ABSTRACT
The first phase of the Second World War, Nazi-Soviet collaboration to destroy Poland between 1939 and 1941, was followed by the alliance of 1941-1945 between Britain and America and the USSR whose overriding priority was the defeat of Nazi Germany. The German invasion of the USSR allowed the establishment of direct bilateral relations between the Polish Government-in-Exile in London and the Soviet Union between summer 1941 and April 1943. The struggle for the truth about the fate of the missing 1940 Polish PoWs became a central feature of the larger Polish Question – what would be her post-war frontiers and the fate of West Belarus and West Ukraine? Britain and America attempted to mediate a Polish-Soviet understanding which would allow the Poles to contribute to the war effort and incline Stalin to accept an independent and democratic post-war Poland in Europe.1 Such hopes became increasingly unrealistic as Soviet military power and political prospects strengthened after Stalingrad in late 1942. The London Poles became a nuisance endangering the Allied war effort in 1941-1943. The dumping of an inconvenient historical loser and the handling of the truth about the 1940 massacre, however, caused Western statesmen embarrassing moral and political dilemmas whose consequences affected the origins and course of the Cold War.
