Western betrayal
The concept primarily derives from several events, including British and French appeasement towards Nazi Germany during its 1938 occupation of Czechoslovakia and the perceived failure of Britain and France to adequately assist the Poles during the German invasion of Poland in 1939.
According to professors Charlotte Bretherton and John Vogler, Western betrayal is a reference to a sense of historical and moral responsibility for the West's abandonment of Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War.
Given the strategic requirements of winning the war, retired American diplomat Charles G. Stefan argued Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had no option but to accept the demands of their erstwhile ally, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, at the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam conferences.
[4] There was also a lack of military or political support for the anticommunist rebels during the uprising in German Democratic Republic in 1953, during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956,[5] and during the democracy-oriented reforms in Czechoslovakia in 1968 (the so-called "Prague Spring").
According to Ilya Prizel, the "preoccupation with their historical sense of 'damaged self' fueled resentment" towards the West generally and reinforced the western betrayal concept in particular.
[6] Grigory Yavlinsky argues that damage to central European national psyches left by the Western "betrayal" at Yalta and Munich remained a "psychological event" or "psychiatric issue" during debates over NATO expansion.
Tactical conditions were favourable for an American advance, and General Patton, in command of the army, requested permission to continue eastward to the Vltava river in order to aid the Czech partisans fighting in Prague.
"[19] 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).
"[23] According to Krzysztof Źwikliński, additionally representatives of the Western powers made several military promises to Poland, including 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.
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).
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.
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.
President Roosevelt and PM Churchill officially agreed that the eastern borders of Poland would roughly follow the Curzon Line.
[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.
[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.
Roosevelt replied on 26 August that "I do not consider it advantageous to the long-range general war prospect for me to join you in the proposed message to Uncle Joe.
[46] "After World War II," remarked Strobe Talbott, "many countries in the (center and) east suffered half a century under the shadow of Yalta.
These Polish troops contributed to the Allied defeat of the Germans in North Africa and Italy, and hoped to return to Kresy in an independent and democratic Poland at the end of the War.
Consequently, at Yalta, it was agreed that tens of thousands of veteran Polish troops under British command should lose their Kresy homes to the Soviet Union.
During the debate, many MPs openly criticised Churchill and passionately voiced loyalty to Britain's Polish allies and expressed deep reservations about Yalta.
These members included Arthur Greenwood, Viscount Dunglass, Commander Archibald Southby, the Lord Willoughby de Eresby, and Victor Raikes.
[48] After the failure of the amendment, Henry Strauss, the Member of Parliament for Norwich, resigned his seat in protest at the British treatment of Poland.
The chief American negotiator at Yalta was Alger Hiss, later accused of being a Soviet spy and convicted of perjuring himself in his testimony to the House Committee on Unamerican Activities.
In 2001, James Barron, a staff reporter for The New York Times, identified what he called a "growing consensus that Hiss, indeed, had most likely been a Soviet agent.
For instance, Moscow's Pravda reported in February 1944 that all Poles who valued Poland's honour and independence were marching with the "Union of Polish Patriots" in the USSR.
[61] The report's arguments included geostrategic issues (possible Soviet-Japanese alliance resulting in moving of Japanese troops from continent to Home Islands, threat to Iran and Iraq) and uncertainties concerning land battles in Europe.
[62] During the Fourth Moscow Conference in 1944, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin and British prime minister Winston Churchill discussed how to divide various European countries into spheres of influence.
