REALISM AND RESISTANCE
By JAN NOWAK
ISPENT the greater part of this war under German occupation as a member of the Polish Underground Movement. For several years my only source of news from the free world was the two or three type-written sheets of paper brought to me every day by a girl liaison worker. These sheets bore the daily BBC communiqués and came from a secret wireless studio furnished with a receiving set and a roneo machine. During the war the BBC undoubtedly rendered priceless service to those who were living under Hitler's rule. But the wireless could not take the place of a normal and reciprocal interchange of views. It could not bridge the gap which the front line created between peoples living in totally different con- ditions over so long a period. In the BBC communiques I found all that the daily press announces in heavy-type headlines—but I could not discover from them the articles which should follow in smaller print. In other words, a person living in Poland was fairly well informed of all the more important political events, but the background, genesis and interpretation of these facts were left largely to his own imagination and assumptions. The views and opinions formed in the Allied camp during this war could not get through to us. And that is the reason why my first encounter with that trend of thought known as " realistic politics " occurred only after my arrival in Great Britain from Poland.
The adherents to these " realistic politics " base their arguments on the experiences of this war. It was won, they say, by the Great Powers which emerged victorious from this gigantic trial of strength. Thus, only those Powers which have actual force at their disposal are considered capable of assuring peace and security to the rest of the world. Such a state of affairs—in their opinion—justifies the necessity for concessions and sacrifices on the part of small and medium powers to great ones. At the present moment, Poland is probably the country from which the most far-reaching concessions in favour of a Great Power are being demanded ; and it is the Poles who are most frequently accused of lacking political realism. I have frequently come across the view that the Poles would be behaving as realists if they were to cease their opposition to the Soviet demands. This view immediately gives rise to the question whether, in that case, Poland's rejection of analogous German demands in 1939 was in accordance with the principles of realistic politics. As a member of the underground movement I must ask myself whether my five years of work had any kind of practical sense, and whether the immense sacrifices and loss of life incurred as a consequence of the resistance which my country put up against the Germans were not in vain. Undoubtedly Poland could have avoided them had she, in 1939, submitted to German demands, agreed to terri- torial concessions, produced a Quisling government and become one of Hitler's vassals. As it is, the Polish people pursued a totally different line of conduct from the very beginning of the war. Poland was the first country to oppose German aggression, and the only one which, after suffering one defeat, continued to fight on without a break. A comparison between the situations of Italy and Poland at the moment of Allied victory forces one to ask whether Poland's fate is not, in fact, worse than that of Germany's oldest ally.
Here we may pass over the purely moral side of the problem and confine ourselves to its practical consequences for the future. For these consequences have a much wider application than has the actual Polish question. The point is: what will be the attitude of smaller States in the future should any Great Power once -again entertain the idea of conquering Europe, and should the world once again be menaced by aggression on a grand scale? For the experi- ence of Poland would seem to teach others that opposition to an aggressor does not pay, and that- the only realistic policy for the smaller States is to submit to superior strength. A psychological effect of this kind would perhaps have no particular significance if the present war had shown that the behaviour of the smaller nations had little influence on its length and final result. But have the possi- bilities of these smaller European States—their economic resources,
* Captain Nowak was an officer in the Polish Home Army. geographical situation, man-power, and so on—in fact constituted quantize negligeable, and was it really of no consequence on whi side this potential was to be engaged? Many facts and events whi I observed on the spot seem to provide a decided negative.
I was in Poland in the first half of 1941 when the Germans wet Preparing for their blow against Russia on a gigantic scale. The underground Polish wireless stations were working without paus transmitting information of German troop movements to London, whence it was immediately passed to the Russians through British mediation. From close at hand we watched the concentration of German forces on Polish territory ; . the entire military might of Germany, then at the peak of her power, passed before our eyes The industry and resources of the whole of Europe were then in Hitler's hands. The German soldier was intoxicated by the victories he had won. He was possessed of military experience, well-fed and magnificently trained, armed and equipped, but for one deficiency, he completely lacked adequate protection against the rigours of the Russian winter. It was quite obvious that the German High Com- mand was counting on a repetition in Russia of the Blitzkrieg which had succeeded in Poland, Norway, Belgium, Holland and France, and the achievement of a military decision in the east before the advent of winter. It was then that we saw for ourselves how far the Balkan campaign thwarted these German plans.
The unexpected and apparently hopeless resistance made by two small States, Yugoslavia and Greece, at a moment when Great Britain was still unable to give them effective aid,. held up the German concentration against Russia. Armoured divisions which were already on the Polish river Bug, or en route for their allotted posi- tions, were diverted to the south. The conquest of Greece and Yugoslavia took only a short time, it is true, and ended in a shattering victory for Germany. But the campaign in the Balkans delayed the German attack on Russia, which was made, not in April, immediately after the end of the thaw, but three months later, at the end of June. After six months, in December, 1941, German officers and soldiers travelling through Poland reported that German advanced patrols had reached the tram termini on the outskirts of Moscow. Even then, however, they were beginning to voice their doubts as to whether the Russian winter would allow them to continue the offensive. What would have been Moscow's fate had the Germans stood at her gates not in December but in September of that year? Beyond question, two small States, Greece and Yugoslavia, made a decisive contribution to the preservation of the Soviet capital. At the same time Turkey, who found herself in an exceptionally dangerous situation, when the Balkans and the Greek islands all came under German contiol and when the chances of victory seemed to be on Hitler's side, resisted pressure in the form of both threats and enticements, and remained neutral. Turkey's neutrality pro- tected the Caucasus and Russia's oil wells from the south, and made possible the safe transport of supplies to Russia through Persia.
The most important communication lines along which supplies passed to the German forces fighting in the east ran through Polish territory. The Poles fully appreciated this fact, and in the years 1941, 1942, 0943 and the first half of 1944 the Polish Home Army destroyed or damaged 6,988 engines, and 17,037 railway trucks, de- railed 721 military transports and destroyed 1,133 others, and in the six months before the Warsaw Rising alone caused 443 hold-ups of rail traffic, each lasting anything from two to 092 hours, Today, these figures seem insignificant when compared with -the results of even one RAF raid. But it should not be forgotten that the immense destructive force of the modern air force has only been fully de- veloped in the last phase of the war. Neither in 1941 nor at the beginning of 0944 were the Allied Air Forces operating over Poland Thus, the constant threat to communications in the German rear could not fail to exert some influence on the course of the war on the eastern front at a time when Russia was meeting defeats and not victories, and when she was only one step from disaster. The Great Powers won the victory in the second round. But would that have been possible without the help of the meditim and small States which stood by them in the first round?
It was in the first, and not the final, phase of the struggle that the resistance put up by small and medium States had its full military significance. It was then, when the scales of victory were
for a long period tipped in the .aggressor's favour, that small forces decided on which side the scales would ultimately tilt. If Belgium had supported the invader in 1914, instead of resisting, Paris would have been occupied by the Germans. In the 'same way, if Poland had accepted the German proposals of a joint attack on Russia in 5939, the fortunes of the present war would have been different. At the cost of tremendous- loss and sacrifice, both countries provided the Allies with the vital factor on which ultimate victory depended— time. Thus, if the peace which concludes this war is to establish in the world the conviction that realistic politics for smaller States consist of opportunism in relation to superior strength, the advantages therefrom will be reaped solely by the future aggressor. For, at the moment of its aggression, the arcking State is the stronger. Every- thing which increases this advantage, increases the probability of aggression ; everything which weakens it, renders aggression more remote.
In offering resistance to the enemy during five years of German occupation, we acted, in the conviction that the military bearing which our resistance had on the ultimate outcome of the war would justify the immense losses incurred. The people who risked their lives, and often lost them, believed that their loyalty to the Allies and the assistance they gave them would meet with its reward at the moment of victory, and that by this means a better future for their nation would be ensured. The fate of Poland has not yet been finally sealed, and it would be premature to conclude that the assump- tions just mentioned have been proved naive, and an example of the Poles' lack of political realism. The efforts and measures adopted by Great Britain and the United States on the Polish question, and the determined attitude of both these Powers to the imposition of a puppet government on Poland, seem to contradict this melancholy conclusion. They have also undoubtedly helped to preserve in the world that large capital of trust which the Great Powers won for themselves in the struggle against tyranny and from which the smaller nations derived their will to resist. For the security of the future peace this moral authority and confidence possesses a very real significance.
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