Stalin's aim to ensure that an independent Poland would never reemerge in the postwar period. The relationship between the Soviets and Sikorski's Polish government in exile, formally a commanding force of the AK, was strained at best, especially in the wake of the evidence of the mass execution of the Polish POW officers by the Soviets at Katyn which was discovered in 1943.As Soviet partisans were ordered to liquidate Polish Home Army units, so the local AK commanders considered the Soviets as just another enemy. As ordered by Moscow on 22 June 1943, the Soviet partisans in Poland started an open fight both against the German forces as well as the local Polish partisans. Collaboration with the Germans In January and February 1944, in the wake of the massive assault by the Soviet paramilitary against the Polish AK resistance units Krzyżanowski conducted a series of negotiations with the Germans. In the aftermath of talks with Seidler for Rosenfield of the Nazi German Security Service near Wilejka and Julian Christiansen, the Chief of the Vilnius Abwehr, cooperation between Germans and the AK was agreed upon in the area of Krzyżanowski's units' operation and, according to the report of the local Nazi official: "three sizeable Polish detachments came over to our side and initially also fought well." While Krzyżanowski refused to sign an explicit agreement on cooperation, the secret arrangement was made that the AK would "capture" the armaments and provisions left to them by Germans. As a result, the AK units in the area were re-supplied. The Germans pulled off their mobilization plans locally (leaving the territory for the AK's mobilization campaign) and largely withdrew. The German spies and agents were spared by the AK members and no AK members were executed by Germans in their reprisals against the local population. However any such arrangements were purely tactical, in contrast to the ideological collaboration as shown by the Vichy regime in France, the Quisling regime in Norway or closer to the region, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The Poles' main motivation was to gain intelligence on German morale, preparedness and to acquire some badly needed weapons. There are no known joint Polish-German actions, with the German attempts to turn the Poles toward fighting exclusively against the Soviets being unsuccessful. The collaboration of local commanders with the Germans was atypical, and condemned by AK High Command. Fighting with the Lithuanians In May