WARSAW, Poland — Fresh from a warm embrace from iconic Polish leader Lech Walesa, Mitt Romney will wrap up a three-country trip overseas Tuesday with a major speech that he hopes will send a message that he’s tough and more willing to take a harder line with rogue nations than President Barack Obama is.

Romney arrived in Warsaw late Monday after a day in Gdansk, where he enjoyed the most enthusiastic reception of his six-day trip, which was marred by controversies at the first two stops, in London and Jerusalem. He was greeted in Gdansk by crowds that swarmed in the streets, though some were apparently there for an arts festival and one group held a 10-foot-long banner supporting Romney’s primary rival for the GOP presidential nomination, Texas U.S. Rep. Ron Paul. Others in the crowd chanted Obama’s name.

But the mood seemed friendlier than those few voices indicated.

“Poland and many other countries will certainly do their best to help the U.S. restore its leadership position,” said Walesa, a former president of Poland who last year refused to meet with the visiting Obama.

“After our conversation I am quite confident that you will be quite successful in doing that,” Walesa assured Romney.

Romney visited memorials at Solidarity Square at the gates of the Gdansk shipyard, and Westerplatte, where Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Each site has enormous importance in this country: Protests at the shipyards in 1980 triggered the Solidarity movement, which eventually led to a free Poland, and the Polish military held off the Germans at Westerplatte for a week before being overwhelmed.

At the World War II site, about 100 people cheered as Romney walked up hand in hand with his wife, Ann, and accompanied by their son Josh. Mitt Romney carried a bundle of roses to the monument’s base, and he and his family bowed their heads and shut their eyes. At Solidarity Square, they laid a wreath.

Poland is important to that argument, advisers believe, as conservatives think Obama was wrong to reverse President George W. Bush’s decision to base a missile-defense system partly in this country.

Critics counter that Obama has hardly abandoned Poland. A ballistic missile defense “just doesn’t exist,” said Sean Kay, an international politics expert at Ohio Wesleyan University. Obama has stressed more cooperation with other NATO countries.