July – September 1949: The Polish Crisis and Uprising
Historians generally agree that the Polish Crisis, beginning in mid-July, caught all observers off-guard. Neither the Vienna Pact nor the OTO countries anticipated the rapid destabilization of Poland that emerged with the arrest of Osóbka-Morawski on July 6th, followed three days later by the assassination of Wladyslaw Sikorski in Poznan. Whether organized conspiracy against moderate Polish nationalists, as some claim, or the coinciding of two bitter events, all trust between the moderate socialist and democratic parties, as well as Armia Krajowa itself, long suspected as a dormant source of armed opposition to communist rule, was lost. The small strikes which had occurred in Lodz only months before immediately resurfaced, spreading to Poznan, Danzig, and by the 16th, Warsaw itself, where five thousand marched in defiance of armed soldiers. Demanding the immediate trial of the alleged Sikorski assassins, these latent protests alarmed officials in Warsaw, Moscow, and Berlin. For the moment, Gomulka held back Polish soldiers, clearly nervous about acting without higher guidance from Stalin. Instead, he wired for instructions on the 17th, asking for
“your thoughts on appropriate action for the encouragement of order,” the word ‘encouragement’ clearly including forceful means.
The growing crisis found Moscow and its leader distracted. Half of the Red Army, up to two-thirds according to some estimates, was fighting a bitter and protacted war in Asia. By July of 1949, the first real breakthrough was being realized as Soviet forces crossed the Yangtze River in force, decimated six Japanese divisions at Shanghai, and seized both this key Japanese port and the Kiri capital at Nanking. China’s puppet leader, Wang Jingwei, was in flight, south through the Ningbo region and beyond.
By July 1949, the Red Army stood on the brink of triumph in Asia
The fall of Nanking promised ripe political fruit for the Soviet Union. Sinkiang broke off negotiations with India and the Kiri government, Tibet began supplying arms to budding warlords in the Himalayas, and the first low-level contacts began between the Soviets and former Chinese communists who had been integrated into the Kiri armies. With all eyes on China, Stalin could afford little time for Poland. Nor could he ignore the situation. The precedent of civil unrest in a Vienna Pact nation was dangerous, and the USSR could not be seen to stand still. On the 19th, the fateful cable was dispatched from Moscow to Berlin, with Stalin instructing President Pieck to
”move contingency forces to the Polish border”. Though the same message was sent to Prague as well, it was the German reaction that would help shape coming events. To Gomulka, Stalin advised him to use his judgment to suppress the uprising, and
”to request such aid as is necessary to restore the situation.” Stalin was placing the entire onus of responsibility on the Polish president’s shoulders. For a week, time seemed to stand still in Europe, as word of the Polish unrest filtered westward. In London, Churchill called it
”the momentous hour.”. In Washington, a proposed Congressional resolution in support of the Polish strikers was narrowly defeated by a combination of Democrats and nervous Republicans.
Stalemate could clearly not last forever, however, and on the 27th of July, it broke. When armed strikers took over a government radio station in Poznan and began broadcasting their demands openly, Polish soldiers were sent in to drive them out. Shots were fired, and the irreversible course had been set. Unfortunately for the government, the show of strength backfired, as most troops in the Polish Army refused to fire on the protestors. Only in Warsaw did any serious fighting break out. In city after city in Poland, government control was almost bloodlessly undone. Declaring the Armia Krajowa to be the true national army of Poland, General Bor-Komorowski, aging yet still the unquestioned leader of the country’s national spirit, emerged from hiding in Poznan to declare a new government on the 29th. By the 5th of August, Warsaw, the scene of some of the only heavy fighting of the uprising, had been seized by AK forces, with Gomulka captured and put under guard. The Polish Uprising, lasting only ten days, seemed miraculous and improbable. That tight communist control, stretching over almost all of Europe, could be so quickly thrown off, contributed to an atmosphere of disbelief. As August began, governments wavered between astounded optimism and outright panic.
In Berlin, especially, a certain panic electrified the government which, under Pieck’s quiet and determined administration, had brought Germany out of defeat to become a sort of
”managing partner” of Europe, as one Wall Street banker quipped. With the second-largest army in Europe, several divisions of which were serving in Pakistan, the communist government in Berlin was not quite the cowed puppet that some of the other Vienna Pact countries may have been. Germany was fortunate in that it was a time in which they were needed by the Soviets, whose armed capacity was already being strained by the war in Asia. Lulled by the relative moderation with which the Soviet Linking Hands program was applied to Germany, Pieck, one historian would later write,
”was endowed with an inflated assessment of his own role in Europe.” While the Czechs stood by for further word from Stalin, Pieck saw a more active role for Germany. A Free Polish government, which had just withdrawn from the Vienna Pact on August 14th, was as threatening to Germany as it was to the Soviet Union. By mid-August, a third of the German army was massed on the Polish border as part of Stalin’s
”contingency forces”.
The uprising in Poland was quickly confronted by Vienna Pact forces
Even as hundreds of tanks rumbled towards Poland, which was protected by less than sixty thousand armed fighters of the AK, the western countries at last caught up with events. Encouraged by President Lindbergh, who had sent Secretary Dulles to London earlier in the month, both Prime Minister Attlee and President DeGaulle sent a joint message to Moscow, calling the events in Poland
”an opportunity for the reassessment of the principles discussed at Versailles and Orleans.” Acknowledged but ignored, this initial act of diplomacy only spurred the Soviet government into its attempt to settle the matter. Communication between Warsaw and Moscow was sporadic, yet face-to-face talks were set up on August 22nd. Unfortunately, they quickly broke down in the face of an absolute Soviet refusal to concede the replacement of Gomulka as Polish President,
”democratically elected”, raged
Pravda. Rumors had reached Warsaw that the OTO countries were contemplated another diplomatic response, which only encouraged Bor-Komorowski’s obstinance. On the 26th, Soviet envoys left Warsaw and Poland for good. Events quickly accelerated from there, too fast for the leaders and the diplomats to contend with. When fighting broke out in Silesia on the 30th, both German and Polish commanders blamed each other. On the 1st of September, with President Pieck declaring that
”the contingency of decisive action in Poland, as foreseen by our beloved Stalin, has come to pass,” German forces crossed the border almost a decade to the day after a different Germany had attacked another free Poland.
The reaction of Josef Stalin to the news that Pieck had single-handedly initiated armed action in Poland was never recorded, though imagination should suffice in this regard. By the time the first Soviet communiqués arrived in Berlin, warning Pieck to recall the divisions, German artillery was already heard rumbling in the distance in Danzig, and full-scale combat was underway. Announcing that Germany’s move was
”in perfect keeping with the maintenance of order in the face of destabilizing reactionaries,” the Vienna Pact, on instruction from Moscow, approved the armed suppression of Bor-Komorowski’s government and the restoration of President Gomulka. Soviet and Czech forces would soon join the attack.
In London, Parliament was a cacophany of shouts as the news from Poland arrived. Pushing the Conservatives to a fever pitch, Churchill intoned that
”he who fails to act on this resounding stage, wallow in the mud and curse himself weak, for he has lain down the mantle…patriot of Britain.” In Nantes, DeGaulle declared that
”our time is at hand.” The floor of Congress in Washington, D.C. saw Senator McCarthy condemn the
”base cur of communism that tramples freedom and dares us to shout.”
There are many who have difficulty fathoming the swift change from Cold War to outright ultimatum. The reasons why three democratic societies, nervous yet peaceful, should so suddenly resolve themselves to the ultimate resolution of differences, are not quite explained to this day. Perhaps it was the rush of events. Perhaps it was three or four years of building tension, of anti-communist rhetoric and fervor. Perhaps it was the underlying thought that the Orleans Conference was a temporary peace, that the Bear would have to be confronted one day. Or perhaps it was the fulfillment of ideological prediction,
”The Great Crusade” so loudly trumpeted and sometimes dismissed in the American political scene. Yet, on September 3rd, acting in the name of all OTO nations, the United Kingdom, the Republic of France, and the United States passed an ultimatum to the Vienna Pact to cease armed conflict in Poland and reopen negotiations with the Warsaw government. When, on the 5th, the 48-hour deadline had expired, the unthinkable happened.
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