Office of the Historian

740.0011 European War 1939/13879: Telegram

The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State

Moscow, August 11, 1941—6 p.m.
[Received August 12—9:07 a.m.]

1476. Brigadier General Zigmund Bohusz, Chief of the Polish Military Mission in Moscow, told me this afternoon:

(1)
As the result of conferences with the Soviet authorities he believes it will be possible to raise four or five divisions of Polish troops in the Soviet Union, the first of which he desires to motorize.
(2)
The British Government has expressed its willingness and ability to outfit these four or five divisions with British uniforms and a limited quantity of arms and munitions.
(3)
The Polish Mission hopes to be able to obtain a limited amount of arms and munitions from material taken by the Soviet Army at the time of the invasion of Poland and to supplement these with the necessary additional material from the United States.
(4)
The General stated that in his opinion these divisions would be ready for action in 3 months provided they could be equipped and munitioned within that time.
(5)
The Polish Government contemplates appointing either Kott,3 now Minister of Interior in London, or Skolnitsky, former Polish [Page 249] Counselor in Helsinki and now in Stockholm, as Polish Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

Repeated to London.

Steinhardt

[Concerning the ukaz of August 12, 1941, of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union which amnestied all Polish citizens confined on Soviet territory as prisoners of war, or for other sufficient reasons, see telegram No. 1488, August 13, 1941, from the Ambassador in the Soviet Union, page 638.]

  1. Stanislaw Kot was appointed as the Polish Ambassador to the Soviet Union.↩