Accusing Winston Churchill of hostility towards the USSR and of intending to start a Third World War using the rebuilt German army was a frequently recurring motif in Moscow’s propaganda. The May 1945 British Chiefs of Staff memorandum, declassified after the end of the Cold War, on plans for the military expulsion of the Red Army from part of Polish territory could shed new light on the intentions of Prime Minister Winston Churchill towards the USSR. However, in reality, he was neither as complacent as many Poles perceived, nor as bellicose as journalists wrote, disregarding the balance of power in the spring of 1945 in Central Europe.
By the end of World War II, the Polish cause had stalled with regard to the creation of a provisional government to hold free elections. Churchill’s policy that Joseph Stalin, in return for the concession of the eastern borderlands, would accept an independent Poland, failed. His future, while important, was not the most important issue for the British Prime Minister. However, he was concerned about the expansion of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. As early as May 1945, he first used the term “Iron Curtain” in a letter to President Harry Truman to describe the countries behind the Eastern Front.
On May 16, Soviet Ambassador Fyodor Gusev had the opportunity to sense Churchill’s mood. The British leader blames him for the arrest of the leaders of the Polish underground state by the NKVD. He confirmed that he had given the Russians a free hand east of the Curzon Line, but west of it he demanded influence for the Anglo-Saxon powers. Finally, he warned Stalin’s representative that he had ordered a halt to the demobilization of the Air Force. Gusev reported to the Kremlin: “We are dealing with an adventurer for whom war is his element.
