History of Poland (1939–1945)

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History of Poland
Chronology
Until 966 966–1385 1385–1569 1569–1795 1795–1918 1918–1939 1939–1945 1945–1989 1989–present
Topics
Culture Demography (Jews) Economics Politics (Monarchs and Presidents) Military (Wars) Territorial changes (WWII)

The history of Poland from 1939 to 1945 encompasses the German invasion of Poland through to the end of World War II. On September 1, 1939, without a formal declaration of war, Germany invaded Poland. Germany's pretext was that Polish troops had allegedly committed "provocations" along the German-Polish border, which was actually a staged attack by the Germans. Germany also used issues like the dispute between Germany and Poland over German rights to the Free City of Danzig and the freeing of a passage between East Prussia and the rest of Germany through the Polish Corridor as excuses for the invasion. Pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union, which invaded eastern Poland on September 17, 1939.

[edit] German, Slovak and Soviet invasions

For more details on this topic, see Invasion of Poland (1939).

Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signs the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Behind him stand (left) German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and (right) Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. The Pact creating in effect the Nazi-Soviet alliance sealed the fate of Poland.

The Polish armed forces resisted the German invasion, but their strategic position was hopeless because Poland was surrounded on three sides by German territories: Inner Pomerania, East Prussia (both parts of Germany), and German-controlled Czechoslovakia. The newly formed Slovak State assisted their German allies by attacking Poland from the south. The Soviet Union encroached from the other direction, and finally Polish forces were blockaded on the Baltic Coast by the German and Soviet navies. In Poland the Germans used the tactic of Vernichtungsgedanke that later evolved into the Blitzkrieg ("lightning war"): rapid advance of Panzer (armoured) divisions, dive bombing to break up troop concentrations, and aerial bombing of undefended cities to sap civilian morale. The Polish Army and Air Force had little modern equipment to match the onslaught.

German forces were numerically and technologically superior to Polish armed forces. The Germans threw eighty-five percent of their armed forces at Poland. They commanded 1.6 million men, 250,000 trucks and other motor vehicles, 67,000 artillery pieces, 4,000 tanks and a cavalry division. Some of the Luftwaffe pilots were the veterans of the elite Condor Legion, which had seen action during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The German air force comprised 1,180 fighter aircraft (mainly Messerschmitt Bf 109s), 290 Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers, 290 conventional bombers (mainly He 111 type), and 240 assorted naval aircraft. The German navy positioned its old battleship Schleswig-Holstein to shell Westerplatte, a section of Free City of Danzig, an exclave separate from the main city and awarded to Poland by Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

The Polish forces found themselves severely outnumbered and outclassed. They managed to muster 800,000 troops, including eleven cavalry brigades, two motorized brigades, 30,000 artillery pieces, and 120 tanks of the advanced 7-TP type. The Polish airforce consisted of 400 aircraft. 160 of them were PZL P.11c fighter aircraft, 31 PZL P.7a and 20 P.11a fighters, 120 PZL.23 Karaś reconnaissance-bombers, and 45 PZL.37 Łoś medium bombers. The navy consisted of four destroyers, one torpedo boat, one minelayer, two gunboats, six minesweepers, and five submarines.

The Poles believed that the invasion was intended from the beginning as a war of extermination. Hitler allegedly said to his commanders: "I have issued the command — and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad — that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness — for the present only in the East — with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish race and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" (There are some doubts about the authenticity of this quotation. See Armenian quote).

Although the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany, no direct military action was rendered. France was in direct violation of the Franco-Polish Military Alliance that was signed in May 19, 1939, where France promised to attack Germany if Poland was attacked. Great Britain also refused to attack Germany, even though they had sworn to do so in the case of a German invasion. The Wehrmacht was occupied in the attack on Poland, and the French Army enjoyed decisive numerical advantage on their border with Germany, but the Allies failed to contribute solid assistance. Nine divisions (out of 102 that were ready for action) of the French army entered to the German area in Saarland, advanced to a depth of eight kilometers and conquered about 20 abandoned villages, without any resistance. The Saar Offensive caused no German soldiers to be brought from Poland to the west. At the same time, the Royal Air Force dropped pamphlets on German cities. Shortly after the French General Staff ordered retreat, and on October 4 the French forces returned to their original positions. Many historians believed that had Great Britain and France honoured their pledge to Poland, the Nazis would have been contained and the war would not have had such a devastating impact on European nations.

In the meanwhile, to the east of Poland, the Soviet Union was preparing its own military advance to occupy the eastern part of Poland in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact concluded between the USSR and Germany in August 1939, just weeks before the German invasion.

Survivor of bombing of Warsaw.

With Britain and France unwilling to follow on their military commitment to Poland, the Soviet Union, having its own reasons to fear the German expansionism towards the East, made several offers to Poland, as earlier to Czechoslovakia, of an anti-German alliance. Such alliances would have likely been a meaningful deterrent to Hitler's expansionist plans since they were to be backed by the Soviet military might. However, the Poles feared Stalin's Communism nearly as much as they feared Hitler's Nazism, during 1939 they had refused to agree to any arrangement which would allow Soviet troops to enter Poland. The dilemma, as Poles perceived it, is best illustrated by the famous quote of Marshall Edward Rydz-Śmigły, the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish armed forces who is quoted to have said "With the Germans we run the risk of losing our liberty. With the Russians we will lose our soul" on the Polish refusal to the take up on the Soviet offer.^[1] The Soviets then turned to concluding the treaty with Germany (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) which was signed in August, 1939, ending the possibility of Soviet aid.

The Polish government feared that Germany would launch only a limited war, to seize the territories which it claimed, and then ask France and Britain for a ceasefire. To defend these territories, the Polish military command compounded their strategic weakness by massing their forces along their western border, in defence of Poland's main industrial areas around Poznań and Łódź, where they could be easily surrounded and cut off. By the time the Polish command decided to withdraw to the line of the Vistula, it was too late. By 28 September Warsaw was surrounded.

Polish infantry in action.

In accordance with a secret protocol annex to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact Germany asked the Soviet Union on 3 September^[2] to engage its troops against the Polish state. The Soviet Union assured Germany that the Red Army advance into Poland would soon follow under the pretext of aiding the Ukrainians and the Byelorussians threatened by Germany.^[3][4]

On 17 September the Red Army marched its troops into Poland, which the Soviet Union now claimed to be non-existent. Also, concerns about the Soviets' own security were used to justify the invasion.^[5] The Red Army advance was coordinated with the movement of the German forces^[6] and met little resistance from the Polish forces, who were ordered by Sikorski to avoid engagement into the armed fights with the Soviets although some fighting between Soviet and Hungarian units took place.^[7]

The Polish government and high command retreated to the southeast Romanian bridgehead and eventually crossed into neutral Romania. There was no formal surrender, and resistance continued in many places. Warsaw was bombed into submission on 27 September, and some Army units fought until well into October. In the more mountainous parts of the country, Army units began underground resistance almost at once. The Polish army lost 65,000 troops, 400 air crew, and 110 navy crew. The German losses were 16,000 troops, 365 air crew, and 126 navy crew. 285 German aircraft were destroyed, with 126 claimed by Polish fighter pilots. Ninety were shot down by anti-aircraft fire, and, due to the modesty of Polish pilots, there is a deficit of 70 unclaimed kills. Three hundred more German aircraft were so badly damaged they were written off. The Polish Air Force lost 327 aircraft, 260 of which were lost due to direct or indirect enemy action, with around 70 in air-to-air fighting. Anti-aircraft fire claimed the other 67.

[edit] Occupation and dismemberment of Poland

Main articles: Occupation of Poland (1939-1945) and Administrative division of Polish territories during WWII

About one fifth of Polish citizens lost their lives in the war ^[8], most of the civilians targeted by various deliberate actions. Both occupants wanted not only to gain Polish territory, but to destroy Polish culture and nation.

[edit] Treatment of Polish citizens under German occupation

See also: Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles and Holocaust in Poland

Fifth Partition of Poland - The Nazi-Soviet Pact.

Under the terms of two decrees by Hitler (8 October and 12 October 1939), large areas of western Poland were annexed to Germany. These included all the territories which Germany had lost under the 1918 Treaty of Versailles, such as the Polish Corridor, West Prussia and Upper Silesia, but also a large area of indisputably Polish territory east of these territories, including the city of Łódź.

The Germans provided for the division of the annexed areas of Poland into the following administrative units:

• Reichsgau Wartheland (initially Reichsgau Posen), which included the entire Poznań voivodship, most of the Łódź voivodship, five counties of the Pomeranian voivodship, and one county of the Warsaw voivodship;
• the remaining area of Pomeranian voivodship, which was incorporated into the Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen (initially Reichsgau Westpreussen);
• Ciechanow District (Regierungsbezirk Zichenau) consisting of the five northern counties of Warsaw voivodship (Płock, Płońsk, Sierpc, Ciechanow and Mława), which became a part of East Prussia;
• Katowice District (Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz) or unofficially Ost-Oberschlesien (East Upper Silesia); which included Sosnowiec, Będzin, Chrzanów, and Zawiercie counties and parts of Olkusz and Żywiec counties.

The area of these annexed territories was 94,000 square kilometres and the population was about 10 million, the great majority of whom were Poles.

Under the terms of the Nazi-Soviet pact, adjusted by agreement on 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union, annexed all Polish territory east of the line of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Bug and San, except for the area around Vilnius (known in Polish as Wilno), which was given to Lithuania, and the Suwałki region, which was annexed by Germany. These territories were largely inhabited by Ukrainians and Byelorussians, with minorities of Poles and Jews (see exact numbers in Curzon line). The total area, including the area given to Lithuania, was 201,000 square kilometres, with a population of 13.5 million. A small strip of land that was part of Hungary before 1914, was also given to Slovakia.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Polish territories previously occupied by the Soviet were organized as follows:

• Bezirk Bialystok (district of Białystok), which included the Białystok, Bielsk Podlaski, Grajewo, Łomża, Sokółka, Volkovysk, and Grodno counties, was "attached" to (but not incorporated into) East Prussia;
• Bezirke Litauen und Weißrussland – the Polish part of White Russia (today western Belarus), including the Vilna province (Vilnius was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ostland);
• Bezirk Wolhynien-Podolien – the Polish province of Volhynia, which was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ukraine; and
• East Galicia, which was incorporated into the General-Government and became its fifth district.

Hans Frank

The future fate of Poland and Poles was decided in Generalplan Ost, a Nazi plan to ethnically cleanse the territories occupied by Germany in Eastern Europe. The remaining block of territory was placed under a German administration called the General Government (in German Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete), with its capital at Kraków. The General Government was subdivided into four districts, Warsaw, Lublin, Radom, and Kraków. (For more detail on the territorial division of this area see General Government.)

A German lawyer and prominent Nazi, Hans Frank, was appointed Governor-General of the occupied territories on 26 October 1939. Frank oversaw the segregation of the Jews into ghettos in the larger cities, particularly Warsaw, and the use of Polish civilians as forced and compulsory labour in German war industries.

The population in the General Government's territory was initially about 12 million in an area of 94,000 square kilometres, but this increased as about 860,000 Poles and Jews were expelled from the German-annexed areas and "resettled" in the General Government. Offsetting this was the German campaign of extermination of the Polish intelligentsia and other elements thought likely to resist (e.g. Operation Tannenberg). From 1941 disease and hunger also began to reduce the population. Poles were also deported in large numbers to work as forced labour in Germany: eventually about a million were deported, and many died in Germany.

[edit] Treatment of Polish citizens under Soviet occupation

See also: Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939-1946)

By the end of Polish Defensive War the Soviet Union took over 52,1% of territory of Poland (circa 200,000 km²), with over 13,700,000 people. Although estimates vary the most throughout analysis gives the following numbers in regards to ethnic composition of these areas: 38% Poles (ca. 5,1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14,5% Belarussians, 8,4% Jews, 0,9% Russians and 0,6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees from areas occupied by Germany, most of them Jews (198,000)^[9]. Areas occupied by USSR were annexed to Soviet territory, with the exception of area of Vilnius, which was transferred to Lithuania, although soon attached to USSR, when Lithuania became a Soviet republic.

While Germans enforced their policies based on racism, the Soviet administration used slogans about class struggle, and dictatorship of the proletariat^[10], which in Soviet reality were equal to Stalinism and Sovietization. Immediately after their conquest of eastern Poland, the Soviet authorities started a campaign of sovietization^[11][12] of the newly-acquired areas. No later than several weeks after the last Polish units surrendered, on October 22, 1939, the Soviets organized staged elections to the Moscow-controlled Supreme Soviets (legislative body) of Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine^[13]. The result of the staged voting was to become a legitimization of Soviet partition of Poland^[14].

Subsequently, all institutions of the dismantled Polish state were being closed down and reopened with new mostly Russian directors and in rare cases^[9]. In schools Polish language books were burned down^[9].

All the media became controlled by Moscow. Soviet occupation implemented a political regime similar to police state^{[15][16][17][18]}, based on terror. All Polish parties and organisations were disbanded. Only the Communist Party was allowed to exist with organisations subordinated to it. Soviet teachers in schools encouraged children to spy on their parents proposing money as bribes^[9]

All organized religions were persecuted. Most churches were closed, priest were discriminated by authorities regardless of their faith, forms of discirmination included high taxes, forced draft into military, arrests and deportations^[9]. Children were told that they should pray to painting of Stalin instead of cross, and were reworded with sweets and candy for this^[9]. All enterprises were taken over by the state, while agriculture was made collective^[19]. The results of Soviet economic policy were quickly seen, in winter locals faced new problems, as shops lacked goods, there was scarce food and they had to face famine^[9].

According to the Soviet law, all residents of the annexed area, dubbed by the Soviets as citizens of former Poland^[20], automatically acquired the Soviet citizenship. However, since actual conferral of citizenship still required the individual consent, residents were strongly pressured for such consent^[21] and the refugees who opted out were threatened with repatriation to Nazi controlled territories of Poland^[5][22][23].

In addition, the Soviets exploited past ethnic tension between Poles and other ethnic groups, inciting and encouraging violence against Poles calling the minorities to "rectify the wrongs they had suffered during twenty years of Polish rule"^[24]. Pre-war Poland was portrayed as a capitalist state based on exploitation of the working people and ethnic minorities. Soviet officials openly incited mobs to perform killings and robberies against Polish population, going as far as stating that Red Army will help to kill and pillage^[25]. A brutal bloodbath ensued^[26]. Such events made an everlasting influence on Polish attitude towards Soviet occupation^[26].

Some parts of the the Ukrainian population initially welcomed the end of Polish rule.^[27] This was even strengthened by a land reform in which the owners of large lots of land were labeled "kulaks" and dispossessed of their land which was then divided among poorer peasants. However, soon afterwards the Soviet authorities started a campaign of forced collectivisation, which largely nullified the earlier gains from the land reform as the peasants generally did not want to join the Kolkhoz farms, nor to give away their crops for free to fulfill the state impose guotas. At the same time, there were large groups of pre-war Polish citizens, notably Jewish youth and, to a lesser extent, the Ukrainian peasants, who saw the Soviet power as an opportunity to start political or social activity outside of their traditional ethnic or cultural groups. Their enthusiasm however faded with time as it became clear that the Soviet repressions were aimed at all groups equally, regardless of their political stance^[28]. The organisation of Ukrainians desiring indpendent Ukraine called OUN was persecuted as "anti-soviet".

An inherent part of the Sovietization was a rule of terror started by the NKVD and other Soviet agencies. The first victims of the new order were approximately 250,000 Polish prisoners of war captured by the USSR during and after the Polish Defensive War^[29]. As the Soviet Union did not sign any international convention on rules of war, they were denied the status of prisoners of war and instead almost all of the captured officers and a large number of ordinary soldiers^[30] were then murdered (see Katyn massacre) or sent to Gulag^[31].

Similar policies were applied to the civilian population as well. The Soviet authorities regarded service for the pre-war Polish state as a "crime against revolution"^[32] and "counter-revolutionary activity"^[33], and subsequently started arresting large numbers of Polish intelligentsia, politicians, civil servants and scientists, but also ordinary people suspected of posing a threat to the Soviet rule. Schoolchildren as young as 10 or 12 years old that laughed at Soviet propaganda presented in schools were sent into prisons,sometimes for as long as 10 years^[9].

The prisons soon got severely overcrowded^[28] with detainees suspected of anti-Soviet activities and the NKVD had to open dozens of ad-hoc prison sites in almost all towns of the region^[14]. The wave of arrests led to forced resettlement of large categories of people (kulaks, Polish civil servants, forest workers, university professors or osadniks, for instance) to the Gulag labour camps^[12]. Altogether roughly a half a million people were sent to the east in four major waves of deportations^[34]. According to Norman Davies^[35], almost half of them were dead by the time the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement had been signed in 1941.

[edit] Government in exile

Władysław Sikorski

For more details on this topic, see Polish government in exile.

See also: Polish Forces in the West and Polish Forces in the East

The Polish government re-assembled in Paris and formed a government in exile. Władysław Raczkiewicz was sworn in as President and chose General Władysław Sikorski as Prime Minister. Most of the Polish Navy escaped to the United Kingdom, and thousands of other Poles escaped through Romania or across the Baltic Sea to continue the fight. Many Poles took part in the defence of France, in the Battle of Britain, and in other operations beside British forces (see Polish contribution to World War II).

This government in exile, based first in Paris and then in London, was recognised by all the Allied governments. 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 destruction of Poland. Hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the Soviet Union in eastern Poland in 1939, and many other Polish prisoners and deportees, were released and were allowed to leave the country via Persia. (Among them was the future Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin.) They formed the basis for the Polish Army led by General Władysław Anders that fought alongside the Allies at Cassino, Arnhem and other battles.

But in April 1943 the Germans announced that they had discovered the graves of 4,300 Polish officers who had been taken prisoner in 1939 and murdered by the Soviets, in a mass grave in Katyń Wood near Smolensk. The Germans invited the International Red Cross to visit the site, which confirmed both that the graves contained Polish officers and that they had been killed with Soviet weapons. The Soviet government said that the Germans had fabricated the discovery. The Allied governments, for diplomatic reasons, formally accepted this, but the Polish government in exile refused to do so. Stalin then severed relations with the London-based Poles.

Stalin immediately set up the nucleus of a Soviet-controlled Communist Polish government, and began recruiting for a Communist Polish Army. By July 1943 this army, led by General Zygmunt Berling, had 40,000 members. Since it was clear that it would be the Soviet Union, not the western Allies, who would enter Poland and drive off from Nazi Germans, this breach had fateful consequences for Poland. In a seemingly unfortunate coincidence, Sikorski, the most talented of the Polish exile leaders, was killed in an aircrash near Gibraltar in July. Sikorski was succeeded as head of the government in exile by Stanisław Mikołajczyk.

Polish volunteers to the Anders Army, released from Soviet POW camp.

During 1943 and 1944 the Allied leaders, particularly Winston Churchill, tried to bring about a resumption of talks between Stalin and the London Poles. But these efforts broke down over several issues. One was the massacre at Katyń and the fate of many other Poles who had disappeared into Soviet prisons and labour camps since 1939. Another was Poland's postwar borders. Stalin insisted that the territories annexed in 1939, should remain in Soviet hands, and that Poland should be compensated with lands to be annexed from Germany. The London Poles, led by Mikołajczyk, refused to this proposition, even when Churchill threatened to cut off relations with them. A third issue was Mikołajczyk's insistence that Stalin not set up a Communist government in postwar Poland. Fundamentally, the issue was that the Poles wanted to preserve their independence, while Stalin was determined that he would be in control of Poland. Eventually, the Poles believed, the UK and US firmly supported Stalin on all three issues.

In 1944, the Polish government in exile considered its position boosted, as the Polish forces in the West were making a substantial contribution to the war: in May, the Second Corps under general Władysław Anders stormed the fortress of Monte Cassino and opened a road to Rome, in August general Stanisław Maczek's 1st Armored Division distinguished itself at the battle of Falaise, in September general Stanisław Sosabowski's Parachute Brigade fought hard at the battle of Arnhem. At the same time, however, the Red Army was marching into Poland defeating the Nazis and Stalin toughened his stance against the Polish exiled government in London, now demanding not only the recognition of the Curzon Line as the border, but the resignation from the government of all 'elements hostile to the Soviet Union', which meant in practice president Władysław Raczkiewicz and most of the Polish ministers.^[36]

[edit] Resistance in Poland

For more details on this topic, see Polish resistance movement in World War II.

Polish Underground State History of Poland
The authorities
Government
Administration
Parliament
Courts
Political organizations
Major
1PPS-WRN (socialists)
2SL (agrarian party)
3SN (right-wing party)
SP (Christian democrats)
Minor
4OZN (sanacja)
SD (centrist)
5Bund and Hatzoar (Jewish left)
6Betar (zionist)
Opposition
7ONR (far-right)
8PPR (communists)
Military organizations
Universal
SZP ZWZ
Armia Krajowa
Szare Szeregi KB
Significantly integrated into ZWZ-AK
1GL WRN
2BCh
Partially integrated
3NOW and NSZ
4OPW
7KN
Not integrated
5ŻOB
6ŻZW
Opposition
7OW ZJ
8GL and AL
See also
Cultural activities
Education
History of Poland (1939–1945)
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Polish resistance to the German occupation began almost at once, although there is little terrain in Poland suitable for guerrilla operations. The Home Army (in Polish Armia Krajowa or AK), loyal to the Polish government in exile in London and a military arm of the Polish Secret State, was formed from a number of smaller groups in 1942. From 1943 the AK was in competition with the People's Army (Polish Armia Ludowa or AL), backed by the Soviet Union and controlled by the Polish Workers' Party (Polish Polska Partia Robotnicza or PPR). By 1944 the AK had some 380,000 men, although few arms: the AL was much smaller. The Polish resistance organizations (Leśni) killed about 150,000 Germans during the occupation.

In August 1943 and March 1944 the Polish Secret State announced their long-term plan, partially designed to counter attractivness of some of the Communists' proposals. Their plan promised land reform, nationalisation of the industrial base, demands for territorial compensation from Germany, as well as re-establishment of the pre-1939 eastern border. Thus the main difference between the Secret State and the Communists, in terms of politics, amounted not to radical economic and social reforms, which where advocated by both sides, but to their attitudes towards national sovereignty, borders, and Polish-Soviet relations.^[36]

In April 1943 the Germans began deporting the remaining Jews from the Warsaw ghetto, provoking the Warsaw Ghetto Rising from April 19 to May 16, one of the first armed uprisings against the Germans in Poland. Some units of the AK tried to assist the Ghetto rising, but for the most part the Jews were left to fight alone. The Jewish leaders knew that the rising would be crushed but they preferred to die fighting than wait to be deported to their deaths in the camps.

During 1943 the Home Army built up its forces in preparation for a national uprising. The plan was code-named Operation Tempest and began in late 1943. Its most widely known elements were Operation Ostra Brama and the Warsaw Uprising. In August 1944, as the Soviet armed forces approached Warsaw, the government in exile called for an uprising in the city, so that they could return to a liberated Warsaw and try to prevent a Communist takeover. The AK, led by Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, launched the Warsaw Uprising. Soviet forces were less than 20 kilometres away, but on the orders of Soviet High Command, they gave no assistance. Stalin described the rising as a "criminal adventure." The Poles appealed for the western Allies for help. The Royal Air Force, and the Polish Air Force based in Italy, dropped some arms but, as in 1939, it was almost impossible for the Allies to help the Poles without Soviet assistance.

The fighting in Warsaw was desperate, with selfless valour being displayed in street-to-street fighting. The AK had between 12,000 and 20,000 armed soldiers, most with only small arms, against a well-equipped German Army of 20,000 SS and regular Army units. Bór-Komorowski's hope that the AK could take and hold Warsaw for the return of the London government was never likely to be achieved. After 63 days of savage fighting the city was reduced to rubble, and German reprisals were savage. The SS and auxiliary units recruited from Soviet Army deserters were particularly brutal.

After Bór-Komorowski's surrender the AK fighters were treated as prisoners-of-war by the Germans, much to the outrage of Stalin, but the civilian population were ruthlessly punished. Overall, Polish casualties are estimated to be between 150,000 and 300,000 killed, with 90,000 civilians being sent to labour camps in the Reich, while 60,000 were shipped to death and concentration camps such as Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, and others. The city was almost totally destroyed after German bombers systematically demolished the city. The Warsaw Rising allowed the Germans to destroy the AK as a fighting force, but the main beneficiary was Stalin, who was able to impose a Communist government on postwar Poland with little fear of armed resistance.

[edit] End of the War: Yalta and the Soviets

Batalion Zośka soldiers in Wola during Warsaw Uprising

As the Soviets advanced through Poland in late 1944 the German administration collapsed. The Communist-controlled Committee of National Liberation (PKWN, Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego), headed by Bolesław Bierut, was installed by the Soviet Union in July in Lublin, the first major Polish city to be seized by Soviets from the Nazis, and began to take over the administration of the country as the Germans retreated. The government in exile in London had only one card to play, the forces of the AK. This was why the government in exile was determined that the AK would cooperate with the advancing Red Army on a tactical level, while Polish civil authorities from underground took power in Allied-controlled Polish territory (see Operation Tempest) to ensure that Poland would remain an independent country after the war. The failure of the Warsaw Uprising marked the end of any real chance that Poland would escape postwar Communist rule, especially given the unwillingness of the Western Allies to risk conflict with Soviets over Poland. Soviets performed executions, deportations and arrests of Home Army members that assisted them in fights against the Germans[4], [5]. Until 1946 Soviet forces fought against the Polish independence movement, and some former AK and NSZ soldiers continued to fight well into 1956.^[37]

Poland's old and new borders, 1945

At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Stalin was able to present his Western Allies, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, with a fait accompli in Poland. His armed forces were in control of the country, and his agents, the Polish Communists, were in control of its administration. The USSR was in the process of incorporating the lands in eastern Poland (Kresy), which it had occupied and annexed in 1939 (see Polish areas annexed by Soviet Union), with some minor border adjustments in Poland's favour (the most important of which allowed Poland to retain Białystok). In compensation, the USSR awarded Poland all the German territories in Pomerania, Silesia and Brandenburg east of the Oder-Neisse Line, plus the southern half of East Prussia (those would be known as the Recovered Territories). The entire country had shifted to the west, and now resembled the territory of Medieval Poland. This entailed the expulsion of 8 million Germans who were forced to relocate their families to the new Germany. Approximately 1000 Germans were certified as "Poles" and were given Polish citizenship. These territories were repopulated with Poles expelled from the eastern regions by the Soviet Union and other territories. The new Poland emerged 20% smaller by 77,500 square kilometres (29,900 sq mi).

Soldiers of the Polish Second Army in the area of Nysa Łuzycka River after forcing it in April 1945.

Most of the ethnic Polish population was expelled from the territories incorporated into Soviet Ukraine and Belarus in the population exchange that included the transfer of the Ukrainian and Belarusian population from from Poland into these republics. The Soviet-controlled Polish government not wishing to entertain the recreation of Belarusian and Ukrainian minorities within the postwar boundaries of Poland, withdrew the citizenship of those displaced persons (DPs) and political refugees who found themselves in western Europe, leaving them stateless, and collaborated actively in 1947 in the expulsion of remaining Belarusians and especially Ukrainians from the southwestern region of postwar Poland, expelling thousands of Ukrainians into Soviet Ukraine (Operation Vistula), thereby undercutting the ongoing Ukrainian nationalist resistance to Soviet rule (Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)) and ensuring that postwar Poland would not have any significant minorities to contend with.

Destroyed Warsaw, capital of Poland, January 1945

Stalin was determined that Poland's new government should be Communist, and therefore ultimately under his control. He had severed relations with the Polish government-in-exile in London in 1943 in the aftermath of the Katyn Massacre, but to appease Roosevelt and Churchill he agreed at Yalta that a coalition government would be formed. The Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, resigned his post and, with several other Polish exile leaders, went to Lublin in eastern Poland, where the Communist-controlled provisional government had been established. This government was headed by a Socialist, Edward Osóbka-Morawski, but the Communists held a majority of key posts. It was recognized by the Western Allies in July 1945. Stalin also agreed that Poland would receive a $US10 billion reparation payment from Germany.

The attitude of the Polish population towards Soviet entry was generally hostile, while some cases existed of welcoming them, they soon turned into hatred and despise as Red Army soldiers engaged in plunder, rape, banditry, while NKVD implemented a reign of political terror. In the eyes of Polish society which wasn't yet under the Soviet occupation in 1939-1941 the Soviets became a new occupiers, and soon protests and demands of their withdrawal have spread among the country. A popular belief was that Western Allies will soon defeat Soviets using atomic weapons and free Poland from the Soviets.^[38]

In April 1945, that provisional government signed a mutual pact with the Soviet Union. The new Polish Government of National Unity was finally constituted on June 28, with Mikołajczyk as Deputy Prime Minister. The Communists' principal rivals were Mikołajczyk's Polish People's Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe PSL), veterans of both the World War II resistance group Home Army (AK), and the Polish armies which had fought in the west. But at the same time, Soviet-oriented parties, especially the PPR, under Władysław Gomułka and Bolesław Bierut, held the balance of power, controlling Polish army and police, and being supported by the Red Army. Potential political opponents of Communists were subject to Soviet terror campaigns, with many of them arrested, executed or tortured[6]. At least 25,000 people lost their lives in labour camps created by Soviets as early as 1944 [7]. Harry S. Truman and Winston Churchill were aware of the predominance of Soviet controlled parties and decided on a policy of strong resistance to Stalin.

The Western Allies in the persons of Roosevelt and Churchill have been criticised, both by Polish writers and some western historians, for what most Poles see as the abandonment of Poland to Stalin. Well before Yalta, they secretly consigned Eastern Europe and the Baltics to the Soviet Union. At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Roosevelt committed that Stalin could have Romania, Bulgaria, Bukovina, eastern Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Finland,^[39] in addition to making changes to the Polish frontier.^[40] Meeting with Stalin in Moscow on October 9, 1994, Churchill penciled a list of which power was to have what degree of "dominance" in each country lying between the Soviet Union and western Europe.^[41] This bifurcation of secret versus public diplomacy (viz. Stimson Doctrine, Atlantic Charter) sealed the post-war fate of Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. Yalta merely confirmed prior Western commitments.

A propaganda photo of a citizen reading the PKWN Manifesto, issued on July 22, 1944

Mikołajczyk and his colleagues in the Polish Government-in-Exile insisted on making a stand in defence of Poland's pre-1939 eastern border (Curzon line) as a basis for the future Polish-Soviet border, a position which could not be defended in practice because Stalin was in control of the territory in question, and he had already been promised those areas by Churchill and Roosevelt back in 1943. The Government-in-Exile's refusal to accept the proposed new Polish borders irritated the Allies, particularly Churchill, making them less inclined to oppose Stalin on the question of the composition of the postwar government. In the end the exiles lost on both issues: Stalin annexed the eastern territories, and gained control over the new Polish government. Whilst Poland avoided the fate of becoming a republic of the Soviet Union, as was proposed by some influential Polish communists such as Wanda Wasilewska[8], it was to remain under heavy Soviet control until the mid-1950s.

Hans Frank was captured by American troops in May 1945 and was one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials. During his trial he converted to Catholicism. Frank surrendered forty volumes of his diaries to the Tribunal and much evidence against him and others was gathered from them. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and on 1 October 1946 he was sentenced to death by hanging.

Of all the countries involved in the war, Poland lost the highest percentage of its citizens: over seven million perished, three million of them Polish Jews.

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] Further reading

• Davies, Norman (1982). God's Playground. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231053533 and ISBN 0231053517.
• Jan Tomasz Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia, Princeton University Press, 2002, ISBN 0691096031, Google Print
• John Hiden (ed.), .), The Baltic and the Outbreak of the Second World War, Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0521531209
• Olgierd Terlecki (1972). Poles in the Italian Campaign, 1943-1945, Interpress Publishers.
• Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War : A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine, Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 030010670X
• Marek Jan Chodakiewicz. Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939-1947. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004 ISBN 0-7391-0484-5.

[edit] External links

• The Poles on the Fronts of World War II
• Polish Resistance in World War II
• Testimony of Hans Frank at Nuremberg
• University of New York in Buffalo Info Poland: World War II
• Polish Losses in World War II, Witold J. Lukaszewski, Sarmatian Review, April 1998
• The Soviet Invasion of Poland During the World War II
• The Polish-Russian Controversy
• History of Warsaw's contributions levied by the German Occupation Authority during the Second World War