Polish Armed Forces in The West - Denouement

Denouement

By 1945, there was growing anti-Polish sentiment in Britain, particularly among the trade unions which feared competition for jobs from Polish immigrants; and from Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. At the same time, there was British and American concern about a police state being built in Poland.

In March 1945, Time reported on Polish "Surplus Heroes", stating that Bevin

promised Anders that those of his soldiers who did not want to return to the new Poland could find asylum in the British Empire. Argentina and Brazil were also reported ready to offer them homes. But Britain thought the best solution would be for them to return to Poland, and Britain was circulating an appeal through the Polish Army containing the Polish Government's pledge to treat the soldier exiles fairly. Anders argued that he could not advise the soldiers to return to Poland unless the Polish Government promised elections this spring. Bevin, too, wanted immediate Polish elections, but both men knew that the chances were becoming slimmer. In Poland the split between the Communist-Socialist groups and shrewd Stanislaw Mikolajczyk's Polish Peasant Party was deepening. Security Police raids on Peasant Party headquarters were reported last week. If efforts to smash the Mikolajczyk forces failed, then the Communist-Socialist groups would fight for a late fall election, when the popularity of the Polish Peasant Party, sure winner of an election now, might have waned. Nevertheless, Bevin argued that, elections or no, the Poles in Anders' army should go home.

In January 1946 Bevin protested against killings by the Polish provisional government, who defended their actions saying they were fighting terrorists loyal to Anders and funded by the British. In February 1946, Time reported "Britain's Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin told a tense House of Commons last week that terror had become an instrument of national policy in the new Poland. Many members of Vice Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk's Polish Peasant Party who opposed the Communist-dominated Warsaw Government had been murdered. "Circumstances in many cases appear to point to the complicity of the Polish Security Police.... I regard it as imperative that the Polish Provisional Government should put an immediate stop to these crimes in order that free and unfettered elections may be held as soon as possible, in accordance with the Crimea decision.... I am looking forward to the end of these police states....", while the Polish government blamed Anders and his British backers for the bloodshed there.

It is often said that the Polish Armed Forces in the West were not invited to the London Victory Parade of 1946. At first the British Government invited representatives of the newly recognised regime in Warsaw to march in the parade but the delegation from Poland never arrived – the reason was never adequately explained, pressure from Moscow being the most likely explanation. Bowing to press and public pressure, the British eventually invited Polish veterans of the RAF now representatives of the Polish Air Force under British Command, to attend in their place. They in turn refused to attend in protest at similar invitations not being extended to the Polish Army and Navy. The only Polish representative at the parade was Colonel Józef Kuropieska – the military attaché of the Communist regime in Warsaw who attended as a diplomatic courtesy.

The formation was finally disbanded in 1947, many of its soldiers choosing to remain in exile rather than to return to communist-controlled Poland, where they were often seen by the Polish communists as 'enemies of the state', influenced by the Western ideas, loyal to the Polish government in exile, and thus meeting with persecution and imprisonment (in extreme cases, death). Failure of allied Western governments to keep their promise to Poland, which now fell under the Soviet sphere of influence, became known as the 'Western betrayal.' The number of Polish ex-soldiers unwilling to return to communist Poland was so high that a special organization was formed by the British government to assist settling them in the United Kingdom: the Polish Resettlement Corps (Polski Korpus Przysposobienia i Rozmieszczenia); 114,000 Polish soldiers went through that organization. Since many Poles had been stationed in United Kingdom and served alongside British units in the war, the Polish Resettlement Act 1947 allowed all of them settle in United Kingdom after the war, multiplying the size of the Polish minority in United Kingdom. Many also joined the Polish Canadian and Polish Australian communities.