Western Betrayal - The Perception of Betrayal

The Perception of Betrayal

"Notions of western betrayal" are a reference to "a sense of historical and moral responsibility" for the West's "abandonment of (Central and) Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War," according to professors Charlotte Bretherton and John Vogler. In Central and Eastern Europe the interpretation of the outcome of the Munich Crisis of 1938, and the Yalta Conference of 1944, as a betrayal of Central and Eastern Europe by Western powers has been used by Central and Eastern European leaders to put pressure on Western countries to acquiesce to more recent political requests such as membership in NATO.

In a few cases deliberate duplicity is alleged, whereby secret agreements or intentions are claimed to have existed in conflict with understandings given publicly. An example is Churchill's covert concordance with the USSR that the Atlantic Charter did not apply to the Baltic States. Given the strategic requirements of winning the war, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had no option but to accept the demands of their erstwhile ally, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, argues retired diplomat Charles G. Stefan.

Max Hastings states that Churchill urged Roosevelt to continue armed conflict in Europe in 1945 - but carried out against the Soviet Union, to prevent the USSR from extending its control west of its own borders. Roosevelt apparently trusted Stalin's assurances, and he was unwilling to support Churchill in ensuring the liberation of all of Central and Eastern Europe west of the USSR. Without American backing, the United Kingdom, with its strength exhausted by six years of war, was unable to take any military actions in that part of Europe.

Specific instances sometimes considered to exemplify the concept by historical and contemporary writers include the annexation of most of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany under the Munich Agreement of 1938, the abandonment of the British alliance with Poland during the Invasion of Poland of September 1939 and during the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi Germany in 1944, and the acceptance of the Soviet abrogation of the Yalta agreement of 1944. In the latter, the Major Allies against Nazi Germany had agreed to secure democratic processes for the countries that would be liberated from Nazi rule, such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Albania.

Also, there was the seeming lack of military or political support for the anticommunist rebels during the uprising in German Democratic Republic in 1953, during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and during the democracy-oriented reforms in Czechoslovakia in 1968 (the so-called "Prague Spring").