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Scenting capitulation by the Anglo-Americans, Stalin moved in quickly. He was trying, he said, all possible ways to locate the top Lublin Poles by phone. So far, they had not been found. "I am afraid we have not sufficient time." He could not go ahead with Roosevelt's proposal until he consulted them. After all, as he observed before, "I am called dictator and not a democrat, but I have enough democratic feeling to refuse to create a Polish government without the Poles being consulted."
While they were waiting for the phone calls to come through, Stalin added, there was a counterproposal. Molotov would read it.
The counterproposal became, with some minor changes, the substance of the Yalta agreement on Poland. It ignored Roosevelt's four Poles project. It drew Stalin's frontiers for Poland, including on the west a deep wedge of Germany to the Oder-Neisse line. It held fast to the Lublin Poles as the base for a provisional government. It pledged the Big Three to recognize this government before elections for a permanent government.
The next day Roosevelt accepted. Stalin seemed unwilling to believe it. He asked: "Does this mean that you would withdraw recognition from the London [Poles]?" Said Roosevelt: "Yes."
Even Caesar's Wife. Churchill still had misgivings. There were seeds of future trouble in turning so much of Germany over to Poland—"I do not wish to stuff the Polish goose until it dies of German indigestion." The Prime Minister visualized a mass deportation of Germans. Was this not inhumane? "I ... feel conscious of the large school of thought in England which is shocked at the idea of transferring millions of people." He added: "Personally, I am not shocked."
At that level, Stalin was Churchill's master. Said the Russian: "There will be no more Germans there, for when our troops come in the Germans run away, and no Germans are left."
How free and unfettered would the future Polish elections be? The principle involved in this was the political key to the future of Eastern Europe. But it was not argued on principle or bargained from strength. Roosevelt thought of the 6,000,000 American-Polish voters. "The matter is not only one of principle," he said, "but of practical politics ... I want this election ... to be ... like Caesar's wife. I did not know her, but they said she was pure."
Stalin cracked back as heavily: "They said that about her, but in fact she had her sins."
Churchill worried: "In Parliament I must be able to say that the elections will be held in a fair way." Perhaps it was his frustration that led him then to an incredibly inept remark: "I do not care much about Poles, myself."
Stalin quickly countered: "There are some very good people among the Poles. They are good fighters." He tossed in a consolation bone: to show how fair the Polish elections would be, he would see to it that Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, sturdy Polish Peasant Party leader and chief hope for a free Poland, would be allowed to return to Poland and electioneer.