The American and Polish Intellectual Cooperation in Postwar Britain

Abstract

The consequences of the Atlantic Charter of 1941 between the United States of America and the United Kingdom had enormous effects for shaping the postwar intellectual landscape of Allied nations. This is observed in the nascent political currents that immediately necessitated a collaborative approach of the Central-European emigration in the United States of America and the United Kingdom in respect to the postwar order. The result of the Polish emigration’s cooperation with the American Government after the war, provided the early contours for a Central-Eastern European intellectual movement, through helping to organise their mutual collaboration and contact. The National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE) played such a role. The impact of American institutions interested in the emerging postwar political and intellectual movements of representatives tied to the wartime Polish Government in Exile, having lost its de jure status among the Allies on 5 July 1945, precipitated fundamental strategic shifts in designing future economic, cultural, diplomatic, and security relations of Central-Eastern European émigré groups. The interaction of the Polish political milieu with international postwar institutions like the NCFE contributed to the most important currents of this postwar Polish émigré activity in the United Kingdom in three ways: the shaping of political representation of the émigré population, providing a diplomatic and cultural response for future cooperation of émigré societies, and finally, outlining possibilities for a ‘local’ cultural approach to Polish and Ukrainian neighbourly relations in the émigré context of the United Kingdom.