Poland

Poland For the fighting in Poland in September– October 1939, see Polish campaign.

1. Introduction

Hitler's attack upon Poland was the immediate cause of the outbreak of the Second World War. It remained an occupied country throughout the hostilities and suffered incomparably both from the campaigns which were waged on its soil and from the harsh policies of the occupying regimes. There were more than 6 million casualties in a population of 35 million. Hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens were subject to involuntary uprooting and transfer (see also deportations). The physical damage included more than half a million homes destroyed (see Table 1).

When, on 15 March 1939, German troops marched into Bohemia and Moravia, completing the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia, it was only a matter of time before Poland became Hitler's next victim. Within days of the seizure of Prague, German diplomats in their talks with the Poles had renewed their demands for the incorporation of Danzig into the Reich and for an extraterritorial road and rail link with East Prussia. The Poles rejected the German demands. Shortly afterwards the British government offered the Polish foreign minister, Józef Beck, an alliance. The British move was calculated to warn Hitler against any further aggressive moves in east–central Europe. On 31 March, Chamberlain, declared that the UK would guarantee Poland's independence and promised aid (see Poland, Guarantee of). Later in the year, on 25 August, a Mutual Assistance Pact was signed between the two states.

Hitler, enraged by the Poles' defiance and by their decision to turn to the British for support, denounced the 1934 German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact. At the end of May 1939 he outlined to German commanders the plan to attack Poland in order to create Lebensraum (living-space) for the German people in the east. Aware that such a move would risk conflict with the UK, and with France which had an alliance with Poland dating from 1921, Hitler attempted to determine what the Soviet position would be if hostilities broke out.

During the summer of 1939 Stalin was courted as an ally both by Berlin and by London and Paris in tandem. In the end Hitler's offer of territorial gains overcame any ideological scruples Stalin may have had. On 23 August the Nazi–Soviet Pact was concluded in Moscow. Though it was called a non-aggression pact, it was a blueprint for aggression—against Poland and other states. By assuring Hitler that the USSR would not join forces with the Poles and their western allies against him, it effectively paved the way for war.

On the morning of 1 September 1939, without a declaration of war and on false claims that Poland was infringing German territory (see Gleiwitz), Hitler's forces invaded Poland on a wide front. Pitching superior numbers of troops and armour, and greater mobility, against a stubborn but out-gunned defence, this brought speedy results; and, when Red Army troops crossed into eastern Poland on the morning of 17 September, the Poles' situation, already desperate, became hopeless. Although the Soviet move had been anticipated in secret protocols attached to the Nazi–Soviet Pact, it came as a complete surprise to the Poles and their allies. Poland had a Non-Aggression Pact with the USSR dating from 1932. Confusion was deepened by Soviet claims to be neutral and to be intervening merely to safeguard fellow Slavs—the Belorussian and Ukrainian communities in Poland. Despite Soviet attempts to disguise their aggression, the Polish authorities were to consider themselves in a state of war with the Soviet Union, as well as with Germany, until June 1941.

With the meeting of German and Soviet troops in central Poland, the occupying powers had to give thought to the future shape of the region. Plans for the creation of a residual Polish ‘puppet’ state were quickly abandoned and the demarcation line originally agreed was changed in Germany's favour. Instead of running along the River Vistula, the line would now run along the River Bug, some 150 km. (93 mi.) to the east. Stalin conceded a large area of central Poland in return for German recognition of a dominant Soviet interest in Lithuania. This new arrangement was sealed in Moscow on 28 September (German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Demarcation), at which time the partitioning powers expressed their determination to combat all forms of Polish resistance and warned Britain and France against prolonging hostilities.

2. Domestic life and government

(a) Pre-occupation government

On the eve of the Second Word War the Polish government was controlled by the followers of Marshal J. Piłsudski (1867–1935), the dominant figure in inter-war Polish politics, who had assumed quasi-dictatorial powers following a coup in 1926. After his death, his followers in the so-called ‘Sanacja’ (the word denotes ‘cleansing’) regime continued to rule in his name. The four most important political parties—the Christian Democrats (Ch.D.), Peasant Party (SL), the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), and the right-wing National Party (SD)—were all in opposition. On the fringes of political life were the Communist Party (KPP), whose following was extremely small, and the National Radical Camp (ONR), an extreme right-wing grouping hostile to the communists and to the non-Polish minority groups.

President and head of state in 1939 was Ignacy Mościcki (1867–1946), a former colleague of Piłsudski's from his early days with the Polish Socialist Party. The government had a distinctively military flavour; the prime minister was a doctor and professional soldier, General Felicjan Sławój-Składkowski (1885–1962), and the foreign minister was Colonel Józef Beck. The Sanacja regime had become increasingly authoritarian and intolerant of dissent in the course of the 1930s. It monopolized the process of political decision-making and refused to allow other parties any kind of voice. Several of the Sanacja's more determined opponents were jailed. Others went into exile. Even when war was seen to be inevitable, in the spring of 1939, the suggestion by opposition parties that a government of national unity should be formed was rejected by the Sanacja. When war came, Poles were prepared, through love for their country, to rally to the national cause, but in the wake of the September 1939 defeat recriminations were bitter and persistent. The debates and divisions created around the figure of Piłsudski and the Sanacja government continued to bedevil Polish politics into exile.

On 18 September the Polish government crossed the southern border into Romania, where it was interned. Accompanying it were the president, Mościcki, and the C-in-C of Polish forces, Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz (1886–1941). The latter ordered his troops to seek sanctuary on the territory of neutral states and try to make their way to France where the Polish Army would re-form.

(b) German occupation

Having partitioned the country (see Map 88), the occupying powers set about imposing their administration on the territory under their control. In the German occupation zone, the western provinces (Silesia, Pomorze, Poznań, most of Łódź and parts of Warsaw, Cracow, and Kielce provinces) were annexed to the Reich by a decree of 8 October and were known as the Wartheland. They accounted for some 90,000 sq. km. (35,000 sq. mi.) and some 9.5 million of Poland's pre-war population. In the remaining area which fell under German control, the Nazis established a ‘General government’ which was intended as a labour colony of the Reich. It incorporated some 96,000 sq. km. (37,000 sq. mi.) of territory—including the cities of Warsaw, Cracow, Radom, and Lublin—and 12 million inhabitants. The seat of power was established at Cracow and Hans Frank, a Nazi lawyer, was appointed governor.

The Nazi occupation marked the beginning of almost six years of unspeakable horror for Poles. Indeed the terror began even as Wehrmacht units crossed Polish territory during the September campaign. In the wake of the Wehrmacht, SS operational units followed in close attendance. Armed with lists of political activists—particularly of those who, almost 20 years earlier, had risen against German rule in Silesia and Wielkopolska—the Einsatzgruppen carried out summary executions of these and other ‘undesirable’ elements, including Jews. In Bydgoszcz German fifth columnists, who aided the Nazi forces by providing intelligence and organizing diversions, took up arms against the Polish garrison, believing that resistance was nearly extinguished. Polish reinforcements swiftly put down the revolt and executed many of its perpetrators, and when the Germans eventually captured the city, they elected to regard this as an unprovoked massacre, and shot thousands of Polish citizens as a reprisal.

This was to be only the first of many thousands of such ‘reprisals’. Before Wehrmacht administration of Polish territory ended on 25 October 1939, some 531 towns and villages were burned and 16,376 Poles executed by various branches of the German army and police. Mass murders continued after military activity had ceased, the most notable during the early months of the war being those at Wawer in December 1939, and at Palmiry, where 1,700 Poles were shot between December 1939 and July 1940.

In the Wartheland, Hitler's aim was to eradicate all traces of Polish culture and to Germanize its inhabitants completely (during the 19th century, and until Poland was restored to statehood in 1918, they had been under Prussian administration). This task fell to Heinrich Himmler, the Reich Commissioner charged with the consolidation of German nationhood. The implementation of his programme involved the forcible expulsion of a million Poles who were considered unsuitable for Germanification. This mass movement took place during the winter of 1939–40 under extremely harsh conditions. Those expelled were moved with few possessions and allowed to take little cash. They were not compensated for the goods, businesses, and property they had left behind, which were taken over by ethnic Germans repatriated from the Baltic States, eastern Poland, or Romania. Their transportation, in unheated freight trucks in the cold of winter, resulted in the death of many thousands. Most were moved to the General government area and simply dumped there, although able-bodied menfolk were separated from their families and taken to the Reich as forced labour. The Poles who remained behind in the Reich areas came under great pressure to Germanize. They were compelled to register as ethnic Germans, for example, and forbidden to use the Polish language. Tens of thousands were forced into military service in the Wehrmacht and more than 200,000 children were sent to the Reich for Germanization (see Lebensborn). Furthermore all visible signs of Polish life and culture were erased: Polish schools, theatres, public libraries, museums, and bookshops were closed down.

In the General government—the reservation which Hitler had earmarked for Poles—German policy in the early days of the occupation was restrained. University courses began normally, theatres opened, newspapers circulated. Only with the appointment of the governor, Hans Frank, in late October did the situation change. On 27 October the mayor of Warsaw, Stefan Starzyński—symbol of the capital's brave resistance—was arrested, and later shot. On 6 November there followed the seizure of 182 members of academic staff of the Jagiellonian University and other higher education institutes in Cracow. They were taken to Sachsenhausen where many subsequently died. On 9 November street round-ups took place in Lublin.

The closure of universities, schools, libraries, publishing houses, archives, museums was accompanied by the destruction of Polish monuments and the seizure of Polish works of art (see loot). The playing of music by Polish composers was banned. The systematic attempts to demoralize the Poles by eradicating their culture were part of a design to reduce them to a subhuman level, fit only for the role of slaves. ‘The Poles,’ stated Hans Frank, ‘do not need universities or secondary schools: the Polish lands are to be changed into an intellectual desert.’ However, Nazi policies went beyond eradication of culture. They anticipated the literal extermination of the Poles as a nation and several policies were directed towards this end. Systematic economic exploitation meant that food was in short supply. The diet of the average Pole grew steadily worse and as early as 1941 daily food rations in Warsaw provided a notional 669 calories per day, compared to the Germans' 2,613. (The Jews were allotted a mere 184 calories.) Reduced diet meant starvation and weakened resistance to illness and disease. The flourishing black market, which the Germans found impossible to suppress, was a lifeline for many. A higher minimum age for marriage was set, in an attempt to reduce the birthrate. The deportation of men and women to the Reich to work in German agriculture or industry (some 2 million were taken between 1939 and 1944) had a similar effect in reducing fertility.

The most brutal measures employed to destroy the Poles, though, were the 300 labour and concentration camps which were established on Polish soil. The camps were often located in the vicinity of factories so that the hapless camp-dwellers, both Christians and Jews, could be utilized as forced labour. By the same logic, they were frequently sited on or near railway lines to facilitate the transport of goods and personnel. Camps such as Auschwitz and Majdanek became bywords for the savagery of the Nazi regime, and they housed prisoners from all over Europe as well as Poles.

The Jewish population of Poland was earmarked for especially brutal treatment by the Nazi regime (see also Final Solution). There were some 2.5 million Polish Jews in areas controlled by the Nazis. Many tens of thousands more would have fallen into Nazi hands had they not fled before the advancing German troops in 1939 to areas which came under Soviet occupation. From late October 1939, a series of sweeping measures was introduced which struck at the freedom and rights of Polish Jews. Compulsory labour was introduced for those aged between 14 and 60 years. Property rights were first restricted, and then curtailed altogether as Jewish property was confiscated. In January 1940, restrictions on the movement of Jews were introduced. They were herded into ghettos in major Polish cities, which were sealed off and guarded by police. Inside the ghetto walls life continued after a fashion and Jewish councils (Judenräte) were formed to carry out administrative tasks. Half a million people were concentrated in the Warsaw ghetto alone. Conditions became appalling as supplies of food and medicine dwindled. After October 1941 Jews who were found outside the ghetto risked death, as did Poles attempting to help them. The mortality rate within the ghettos rose and people expired on the street.

Within days of the German attack on the USSR in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA) all Poland as constituted in September 1939 came under German rule for the first time. In a new administrative division, the south-eastern regions became transformed into Distrikt Galizien with its administrative headquarters at Lwów, and this was incorporated into the General government. To the east the remaining territories became Reichskommissariats of the Ukraine and Ostland—the latter incorporating also the Baltic States (see Map 80). Poland was now divided between the Reich (30.8%), the General Government (38.8%), and the eastern Reichskommissariats (30.3%).

In the course of 1941 a change in German policy towards the General government took place. Hitler had decided that it would become a German region and 80% of its Polish population would be expelled. Efforts were made to emphasize the German character of towns such as Cracow, Tarnów, and Lublin and in November 1942 the Germans embarked upon a mass resettlement and colonization operation in the Zamość region. The situation of Polish Jews also worsened. Almost the entire Jewish population was earmarked for extermination; most were to die in Nazi death camps (see OPERATION REINHARD), although many thousands died when the urban ghettos were eventually liquidated. Attempts made by Christian Poles to help could only be symbolic when measured against the size of the task and the sanctions they faced. By contrast with Nazi occupation policies in western Europe, in Poland whole families risked death if they were detected attempting to conceal a Jew.

(c) Soviet occupation

Whereas the Germans took control of some 188,700 sq. km. (72,800 sq. mi.) of Polish territory with a population of 22 million (18.5 million Poles, 2 million Jews, under a million ethnic Germans), the Soviets took slightly more territory—201,000 sq. km. (77,500 sq. mi.), but with a population of only 13 million (5 million Poles, 4.5 million Ukrainians, 1.5 million Belorussians, and 1.5 million Jews). In the north-east the town of Wilno and its environs were transferred to Lithuania. But Moscow's largesse was short-lived; only nine months later Wilno, now called Vilnius, and the whole of Lithuania were to find themselves under Soviet rule when the Baltic States were occupied by the Red Army.

In the course of the September campaign, according to Soviet sources, some 200,000 Polish troops were captured by the Red Army. (A further 11,000, interned in Lithuania, were to fall into Soviet hands with the seizure of the Baltic States in the summer of 1940.) Some of the ordinary soldiers—including those of non-Polish origin and those whose homes were in German-held areas—were released and allowed to return home. Thousands of others were held in prisoner-of-war camps in the south-east of the country, many being employed on construction projects. Most of the officers were taken to camps within the USSR, but few of them survived until the re-establishment of Polish–Soviet relations in 1941. The majority fell victim to NKVD execution squads at Katyń forest and other sites.

In the Soviet occupation zone conditions were only marginally less harsh than under the Germans. The entry of the Red Army into Poland had not passed without resistance and where the defending forces had fired on the invaders the Soviets frequently took immediate reprisals, shooting prisoners on the spot. The terror increased in the days immediately following the entry of Soviet troops when military rule was still in force. The commanders of the Belorussian front (army group) and the Ukrainian front, generals Kovalev and Timoshenko, authorized the creation of local people's militias or peasants' committees to maintain order. These included in their ranks prisoners the Soviets had released from jail, or else radicalized Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews—many with grudges and their own scores to settle. At risk from random retribution by them were Polish officers, members of the Frontier Defence Corps (KOP), policemen, local officials, judges, prison staffs—anyone, in fact, who having held a responsible position in the service of the Polish state, or else because of his class background, was disliked by the new regime.

Within days the Soviet civilian authorities began to build an administration at all levels which included many Soviet citizens. P. Ponomarenko, first secretary of the Belorussian Communist Party, took over control from his new base in Białystok, whilst his opposite number in the Ukraine, N. Khrushchev (1894–1971), moved to Lwów. The Soviet security agencies, led by the NKVD, established a firmer hold on the territories, and Stalinist terror became more systematically applied, as arrests and disappearances increased.

The formal annexation of the Polish territories took place within five weeks of the invasion. Throughout the Soviet-occupied region ‘elections’ took place on 22 October. This plebiscite, staged to determine ‘the will of the people’, was manifestly fraudulent. The list of candidates was selected by the NKVD, threats and pressures were exerted on people to vote, and there was widespread evidence that the results had been falsified. Yet on the basis of this poll, delegates were elected to ‘People's Assemblies’ of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia which met at the beginning of November in Lwów and Białystok respectively. The delegates were invited to vote in favour of incorporation into the Soviet Union. Once they had served their purpose the assemblies were dissolved. On 29 November the Supreme Soviet decreed that inhabitants of the annexed territories had acquired Soviet citizenship. The Polish government in London (see below) refused to accept the election result or the steps which followed from it, regarding the Soviet annexation as an act of force majeure and protesting vigorously against infringements of international law.

Nevertheless, Moscow henceforth treated the eastern Polish provinces as an integral part of the USSR, and the Soviet authorities felt free to impose their own political, economic, and social system. The Polish złoty was removed from circulation and replaced with the rouble. Savings accounts were frozen and largely confiscated. Large industry, financial institutions, and the mines were nationalized. Free trade was outlawed as ‘speculation’ and co-operatives and state shops introduced. In the countryside, estates were seized and placed under state control. In the towns, apartments were appropriated for the use of Soviet personnel and their owners were thrown out on to the street. In time, too, Poles in more responsible positions began to lose their jobs, replaced either by members of the local non-Polish communities, or else by Soviet personnel brought in from Minsk and Kiev.

The eradication of Polish political, cultural, and economic influence proceeded in direct proportion to the encouragement of Ukrainian and Belorussian aspirations. There was destruction of Polish monuments, removal of Polish street signs, closing of Polish bookshops, publishing houses, newspapers (although communist newspapers in Polish rapidly appeared). Ukrainian and Belorussian became the languages of school and university, while Russian also became compulsory. Polish history was replaced on the syllabus by the principles of Marxist–Leninism—or the Soviet Constitution. Religious influences were also seen as harmful and were countered. Bans were imposed on the teaching of religion in schools and on outward manifestations of religious belief such as the ringing of church bells, or the wearing of vestments outside the church. Although religious worship as such was not outlawed, punitive taxes were imposed on the churches and many were forced to close.

Arrests began soon after the arrival of the Red Army and existing prisons were soon too full to cope with the numbers. The Soviets sought to root out the ‘enemies of socialism’ and found these enemies everywhere—including among the ranks of Polish labour leaders and members of the pre-war Polish Communist Party (KPP). Tens of thousands of prisoners were transported by stages to prisons in the Soviet interior, and then on to the GUlag or to state farms. In the first half of 1940, hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens were forcibly deported in three mass movements (in February, April, and June). Many of these deportees, estimated to number 1.5 million, were women and children. They included members of the pre-war minorities—Ukrainians, Belorussians, and Jews—although ethnic Poles predominated, and they came from all walks of life: peasants, forestry workers, and artisans accompanied judges, teachers, businessmen, state officials, politicians. Many, particularly the elderly and young children, died in the freight trucks on journeys to Kazakhstan or elsewhere beyond the Urals—journeys which commonly lasted some three weeks. Polish sources estimate that some 30% of those deported died in the Soviet Union before most were released under ‘amnesty’ in the autumn of 1941.

The German attack on the low countries and France in May 1940 (see FALL GELB) caused a halt to the NKVD's two-monthly cycle of deportations. With the western powers embroiled in the fighting that led to the fall of France, Stalin decided it was a good time to make further territorial acquisitions—the Baltic States and Bessarabia. This brought more Poles into the Soviet orbit including civilian refugees, military internees, and pre-war Polish residents of Lithuania. However, the Poles in areas controlled by the Soviets were to experience a marginally less repressive regime in the latter half of 1940. Following the unexpectedly speedy collapse of France, the Soviets became concerned about the pro-German sentiments of Ukrainian nationalists and their potential as fifth columnists should Hitler decide to turn his armies eastwards once more. They were also concerned by the resistance of Ukrainian and Belorussian peasants to collectivization.

In eastern Galicia jails began to fill with Ukrainians, and the firmly anti-German Poles were courted. Moves began to revive Polish cultural life and a literary monthly, Nowe Widnokręgi (‘New Horizons’), was started in January 1941. A number of prominent Poles, including the former premier Kazimierz Bartel were invited to Moscow to be questioned about the mood of the Polish population under Soviet rule. Talks even began with captured Polish officers about the possible formation of Polish units to fight alongside the Red Army. Unfortunately, such moves did not help those who were still in NKVD prisons during June 1941. When the Germans launched BARBAROSSA, the NKVD murdered thousands of Polish prisoners in their cells, rather than allow them to fall into German hands.

(d) Post-occupation

Poland at the end of the war had new borders and was some 20% smaller in area than the pre-war state, but it was not only affected by territorial changes. Its population had also changed. The country had suffered tremendous war losses—more than 6 million, of whom 5,384,000 died as a result of mass terror on the part of the occupying powers—and its population was reduced from a pre-war figure of 35 million to some 24 million. Warsaw alone lost 700,000 people, more than the combined losses of the UK and USA during the war. The intelligentsia suffered disproportionately: Poland lost 45% of its physicians and dentists, 57% of its lawyers, more than 15% of its teachers, 40% of university professors, and more than 18% of its clergy. (See Table 1 for losses of plant and property.)

In ethnic and religious terms Poland had become more homogeneous. Hitler's racial policies had destroyed the large Jewish community; the loss of the eastern provinces had removed the large Ukrainian and Belorussian minorities of pre-war days; the German population was expelled. Thus the population of the new Poland was overwhelmingly Polish by ethnic origin and Roman Catholic by religion. But hundreds of thousands of Poles found themselves outside the borders of their homeland, having been scattered by the vicissitudes of war to destinations as dispersed as Mexico, Uganda, India, and Japan. The largest concentration was in Germany and Austria—Poles who had been forced to work for the Todt Organization or had been forcibly conscripted into the Wehrmacht. There were more than 750,000 Polish displaced persons (see refugees) and prisoners-of-war in the western zones of Germany alone in the summer of 1945. More than a million Poles from Germany and Austria had been repatriated by the end of that year.

Poland, 3(d), Table 1: Losses in plant and property in Poland (post-war frontiers) during the Second World War

	in billions of pre-war Zloties	as % of total
Source: Luczak, C.,‘Polityka Iudnościowi: ekonomiczna hitlerowskichNiemiec w okupowanej Polsce’,(Poznań, 1979)
Residential buildings,
furniture and contents,
private offices	9.69	30
Culture and art	5.36	43
Education and schools	1.86	60
Health service	0.54	55
Public and local administration,
state monopolies, banking,
insurance	3.00	60
Transport and
communications	9.35	56
Industry, energy,
workshops	11.04	33
Trade	7.10	65
Forestry, hunting, fishing	3.58	28
Agriculture, horticulture	5.24	35
Military equipment	5.26	100
TOTAL	62.02	38

(e) Governments-in-exile

Following the internment in Romania of the Polish president, the government, and the C-in-C, leadership of the Polish cause was temporarily paralysed. On 30 September 1939 President Mościcki transferred his powers to Władysław Raczkiewicz, a former interior minister and marshal of the senate. Raczkiewicz was one of several Poles who found themselves in France at the time of the Polish collapse, or else made their way there in the course of the Polish campaign. His first act as president was to entrust General Sikorski with the task of forming a government in Paris. Sikorski, once a colleague of the pre-war leader, Marshal Piłsudski, had fallen from favour after the latter's 1926 coup. He had turned to writing on military matters and had spent much of the intervening period in France. While extremely critical of the pre-war Sanacja regime, he was forced to co-operate with a number of figures closely associated with it. Sikorski formed a coalition government of national unity which included moderate representatives of it as well as members of the pre-war opposition; the Peasant Party (SL), the Socialists (PPS), the National Democrats (ND), and the Labour Party (SP). This government was recognized immediately by France and the UK and thereafter by many neutral states. Sikorski concentrated in his hands both political and military power: not only was he prime minister, but he also became minister of war and C-in-C of the armed forces. His main objectives were to ensure the continuity of the Polish state, to build up Polish military forces abroad, and to represent national interests in Allied councils at a time when Poland itself lay powerless.

Sensitive to possible charges that his government lacked a mandate, Sikorski authorized the creation of a National Council (Rada Narodowa) in December 1939. The council was intended as a people's chamber or parliament, which would substitute for the democratic institutions of the homeland. However, the members of the council were appointed, not elected; they consisted of some 20 prominent politicians then in France. The Jewish community in Poland had its representatives, as did the Polish emigration, but—significantly, in view of the Polish government's determined denial of Soviet claims to their eastern provinces—there was no representative of the Ukrainian or Belorussian minorities. Furthermore, the council was a purely advisory body and had no powers to legislate. Its first president was Ignacy Paderewski, the world-renowned concert pianist who had represented the Polish cause at the Versailles settlement in 1919. For most of its period in France, the Polish government had its seat at Angers.

Sikorski had good contacts in France, but he was little known in the UK. He visited London in November 1939 to confer with members of the British government, and with diplomatic and military staffs. He soon became a respected figure in Allied councils, but despite this the Poles found it difficult to gain treatment as equals. From 1939 onwards, the Polish government found itself in the position of a ‘client’—first of France, then of Britain, and later, to some degree, of the USA and the USSR. Lacking a territorial base, it was forced to accept the hospitality of others and became a supplicant for arms, supplies, transport, finance, and so on. Sikorski felt his country's weakness sorely. His determination to build up a sizeable armed force was based on his conviction that increased military power would strengthen Poland's voice in international counsels.

When France fell in June 1940, Sikorski was forced to reorient his policy towards the only remaining power opposed to Hitler—the UK. Through the offices of his ambassador in London, Count Raczyński, and his personal adviser, Józef Retinger, Sikorski flew to London to meet Churchill during the French campaign. As a result of their meeting it was agreed that the Polish government would be transferred to London and Churchill gave orders for the Royal Navy to evacuate Polish troops from French ports. The fall of France came as a great shock to Sikorski, who had placed great hopes in his ally. Moreover, the speedy collapse of a military power such as France made the Polish defeat of 1939 seem in retrospect less ignominious. Sikorski's criticisms of the former regime's performance were seen to have been unfair, and it was pointed out that his own performance had not been much better. The bulk of the Polish Army in France had been lost, and Sikorski himself had been incommunicado for days as, in his role as C-in-C, he roamed France attempting to keep up with the rapidly changing military situation and remain in contact with his troops.

Once the Polish government re-established itself in London, Sikorski came under strong pressure to resign. Apart from his poor handling of the French crisis, there was a further reason for his colleagues' discontent. After the fall of France the hundreds of thousand of Poles deported to the Soviet interior formed the one reservoir of manpower that could be used to boost Polish military strength and Sikorski had submitted a memorandum to the British foreign office which contained the suggestion that, in order to defeat Hitler, it might eventually prove advantageous to form Polish military units on Soviet soil. But the memorandum had not been cleared by his own cabinet. Furthermore many Poles at this time were at least as suspicious of Stalin as they were of Hitler. President Raczkiewicz moved to dismiss Sikorski, but when it became clear that the prime minister was supported by the British and that the step might provoke a revolt in Polish ranks, he was forced to back down.

During the twelve-month period between the fall of France and the launching of BARBAROSSA, Poland was, the British Empire apart, the UK's only significant ally in the fight against Hitler, but, with Hitler's attack on the USSR on 22 June 1941, the configuration of forces shifted. The Soviet Union became a key member of the anti-Nazi alliance; an understanding between Soviet and Polish governments became essential and on 30 July they signed the Polish–Soviet Treaty. The pact not only paved the way for a renewal of diplomatic relations, but provided for full military co-operation against the common enemy, Germany. There was agreement that all the Polish citizens held by the Soviet authorities in prisons and in the GUlag would be released under ‘amnesty’ and that a Polish Army would be formed in the USSR, but although the Soviet government stipulated that its earlier pacts with Berlin had lost their validity, there was no agreement on the question of the Polish–Soviet frontier. The signing of the agreement, without an assurance on frontiers, led to the resignation of three ministers, General Sosnkowski, M. Seyda, and the foreign minister, A. Zaleski.

With hindsight, Sikorski's failure to tie Stalin down to an agreement on the frontier issue was a mistake. There were to be few other opportunities to achieve one during the eighteen-month period that the Red Army reeled before the German onslaught and Soviet diplomats spoke from a position of weakness (a further chance was spurned by Sikorski during his Moscow meetings with Stalin in December 1941). By the end of 1942, as the tide of battle turned on the Eastern Front and the Red Army went on to the offensive, any opportunity there might have been to seal an agreement favourable to the Poles was lost completely.

The Polish embassy was soon re-established in Moscow (though within weeks it transferred to Kuibyshev as the German advance threatened the Soviet capital) and Stanisław Kot, Sikorski's minister for home affairs, was sent as ambassador. The embassy set up a network of regional delegates to distribute relief supplies to destitute Polish deportees scattered throughout Soviet territory. At the same time, Poles were flooding from all corners of the USSR to join a new force, Anders' Army, which was being formed in the southern Urals. But despite a visit by General Sikorski to Moscow in December 1941, Polish–Soviet relations soon began to run into difficulties. The Soviets were reluctant to arm and equip the Polish divisions. They were also reluctant to allow Polish citizens of Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Jewish origin to be recruited, arguing that these had become Soviet citizens. The decision to evacuate Anders' Army during 1942 to British command in the Middle East accelerated the deterioration in relations. Not only did Moscow refuse the Polish government permission to raise further troop formations on Soviet soil, it also began to dismantle the Polish embassy's relief network, and to arrest embassy delegates on charges of spying. Relations finally ruptured irrevocably in April 1943 over the Katyń Forest massacre. The Germans' discovery of some 4,000 bodies in a mass grave near Smolensk helped to explain the disappearance of thousands of Polish officers sought by General Anders during 1941–2. This tragedy for Poland was exploited to the full by the Germans, who sought to rupture Allied unity. Polish requests that the International Red Cross Committee investigate the affair proved a sufficient pretext for Moscow to break off diplomatic relations with the Poles.

After the break the way was clear for Polish communists (both within Poland and in the USSR) to step up their activities. Stalin had dissolved the pre-war Polish Communist Party (KPP) in 1938 and had liquidated most of its leaders, but following the German attack in 1941 he had sanctioned the creation of a replacement, the Polish Workers' Party (PPR). In December 1941 Polish communists headed by Paweł Finder and Marceli Nowotko, had parachuted into Poland to begin the work of organizing the new party and had made contact with figures such as Władysław Gomułka (1905–82). The PPR formally came into existence on 5 January 1942. Although its support in the early days was thin, it quickly sought to build up its own military resistance organization, the People's Guard (GL).

In Moscow the Union of Polish Patriots (ZPP) was established under the leadership of Wanda Wasilewska in March 1943. Not all its members were communists, but all were prepared to bow to the dictates of Soviet policy. Importantly, they agreed to Soviet demands for the Polish eastern provinces and conceded that post-war Poland would be a state allied to Moscow. Immediately following the rupturing of diplomatic relations with the Polish government, Stalin approved Wasilewska's proposal for the creation of a second Polish army on Soviet soil. The new force, Berling's Army, was be subordinated to the ZPP and through it to the Soviet authorities. The Polish government in London was given no say regarding its formation or its use.

A further blow to the Polish cause fell on 4 July 1943 when the prime minister, General Sikorski, returning from a visit to General Anders and his troops in the Middle East, was killed as his Liberator aircraft was taking off from Gibraltar. He was the one Polish statesman of stature who commanded the respect of the Allies. Henceforth, the political and military wings of the Polish establishment were to be divided—with unfortunate results for Poland. The Peasant Party leader, Stanisław Mikołajczyk (1901–66), who had been Sikorski's deputy, became prime minister, while General Sosnkowski became C-in-C of the armed forces. The two men had different social and political philosophies, and they did not get on. While Mikołajczyk attempted to reach an understanding with Moscow, Sosnkowski distrusted the Soviet politicians absolutely.

The conference of the Big Three powers at Teheran in November 1943 (see Eureka) had a decisive influence on Poland's post-war fate, yet its representatives were not admitted to the discussions and their views were not aired. The Allies agreed that the Polish–Soviet frontier should follow the ‘Curzon Line’, which they recognized as Poland's ethnographic border in the east. Thus the USA and Britain conceded to Stalin most of the large area of eastern Poland that he had seized as a result of the Nazi–Soviet Pact in 1939 (see Map 90). Poland, it was agreed, would be compensated at the expense of Germany and the restored Polish state would enjoy ‘friendly relations’ with the USSR.

By the middle of 1944 the negotiating position of the London Polish government vis-à-vis Moscow had become hopeless. It could expect little help from its western allies. While the USA and Britain wanted a strong Poland which might curb any future German expansionism, they were not prepared to listen to Polish protests against the loss of territory to the Soviets. However, the western Allies—and particularly Churchill—did expect that in return for these territorial gains, the legitimate Polish government in London would be allowed to return to administer the country. But on this matter, too, Stalin's position hardened. Despite British efforts to bring about the restoration of Polish–Soviet relations, the Soviets placed more and more hurdles in their way. In June 1944 Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, stated that before diplomatic relations could be restored, certain members of the government who were ‘reactionary’ and ‘anti-Soviet’ would have to be removed. The names mentioned included Raczkiewicz, Sosnkowski, and Kukiel the minister of defence. It was clearly impossible for any Polish government to accede to such demands without itself becoming little more than a puppet.

At the end of July 1944 the prime minister, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, travelled to Moscow for talks with Stalin. His aim was to try to put Polish–Soviet relations on a more secure footing, to agree to reform the Polish government with the addition of Polish Workers' Party representatives (see resistance, below), and to clarify how Polish territory liberated by the Red Army might be administered. Stalin was unwilling to negotiate, arguing that Mikołajczyk should talk to the leaders of the Soviet-backed Lublin Committee. In fact there was little to talk about. Stalin did not need the ‘London Poles’; he had his own Polish government in the making, the Lublin Committee, and it was already seeing to the administration of the liberated territories. To make matters worse, while Mikołajczyk was in Moscow, the Warsaw rising broke out (on 1 August) and Mikołajczyk found himself in the embarrassing position of having to request Soviet help for the insurgents. He returned empty-handed. On 12 October he again travelled to Moscow to attend the TOLSTOY conference with Churchill and Eden, who had suggested that Mikołajczyk renew attempts to reach an accommodation with Stalin. The main issue at stake for the Poles in the Moscow talks was, once again, that of the Polish–Soviet border. Since the Great Powers had already come to an agreement on the eastern Polish border at the Teheran conference, the Moscow discussions could only be on points of detail. The British put intense pressure on Mikołajczyk to concede and agree to the Curzon Line. But even a compromise proposal that would have enabled Poland to retain Lwów and the Borysław oilfield was rejected by Stalin. On his return to London, Mikołajczyk failed to persuade his cabinet to accept the Soviet terms and he resigned as prime minister on 24 November. Convinced that the London Poles no longer posed any threat to his ambitions, Stalin authorized the Lublin Committee to transform itself into the Provisional government of the Republic of Poland on 1 January 1945. In the course of the next Grand Alliance conference at Yalta in the Soviet Crimea between 4 and 11 February (see ARGONAUT), the Allies reaffirmed their ‘common desire to see established a strong, free, independent and democratic Poland’. They called for the provisional government to be organized on a broader basis, with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and from abroad. The new, reconstituted government would pledge itself to holding ‘free and unfettered’ elections as soon as possible.

(f) The Communist take-over

In June 1945, Mikołajczyk and a small number of colleagues returned to Warsaw to take up positions in the new Polish government of National Unity (TRJN). The line-up of the new government had been agreed previously in Moscow. Of the 21 ministerial posts, the ‘London’ Poles received just five—the remainder going to Lublin Committee nominees. The government was headed by Edward Osóbka-Morawski, one of a group of Socialist Party (PPS) members who had decided to throw in their lot with the communists. Mikołajczyk became deputy premier and minister of agriculture. The new government was formally recognized by the UK and the USA on 5 July. Henceforth the Polish government in London, under its new leader, the veteran socialist, Tomasz Arciszewski, was to be the voice of Polish opposition in exile.

At the Potsdam Conference which began on 17 July (see TERMINAL), the western borders of Poland were agreed upon by the Great Powers. Poland advanced its borders at the expense of Germany by over 200 km. (125 mi.) in places, recovering land which had belonged to Polish rulers in the Middle Ages (see Map 78). The German population was expelled from these areas in a massive operation which saw 3.5 million people removed, some under conditions of great hardship. With Stalin having refused to re-establish the pre-war Polish–Soviet frontier, a population transfer of similar scale was carried out in the east following agreements between the Polish provisional government and communist authorities in the Lithuanian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian republics. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were ‘repatriated’, the majority leaving their homes in what was now Soviet territory. Most of them were taken to the west to colonize the regions freshly acquired from the Germans. Stettin became Szczecin, Oppeln became Opole, and Breslau became Wrocław.

Not all Poles were willing to return to a homeland under communist domination. In May 1945 Polish servicemen and women in the West numbered 250,000 and were dispersed in four main theatres: Germany, Italy, the Middle East, and the UK. Once the western Allies transferred diplomatic recognition to the communist authorities in Warsaw, the troops were faced with a dilemma; should they accept the authority of this new regime and agree to be repatriated? Many, especially those like Anders who had suffered and seen their friends and kin die in the Soviet Union, viewed the communists with hatred and suspicion. Many of those from eastern Poland had, in any case, no homes to return to; they had been absorbed into the USSR. Large numbers wanted to wait until the elections which, they hoped, would throw the communists out of power. The hostility of the Polish communist and Soviet media towards General Anders and other Polish commanders was reflected in the violence of their language and by the later decision to strip him and 75 other senior officers of their Polish citizenship. Eventually, in the autumn of 1946, having become convinced that large numbers of Polish troops were stubbornly opposed to repatriation, the British authorities took steps to bring all units to Britain and demobilize them (see Polish Resettlement Corps).

The elections provided for in the Yalta accords were not held until January 1947 and resulted in a sweeping victory for the communists. They had been preceded by a widespread campaign of political terror and were followed by allegations of electoral malpractice. In October 1947 Mikołajczyk fled to the West, fearing for his life. The western powers were helpless to intervene, and after six years of Nazi occupation, Poland found itself once again under the heel of a powerful neighbour. The first to defy Hitler, it now became the first victim of the Cold War.

3. Armed forces

The strength of the Polish armed forces in September 1939 was as follows. The army, commanded by Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz, amounted to about 280,000 men. There were 30 regular infantry divisions, 11 cavalry brigades, and 2 mechanized brigades, which could be reinforced by some 3 million reservists. The navy, commanded by Rear Admiral Józef Swirski, had 4 modern destroyers, 5 modern submarines, and 23 aircraft, and there was also a small coastal defence force. The air force, commanded by Maj-General J. Zając, had 400 operational aircraft which included 15 fighter squadrons. These forces proved no match for either the German or Soviet ones they faced, and those who could fled abroad.

For Polish forces raised in the USSR, seeAnders' Army and Berling's Army; for those raised in the West, see below.

(a) Army

By the end of September 1939 some 90,000 Polish troops had made their way out of the country, both in order to evade capture and to prosecute the war from abroad. The majority (70,000) of these troops crossed the south-eastern border into Hungary and Romania, while smaller numbers sought refuge in Lithuania and Latvia. Despite the rapid sealing of the borders by the occupying powers, Poles of military age continued to cross unguarded parts of the frontier and to make their way to the west. In 1939–40 some 43,000 men reached France from Hungary or Romania either travelling overland or else by ship from ports such as Constanta and Split.

The French government's agreement to the formation of Polish military units on French soil had been secured in a Franco-Polish Military Agreement of 9 September 1939, and this was later strengthened (in January 1940) by a military accord. The French immediately provided their guests with a training camp in Brittany—Coetquidan, which became the Poles' main military base in France. Their military headquarters were located at the Hotel Regina in Paris. By 10 May 1940, when the German attack on France was launched, there were some 80,000 men under Polish colours, 42,000 of whom, as active military personnel in France, were subordinated to French operational command and dispersed among French defensive units; this was to have disastrous consequences when the French collapse gathered momentum. During the Norwegian campaign the Polish Highland (Podhale) Brigade landed at Narvik but, despite the already grave situation in France, it was then ordered to return to Brittany, where it was trapped by the speed of the German advance. The 2nd Rifle Division commanded by General Prugar-Ketling had to cross into Switzerland where it was interned for the duration of the war, but some 20,000 Polish troops were evacuated by the Royal Navy from French ports. They were taken to Scottish ports before being directed to camps on the eastern coast of Scotland and employed in coastal defence work. On 5 August 1940 an Anglo-Polish Military Agreement was signed which regulated the conditions for Polish forces regrouping in the UK. Earlier agreements had been signed concerning the formation of the Polish Air Force (mainly bomber) units in Britain ( 11 April 1940) and the organization of Polish naval units alongside the Royal Navy ( 18 November 1939). These Anglo-Polish agreements also applied to Poles serving in military formations outside the UK, the most notable of these being the Carpathian Brigade, which served in the Western Desert campaigns, and Anders' Army which, as 2nd Polish Corps, fought with the Eighth Army in the Italian campaign.

The Polish High Command was compelled to re-establish itself in London. The C-in-C's staff was headed initially by General T. Klimecki and later in the war (following Klimecki's death at Gibraltar in 1943) by General S. Kopański. The body of troops that was to become the 1st Polish Corps numbered more than 14,000 men in the autumn of 1940. The Corps' 4th Rifle Brigade under Colonel Stanisław Sosabowski became an Independent Parachute Brigade which distinguished itself during the Arnhem operation (see MARKET-GARDEN) and General Maczek's 1st Armoured Division was also formed from the Corps. This crossed to the Continent in June 1944 and, attached to Montgomery's 2nd Canadian Corps, took part in the fighting in north-west Europe.

(b) Navy

Ships and personnel of both the Polish Navy and the merchant marine managed to evade German hands in 1939. Many, following prior agreement with the British authorities, had left their home ports before the outbreak of war and made their way to the UK. The most dramatic escape was that of the submarine Orzeł, which had initially been interned in neutral Estonia. Despite the confiscation of its armaments and navigation equipment, the Orzeł succeeded in making its way out of the Baltic, across the North Sea to a safe haven in Britain. The Orzeł was one of two submarines, three destroyers, a training vessel and a supply ship which the Polish naval command had at its disposal in November 1939. In all, 38 ships of the merchant marine also escaped German hands, including the troopships Baltic, Batory, and Sobieski.

The Anglo-Polish Naval Accord provided for co-operation between the British and Polish fleets and for the subordination of Polish units to Admiralty operational control. Polish warships took part in convoy escort duties and in guarding British shores, and the Polish destroyer Piorun engaged the Bismarck in the north Atlantic during the famous chase which led to the sinking of the German battleship in May 1941. Following the fall of France the Polish navy and merchant marine were merged. Steady recruitment throughout the war period meant that an initial complement of 1,500 men had been increased to 4,000 by 1945. A number of losses were suffered, in the course of the war, including the destroyer Grom and the submarine Orzeł, but replacement British vessels were found.

(c) Air Force

After the Polish campaign, several Polish squadrons were formed in France and the UK. In France in 1940 the Polish Air Force already had two fighter squadrons, two reconnaisance squadrons, and one bomber squadron. But it was in Britain from 1940 onwards that the Polish air units really began to expand and an Anglo-Polish Agreement provided for the Polish Air Force to be subordinated to RAF command.

Priority was given to fighter squadrons for the defence of Britain against German air attack. The first two squadrons to see service were 302 (Poznań) and the famous 303 (Warszawa) squadron, the latter based at Northolt just outside London. Despite initial reservations, the British soon came to appreciate the skill and courage of the Polish pilots, several of whom had experienced air combat with the Germans in two campaigns already. The Poles played an outstanding role during the battle of Britain, shooting down a disproportionately high number of German aircraft. Between 10 July and the end of October 1940, 1,733 of all types were destroyed; 203 of these were shot down by Poles, including 110 claimed by 303 squadron alone. The Poles continued to offer a valuable service in many theatres throughout the war (bomber crews took part in the ill-fated operations to drop supplies to the insurgents during the 1944 Warsaw rising). At the end of the war there were some 15 squadrons operational and 19,400 personnel serving in air force ranks.

4. Resistance

Polish resistance to both German and Soviet occupation regimes sprang up spontaneously. In many areas partisan organizations had been formed before the Polish campaign was over. On the night of 26/27 September an underground organization called Service for the Victory of Poland (Słuz̀ba Zwycięstwu Polski, or SZP) was created in Warsaw, the embattled Polish capital. Under the leadership of General Michał Tokarzewski-Karasiewicz, it subordinated itself to the exiled Polish government in France and slowly set about absorbing and subordinating to its command the myriad local resistance groups which had come into being.

wo factors aided the creation of a resistance movement in Poland. One was the longstanding tradition of underground struggle and revolt, especially against Russian rule. The second factor was the unbridled terror which both occupying forces brought to the country. The Germans in particular, with their vicious policies of exploitation and extermination, left no room for compromise or collaboration with the Polish population.

In January 1940 General Sikorski ordered the creation of an underground army named the Union for Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej, or ZWZ). It absorbed the SZP and was put under the overall command of General Sosnkowski in London. A few months later the exiled Polish authorities created a homeland political Delegature consisting of representatives from the major political parties. The first government delegate was Cyril Ratajski. Whereas the ZWZ was the Polish government's military presence in Poland, the Delegature acted as its political representation.

The military organization was based on officers and soldiers from the Polish services. It could therefore draw on a large reservoir of willing and experienced recruits who had knowledge of arms, explosives, tactics, and so on, and the ability to mount armed attacks and undertake sabotage (see Table 2 for losses inflicted on the Germans). But the need to counter Nazi propaganda and to boost civilian morale also led to the printing and distribution of newspapers, leaflets, and posters. Intelligence gathering was another important activity. The Poles produced reports for British intelligence of the growing traffic in war materials between the USSR and Nazi Germany. In 1941 they were able to inform the British about the impending German attack on the USSR. Polish intelligence also warned Britain about the danger from the German rocket programme and managed to conceal a whole V-2 (see V-weapons) and preserve the engine for transport to the UK.

When the threat to the Jewish community in Poland became apparent, the underground created a Committee for Aid to Jews (see Z˙egota). Underground courts existed which carried out punishment (including the death sentence) on offenders. Furthermore, resistance included maintaining all the normal educational and cultural activities of Polish life which the Germans were so determined to undermine and destroy. Secret schools and university courses existed, artistic pursuits such as the theatre continued, as did scientific activity. It is not difficult to see why the Poles refer to this resistance activity as the ‘Underground State’.

Although the Polish High Command was at all times in touch with resistance leaders, communication whether by radio or by courier (see Karski and Nowak, for example) was difficult and the problem was exacerbated in the early period of the war by the country's division into two occupation zones with a tightly controlled frontier. Initially radio communication was maintained with bases in Budapest, Bucharest, and Kaunas. Later, when expanding German and Soviet influence made a presence in these capitals impossible, the bases were re-established in Stockholm and Istanbul. Couriers could be sent overland but after the fall of France this channel of communication became difficult. The Polish section of SOE, which was formed in the late summer of 1940, did much to help the Sixth Bureau of the Polish general staff develop communications with Poland. From early 1941 most incoming couriers, travelled by air and parachuted into Poland, though the return journey still had to be negotiated by land via either neutral Switzerland or the Middle East.

Poland, 4, Table 2: Sabotage undertaken by the Polish Home Army during the period 1 January 1941-30 June 1944

Source: Lukas, R. C., Forgotten Holocaust. The Poles under German Occupation, 1939–1944, (Lexington, 1986).
Locomotives damaged	6,930
Locomotives delayed in overhaul	803
Transports derailed	732
Railway trucks destroyed	979
Railway trucks damaged	19,058
Transports set on fire	443
Disruptions of electric power in Warsaw	638
Military vehicles damaged or destroyed	4,326
Railway bridges blown up	38
Aircraft damaged	28
Aircraft engines destroyed	68
Petrol storage tanks destroyed	1,167
Tons of petrol destroyed	4,674
Oil wells put out of action	3
Truckloads of wood burned	150
Military warehouses burned	122
Military food storage depots burned	8
Production in factories brought to halt	7
Factories burned	15

During the period 1939–41, Poland was divided between Germany and the USSR, at that time allies. The Polish underground aimed, amongst other things, to sabotage the trainloads of war materials which Stalin was supplying to Hitler, in an effort to help him evade the British blockade (see economic warfare). After the German attack on the USSR, in the summer of 1941, Poland found itself completely under German occupation and to the rear of an operational front line. With the disappearance of the Nazi–Soviet frontier, it became easier to organize resistance activity over the country as a whole. From 1942 onwards, when the ZWZ was transformed into the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK), a strong partisan movement developed in the marshes and forest land of Eastern Poland. It included not only Home Army members, but also Polish communist partisans and Soviet troops stranded by the speed of the Wehrmacht's advance.

The Home Army leaders adopted a restrained policy with regard to armed activity against the Germans. Unwilling to risk heavy reprisals against the civilian population, they played a waiting game, planning for a general rising which would occur when the decisive phase of the war had been reached. A departure from this policy occurred at the end of 1942 when the SS began a massive expulsion of Poles from the Lublin and Zamość region to make way for German colonists. The Home Army sanctioned a ‘self-defence’ operation against the colonists, and the Germans, realizing their vulnerability, called a halt to the expulsions in February 1943.

The creation by Polish communists of the Polish Workers' Party (PPR) in January 1942 led to the creation of its resistance wing, the People's Guard (GL) which, in 1944, was renamed the People's Army (AL). Although the communist resistance started with a very small membership (some 3,000), they scorned the ‘London’ camp's calls for restraint and adopted an aggressive policy towards the Germans. They increased sabotage and partisan attacks on the occupying forces, irrespective of the terrible price that the local population often paid in reprisals. Sometimes they clashed with the right-wing National Armed Forces (NSZ), a partisan group which had broken away from the AK. In the summer of 1943 the Polish underground suffered a grave blow when its commander, General Rowecki, was betrayed to the Gestapo, arrested, and spirited away to Berlin. He later died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and his deputy, General Komorowski, was appointed his successor.

During the autumn of 1943 attempts were made to forge some kind of co-operative working relationship between the ‘pro-London’ political and military underground and the Polish Workers' Party and its resistance wing. When these collapsed, encouraged by the military successes of the Red Army, the communists took the initiative. On 31 December 1943, only days before Soviet troops were due to cross the pre-war Polish frontier, they formed a National Council for the Homeland (KRN) led by Bolesław Bierut. The KRN had a narrow political base, but it received the support of the Polish communists in Moscow. Its claims to ‘represent’ the Polish nation were plainly unfounded, but its formation was a warning to the Polish government in London about the way the situation might develop. The non-communist underground (the government Delegature) responded within days by creating, on 9 January 1944, a Council of National Unity (RJN). This ‘underground parliament’ had representation from four of the major Polish political parties and its formation was an attempt to regain the initiative from the communists. Its declaration, issued in mid-March, had some important proposals concerning economic and social reform in post-war Poland. But the declaration also foresaw an enlarged Poland which not only retained the pre-war Polish frontier in the east, but was enlarged in the north and west at the expense of Germany. This was not a realistic proposition, given the balance of military and political forces at the time.

As early as November 1942, General Sikorski had sent the Home Army commander, General Rowecki, instructions on how his forces should react once Red Army units arrived on Polish territory (see TEMPEST). At the beginning of January 1944, when the Red Army crossed the pre-war eastern Polish border, attempts to co-operate with the Soviets were made by local Home Army commanders and some joint operations did take place, notably in Volhynia. But more often, the Home Army units were given the option of joining Berling's Army or else of disbanding and in some notorious cases Polish leaders who went to meetings with Red Army commanders disappeared completely (see Wilno).

The Warsaw rising was the Polish resistance movement's final desperate attempt to show that the Poles could be masters in their own house. Beginning on 1 August and lasting for more than two months, it proved a political and military disaster and an estimated quarter of a million Poles died. One of the few positive results was that many of the illusions the western leaders held about Stalin were dispelled. It marked the end of the Home Army as an organization capable of resisting communist domination of the homeland. A further body-blow occurred in March 1945 when sixteen underground leaders, including the Home Army's C-in-C, General Okulicki, were rounded up by the Soviets and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment at the Moscow trials.

Keith Sword

Bibliography

Garliński, J. , Poland in the Second World War (London, 1985).
Lukas, R. C. , Forgotten Holocaust. The Poles under German Occupation 1939–44 (Kentucky, 1986).
Rozek, E. J. , Allied Wartime Diplomacy: A Pattern in Poland (New York, 1958).