The European theater of World War II opened with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. The Polish Army was defeated after over a month of fighting. After Poland had been overrun, a government-in-exile (headquartered in Britain), armed forces, and an intelligence service were established outside of Poland. These organizations contributed to the Allied effort throughout the war. The Polish Army was recreated in the West, as well as in the East (after German invasion of the Soviet Union).
Poles provided crucial help to the Allies throughout the war, fighting on land, on the seas and in the air. Notable was the service of the Polish Air Force, not only in the Allied victory in the Battle of Britain but also the subsequent war in the air. Polish ground troops were present in the North Africa Campaign (siege of Tobruk); the Italian campaign (including the capture of the monastery hill at the Battle of Monte Cassino); and in battles following the invasion of France (the battle of the Falaise pocket; and an airborne brigade parachute drop during Operation Market Garden). Some Polish contributions were less visible, and most notably included the prewar and wartime decyphering of German Enigma machine codes by cryptologists Marian Rejewski and his colleagues. The Polish intelligence network also proved to be of much value to the Allied intelligence.
As Poland never made a general surrender or produced a collaborative puppet government unlike France, it was directly governed by a purely German administration known as the Generalgouvernement. This administration was in turn opposed by the Polish Underground State, which not only fielded one of the three largest partisan forces in existence,[b] but was a rare example of an underground government, a phenomenon not witnessed in many other occupied countries.
The Polish forces as a whole are considered to have been the 4th largest Allied army in Europe.[a]
Contents |
The invasion of Poland by the military forces of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and a small German-allied Slovak contingent marked the beginning of World War II in Europe.
In keeping with the terms of the Secret Additional Protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact Germany informed the Soviet Union that its forces were nearing the Soviet interest zone in Poland and so urged the Soviet Union to move into its zone. The Soviets had been taken by surprise by the speed of the German advance as they had expected to have several weeks to prepare for an invasion rather than merely a few days. They did promise to move as quickly as possible.[1] On September 17 the Soviets invaded eastern Poland, forcing the Polish government and military to abandon their plans for a long-term defense in the Romanian bridgehead area. The last remaining Polish Army units capitulated in early October.
In accordance with their treaty obligations, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany on September 3. Hitler had gambled incorrectly that France and Britain would allow him to annex parts of Poland without military reaction. The campaign began on September 1, 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact containing a secret protocol for the division of Northern and Central Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. It ended on October 6, 1939, with Germany and the Soviet Union occupying the entirety of Poland. German and Soviet units went on a joint victory parade in the streets of Lwow.
Further cooperation between German and Soviets took the form of an exchange of Polish POWs : following order by Lavrentiy Beria to the NKVD of October 3, 1939, 46,000 Polish prisoners detained in soviet camps were traded against 44,000 POWs released by the Germans.[2]
German losses included approximately 16,000 Killed in Action, 28,000 wounded, over 200 aircraft, and 30% of their armored vehicles. The Polish casualties were around 66,000 dead and 694,000 captured. Though the German attack was successful, losses were greater than expected. It has been estimated that, during the September campaign in Poland, the Wehrmacht needed to use more than twice the ammunition they used in France the following spring.
There was a substantial group of Poles who risked their lives during the German occupation to save Jews. Poland was unique among the German-occupied countries to establish an organization which specifically aided the Jewish people.
Known as the Żegota (Polish: "Council for Aid to Jews") the organization provided shelter, food, medicine, money and false documents for Jews across the country who could pass as Christians. Most of Żegota's funds came directly from the Polish government, then in exile. Individual Poles, both clerical[3] and secular, also offered various forms of aid to the Jewish people. For example, the children's section of Żegota led by Irena Sendler saved 2,500 Jewish children with cooperation of Polish families and the Warsaw orphanage of the Sisters of the Family of Mary, Roman Catholic convents such as the Little Sister Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Conceived Immaculate.[4]
Most Jews who survived the German occupation of Poland were saved by Poles unconnected with Żegota. Estimates of Jewish survivors in Poland range from 40,000-50,000 to 100,000-120,000. Scholars estimate that it took the work of ten Poles to save the life of one Jew.[5] Of the individuals awarded medals of Righteous among the Nations (given by the State of Israel to non-Jews who saved Jews from extermination during the Holocaust) those who were Polish citizens number the greatest.[6] There are 6,266[7] Polish men and women recognized as "Righteous" to this day, amounting to over 25 per cent of the total number of 22,765 honorary titles awarded already.[8]
| Part of a series on the |
| Polish Underground State |
|---|
|
Authorities
|
|
Political organizations
|
|
Military organizations
|
|
Related topics
|
The main resistance force in German-occupied Poland was the Armia Krajowa ("Home Army"; abbreviated "AK"), which numbered some 400,000 soldiers at its peak as well as many more sympathizers.[9] Throughout most of the war, AK could be considered one of the three largest resistance movements in the war.[b] The AK coordinated its operations with the exiled Polish Government in London and its activity concentrated on sabotage, diversion and intelligence gathering.[10] Its combat activity was low until 1943[9][11] as the army was avoiding suicidal warfare and preserved its very limited resources for later conflicts that sharply increased when the Nazi war machine started to crumble in the wake of the successes of the Red Army in the Eastern Front. Then the AK started a nationwide uprising (Operation Tempest) against Nazi forces.[10] Before that, AK units carried out thousands of raids, intelligence operations, bombed hundreds of railway shipments, participated in many clashes and battles with the German police and Wehrmacht units and conducted tens of thousands of acts of sabotage against German industry[12] The AK also conducted "punitive" operations to assassinate Gestapo officials responsible for Nazi terror. Following the 1941 German attack on the USSR, the AK assisted the Soviet Union's war effort by sabotaging the German advance into Soviet territory and provided intelligence on the deployment and movement of German forces[10] After 1943, its direct combat activity increased sharply. German losses to the Polish partisans averaged 850-1,700 per month in early 1944 compared to about 250-320 per month in 1942.
In addition to the Home Army, there was an underground ultra-nationalist[9] resistance force called Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (NSZ or "National Armed Forces"), with a fiercely anti-communist and chauvinist stance. It participated in fighting German units, winning many skirmishes. From 1943 onwards, some units took part in battling the Gwardia Ludowa, a communist resistance movement. From 1944, the advancing Red Army was also seen as a foreign occupation force, prompting skirmishes with the Soviets as well as Soviet-backed partisans. In the later part of the war, when Soviet partisans started attacking Polish partisans, sympathizers and civilians, all non-communist Polish formations were (to an increasing extent) becoming involved in actions against the Soviets.[13]
The Armia Ludowa, a Soviet proxy fighting force[14] was another resistance group that was unrelated to the Polish Government in Exile, allied instead to the Soviet Union. As of July, 1944 it incorporated a similar organization, the Gwardia Ludowa, and numbered about 6,000 soldiers (although estimates vary).[14]
There were separate resistance groups organized by Polish Jews:[9] the right-wing Żydowski Związek Walki ("Jewish Fighting Union") (ŻZW) and the more Soviet-leaning Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa ("Jewish Combat Organization") (ŻOB). These organisations cooperated little with each other and their relationship with the Polish resistance varied between occasional cooperation (mainly between ZZW and AK) to armed confrontations (mostly between ŻOB and NZS).
Other notable Polish resistance organizations included the Bataliony Chłopskie (BCh), a mostly peasant-based organization allied to the AK. At its height the BCh included 175,000 members.
On the other hand the role of the Polish Police force ('Granatowa Policja') in the General Government (Generalna Gubernia), a semi-state under the full control of Germany remains a debatable issue. There was some co-operation between the Polish Police and the Nazis in persecuting the Jewish community while at the same time some officers secretly supported the underground resistance movement.
There were single instances of military and political co-operation between the Polish ultra-nationalist resistance movement and the Nazis ('Brygada Swietokrzyska', the attempts of professor Wladyslaw Studnicki etc.). Throughout the war the German state was forced to divert a substantial part of its military forces to keep control over Poland:
| Timeperiod | Wehrmacht | Police and SS
(includes German forces only) |
Together |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 1939 | 550,000 | 80,000 | 630,000 |
| April 1940 | 400,000 | 70,000 | 470,000 |
| June 1941 | 2,000,000
(high number due to imminent invasion of Soviet Union) |
50.000 | 2,050,000 |
| February 1942 | 300,000 | 50,000 | 350,000 |
| April 1943 | 450,000 | 60,000 | 510,000 |
| November 1943 | 550,000 | 70,000 | 620,000 |
| April 1944 | 500,000 | 70,000 | 570,000 |
| September 1944 | 1,000,000 | 80,000 | 1,080,000 |
| Action type | Totals |
|---|---|
| Damaged locomotives | 6,930 |
| Delayed repairs to locomotives | 803 |
| Derailed transports | 732 |
| Transports set on fire | 443 |
| Damage to railway wagons | 19,058 |
| Blown up railway bridges | 38 |
| Disruptions to electricity supplies in the Warsaw grid | 638 |
| Army vehicles damaged or destroyed | 4,326 |
| Damaged aeroplanes | 28 |
| Fuel tanks destroyed | 1,167 |
| Fuel destroyed (in tonnes) | 4,674 |
| Blocked oil wells | 5 |
| Wagons of wood wool destroyed | 150 |
| Military stores burned down | 130 |
| Disruptions of production in factories | 7 |
| Built-in faults in parts for aircraft engines | 4,710 |
| Built-in faults into cannon muzzles | 203 |
| Built-in faults into artillery missiles | 92,000 |
| Built-in faults into air traffic radio stations | 107 |
| Built-in faults into condensers | 70,000 |
| Built-in faults into (electro-industrial) lathes | 1,700 |
| Damage to important factory machinery | 2,872 |
| Various acts of sabotage performed | 25,145 |
| Planned assassinations of Germans | 5,733 |
During a period of over six and a half years, from late December 1932 to the outbreak of World War II, three mathematician-cryptologists (Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki) at the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau in Warsaw had developed a number of techniques and devices — including the "grill" method, Różycki's "clock", Rejewski's "cyclometer" and "card catalog", Zygalski's "perforated sheets", and Rejewski's "cryptologic bomb" (in Polish, "bomba," precursor to the later British "Bombe", named after its Polish predecessor) — to facilitate decryption of messages produced on the German "Enigma" cipher machine. Just five weeks before the outbreak of World War II, on July 25, 1939, near Pyry in the Kabaty Woods south of Warsaw, Poland disclosed her achievements to France and the United Kingdom, which had, up to that time, failed in all their own efforts to crack the German military Enigma cipher.[17]
Had Poland not shared her Enigma-decryption results at Pyry, the United Kingdom would have been unable to read Enigma ciphers.[18] In the event, intelligence gained from this source, codenamed Ultra, was extremely valuable to the Allied prosecution of the war. While ULTRA's precise influence on its course remains a subject of debate, ULTRA undoubtedly altered the course of the war.[19]
Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) intelligence was vital to locating and destroying (18 August 1943) the German rocket facility at Peenemünde and to gathering information about Germany's V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket. The Home Army delivered to the United Kingdom key V-2 parts after a rocket, fired on 30 May 1944, crashed near a German test facility at Sarnaki on the Bug River and was recovered by the Home Army. On the night of 25–26 July 1944 the crucial parts were flown from occupied Poland to the United Kingdom in an RAF plane, along with detailed drawings of parts too large to fit in the plane (see Home Army and V1 and V2). Analysis of the German rocket became vital to improving Allied anti-V-2 defenses (see Operation Most III).[20]
In July 1941 Mieczysław Słowikowski (using the codename "Rygor" — Polish for "Rigor") set up "Agency Africa," one of World War II's most successful intelligence organizations.[21] His Polish allies in these endeavors included Lt. Col. Gwido Langer and Major Maksymilian Ciężki. The information gathered by the Agency was used by the Americans and British in planning the amphibious November 1942 Operation Torch[22] landings in North Africa. These were the first large-scale Allied landings of the war, and their success in turn paved the way for the Allies' Italian campaign.
Polish intelligence operated in every European country and ran one of the largest intelligence networks in Nazi Germany. Many Poles also served in other Allied intelligence services, including the celebrated Krystyna Skarbek ("Christine Granville") in the United Kingdom's Special Operations Executive. Of all reports received by the British secret services from continental Europe in 1939-45, 43 percent came from Polish sources.[23] Until 1942 most of Britain's intelligence from Germany came from Polish Home Army reports; until war's end, the AK would remain Britain's main source of intelligence from Central and Eastern Europe. Polish Home Army intelligence provided the Allies information not only on the V-1 flying bomb and the V-2 rocket but also on German concentration camps. As early as 1940, Polish agents (including Witold Pilecki) penetrated German concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and informed the world about Nazi atrocities.
| Deserters from the German Wehrmacht | 89,300 | (35.8%) |
| Evacuees from the USSR in 1941 | 83,000 | (33.7%) |
| Evacuees from France in 1940 | 35,000 | (14.0%) |
| Liberated POWs | 21,750 | (8.7%) |
| Escapees from occupied Europe | 14,210 | (5.7%) |
| Recruits in liberated France | 7,000 | (2.8%) |
| Polonia from Argentina, Brazil and Canada | 2,290 | (0.9%) |
| Polonia from United Kingdom | 1,780 | (0.7%) |
| Total | 249,000 | |
| Note: Until July 1945, when recruitment was halted, some 26,830 Polish soldiers were declared KIA or MIA or had died of wounds. After that date, an additional 21,000 former Polish POWs were inducted. | ||
Source:[24]
After the country's defeat in the 1939 campaign, the Polish government in exile quickly organized in France a new army of about 80,000 men. In 1940 a Polish Highland Brigade took part in the Battle of Narvik (Norway), and two Polish divisions (First Grenadier Division, and Second Infantry Fusiliers Division) took part in the defense of France, while a Polish motorized brigade and two infantry divisions were in process of forming. A Polish Independent Carpathian Brigade was formed in French-mandated Syria, to which many Polish troops had escaped from Romania. The Polish Air Force in France comprised eighty-six aircraft in four squadrons, one and a half of the squadrons being fully operational while the rest were in various stages of training.
After the fall of France, numbers of Polish personnel had died in the fighting (some 6,000) or been interned in Switzerland (some 13,000). Nevertheless, General Władysław Sikorski, Polish commander-in-chief and prime minister, was able to evacuate many Polish troops to the United Kingdom. In 1941, following an agreement between the Polish government in exile and Joseph Stalin, the Soviets released Polish citizens, from whom a 75,000-strong army was formed in the USSR under General Władysław Anders. Without any support from the Soviets to train, equip and maintain this army, the Polish government in exile followed Anders' advice for a transfer of some 80,000 (and around 20,000 civilians), in March and August 1942, across the Caspian Sea to Iran. In the Middle East, this "Anders' Army" joined the British 8th army, where it became the Polish II Corps.[25]
The Polish armed forces in the west fought under the British command and numbered 195,000 in March 1944 and 165,000 at the end of that year, including about 20,000 personnel in the Polish Air Force and 3,000 in the Polish Navy. At the end of World War II, the Polish Armed Forces in the west numbered 195,000 and by July 1945 had increased to 228,000, most of the newcomers being released prisoners of war and ex-labor-camp inmates.
The Polish Air Force first fought in 1939 Invasion of Poland. Significantly outnumbered and with its fighters outmatched by more advanced German fighters, remained active up to the second week of the campaign, inflicting significant damage on the Luftwaffe.[26] The Luftwaffe lost, to all operational causes, 285 aircraft, with 279 more damaged, while the Poles lost 333 aircraft.[27]
After the fall of Poland many Polish pilots escaped via Hungary to France. The Polish Air Force fought in the Battle of France as one fighter squadron GC 1/145, several small units detached to French squadrons, and numerous flights of industry defence (in total, 133 pilots, who achieved 53-57 victories at a loss of 8 men in combat, what was 7,93% of allied victories).[28]
Later, Polish pilots fought in the Battle of Britain, where the Polish 303 Fighter Squadron claimed the highest number of kills of any Allied squadron. From the very beginning of the war, the Royal Air Force (RAF) had welcomed foreign pilots to supplement the dwindling pool of British pilots. On 11 June 1940, the Polish Government in Exile signed an agreement with the British Government to form a Polish Army and Polish Air Force in the United Kingdom. The first two (of an eventual ten) Polish fighter squadrons went into action in August 1940. Four Polish squadrons eventually took part in the Battle of Britain (300 and 301 Bomber Squadrons; 302 and 303 Fighter Squadrons), with 89 Polish pilots. Together with more than 50 Poles fighting in British squadrons, a total of 145 Polish pilots defended British skies. Polish pilots were among the most experienced in the battle, most of them having already fought in the 1939 September Campaign in Poland and the 1940 Battle of France. Additionally, prewar Poland had set a very high standard of pilot training. The 303 Squadron, named after the Polish-American hero, General Tadeusz Kościuszko, claimed the highest number of kills (126) of all fighter squadrons engaged in the Battle of Britain, even though it only joined the combat on August 30, 1940[29] These Polish pilots, constituting 5% of the pilots active during the Battle of Britain, were responsible for 12% of total victories in the Battle.
The Polish Air Force also fought in 1943 in Tunisia (Polish Fighting Team, so called "Skalski's Circus") and in raids on Germany (1940–45). In the second half of 1941 and early 1942, Polish bomber squadrons were the sixth part of forces available to RAF Bomber Command (later they suffered heavy losses, with little replenishment possibilities). Polish aircrew losses serving with Bomber Command 1940-45 were 929 killed. Ultimately 8 Polish fighter squadrons were formed within the RAF and had claimed 629 Axis aircraft destroyed by May 1945. By the end of the war, around 19,400 Poles were serving in the RAF.[30]
Polish squadrons in the United Kingdom:
| 1940 | 1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | 1945 | total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| destroyed | 266 1/6 | 202 | 90 | 114¾ | 103 | 38½ | 769 5/12 |
| probable | 38 | 52 | 36 | 42 | 10 | 2 | 177 |
| damaged | 43⅔ + 3/5 | 60½ | 43 | 66 | 27 | 18 | 252 1/6 |
Just on the eve of war, three destroyers — representing most of the major Polish Navy ships - had been sent for safety to the British Isles (Operation Peking). There they fought alongside the Royal Navy. At various stages of the war, the Polish Navy comprised two cruisers and a large number of smaller ships. The Polish navy was given a number of British ships and submarines which would otherwise have been unused due to the lack of trained British crews. The Polish Navy fought with great distinction alongside the other Allied navies in many important and successful operations, including those conducted against the German battleship, Bismarck.[31] During the war the Polish Navy, which comprised a total of 27 ships (2 cruisers, 9 destroyers, 5 submarines and 11 torpedo boats, sailed a total of 1.2 million nautical miles, escorted 787 convoys, conducted 1,162 patrols and combat operations, sank 12 enemy ships (including 5 submarines) and 41 merchant vessels, damaged 24 more (including 8 submarines) and shot down 20 aircraft. 450 seamen out of the over 4,000 who served with the Navy lost their lives in action.[32][33]
This does not include a number of minor ships, transports, merchant-marine auxiliary vessels, and patrol boats. Polish Merchant Navy contributed about 137 Gross Register Tonnages to Allied shipping; losing 18 ships (with capacity of 76 BRTs) and over 200 sailors during the war.[34]
Broadly speaking, there were two formations among the Polish Armed Forces in the East. First was the Polish government-in-exile-loyal Anders Army, created in the second half of 1941 after German invasion of the USSR. In 1943 this formation was transferred to the Western Allies and became known as the Polish II Corps. Additionally, remaining Polish forces in USSR were reorganized into the Soviet-controlled Polish I Corps in the Soviet Union, which in turn was reorganized in 1944 into the Polish First Army (Berling Army) and Polish Second Army, both part of Polish People's Army (Ludowe Wojsko Polskie, LWP). In 1944, following the takeover of Poland by Soviets from Nazi Germany, the Polish People's Army was reorganized into a Poland-based military formation.
In the aftermath of the Operation Barbarossa, Stalin agreed (Sikorski-Mayski Agreement) to release tens of thousands of Polish prisoners-of-war held in Soviet camps from whom a military force was formed. The Anders Army, as the formation became known, was loyal to the Polish government in exile, and as such its formation was obstructed by the Soviets. Eventually, with about 40 000 combatants and 70 000 civilians, it was transferred to the British command in the Middle East, becoming the Polish II Corps and part of the Polish Armed Forces in the West.
To utilize the potential of the remaining Polish soldiers in USSR, without actually allowing them to become independent from Soviet control, a fact which allowed Anders Army to leave USSR, the Soviet Union created a Union of Polish Patriots (ZPP) in 1943 as communist puppet counter-government[35][36] to the Polish government in exile. At the same time a parallel army (Polish People's Army or LWP) was created which, by the end of the war, numbered about 200,000 troops.[35] The Soviet created guerilla force called Armia Ludowa was integrated with the Polish People's Army at the end of the war. These Soviet controlled units on the Eastern Front included the First, the Second and the Third Polish Armies (the latter was later merged with the second), and Air Force of the Polish Army with 10 infantry divisions, 5 armored brigades and 4 divisions of air force.
The Polish First Army was integrated in the 1st Belorussian Front with which it entered Poland from Soviet territory in 1944. Ordered to hold position by the Soviet leadership, it did not advance towards Warsaw as Germans suppressed the Warsaw Uprising. It took part in battles for Bydgoszcz, Kolobrzeg (Kolberg), Gdańsk (Danzig) and Gdynia losing 20,000 people in the winter of 1944-45 battles.[35] In April–May 1945 the 1st Army fought in the final capture of Berlin. The Polish Second Army fought as part of the Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front and took part in the Prague Offensive. In the final operations of the war the losses of the two armies of the LWP amounted to 32,000. catie was X.
Major battles and campaigns in which Polish regular forces took part:
Polish engineers who escaped German occupied Poland contributed to weapon developments during the war. A Polish/Czech/British team brought the Polsten to fruition as a simpler and cheaper but as effective derivative of the 20 mm Oerlikon gun.
The Polish Home Army was probably the only World War II resistance movement to manufacture large quantities of weaponry and munitions. In addition to production of pre-war designs they developed and produced during the war the Błyskawica submachine gun, Bechowiec, KIS and Polski Sten machine pistols as well as the filipinka and sidolówka hand grenades. During the Warsaw Uprising Polish engineers built several armoured cars, such as the Kubuś, which also took part in the fighting. The KIS was designed and made in the Jan Piwnik's "Ponury" ("Grim") guerrilla unit that was operating in Holy Cross Mountains region. It was probably the only kind of modern firearm that could be manufactured in the forest without the need for sophisticated tools and factory equipment during the Second World War.
a ^ Numerous sources state that Polish Army was the Allies fourth biggest fighting contingent. Steven J. Zaloga and Richard Hook write that "by the war's end the Polish Army was the fourth largest contingent of the Allied coalition after the armed forces of the Soviet Union, the United States and the Great Britain."[41] Jerzy Jan Lerski writes "All in all, the Polish units, although divided and controlled by different political orientation, constituted the fourth largest Allied force, after the America, British and Soviet Armies."[42] M. K. Dziewanowski has noted that "if Polish forces fighting in the east and west were added to the resistance fighters, Poland had the fourth largest Allied army in the war (after the USSR, the U.S. and Britain)".[43]
Total size of Polish armies in the West and in the East has been estimated at 700,000 strong (approximately half a million in the West[43] and 200,000 in the East[35]).[44] Polish resistance numbered over 400,000.[9] With enrollment in the armies growing as the war progressed and numbers of resistance falling after Operation Tempest, the size of Polish armed contribution can be estimated, at its peak, as one million men.
The claim of the fourth biggest Ally need to be taken in perspective. When the war begun in September '39, Polish Army was the third largest, after French and British. After the fall of France in June 1940, de Gaulle's had only 3,000 strong contingent in Britain, growing to 7,000 by the end of the year,[45] Poland, 35,000, growing to 80,000 by the end of the year[46] (not counting a growing resistance, approaching tens of thousands by that point).[24] Thus for about a year, Poland could be seen as the 2nd biggest ally, after Britain. Since the fall of France, the French forces lagged behind the Polish. It was only after D-Day and liberation of French mainland that French forces swelled to 550,000, outnumbering the Polish Army in the West, but not the West, East and partisan forces combined.[47] With the entrance of Soviet Union into the war in June '41, Poland returned to being the third biggest Ally again, and with the entry of United States in December '41, the fourth. However, the Japanese involvement also marked the connection of the European and African theaters to Second Sino-Japanese War, and estimates cited above ignore the China, whose armies totaled about two million by the end of the war.[48] Till 1944, Polish forces also outnumbered the French. In 1942, French resistance numbered about 10,000,[45] and 1943, the Free French numbered about 70,000.[49] Thus counting China, from 1941, Poland was the 5th biggest ally.
b ^ Sources vary with regards to what was the largest resistance movement during World War II. The confusion often stems from the fact that as war progressed, some resistance movements grew larger - and other diminished. Polish territories were mostly freed from Nazi German control in the years 1944-1945, eliminating the need for their respective (anti-Nazi) partisan forces (in Poland (although the cursed soldiers continued to fight against the Soviets). Several sources note that Polish Armia Krajowa was the largest resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe. For example, Norman Davies wrote "Armia Krajowa (Home Army), the AK, which could fairly claim to be the largest of European resistance";[50] Gregor Dallas wrote "Home Army (Armia Krajowa or AK) in late 1943 numbered around 400000, making it the largest resistance organization in Europe";[51] Mark Wyman wrote "Armia Krajowa was considered the largest underground resistance unit in wartime Europe".[52] Certainly, Polish resistance was the largest resistance till German invasion of Yugoslavia and invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. After that point, the numbers of Soviet partisans and Yugoslav partisans begun growing rapidly. The numbers of Soviet partisans quickly caught up and were very similar to that of the Polish resistance.[53][54] The numbers of Tito's Yugoslav partisans were roughly similar to those of the Polish and Soviet partisans in the first years of the war (1941–1942), but grew rapidly in the latter years, outnumbering the Polish and Soviet partisans by 2:1 or more (estimates give Yugoslavian forces about 800,000 in 1945, to Polish and Soviet forces of 400,000 in 1944).[54][55]