ABSTRACT
In March of 1941, Sikorski made his first trip to America. It was preceded by lengthy meetings with Churchill. Retinger accompanied him along with two officers, including Leon Mitkiewicz, the peasant leader Mikolajczyk, and Cazalet. The motives of his mission were rather vague and consisted essentially of winning American goodwill and support for his large postwar plans for European federation, and to put Poland on the list of those nations eligible for lend lease. Terlecki claims that he was the first European statesman to raise to the Americans the idea of postwar reconstruction along federal lines, emphasizing the centrality of a Polish-Czech confederation. These giant plans surprised Roosevelt who expressed his enthusiastic support for the notions. In December 1943 Beneš signed, in Moscow a "Czechoslovak-Soviet Treaty of Alliance". The battle between the Sikorski's and Beneš's conceptions of Eastern Europe has ended with Beneš holding the field, and he is to all intents and purposes a Soviet agent.
