Stalin became agitated during these discussions. After a recess, he suddenly stood up to speak. He admitted that the Russians had ‘committed many sins against the Poles in the past’, but argued that Poland was vital to Soviet security. The Soviet Union had been invaded twice through Poland in the course of the century, and for that reason alone it was necessary that Poland be ‘mighty, free, and independent’. Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt could fully understand the shock of the German invasion in 1941 and Stalin’s determination to establish a cordon of satellite states so that the Russians
...more
