Mikołajczyk.
Historians have argued that “the impact of the Polish-Soviet split on domestic politics in the United States was considerable. Those moderate elements in the Polish community who had refrained from public and divisive attacks on the Soviet Union in response to unity pleas by the Roosevelt administration now found themselves bitterly agreeing with the KNAPP militants.”117 On the other hand, the pro-Soviet Poles vigorously attacked KNAPP and its supporters on the pages of Detroit’s Głos Ludowy (People’s Voice), the only pro-Soviet Polish daily in the country. The concern of the administration over the KNAPP-inspired anti-Soviet campaign was reflected in its initiation of the circulation of a pamphlet attacking KNAPP signed by more than thirty moderate and leftist Poles.118
Throughout 1943 American Polonia observed with gravity how the American public as well as the government generally accepted the Soviet side of the Katyń story and showed signs of deliberately undermining the demands of the Polish government in exile.119 The U.S. War Department refused to launch any investigation into the Katyń massacre, despite the appeals of nine Polish-American congressmen led by John Lesinski of Michigan, Thaddeus Wasilewski of Wisconsin, and Joseph Mruk of New York. During the Big Three meeting in Tehran in 1943, the fate of Poland’s eastern border was decided without consultation with the Poles. Approached by Polish Americans inquiring about the results of the meeting, Roosevelt, who was determined to keep the agreements secret, offered vague and inconclusive answers.120 Shortly afterward, the White House allowed two controversial figures connected with the American Slav Congress, Professor Oskar Lange and the Reverend Stanisław Orlemański, to travel to Moscow on a direct invitation from Stalin. In response to widespread criticism from major Polish-American newspapers, the White House announced that the two had journeyed as private citizens and had no right to speak for the United States.121
Political issues concerning postwar arrangements in Europe continued to occupy public attention. The Polish-American community expressed vivid interest in assuring the existence of a sovereign and independent Polish state. Charles Rozmarek, the president of the PNA since 1939 and a rising star in Chicago Polonia, together with KNAPP leaders and some other activists from the Polish press and clergy realized that Polonia needed to establish a political presence that could exert greater pressure on Washington. As a result, the Polish American Congress (PAC) was founded in May 1944 at a meeting of some twenty-five hundred representatives of Polonia gathered in Buffalo, New York. The PAC, as a large federation of fraternal, church, and professional organizations, immediately evoked enormous enthusiasm among American Polonia. Soon the PAC claimed 6 million members and followers, and was supported by nearly all Polish-American organizations.122
The PAC accepted the leadership of American Polonia in a difficult moment. Roosevelt, conscious of the significance of the Polish vote in the upcoming presidential elections, agreed to meet with Mikołajczyk in the summer 1944, but demanded that the premier have no contact with Polish Americans. On August 1, 1944 an uprising broke out in Warsaw, led by the Polish Home Army, which fought against overwhelming German forces as the Red Army watched from the right bank of Vistula River. Despite the repeated pleas for help that the PAC directed to the American government, no decisive action was taken as the Germans suppressed the uprising, killing and deporting the population of Warsaw and turning the city into a sea of ruins.
The Republican Party failed to capitalize on the growing dissatisfaction of Polish Americans with Roosevelt’s policies toward Poland. In October 1944 Roosevelt went to Chicago and met Rozmarek, convincing him of his good intentions regarding the Polish question. Rozmarek, the most influential political leader of Polonia at that time, was swayed by FDR’s eloquence and announced his support for Roosevelt. On Election Day the Polish-American community gave Roosevelt 90 percent of their votes.123
International events in 1945 continued to follow an adverse course for Poland. In February 1945 Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met in Yalta to formalize the agreements arrived at in Tehran and to conclude the settlement of the postwar world. The Allies affirmed that the boundary between Poland and the Soviet Union would run along the so-called Curzon Line, which meant a loss of 178,220 square kilometers in the east, including the cities of Wilno and Lwów. Although Poland was to be compensated by the award of German lands in the west (101,200 square kilometers), Poland became the only country in the victorious Allied camp that came out of the war with a territorial loss.124 It was also agreed that the Lublin government installed by the Soviets would be reorganized to include a broader representation of Polish society and democratic leaders from abroad. This Provisional Government of National Unity (Tymczasowy Rząd Jedności Narodowej, TRJN) was to be recognized by the Western powers and to have the responsibility to hold “free and unfettered elections.”125 The reaction of the PAC, Rozmarek, and the group of Polish-American congressmen was an immediate and vehement criticism of the Yalta agreement and Roosevelt’s politics as well. Leo Krzycki, however, as president of the American Polish Labor Council (APLC) and claiming to represent six hundred thousand trade union members of Polish background, supported Roosevelt and Yalta and called on the president to reject the divisive claims of other Polish-American leaders. The APLC manifesto was signed by representatives of the auto, steel, electrical, clothing, transportation, and smelter workers unions.126
Both political factions of Polonia were represented at the San Francisco United Nations conference in April 1945, but their presence was symbolic. At the beginning of July 1945, the United States and Great Britain withdrew recognition from the London government and recognized the Provisional Government of National Unity formed in Warsaw on June 28, 1945. Despite hopes that Truman would adopt a tougher stance on the Polish question, the Big Three, meeting in Potsdam in July 1945, only confirmed the previous agreements. The PAC bulletin of August–September declared: “It was not Russia but America that broke Poland.”127 In the growing climate of the Cold War, the Yalta agreement—often referred to as the “betrayal at Yalta”—became a rallying point for the PAC and Rozmarek. Coming closer to the position taken by KNAPP, the PAC called for the repudiation of the Yalta agreement, recognition of the London government, and Allied supervision of elections in Poland. In the Cold War atmosphere and as the Left gradually lost its significance, the PAC became the voice of the majority of American Polonia, gaining in stature and support, and representing Polonia before the American government and society.
The loss of recognition was a serious blow to the Polish government in exile in London, but its leaders were determined to carry on and, recalling the nineteenth century tradition, revived the concept of the “state in exile.” The state in exile, or Mała Polska (Little Poland) in exile, assumed a certain institutional completeness, with governmental, political, military, and social structures as intact as possible. For instance, its leaders discouraged naturalization, which was
considered to be an act of disloyalty to the exiled Government. If an officer of the Polish Army became a British subject, for example, his name was removed from the officers’ list of the future Polish Army and added to the list of the deceased. Any Pole who felt that the nature of his job justified his becoming a British subject was expected to apply for permission to the London Polish Government. They saw the preservation of the Polish character of the community, of its sense of its own Polishness, as a major task, involving the encouragement of separate Polish political, cultural, social and even quasi-military organizations.128
After the Polish armed forces in the West had been disbanded, many still continued to believe that, in the case of imminent war between the West and Russia, Poles would take an active part in the struggle for Poland’s independence. They “considered themselves to be ‘on long leave’ rather than fully demobilized,” a view reinforced by General Anders.129 The state in exile concept assumed that Polish diaspora had the right to consider itself a true nation in exile, being an intrinsic part of the Polish nation in Poland, and its main goal was “the duty of struggle for independence.” According to Adam Pragier, minister of information and a respected politician, the nation in exile included soldiers of the Polish armed forces, the war emigration (emigracja wojenna), and the old emigration, or Polonia. He further assumed that leadership over this structure belonged to the Polish political circles in London.130
Although the political goals of