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Relations with the Soviet Union

Huge portraits of Churchill and Stalin, Brisbane, Australia, 31 October 1941

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Churchill, a vehement anti-communist, famously stated "If
Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of
Commons", regarding his policy towards Stalin.[441] Soon, British supplies and tanks were being
sent to help the Soviet Union.[442]
The Casablanca Conference, a meeting of Allied powers held in Casablanca, Morocco, on 14
January through 23 January 1943, produced what was to be known as the "Casablanca
Declaration". In attendance were Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle. Joseph
Stalin had bowed out, citing the need for his presence in the Soviet Union to attend to the
Stalingrad crisis. It was in Casablanca that the Allies made a unified commitment to continue the
war through to the "unconditional surrender" of the Axis powers. In private, however, Churchill
did not fully subscribe to the doctrine of "unconditional surrender", and was taken by surprise
when Franklin Roosevelt announced this to the world as Allied consensus.[443][444]
The settlement concerning the borders of Poland, that is, the boundary between Poland and the
Soviet Union and between Germany and Poland, was viewed as a betrayal in Poland during the
post-war years, as it was established against the views of the Polish government in exile. It was
Churchill who tried to motivate Mikołajczyk, who was prime minister of the Polish government in
exile, to accept Stalin's wishes, but Mikołajczyk refused. Churchill was convinced that the only
way to alleviate tensions between the two populations was the transfer of people, to match the
national borders.[445][446]

Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at the Yalta Conference, February 1945

The idea to expel the ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia was also supported by
Churchill.[447] As he expounded in the House of Commons on 15 December 1944, "Expulsion is
the method which, insofar as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting.
There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble ... A clean sweep will be made.
I am not alarmed by these transferences, which are more possible in modern
conditions."[448][449] However, the resulting expulsions of Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania were carried out in a way which resulted in much hardship
and, according to a 1966 report[450] by the West German Ministry of Refugees and Displaced
Persons, over 2.1 million Germans dead or missing.[450][451] Churchill opposed the Soviet
domination of Poland and wrote bitterly about it in his books, but was unable to prevent it at the
conferences.[452]
During October 1944, he and Eden were in Moscow to meet with the Soviet leadership. At this
point, Soviet forces were beginning to advance into various eastern European countries.
Churchill held the view that until everything was formally and properly worked out at the Yalta
conference, there had to be a temporary, war-time, working agreement with regard to who would
run what.[453] The most significant of these meetings was held on 9 October 1944 in
the Kremlin between Churchill and Stalin. During the meeting, Poland and the Balkan problems
were discussed.[454] Churchill told Stalin:
Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans. Your armies are in Rumania and Bulgaria. We have
interests, missions, and agents there. Don't let us get at cross-purposes in small ways. So far as
Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to have ninety per cent predominance
in Rumania, for us to have ninety per cent of the say in Greece, and go fifty–fifty about
Yugoslavia?[453]
Stalin agreed to this Percentages agreement, ticking a piece of paper as he heard the
translation. In 1958, five years after the account of this meeting was published (in The Second
World War), authorities of the Soviet Union denied that Stalin accepted the "imperialist
proposal".[454]
One of the conclusions of the Yalta Conference was that the Allies would return all Soviet
citizens that found themselves in the Allied zone to the Soviet Union. This immediately affected
the Soviet prisoners of war liberated by the Allies, but was also extended to all Eastern
European refugees.[455] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called the Operation Keelhaul "the last secret" of
the Second World War.[456] The operation decided the fate of up to two million post-war refugees
fleeing eastern Europe.[457]

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