This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.
It's 1944 and the Soviets are beginning to recapture the territory
in Eastern Poland that they last occupied three years before.
IN TRANSLATION:
In 1944, when the Red Army came for the second time,
it was, of course, worse,
because we had an idea of what the consequences might be.
How were the Western Allies going to deal with Stalin
over the future of Poland?
It was a vital question.
Almost, as previously secret archival material reveals,
a test of the integrity of the whole alliance.
Not least because Poland was the very country
the British had gone to war to protect.
I know that the Germans and Russians are killing all your best elements,
particularly the intellectuals. I sympathise with you deeply.
As the Germans packed up and prepared to retreat from Poland,
the Western Allies had to ask themselves,
could they prevent one tyranny simply being replaced by another?
In November 1943, one of the most important meetings
of the 20th century took place in Tehran, the capital of Iran.
Here, for the first time, the leaders of the Alliance
would meet face to face.
Now, they would attempt to shape the future of the post-war world.
Late one night during the conference,
Churchill and the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden,
talked to Stalin
about one of the most controversial issues between them -
the future shape of Poland.
Personally, I think Poland might move westwards.
If Poland treads on some German toes, that cannot be helped.
There must be a strong Poland -
that instrument is needed in the orchestra of Europe.
The Soviets had seized nearly half of Poland
as part of a deal with the Nazis in 1939.
And now, as they fought their way west, they wanted it back.
Churchill agreed to let them have it,
but wanted to compensate the Poles
by giving them a chunk of Germany instead.
So Poland would shift more than 100 miles west.
TRANSLATION FROM RUSSIAN:
I don't know how much you're going to eat!
How much are you planning to leave undigested?
What Poland loses in the east, she might perhaps gain in the west?
TRANSLATED INTO RUSSIAN
IN TRANSLATION:
That's what we won't forget - ever.
How is it possible that, even before the war ended,
somebody else was already deciding about the Polish borders?!
If the country's border... moved here...
er, westwards into Prussia...
the new border would be here.
By the end of the war, this line marked with matchsticks
had indeed roughly become the new border between Germany and Poland.
IN TRANSLATION:
For the English, Churchill is a national hero.
He is everything, a victor.
For us, he is a common gangster.
Because of him, we have lost half of the Polish territory.
I was struck by what the...
The British were playing what they hoped were clever politics.
By letting Stalin have the territory
in Eastern Poland he wanted,
Churchill thought he would then be more cooperative
over allowing an independent government for the new Poland.
Marshal Stalin,
I believe God is on our side.
At least I have done my best to make Him a faithful ally.
IN TRANSLATION:
THEY CHUCKLE
Stalin had an advantage in the negotiations at Tehran.
Because the Americans had accepted Stalin's invitation
to come and stay in the Soviet compound itself,
the Soviets could bug
all the rooms where the Americans stayed.
And so they listened to every word that was said.
Stalin received daily updates
on just what the Americans were talking about...
THEY CONVERSE IN RUSSIAN
..or at least what they were prepared to say
within the confines of the Soviet compound.
At the same time as Stalin was finding out
what his Allies were talking about,
he was trying to prevent them discovering the crimes
he had previously committed himself...
..in the Forest of Katyn, near Smolensk, in Western Russia.
By the time the Allies met at Tehran,
the Soviet Secret Police had cordoned off the forest
in order to create one of the most elaborate cover-ups of the war.
They were exhuming bodies from mass graves.
The Germans had first uncovered these graves earlier in 1943,
and had told the world the truth:
that these were the remains of Polish officers
who had been murdered by the Soviets.
Now that the Red Army had recaptured this part of the Soviet Union,
Stalin's Secret Police wanted to falsify the history,
and pretend that they hadn't committed the murders.
But it wasn't going to be easy, because locals knew the truth.
IN TRANSLATION: Of course we knew that our side killed the Poles.
My mother told me to keep my mouth shut
and not to talk about it ever in my life.
The secret police organised the forging of false documents,
faking material which suggested that the Germans had committed the crime,
and planting it on the newly-exhumed bodies.
The Soviet authorities also dealt with troublesome local eyewitnesses,
like a forester called Kiselev,
who had told the Germans the truth about the crime.
IN TRANSLATION:
The only possible way out for those who collaborated with the Germans
was to try to be useful to the NKVD interrogators.
For Kiselev it was the only way to save his life.
While this ruthless cover-up was being conducted in secret,
in public, at the Tehran conference, Stalin was receiving an award.
TV COMMENTATOR: 'A dramatic ceremony highlights the meeting,
'the presentation of the Sword of Stalingrad,
'gift of Britain's King to the people of that heroic city.
'Marshal Stalin accepts the tribute on behalf of the Russian people.'
The gift of the Sword of Stalingrad
commemorated what had happened here
earlier in 1943.
The Red Army had crushed the Germans
in the city of Stalingrad
on the River Volga.
Nearly 100,000 German soldiers had been captured.
The Western leaders at Tehran knew just how much
they owed the Soviets for this victory.
Even today, the ground around Stalingrad
is littered with remains of the battle.
Around 500,000 Red Army soldiers died here.
When we started preparing for the Tehran conference,
a group of military attaches of the United Kingdom
and the United States and interpreters
landed in Stalingrad.
They said that we had the feeling of guilt.
When we came to the city, it was practically non-existent.
But in spite of the victory at Stalingrad,
the Soviets still faced fierce German resistance
here on the Eastern Front.
At the Tehran conference,
the Soviets were trying to persuade
the Western Allies
to launch a swift invasion of France
to take pressure off the Red Army.
Marshal Voroshilov, under strict orders from Stalin,
asserted that such an operation would be a relatively easy task.
I suppose he did his best, but his best wasn't very good at all
because he really was very thick-headed
and couldn't really understand much about strategy.
The head of the American military, General Marshall, wasn't convinced.
There is a huge difference between a river crossing
and a landing from the sea.
Failure of a river crossing
would be a reverse. Failure of an amphibious landing
would be a catastrophe.
Stalin and Voroshilov were all too aware
of the cost of the war in the Soviet Union.
Throughout Soviet territory,
civilians had suffered as much as soldiers.
In all, some 16 million Soviet civilians died in the war.
All this suffering created an immense desire for revenge.
The Germans had sown the wind and, as far as Stalin
and the rest of the Soviet leadership were concerned,
now they would reap the whirlwind.
This desire for revenge took practical form
here on the steppes near Stalingrad
around the time of the Tehran conference.
A unit of the Soviet counter-intelligence organisation,
SMERSH, was hard at work.
Zinaida Pitkina was a junior officer in SMERSH.
She witnessed the interrogation and torture of captured German soldiers
and, on one occasion,
was told to take action against a young German major herself.
TRANSLATION: Here was a man who may have killed many of my relatives.
'I would have cut him up if I'd been asked.'
'The junior lieutenant told me to sort him out,
'so I had one on my account.
'It was a joy for me.'
'The Germans didn't ask us to spare them.
'They knew they were guilty and I was angry.
'My enemy was in front of me.
'He had to be destroyed.
'We had to treat them the same way they had treated us.
'What should we do?
'Pray to God?!'
GUNSHOT
ZINAIDA: 'If they had given them to me in numbers of ten,
'I would have killed them all.
'My hand didn't tremble when I killed him.'
It didn't even tremble.
At Tehran, behind the closed doors of the Soviet compound,
Stalin demonstrated to the Western leaders his own desire for revenge.
Over dinner one night, he talked of how he wanted to treat
the German leadership after the war.
IN TRANSLATION FROM RUSSIAN:
They must be physically liquidated.
They must be shot.
The British Parliament and public will never tolerate mass executions.
Even if, in the passion of war, they allowed them to begin,
they would turn violently against those responsible
after the first butchery had taken place.
You must be under no delusion on this point.
Perhaps Mr Churchill
has a secret liking for the Germans?
Roosevelt sought to diffuse the atmosphere.
I have a compromise to propose.
I put the figure of Germans to be executed at 49,000, no more.
LAUGHTER
THEY APPLAUD
Eventually it was all too much for Churchill.
Roosevelt chose not to support Churchill at the dinner.
The American President thought it more important
to build a relationship with Stalin.
He wanted Stalin's cooperation on a whole range of different issues,
like gaining Soviet involvement in the war against Japan.
As for Stalin,
he appeared to be completely in control of the situation.
In January 1944, less than two months
after the end of the Tehran conference, the Soviet authorities
went public with their attempt
to con the world about the murders at Katyn.
FILM NARRATION IN TRANSLATION:
The falsified documents showing the Poles had still been alive in 1941,
a year after the Soviets had, in fact, murdered them,
now took pride of place in the film propaganda.
And key witnesses, like the Russian forester Kiselev,
had now been persuaded, on threat of their own death,
to withdraw the testimony they'd given to the Germans.
Kiselev even lied for the benefit of the Soviet Commission of Inquiry
and the newsreel about what the Germans had done to him.
IN TRANSLATION:
But the Soviet deception didn't fool the British Government.
A British Foreign Office official
who examined what the Soviets claimed had happened here at Katyn
wrote a secret report in which he said
that an essential part of the Soviet case was simply incredible.
But all this was to remain confidential.
Even before he'd read the report,
Churchill had written to the Foreign Secretary saying...
At the White House,
Roosevelt did his best to ignore the problem of Katyn.
The American President was focused on the bigger picture.
The Western Allies were preparing for D-Day
and were also fighting a tough war in the Pacific.
Can you make sure I get a copy at once?
And send one to Hopkins. Yes, Mr President.
Roosevelt had never even replied to a previous report
Churchill had sent him
suggesting that the Soviets were guilty of the killings at Katyn.
But in May 1944, Roosevelt was forced to talk about the murders.
George Earle, a friend of Roosevelt's
and a special American emissary to the Balkans,
had uncovered evidence from his intelligence contacts
that convinced him the Soviets had committed the crime.
Here are these pictures.
Here are these affidavits.
What greater proof could you have?
George, they could have rigged things up.
The Germans could have rigged things up - the Nazis are very smart.
This is entirely German propaganda and a German plot.
I am absolutely convinced the Russians did not do this.
George, you've been worried about Russia since 1942.
Now, let me tell you, I'm an older man.
I've had a lot of experience.
These Russians,
they're 180 million people speaking 120 different dialects.
After this war, they're going to fly to pieces
like a centrifugal machine cracked through and through.
'I think he was horribly frustrated, I really do.'
He was all over me about the fact that he was convinced
from the beginning that the Russians had done it.
Ten months later, in March 1945, Earle told Roosevelt
he was going to make public all his concerns about the Soviets.
Roosevelt immediately wrote to him saying it would be a betrayal
for Earle to publish this material, and ordered him not to.
As if this was not enough,
a few days later Earle's life was turned upside-down.
He was fishing from a rowing boat with a guide in a lake in Maryland
when suddenly he had unexpected visitors.
They were FBI agents.
They had come to tell Earle surprising news:
with immediate effect, he was to leave for a new post
7,000 miles away in Samoa.
It was clear that President Roosevelt
wanted his old friend out of the way.
A few weeks later,
his son managed to visit his father in his Pacific exile.
He was bitter, he was very disappointed,
he was very upset that the President had done that to him.
In a democracy, you don't do that sort of thing,
but the President thought
wartime he could do it, and he did it.
And of course he got away with it, naturally.
Back in Moscow, in early May 1944,
the Soviet leadership were contemplating
the persecution of another group of people.
Lavrenti Beria, Head of the Secret Police,
discussed with Stalin the fate of an ethnic group
that lived in the south of the Soviet Union - the Crimean Tatars.
During the war, some of the Tatars had collaborated
with the German invaders but most had not.
IN TRANSLATION:
Contrary to what many in Britain and America wanted to believe,
Stalin was as ruthless as ever.
Every single Crimean Tatar was to suffer.
Some 200,000 Tatars lived here in the Crimea on the Black Sea,
and the overwhelming majority of them were pleased
to see soldiers of the Red Army
when they liberated the Crimea from the Germans in April 1944.
IN TRANSLATION: The first time we saw the Soviet tanks
we ran up to them and sat on the tanks and rode with the soldiers.
We were overjoyed to meet them.
We were expecting only good things to come.
Thank God the war was over,
everything could begin anew.
But how long did that good period last?
Not even a month.
20,000 troops of the NKVD were deployed to the Crimea
in order to fulfil Stalin's order
that the whole Tatar nation be punished
because a minority of them had collaborated with the Germans.
On May 18 in a coordinated action across the Tatar villages,
the NKVD all struck at once.
IN TRANSLATION:
So I read the decree and, of course,
they all started crying and screaming.
Well, I have to say, the people did
everything we asked them to do.
OFFICER SHOUTS ORDERS IN RUSSIAN
WOMAN IN TRANSLATION: 'They were very rude to us,
'told us to hurry up, get a move on.
'They told us to get out faster. That's how it was.
'What could we do in 15 minutes?! There was shouting,'
noise and pain, and bitter tears.
OFFICER CONTINUES TO SHOUT ORDERS
MAN IN TRANSLATION: My mother began to cry, "Why?
"I have a son serving in the army. There must be some kind of mistake."
Every single Tatar was to be deported.
In the house supervised by Nikanor Perevalov,
an old bedridden woman was carried away on a stretcher.
INTERVIEW IN TRANSLATION: What was that old woman guilty of?
No, she wasn't directly guilty, but the problem
is that the decision of the government
was to evict the whole nation...
100% of the nation -
even those who had received State prizes and State awards,
those who had been fighting at the front,
who had returned from the front wounded,
everyone was supposed to be evicted.
It was not a selective process.
The whole of the Crimean Tatar nation was to be transported
a thousand miles to exile in Uzbekistan.
Around a third of them would die as a result.
IN TRANSLATION:
Many people began saying,
"Surely Stalin doesn't know about this.
"If Stalin knew, this would never happen."
During the journey, rumours began that Stalin had discovered what was
happening to us and that we would soon be going home again.
People constantly vindicated him.
"It isn't Stalin. It's somebody else."
But as the Red Army liberated the Soviet Union,
Stalin was to order the deportation of not just the Tatars,
but many other ethnic groups, like the Chechens and the Kalmyks,
altogether more than 1 million people.
LOUD GUNFIRE SOUNDS
Less than a month after the deportation of the Crimean Tatars,
the Western Allies launched D-Day,
a massive amphibious landing on the coast of France on 6 June 1944.
It was the start of the so-called Second Front, which Stalin had been
asking the Western Allies to provide for several years.
But in a less well known piece of history,
in an operation that dwarfed D-Day in scale,
the Red Army launched its own offensive on June 23.
Nearly 2.5 million Red Army soldiers
would confront the mass of German Army Group Centre.
And within a month, the Red Army had pushed forward around 200 miles.
In late July in Lwow in Eastern Poland, special troops
of the NKVD entered the city in advance of the major assault.
The Soviets had last occupied this area three years before.
TRANSLATION: There were people in our group
who had been working for the secret police since 1939.
They knew Lwow very well.
They were choosing our route so we wouldn't
encounter many Germans.
The Soviets were particularly interested in
the Gestapo headquarters in Lwow,
where the Germans were preparing for a hurried exit, taking their intelligence files with them.
TRANSLATION: I think they were so busy loading their cars
that they were really surprised when they saw us.
They were so frightened, they didn't even resist us.
In the archive, we were hoping to find who was working with the Germans.
The Soviet secret police planned simply to convert
the Gestapo headquarters into their own new home.
And from here the secret police wanted to target
more than just those people who had collaborated with the Germans.
They intended to seize anyone who so much as uttered one bad word about the Soviet regime.
TRANSLATION: If they were against the Soviet power,
we decided at the time we would arrest them.
I understand that it was cruel because I am more experienced now.
Now we have democracy, and one can say anything.
At the time, there was censorship, and nobody could say anything bad about the Soviet system.
That's what I thought.
The city of Lwow was at the heart of the area in Eastern Poland
the Soviets had first snatched in 1939.
TRANSLATION: In 1944, when the Red Army came for the second time,
it was of course worse, because we had an idea of what the consequences
might be because of all the arrests that there had been in 1939 and 1940.
Regardless of the propaganda speeches,
the Soviets would never again let this land be part of Poland.
TRANSLATION: For us, it was not a war of liberation,
it was a war of occupation.
We felt betrayed, because we had hoped that
the West would react differently, but it did not turn out like that.
At the same time as the Soviet Union was suppressing resistance in Lwow,
Polish soldiers were fighting and dying
here in Italy in the British Army.
These Poles, fighting against the Germans,
believed they were laying down their lives
so that their homeland could be free.
But no matter how bravely the
soldiers from Eastern Poland fought,
no matter how many of them died in battle, they,
as far as Stalin was concerned, now came from the Soviet Union.
It was in May 1944 that the Poles fought their most famous battle as
part of the British Army, here at the monastery of Monte Cassino,
which protected the road north to Rome.
The terrain ideally suited the German defenders, who occupied the area around the monastery,
and the allied advance had been held here for months.
The Poles took part in what would prove to be the final attempt to take the mountain in May.
TRANSLATION: General Anders, who was Commander of the 2nd Corps,
agreed to us taking part in the fight in the Battle of Monte Cassino.
This was our baptism of fire.
The mountains were defended by some of the Germans' elite troops.
And they soon formed their own opinion about the fighting quality of their Polish opponents.
TRANSLATION: Right, well, the Poles, they were very admirable.
You really have to say that.
They were brave soldiers, they were the bravest of them all, in fact.
But it was more like an inner drive
that went almost to the level of fanaticism.
Around 4,000 Poles were killed or wounded
fighting for the British Army in this one battle.
Eventually the monastery at Monte Cassino was occupied by the Poles on 18 May 1944.
RADIO: After many days of bitter fighting and heavy losses incurred,
the Polish flag flies from the ruins of the monastery.
On Monte Calvary, overlooking Monte Cassino, is a monument to the Polish sacrifice.
One side of it reads, "For our freedom and yours, we soldiers
"of Poland gave our soul to God, our life to the soil of Italy,
"our hearts to Poland."
But despite the scale of the sacrifice,
Monte Cassino was a great victory for the Poles.
They thought they had proved their worth to the British Army in which they fought.
RADIO: Poland fights side by side
with her great allies for freedom and democracy.
Your Majesty, General Sosnkowski.
In July 1944, General Anders of the Polish 2nd Corps
welcomed King George VI who had come to Italy
to congratulate the Allied soldiers on their achievement.
This is a song about the Polish city of Lwow, Your Majesty.
The words are, "If I were to be born again some day, only in Lwow."
THEY SING IN POLISH
But back in Lwow, the very city they were singing about,
the Red Army was beginning its occupation.
The Polish soldiers in the British Army didn't know it yet,
but most of them would never see Lwow again.
In the Polish capital, Warsaw, members of the Polish resistance
learnt how the Soviets were behaving as they came west.
TRANSLATION: In Lwow the Underground Army,
which was cooperating with the Russians when they
took over the city, was then disarmed and arrested.
We received information that this Soviet army would do
the same thing in Warsaw, so we made the decision to instigate the rising.
The Polish Underground Army rose up against the German occupiers of Warsaw on August 1, 1944.
By taking on the Germans before the Soviets arrived,
they hoped to show the world their independence.
TRANSLATION: My friend died four minutes after the action started,
just a short step away from me. He was shot in the chest.
Just a few moments ago, he was alive.
He even still had his grenade in his hand.
And then the slaughter started.
Soviet propaganda had encouraged the citizens of Warsaw to believe
they were about to be liberated by the Red Army.
But the Poles had not consulted Stalin before launching their attack.
The Red Army lay to the east
of Warsaw, across the River Vistula.
But Stalin had no intention of committing them to the struggle in the Polish capital.
He even refused to assist allied planes which were trying to supply the rising from the air.
We realised that they were not going to allow
either us or the Americans to land on Soviet territory.
And this seemed to us a most terrible betrayal,
not only of the Poles,
but of the Allies.
The British made more than 300 supply flights to Warsaw,
most flying a tortuous journey from bases in Southern Italy.
Churchill wanted to help the resistance fighters in Warsaw,
regardless of what Stalin might think.
Many of the missions were flown by Poles who were serving in the RAF.
Mr Churchill said, "Polish squadron,
"if you want to fly, it's your country, your capital city."
And not one refused to go.
The war was on.
You had to help your friends.
Tadeusz Ruman flew 18 missions to Warsaw.
Every trip was more dangerous because
it was a long trip and the Germans
knew the route you were coming.
At the end of August,
Tadeusz Ruman's plane was attacked on his way back from Warsaw,
and he only just managed to crash land it back at base.
He was awarded a distinguished flying medal for his bravery.
Over 100 of his Polish colleagues were shot down.
While the battle for Warsaw continued,
Winston Churchill arrived in Italy to meet with General Anders,
Commander of the Polish 2nd Corps.
General Anders.
May I congratulate you, General, on the fine successes that the 2nd Corps...
Churchill was in a difficult position.
One of his allies, the Soviets,
seemed almost to be at war with another - the Poles.
You must trust us.
Great Britain entered this war in defence of the principal
of your independence and I can assure you,
we will never desert you.
I know that the Germans and Russians are killing all your best elements,
particularly the intellectuals.
I sympathise with you deeply.
But be confident - we will not
desert you, and Poland will be happy.
I and my friend, President Roosevelt, to whom I have promised my support
and who will again be elected president,
will never abandon Poland.
Put your trust in us.
But Churchill's support made little difference
to the situation in Warsaw, which was grim.
TRANSLATION: Just imagine - it was 60-something days
in conditions that weren't even fit for animals.
We were hounded.
Imagine if your closest friends are killed,
if the city and the churches are burnt down,
and all life is collapsing.
And everything you live for has disappeared.
German forces openly targeted Polish civilians as well as members of the Home Army.
Within two weeks of the rising starting, in one district of the city alone,
the Germans killed at least 40,000 civilians.
One of the worst atrocities occurred here,
in the basement of a makeshift hospital in the centre of Warsaw.
On September 2, 1944 a group of German auxiliary troops arrived
and found the underground rooms filled with Polish wounded, men and women.
The shouts of those drunken soldiers were really frightening.
And every moment, someone would enter and rape the girls.
It was terrible.
They were screaming,
but there was nothing they could do because they were badly wounded.
The people in that hospital
were really badly wounded.
Danuta Galkowa managed to hide during the assaults,
but still witnessed the sight of mass rape.
It's beyond one's imagination that such things can be done with people looking on.
The mass rapes and murders that took place in this makeshift hospital
were just a tiny proportion of the atrocities perpetrated by German forces in Warsaw.
In total, over 200,000 Polish civilians died.
The Poles in Warsaw finally surrendered in early October 1944.
A few weeks before, Stalin had relented and offered them some help,
including allowing Soviet planes to drop supplies.
But many believed he deliberately did too little too late.
The fighting in Warsaw had lasted more than 60 days,
and now it was over.
When we heard the news, and this I remember, everyone cried.
The Germans began to destroy Warsaw,
brick by brick.
All autumn, there was an aura over Warsaw in the evening.
A red aura, a pink aura.
Warsaw was burning.
TRANSLATION: The people of Warsaw are dying.
Warsaw is dying.
The national culture of Poland is dying.
It seemed like Stalin had got his way.
He'd watched as the Germans destroyed the Home Army in Warsaw.
The Western Allies had ultimately felt powerless to prevent the Soviets acting as they saw fit.
It didn't auger well for the future.
As the last rites were about to be read over Warsaw,
Churchill and Roosevelt met
several thousand miles away in Quebec in Canada.
RADIO: Now, into a Quebec station, comes an official train
carrying England's Prime Minister Winston Churchill to meet
once more with America's President Franklin Roosevelt.
Discussion of the Soviet action, or lack of it, during the rising
in Warsaw wasn't a priority at the Quebec talks.
Overall, the war in Europe seemed to be going well for the Allies.
Perhaps, some thought, the Nazis would be beaten by Christmas.
So here the focus was on how Germany should be treated
at the end of the war.
We have got to be tough on the Germans...
Roosevelt was keen on a radical plan
proposed by his Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau,
a plan which would destroy post-war German industry.
Henry, would you like to say a little more about the Treasury's proposals? Yes, Mr President.
It is in the interests of peace and security
that Germany's economic domination of Europe is eliminated.
The Ruhr, the heart of Germany's industrial power, this area should
be stripped of all industry within six months of the end of the war.
And all German industrial equipment
should be transported to Allied
nations as reparation.
The mines must be closed...
I will be honest with you, Mr President.
I regard this proposal as unnatural, un-Christian and unnecessary.
Un-Christian.
What is more, it would be like chaining oneself to a dead German.
Stalin massively approved of the harsh treatment of Germany.
Perhaps coincidentally, one of the people who helped draw up the American plan, Harry Dexter White,
was a Soviet spy who was relaying all the secrets he could back via his Soviet handler to Moscow.
White was just one of a whole network of Soviet spies
in Britain and America that kept Stalin informed during the war.
The Western Allies had no such intelligence network in the Soviet Union.
In Quebec,
Eden and Churchill were both anxious
that the Americans agree to a new package of financial assistance for the British of over $1 billion.
Two days after Churchill's protest about the Morgenthau Plan, Roosevelt signed the deal.
Mr President,
the British people
are greatly in your debt.
This is something that we are doing for the benefit of both our countries. I think...
we should look at your proposals on Germany a little more.
After the agreement had been signed, Churchill appeared to change his mind about the Morgenthau Plan.
Though he reworked the plan
slightly, he still agreed to destroy
German industry after the war.
The programme for eliminating
the war-making industries
in the Ruhr and in the Saar
should look forward to converting Germany
into a country primarily agricultural
and pastoral in its character.
It would be like turning the Black Country into Devon.
It is not in our national interest.
The future of my people is at stake.
And if I have to choose between my people and the German people,
I am going to choose my people.
While Churchill and Roosevelt were planning the future of Germany,
Stalin's secret police seemed to be determining the future of Poland.
The secret police even saw as a threat those who had fought against the Nazis in Warsaw,
like Halina Szopinska.
He said I should tell him what I'd been doing in the Warsaw uprising.
If I lied, then he'd prove
I was lying, because he knew everything.
For them, the Home Army members were spies.
They said we were cooperating with the English and the Germans.
HE TALKS IN OWN LANGUAGE
The conflict within the Alliance was now such that one ally, the Soviets,
was in the process of torturing members of another ally, the Poles.
He would kick me, and I would fall onto the floor.
And then he would kick me again, and he would beat me, and he would hit me in the back of the head.
He was kicking me all the time.
When the Red Army eventually entered Warsaw in January 1945,
they liberated a ghost city.
Most of Poland was now under the control of a puppet government installed by Stalin.
It looked here as if one tyranny was indeed in the process of replacing another.
It is important that you and I understand each other...
Winston Churchill tries to reach a secret agreement with Stalin.
This is, er,
rather a naughty document.
The Americans...
..would be shocked if they saw how crudely I have put this.
The Eastern Front meets the Western Front.
On the surface, there is friendship.
But there is another story behind closed doors.
The harsh Morgenthau plans for Germany have been dropped,
and the question of who controls Eastern Europe becomes critical.