Immediately following the elections of January 19, 1947, in Poland, I determined to resign my position as American Ambassador. My mission—to ensure that �free and unfettered elections� should be held—had been a failure. To remain in Warsaw would be interpreted as tacit acquiescence in the fraudulent methods employed [by Stalin�s stooges] in the elections.
Furthermore, I felt strongly that the facts which had brought about the tragedy of the Polish situation should be placed publicly on the record. This could not be done so long as I remained an official of the United States Government ; for the facts would indicate not only the intellectual dishonesty of the Soviet and the [pseudo-] Polish Governments, but also the grievous errors which our own government had made in following a policy of appeasement in its dealings with Stalin. My resignation was accepted, to take effect on March 31, 1947, with the understanding of President Truman and of the Acting Secretary of State (Dean Acheson) that I would tell the story as I had seen it.
The Department of State kindly allowed me to refresh my memory on the happenings during my Ambassadorship by putting at my disposal the pertinent documents dealing with that period. But the views expressed in this volume are solely my own and are in nowise to be interpreted as those of the United States Government, with which I am no longer connected.
If I have seemed to make excessive use of the first personal pronoun in this volume—as well as in its title—it is because I have wished to emphasize that this is a first-hand and personal account of what I have seen and experienced : the consecutive steps in the formation of a puppet police state.
Where I have not given the names of informants still resident in
Poland, the omission is due to my desire to protect the safety of the individuals.
I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to the members of our staff in the American Embassy in Poland during my incumbency who unconsciously aided me in the writing of this book. He remembrance of these loyal public servants, whether poles or Americans, has served as an inspiration to me in my effort to bring to the world the tragic story of Poland�s present [1948] fate. My gratitude to them cannot be adequately expressed in words ; but I shall never forget their courage and devotion to the cause of freedom.
In my concluding chapter I have stressed the essential importance of keeping the public informed as to international relationships before those relationships reach a critical stage. Yet, if the public has been kept insufficiently advised of our foreign relations, the reader may well wonder, as he follows my experiences in Washington and in Poland, why it was that the United States Ambassador to Poland was not advised by his own government of the commitments which had been made and were being made with respect to Poland. Such oversights—whether deliberate or not—are inexcusable. For no American ambassador can effectively represent his nation abroad unless he is acquainted with all the facts dealing with the situation in the country to which he is accredited.
Although I received close and sympathetic co-operation from all officers in the Department of State charged with the handling of the details of Polish affairs, the reticence and apparent indifference of some of the highest officials of the United States Government in this vital question are inexplicable. Nothing can more effectively ruin the morale of the Department of State [*] and of the Foreign Service—as well as the very foreign policy which these bodies are required to carry out—if high officers of the government ignore the reports sent by observers abroad and withhold from them the information without which those representatives cannot properly carry out their functions.
Apart from the importance of the Polish question to the American people—due to the historically strategic geographic positions of Poland in Europe and to the fact the millions of American citizens are of Polish descent—the fate of Poland is tremendously significant to all the world because it is parallel to the fate already suffered by Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania and Yugoslavia and, in a lesser degree, by Czechoslovakia. In Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, even nominal independence has been eradicated through the incorporation of these Baltic States into the Soviet Union. The Soviet technique in Poland—as in all these other nations—has been, through the imposition of the police state, to stamp out all political opposition, all nationalistic elements, and virtually all freedom of speech.
The execution of this policy, however inhuman in its methods, embraces more than the suppression of democracy in Eastern Europe. Inherent in the policy of dictators such as Hitler and Stalin is the aim for world domination, accomplished through the conquest, one by one, of the states of Europe until the turn of the United States is reached.
The American people has therefore a vital stake in the fate of Poland—and of all Europe. We cannot close our eyes to Communist imperialism without endangering our own existence.