352 GOLGOTA
Germany had to be protected, the Soviet Army was able to stay in Poland, and
thus to guarantee that political developments proceeded in accordance with the
Kremlin's wishes. It stayed until 1994.
The critical moment had arrived in July 1944 when the Soviet Army crossed
the River Bug, and entered territory which Moscow was prepared to recognize
as belonging to the future Polish state. On 20 July, with no prior consultation
with the other interested parties, they created the Polish Committee of National
Liberation (PKWN) and invested it with the powers of a temporary administra-
tion. On 27 July the members of the administration moved first to chetm, and
on 2 August to Lublin. The leaders of the AK were placed in a quandary of the
most acute nature. As an arm of the legally constituted Polish government, and
in command of the largest single element of the Resistance Movement, they had
every right to expect a share in the political dispositions of the liberation.
Absurdly, they were being urged by their Western patrons to co-operate with
the Soviets, even when the Soviets refused to recognize their existence. Co-
operation on these terms was simply impossible. What is more, their position
deteriorated as the Soviet advance continued. Their long-cherished strategic
plan, code-named 'Burza' (Tempest), whereby units in the field were to restrict
operations against the Germans until they could act in concert with the Soviet
Army, was proving disastrous. At Wilno, at Lwow, and at Bialystok, the AK,
having emerged from the underground, had engaged the retreating Wehrmacht,
and had fought alongside the Soviet Army, only to end up under Soviet arrest.
In Volhynia, the 27 Infantry Division of the AK suffered a similar fate, after
carving a blood-strewn path through the German lines in order to link up with
Polish units serving in the Soviet ranks. At Lublin, AK units patrolling the cap-
tured city in advance of the Soviet Army, found that they themselves were to be
interned, whilst their prize was to be handed over to the communist PKWN,
newly delivered by air from Moscow. With the fate of the capital, Warsaw, in
the balance, the situation was desperate. If the AK failed to throw its reserves
into the fray, the likelihood was that Warsaw would fall under communist con-
trol and that the AK would be suppressed by the Soviets, without a word or a
shot of defiance. If, on the other hand, the AK tried to wrest control of Warsaw
from the Germans on their own, they were bound to be condemned for disrupt-
ing the Grand Alliance and for acting from motives of private political advan-
tage. In Moscow, any operation which was not subject to direct Soviet
supervision was sure to be denounced as an anti-Soviet adventure. In Warsaw,
in the clandestine councils of the AK leadership, the alternatives were weighed
and sifted. Ever since the third week of July, the AK Commander, General
Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski was convinced that an armed rising in Warsaw
would have to take place in the very near future. His objectives and priorities
were expressed in a dispatch to London on 22 July:
- Not to stop our struggle against the Germans even for one moment...
- To mobilise the entire population spiritually for the struggle against Russia...
- To crush the irresponsible activity of the ONR [extreme right-wing nationalists].