The figures he gave for total enemy losses were, as usual, improbably high. In three months, he said, the Germans and their allies had lost 7,000 tanks, 4,000 planes and 17,000 guns; 700,000 enemy soldiers had been killed and 300,000 taken prisoner. Since the beginning of the war, the enemy casualties had amounted to nine million men, among them four million killed. In the Soviet Union things were going much better, both in the army and in industry, whose output of armaments had "enormously increased".
If, Stalin said, the German army was more experienced at first than the Red Army, the opposite was now true. The Red Army had now become a cadres army, and the quality and skill of the Soviet soldier had greatly increased. The German losses, on the other hand, were compelling the German High Command to draw low-quality soldiers into the
army. Also, Russian officers and generals were now superior to their German opposite numbers. The Germans' tactics were banal and when the situation no longer corresponded to one outlined in his Field Regulations, the German officer lost his head.
Yet this did not mean that the German Army was finished:
The German Army has suffered a defeat, but it has not yet been smashed. It is now going through a crisis, but it does not follow that it cannot pull itself together... The real struggle is only beginning... It would be stupid to imagine that the Germans will abandon even one kilometre of our country without a fight.
Stalin's statement was remarkable in two respects: it was a warning to the Red Army that very heavy fighting was still in store; and, as events were to prove before long, the Germans were already on the point of launching their counter-offensive. Russian
reconnaissance must have shown by February 23 that it was coming.
Secondly, of all Stalin's war-time statements, this one was by far the least pro-Ally.
Without mentioning North Africa—where the Allies' progress was admittedly slow at the time—Stalin said that the Soviet Union was "bearing the whole brunt of the war." The compliments he had paid the Allies in November 1942 on their North Africa landing
were not followed up. What they were doing was small stuff compared with Stalingrad
and the rest.
What nettled the British and Americans even more was that, after paying a warm tribute to Soviet industry, Stalin should have made no mention at all of Lend-Lease and other Western supplies which were now beginning to arrive in very substantial quantities,
partly along the newly-reorganised Persian route. It was this Stalin Order of February 23
which was really at the root of the "Standley incident" described in the last chapter.
A strange dual phenomenon was to characterise Soviet foreign policy during the rest of 1943: an almost constantly growing cordiality towards the United States and Britain (all, as it were, in preparation for Teheran at the end of the year) but, at the same time, an extremely "anti-Western" stand on the Polish issue. It already looked as though Stalin, while anxious to cultivate the best possible relations with the Western Allies, had made up his mind that Poland was an issue which the Soviet Union was going to settle her own way. It was the biggest test-case of all; and one, as de Gaulle was to observe during his visit to Moscow at the end of 1944, which was "the principal object of his (Stalin's) passion, and the centre of his policy".
[C. de Gaulle, Salvation, 1944-6 (New York, 1956), p. 74.]
From the end of March until early July there was a relative lull on the Soviet-German Front—in fact the longest lull from then until the end of the war. But both sides were preparing feverishly for the summer campaign which was to begin on July 5 with the
stupendous Battle of Kursk, the last major battle that most (though not all) Germans were still confidently expecting to win—thanks largely to their new Panther and Tiger tanks and Ferdinand mobile guns. Yet within five days the Germans had lost the battle, and the Russians then were able to fight their way to the Dnieper and beyond.
But this long three-months' lull was marked by political events of far-reaching
importance, among them a further rapprochement with Britain and the United States, characterised by such "gestures of goodwill" as the dissolution of the Comintern and, on the other hand, the breach with the Polish Government in London and the laying of the foundations for an entirely new Polish régime.
Chapter VI THE TECHNIQUE OF BUILDING A NEW POLAND
The Breach with the London Poles
Poland occupies the central place in the diplomatic battle between Russia and her
Western Allies—a battle which began long before the war was over. Despite all official attempts to play it down or to localise it, it was the problem which had, since the early part of 1943 (and even before) tended to poison East-West relations.
Throughout the Soviet Union's Battle of Survival of 1941-2, from the invasion to the Stalingrad victory, the Soviet Government had been on its best behaviour—at least most of the time—in its relations with the outside world. There had been a strident outcry, largely for home consumption, for a Second Front during the agonising summer of 1942, but apart from that and the snarling about Hess, the Soviet Union was, in the main, being thoroughly conciliatory in her relations with the West.
The only allied and "friendly" country with whose government relations were continuously strained was Poland. This was, indeed, a very special case. The trouble inevitably went back to the fact that Germany and Russia had "partitioned" Poland in 1939, and that several hundred thousand Poles had been taken prisoner or deported by the Russians; there were Poles scattered all over the Soviet Union; and among these Poles there were numerous war prisoners, including some twelve to fifteen thousand officers and N.C.O.'s.
According to the Polish Government, the officers had been in three large camps—at
Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov until the spring of 1940; but by the end of 1941,
despite pressing inquiries, no trace could be found of any of them, except for some 400
who had been transferred from one of these camps in the spring of 1940 to the camp of Griazovetz, near Vologda.
The fate of these missing officers was to become a major bone of contention between the Russians and the "London" Poles. It was also to provide the basis for one of the master-strokes of Goebbels's propaganda machine—the story of the mass-graves in Katyn forest, near Smolensk, which we shall discuss later in this chapter.
Under the terms of the Sikorski-Maisky Agreement of July 30, 1941, concluded in
London, diplomatic relations between the two Governments were restored, and a Polish Army was to be organised in Russia "under the orders of a chief appointed by the Polish Government, but approved by the Soviet Government". It would be under the Supreme Soviet Command, but this would include a Polish representative.
The Agreement further said that, after the restoration of diplomatic relations, the USSR
would "grant an amnesty to all Polish citizens imprisoned in Soviet territory whether as war prisoners or for any other reason." The very word "amnesty" in this context was, of course, more than distasteful to the Polish Government, but conditions were too serious for quibbling.
General Sikorski went to Moscow in December, 1941—with the Germans still only a few
miles from the Soviet capital—and confirmed the Polish promise to set up a Polish Army on Soviet territory, which would fight the Germans beside the Soviet Army. Even with Russia in a highly precarious military position, Stalin would not agree during the meeting with Sikorski to the restoration of Poland within her pre-September 1939 frontiers, and the Polish territorial claims continued to be a chronic subject of dispute between the Russian and Polish "allies". But a more serious and immediate problem was the Polish Army in the Soviet Union.