asking for 60 million.[27]
Upon the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939, after giving Germany an ultimatum on 1 September, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September, and a British naval blockade of Germany was initiated. General Gort was appointed commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), and placed under the command of French General Gamelin of the North-eastern Theatre of Operations, as agreed before the war. On 4 September, an RAF raid against German warships in harbour was conducted, and the BEF began its shipment to France.
The German forces reached Warsaw on 8 September, and on 14 September, Marshal Rydz-Śmigły ordered Polish forces to withdraw to the Romanian Bridgehead. On 17 September, the Soviet Union invaded Poland, and Polish Army in the field was effectively defeated before the divisions of the BEF could arrive in France. The first two BEF divisions, which took their place in the French line and change of command, on 3 October, and two further BEF divisions took their place in the French line on 12 October.
France had committed to undertaking a ground offensive within two weeks of the outbreak of war. The French initiated full mobilisation and began the limited Saar Offensive on 7 September, sending 40 divisions into the region. The French assault was slowed down by out-dated doctrines, minefields, and the French lacked mine detectors. When the French reached artillery range of the Siegfried Line, they found that their shells could not penetrate the German defences. The French decided to regroup an attack on 20 September, but when Poland was invaded by the Soviet Union on 17 September, any further assault was called off.[28] Around 13 September, the Polish military envoy to France, general Stanisław Burhardt-Bukacki, upon receiving the text of the message sent by Gamelin, alerted marshal Śmigły: "I received the message by general Gamelin. Please don't believe a single word in the dispatch".[24].
It had been decided that no major air operations against Germany would take place. This was due to French concerns over reprisals on RAF launches from French airfields, against targets in Germany, so most British bomber activity over Germany was the dropping of propaganda leaflets and reconnaissance.[29] This theme would continue in subsequent Anglo-French Supreme War Council meetings. Afterwards, French military leader Maurice Gamelin issued orders prohibiting Polish military envoys Lieutenant Wojciech Fyda and General Stanisław Burhardt-Bukacki from contacting him.[24] In his post-war diaries, General Edmund Ironside, the chief of the Imperial General Staff, commented on French promises: "The French had lied to the Poles in saying they are going to attack. There is no idea of it".[30]
On 17 September 1939 the Soviet Union invaded Poland, as agreed in advance with Germany following the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Britain and France did not take any significant action in response to the Soviet invasion.[31][32] However, the terms of the Anglo-Polish military alliance specifically applied to invasion from Germany only.
France and Britain were unable to launch a successful land attack on Germany in September 1939, and Poland was overcome by both the Germans and Soviets on 6 October, with the last Polish units capitulating that day following the battle of Kock.[33] However, even by the end of October, the still-forming British Expeditionary Force totaled only 4 divisions compared to the 25 German divisions in Western Germany, making a British invasion of Germany unlikely to succeed.[34]
Tehran, 1943
In November 1943, the Big Three (the USSR, US, and UK) met at the Tehran Conference. President Roosevelt and PM Churchill officially agreed that the eastern borders of Poland would roughly follow the Curzon Line.[35] The Polish government-in-exile was not a party to this decision made in secret.[36][37] The resulting loss of the Kresy, or "eastern territories", approximately 48% of Poland's pre-war territory, to the Soviet Union was seen by the London Poles in exile as another "betrayal" by their Western "Allies".[38] However, it was no secret to the Allies that before his death in July 1943 General Władysław Sikorski, Prime Minister of Poland's London-based government in exile had been the originator, and not Stalin, of the concept of a westward shift of Poland's boundaries along an Oder–Neisse line as compensation for relinquishing Poland's eastern territories as part of a Polish rapprochement with the USSR.[39] Józef Retinger, who was Sikorski's special political advisor at the time, was also in agreement with Sikorski's concept of Poland's realigned post-war borders, later in his memoirs Retinger wrote: "At the Tehran Conference, in November 1943, the Big Three agreed that Poland should receive territorial compensation in the West, at Germany's expense, for the land it was to lose to Russia in Central and Eastern Europe. This seemed like a fair bargain."[40]
Churchill told Stalin he could settle the issue with the Poles once a decision was made in Tehran,[41] however he never consulted the Polish leadership.[42] When the Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile Stanisław Mikołajczyk attended the Moscow Conference (1944), he was convinced he was coming to discuss borders that were still disputed, while Stalin believed everything had already been settled. This was the principal reason for the failure of the Polish Prime Minister's mission to Moscow. The Polish premier allegedly begged for inclusion of Lwów and Wilno in the new Polish borders, but got the following reply from Vyacheslav Molotov: "There is no use discussing that; it was all settled in Tehran."[43]