Office of the Historian

860c.00/7–1945: Telegram

No. 1122
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Acting Secretary of State1
secret
London, July 19, 1945—5 p.m.

7269. Sargent tells us that Hankey reported from Warsaw that he has had conversations with Bierut and Mikołajczyk. Bierut in the course of a short conversation stressed desire of Polish Govt to establish close political and economic relations with the West. Mikołajczyk, Hankey found to be in an optimistic frame of mind.

Sent Dept as 7269; rptd Moscow as 258; rptd Paris for Lane as 462.

Mikołajczyk told Hankey that he has been able to get around freely, re-establishing contact with former Peasant Party associates. His visit to Cracow was particularly encouraging. After some further talks with Peasant Party leaders the party’s program would be formulated. No difficulty in making it public was anticipated by Mikołajczyk.

Popiel, according to Mikołajczyk, has also been able to move about and get in touch with Christian Labor Party people. That party’s program would also be drafted soon and it was planned to make it public too.

All political parties and groups, Mikołajczyk thinks, will be permitted to participate in elections with the exception, of course, of the pro-German party formerly active chiefly in Silesia and a small underground group which had cooperated with the Germans during the German occupation.

In the same message reporting his talks with Bierut and Mikołajczyk, Hankey emphasized the extent to which Warsaw had been destroyed, the heaps of rubble still very much in evidence and the shortage of food and goods generally. With reference to this, Sargent said that Foreign Office was making plans to have a plane go from here twice weekly to Warsaw. This would be used for transporting essential food and other supplies for the Embassy staff and it was hoped for transporting English journalists to Warsaw. Foreign Office was very anxious, Sargent continued, to get some English [Page 1113] journalists to Warsaw as quickly as possible. Arrangements for a British plane on a regular service to land in Poland could, Sargent thought, be made without difficulty. The British Air Ministry, however, was slow in releasing a plane for this purpose, claiming that every available plane was needed for the Far East.

Winant
  1. The gist of this message was included in telegram No. 80 of July 20 from Grew to Byrnes (file No. 800.00 Summaries/7–2045).↩