Polish government in Exile

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The Government of the Polish Republic in Exile was the government of Poland after the country had been occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union during September-October 1939. The Polish Government in Exile commanded Polish armed forces operating in Poland and abroad during the war. Though largely unrecognized and without effective power after World War II, it remained in existence until the end of Communist rule in Poland in 1990, when it formally passed on its responsibilities to the new government.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Establishment

On September 17, 1939, the President of the Polish Republic, Ignacy Mościcki, who was then in the small town of Kosów near the southern Polish border, signed an act appointing Władysław Raczkiewicz, the Speaker of the Senate, as his successor. This was done in accordance with Article 24 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, adopted in April 1935, which provided as follows:

"In event of war, the term of the President's office shall be extended until three months after the conclusion of peace; in such circumstances, the President of the Republic shall, by a special act promulgated in the Official Gazette, appoint his successor, in case the office should fall vacant before the conclusion of peace. Should the President's successor assume office, the term of his office shall expire at the end of three months after the conclusion of peace."

Raczkiewicz, who was already in Paris, immediately took his constitutional oath at the Polish Embassy and became President of the Republic of Poland. He then appointed General Władysław Sikorski to be Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces.

Most of the Polish Navy had escaped to Britain before September 1, 1939, and tens of thousands of Polish soldiers and airmen escaped through Hungary and Romania or across the Baltic Sea to continue the fight in France and French-mandated Syria. Many Poles subsequently took part in Allied operations in Norway (Narvik), France, the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic, North Africa (notably Tobruk), Italy (notably at Cassino and Ancona), Arnhem, Wilhelmshaven and elsewhere beside other Allied forces. Even after the fall of Poland, and before the Soviet Union's entry into the war, Poland remained the third strongest Allied belligerent, after France and Britain. (Other Polish military units, formed in the Soviet Union after Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, fought alongside and under the command of the Soviets.)

[edit] Wartime history

Main article: History of Poland (1939-1945)

The Polish Government in Exile, based first in Paris and then in London, was recognized by all the Allied governments. Politically, it was a coalition of the Polish Peasant Party, the Polish Socialist Party and the National Democratic Party, although these parties maintained only a vestigial existence in the circumstances of exile.

When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the Polish Government in Exile established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, despite Stalin's role in the earlier dismemberment of Poland. Hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the Soviets in eastern Poland in 1939, and many civilian Polish prisoners and deportees, were released and allowed to form military units ("Anders' Army") and evacuate to Iran and the Middle East, where they were desperately needed by the British, hard pressed by Rommel's Afrika Korps. These Polish units formed the basis for the Polish 2nd Corps, led by General Władysław Anders, which together with other, earlier-created Polish units fought alongside the Allies.

In April 1943 the Germans announced that they had discovered at Katyn Wood, near Smolensk, Russia, mass graves of 4,300 Polish officers who had been taken prisoner in 1939 and murdered by the Soviets. The Germans invited the International Red Cross to visit the site, and the graves were confirmed to contain the corpses of Polish officers who had been killed with Soviet weapons. The Soviet government said that the Germans had fabricated the discovery. The other Allied governments, for diplomatic reasons, formally accepted this; the Polish Government in Exile refused to do so.

Stalin then severed relations with the Polish Government in Exile. Since it was clear that it would be the Soviet Union, not the western Allies, who would liberate Poland from the Germans, this breach had fateful consequences for Poland. In an unfortunate coincidence, Sikorski, widely regarded as the most capable of the Polish exile leaders, was killed in an air crash at Gibraltar in July 1943. He was succeeded as head of the Polish Government in Exile by Stanisław Mikołajczyk.

During 1943 and 1944 the Allied leaders, particularly Winston Churchill, tried to bring about a resumption of talks between Stalin and the Polish Government in Exile. But these efforts broke down over several matters. One was the massacre at Katyń (also Kalinin and Kharkiv). Another was Poland's postwar borders. Stalin insisted that the territories annexed by the Soviets in 1939, which had majority Ukrainian and Belarusian populations, should remain in Soviet hands, and that Poland should be compensated with lands to be annexed from Germany. Mikołajczyk, however, refused to compromise on the question of Poland's sovereignty over her prewar eastern territories. A third matter was Mikołajczyk's insistence that Stalin not set up a Communist government in postwar Poland.

[edit] Postwar history

Main article: History of Poland (1945-1989)

Mikołajczyk and his colleagues in the Polish government-in-exile insisted on making a stand in the defense of Poland's pre-1939 eastern border (the Curzon Line and Kresy region) as a basis for the future Polish-Soviet border. However, this was a position that could not be defended in practice — Stalin was in occupation of the territory in question, and he had already been promised those areas by Churchill and Roosevelt in 1943. The government-in-exile's refusal to accept the proposed new Polish borders infuriated the Allies, particularly Churchill, making them less inclined to oppose Stalin on issues of how Poland's postwar government would be structured. In the end, the exiles lost on both issues: Stalin annexed the eastern territories, and took control of the new Polish government. However, Poland preserved its status as an independent state, despite the arguments of some influential Communists, such as Wanda Wasilewska, in favor of Poland becoming a republic of the Soviet Union.

In November 1944, despite his mistrust of the Soviets, Mikołajczyk resigned to return to Poland and take office in the new government established under the auspices of the Soviet occupation authorities. Many Polish exiles opposed this action, believing that this government was a façade for the establishment of Communist rule in Poland, a view that was later proven correct; after losing an election which was later shown to have been fraudulent, Mikołajczyk left Poland again in 1947.

Meanwhile the Polish Government in Exile had maintained its existence, but the United States and the United Kingdom withdrew their recognition on July 6, 1945. The Polish Armed Forces in exile were disbanded in 1945, and most of their members, unable safely to return to Communist Poland, settled in other countries. A Polish exclave in Emsland, around Haren, Germany, existed untill 1948. The London Poles had to vacate the Polish embassy on Portland Place and were left only with the president's private residence at 43 Eaton Place. The Government in Exile became largely symbolic of continued resistance to foreign occupation of Poland, while retaining some important archives from prewar Poland. Ireland, Spain and Vatican City (until 1979) were the last countries to recognize the Government in Exile.

Władysław Sikorski, first Prime Minister of the Polish Government in Exile
Władysław Sikorski, first Prime Minister of the Polish Government in Exile

In 1954, political differences led to a split in the ranks of the Government in Exile. One group, claiming to represent 80% of 500,000 anti-Communist Poles exiled since the war, was opposed to President August Zaleski's continuation in office when his seven-year term expired. It formed a Council of National Unity on July 31, 1954, and set up a Council of Three to exercise the functions of head of state, comprising Tomasz Arciszewski, General Władysław Anders, and Edward Raczyński. Only after Zaleski's death in 1972 did the two factions reunite.

Some supporters of the Government in Exile eventually returned to Poland, such as Prime Minister Hugon Hanke in 1955 and his predecessor Stanisław Mackiewicz in 1956. The Warsaw government actively campaigned for the return of the exiles, promising decent and dignified employment and forgiveness of past transgressions.

Despite these setbacks, the Government in Exile continued in existence. When Communist rule came to an end in Poland in 1989, there was still a president and a cabinet of eight meeting every two weeks in London, commanding the loyalty of many of about 150,000 Polish veterans and their descendants living in Britain, including 35,000 in London alone.

In December 1990, when Lech Wałęsa became the first post-Communist president of Poland, he received the symbols of the Polish Republic (the red presidential banner, the presidential and state seals, the presidential sashes, and the original text of the 1935 Constitution) from the last president of the Government in Exile, Ryszard Kaczorowski, thus re-establishing the continuity of the Republic and in effect retroactively recognizing the legitimacy of the Government in Exile. In 1992, military medals and other decorations awarded by the Government in Exile were officially recognized in Poland.

[edit] Government and politics

[edit] Presidents

[edit] Prime ministers

[edit] Armed forces

Main article: Polish contribution to World War II

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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