The Poles in Italy

[sunray]

I have recently come across a book called Impossible Victory - A Personal Account of the Battle for the River Po, by Brian Harpur (London: William Kimber, 1980). Harpur served as an officer in the Princess Louise's Kensington Regiment in Italy and was awarded the MM in the River Senio battle. He was also a journalist and became a Director of Associated Newspapers.

Something he talks about which I have never come across anywhere else. During the Yalta and Teheran conferences America, Britain and Russia decided that Poland would be dominated by Russia (although Churchill was not in agreement). In early 1945, just before the start of the Battle for the River Po, the whole of the Polish Corps (over 100,000 men) feeling betrayed by the big three, decided to withdraw from future operations and asked to be treated as prisoners of war. It was only the intervention of McCreery that persuaded them on operational grounds to change their minds.

Then, to rub salt into the wounds, just as the Polish began their assault on Bologna, U.S. heavy bombers mistook their target bombing the poles instead causing tremendous casualties.

Ummm... more research required I think.

[Kyt]

I've got a copy of the book too (though, to my shame, it's still sitting on my to-read pile). I shall have to dig it out.

I hadn't realised that the inferences made in the public declarations from Yalta had been so quickly interpreted by the troops on the ground. Of course, the Poles would have been highly sensitive to the nuances of any decisions made about their country, but I'd never heard of this episode. Keep us informed of any info you find, sunray.

The Yalta statement on Poland read:

A new situation has been created in Poland as a result of her complete liberation by the Red Army. This calls for the establishment of a Polish Provisional Government which can be more broadly based than was possible before the recent liberation of the western part of Poland. The Provisional Government which is now functioning in Poland should therefore be reorganized on a broader democratic basis with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad. This new Government should then be called the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity.

"M. Molotov, Mr. Harriman and Sir A. Clark Kerr are authorized as a commission to consult in the first instance in Moscow with members of the present Provisional Government and with other Polish democratic leaders from within Poland and from abroad, with a view to the reorganization of the present Government along the above lines. This Polish Provisional Government of National Unity shall be pledged to the holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot. In these elections all democratic and anti-Nazi parties shall have the right to take part and to put forward candidates.

"When a Polish Provisional of Government National Unity has been properly formed in conformity with the above, the Government of the U.S.S.R., which now maintains diplomatic relations with the present Provisional Government of Poland, and the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States of America will establish diplomatic relations with the new Polish Provisional Government National Unity, and will exchange Ambassadors by whose reports the respective Governments will be kept informed about the situation in Poland.

"The three heads of Government consider that the eastern frontier of Poland should follow the Curzon Line with digressions from it in some regions of five to eight kilometers in favor of Poland. They recognize that Poland must receive substantial accessions in territory in the north and west. They feel that the opinion of the new Polish Provisional Government of National Unity should be sought in due course of the extent of these accessions and that the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should thereafter await the peace conference.