POSTWAR RELATIONS: THE LONG CLIMB FROM YALTA AND POTSDAM TO GDANSK AND THE ROUND TABLE
Year: 2016

When hostilities ended in 1945 Poland lay in ruins, having suffered the loss of almost a third of its population, sixty percent of its industrial capacity, physical displacement westward with the net loss of about twenty percent of its territory, and the bitter and catastrophic defeat of the Warsaw Uprising with its toll of some 200,000 of the urban elite. Nominally among the victors, most Poles had come to fear abandonment by their Western allies. In this dour climate, postwar diplomatic relati