Arthur Bliss Lane

Arthur Bliss Lane (16 June 1894–12 August 1956) was the United States Ambassador to Poland (1944–1947).

Biography

Lane was born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York. He was appointed U.S. Minister to Nicaragua (1933–1936); Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (1936–1937); Kingdom of Yugoslavia, (1937–1941); and Costa Rica (1941–1942). He was then appointed U.S. Ambassador to Colombia (1942–1944), and subsequently to Poland (1944–1947).

While in Poland, Lane was so disappointed that he resigned his post (on February 24, 1947)^[1] and wrote the book which detailed what he considered to be the failure of the United States and Britain to keep their promise that the Poles would have a free election after the war. In that book he described what he considered betrayal of Poland by the Western Allies, hence the title, I Saw Poland Betrayed. The book was translated into Polish and published in this version in the United States, and later by an underground publishing house in Poland in the 1980s.

According to Lane, the U.S. and Britain at the Tehran Conference agreed to dismemberment of the eastern part of Poland. He considered it a breach of the United States Constitution, since Roosevelt never reported his decision to the Senate. The Yalta Conference was the death blow to Poland's hopes for independence and for a democratic form of government, said Lane.

Following his career at the State Department, Lane was active in investigating the Katyn Massacre and in several anti-Communist organizations (National Committee for a Free Europe).

After his death, Lane's papers were kept in Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library.

References

External Links

• A film clip "Longines Chronoscope with Arthur Bliss Lane (March 24, 1952)" is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]

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