the polish armed forces in the west had fought alongside the western allies (primarily the united kingdom) since 1939. however, in the aftermath of the "western betrayal" - the decisions reached at the yalta conference and subsequent agreements between the big three - the polish government in exile found itself no longer recognised by the allies; instead the soviet puppet government, the polish committee of national liberation, assumed control of poland. with the communist government mounting persecutions against the polish resistance and the soldiers who fought "in the west", mostly loyal to the government-in-exile and opposed to communism, many polish soldiers found themselves torn between returning to their homeland and facing persecution or remaining in the west. many expected a collapse of the communist regime in poland, and the liberation of poland via a third world war between the western allies and the soviets, but instead by 1949 a full-blown stalinist regime was entrenched in poland, and showed no signs of weakening. out of approximately 250,000 polish soldiers in the west in 1945, 105,000 returned to poland, but close to 160,000 were still in western (mostly british) territory.