In the planned Operation Unthinkable, the USA-USSR war would have started under the pretext of Allies wanting a "square deal" for Poland. What did Allies want for Poland?

by This_The_Last_Time

EDIT: Expanding my post a bit, since it became so popular.

So Wikipedia states:

The first of the two assumed a surprise attack on the Soviet forces stationed in Germany in order to "impose the will of the Western Allies" on the Soviets. "The will" was qualified as "square deal for Poland"[1] (which probably meant enforcing the recently signed Yalta Agreement).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

Even after reading about Yalta Agreement, I still lack a clear picture of what Allies wanted. Was it all about free elections? Or something else?

relaxlu

What Churchill meant with a "square deal" were probably two things:

First, during the Yalta conference, the Churchill and Roosevelt had to make big concessions to Stalin. Namely, they had to agree that Kresy, the eastern region of what was Poland at that time, would be annexed by the Soviet Union. That would mean that the Eastern border of Poland would be the Curzon Line, named after British Foreign Secretary George Curzon.

Many of the Polish soldiers who were fighting alongside the Allied Forces, around 200,000 men, were from the region east of the Curzon Line. Which made the concession all the harder to swallow for Churchill.

Second, Stalin promised that there would be fair elections in Poland without Soviet interference, that the Polish exile government in London would have a big say and that the elected government would be independent. Instead, Stalin rounded up resistance fighters and either executed them or sent them to Gulags inside the USSR. A communist committee (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego) founded, financed and supported by the Soviet Union took over power and the exile government residing in London was all but powerless to prevent it.

This caused Churchill to be deeply troubled. Not only because he was attacked at home by politicians that felt that he conceded too much to the USSR but also because he was worried that Stalin seemingly wasn't interested in keeping his promised or even pretend to keep them.

Nevertheless, all signs point towards Operation Unthinkable having been just that, unthinkable. Churchill knew that the plan would only ever be feasible with total support by the US but the US was still fighting Japan in the Pacific and desperately wanted USSR's support in that war theater. Truman also believed that it was still possible to reach a consensus through negotiations rather than any kind of confrontation. Finally, the plan called for the use of "re-educated" German troops which would be a very hard sell for the British people at home.

There are some who claim that Churchill only ever considered Operation Unthinkable because he knew about the nuclear capabilities of the US and even planned on using those against the USSR. But that is, as far as I know, just speculation.

I'm on mobile right now so I couldn't provide sources like I wanted to so please let me know if sources are necessary and I'll edit them in later. I can also provide more details if this isn't enough.

Edit with some quick sources:

http://www.warsawuprising.com/paper/nkvd.htm

http://polishresistance-ak.org/6%20Article.htm

https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-131/whodunnit-listening-in-on-roosevelt-and-churchill1/

Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books, 2012.

Roberts, Geoffrey. Stalin's Wars: from World War to Cold War, 1941-1947. Yale University Press, 2006.