Part 12

World War II

The German onslaught on Poland on September 1, 1939, started the Second World War. On September 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany. On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded Poland.

Confronted with the enormous military might of the enemies and having no assistance from France and Britain, which were unprepared for war, Poland was forced to suffer a military defeat. The struggle ended at the beginning of October. Under the German-Soviet Treaty of September 28, 1939, dividing Poland into two partition areas, the Rivers Pisa, Narew and Bug became the borderline between the occupying powers.

Poland was under occupation by two cruel and totalitarian states. The Soviet Union snatched 50% of Poland's territory, inhabited by 14.3 million people, including 6.5 million Poles. During eighteen months of occupation the most active individuals from all walks and domains of life were murdered. Hundreds of thousands of people were arrested and sent to Soviet concentration camps. Together with members of their families, upwards of 1.5 million Poles were imprisoned in the Gulag system. Most of them died of exhaustion and famine. In the spring of 1940, 15.000 Polish officers, who had been taken prisoners of war, were murdered at Katyn, Kharkov and Miednoie. Among them were commissioned officers and doctors, scientists, lawyers, engineers, chaplains and teachers called up for service at the outbreak of war.
 

[To purchase an English language DVD documentary about the Katyn Massacre click here]

The fate of Polish citizens under the German occupation was no less horrible. The aim of the Germans was to turn Poles into unskilled laborers. High schools and universities were closed. The treasures of Polish culture were plundered and taken away to Germany. Mass arrests and executions went on unabated throughout the occupation period. Roundups were organized in towns and hostages from among the innocent population were taken. A network of concentration camps in which slave labor force was inhumanely exploited was established. Hundreds of thousands of people were murdered there or died of hunger, disease or exhaustion. Some three million Polish Jews perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Majdanek and Treblinka death camps. Poles and citizens of other countries occupied by the Nazis also died there.

The defeat suffered in September 1939 did not stop the Polish resistance. A Polish Government-in-Exile was formed. It was recognized by the states of the anti-Nazi coalition. Wladyslaw Sikorski became the Prime Minister. The exile government first operated in Paris, France, but after the inevitable fall of that nation to the Germans, the Government-in-Exile moved to the United Kingdom, where it continued to exist throughout the war and until the fall of communism in Poland.

Thousands of Polish soldiers escaped to the United Kingdom, where they joined the Allied Forces in the ongoing struggle against the Axis Powers.

The Home Army [Armia Krajowa] was formed in Poland. Operating underground, it used the weapons of subversion, intelligence and propaganda, preparing for an uprising. At its peak the Home Army numbered some 250,000 soldiers. General Stefan Rowecki-Grot was the commander-in-chief of the Home Army until the time of his arrest on June 30, 1943. He was replaced by General Tadeusz Komorowski-Bor.

In December 1940, the Government Delegation in the Homeland, led by the Deputy Prime Minister of the Government-in-Exile, was set up to operate clandestinely. Despite terror and arrests, the Polish underground state functioned throughout the whole period of the occupation. It was preparing for assuming power after the liberation.

As high schools and universities were closed, it was necessary to develop clandestine forms of schooling. There were also hundreds. of underground newspapers and printing houses. As early as 1940 the Government-in-Exile established the Polish Armed Forces in the West. Polish fighter pilots made a great contribution to the victory in the Battle of Britain.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union (June 1941) and following a Polish-Soviet agreement, General Wladyslaw Anders formed a Polish Army in the USSR. In the spring and summer of 1942, with Stalin's grudging permission, that army was evacuated to Iran. During the liberation of Italy, Anders' army won fame for storming the Monte Casino Monastery (May 1944).

Upon the counter-offensive by the Red Army, the Soviet attitude toward Poland was altered. However, when in April 1943 the Germans found the graves of Polish officers at Katyn and the Polish Government-in-Exile asked the International Red Cross to look into the case, the USSR severed diplomatic relations with the Polish government. Polish communists in the Soviet Union set up the Union of Polish Patriots. The formation of a Polish division under the command of General Zygmunt Berling began.

The year 1943 was particularly tragic for the Polish cause. Gen. Sikorski was killed in an air crash and the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Army, Gen. Grot-Rowecki, was arrested in Poland. An uprising broke out in the Warsaw Ghetto, but was crushed by the Nazis despite courageous efforts on the part of the Jews and attempts at assistance by Christian Poles.

In January, 1944, the advancing Soviet troops entered Poland's prewar territory, treating those lands as Soviet property. Military cooperation with local Home Army units lasted until the Germans were defeated. Upon victory, Polish units were taken prisoners, very often by deceit, and transported to the Gulag camps and Siberia. After Soviet troops crossed the Bug River, the USSR set up the Polish National Liberation Committee, entirely dependent on the Soviets.

Polish society remained consistent in supporting the institutions of its underground state, the Warsaw Uprising being the final attempt to win full independence for Poland. The Warsaw Uprising, which must be differentiated from the Ghetto Uprising, broke out on August l, 1944, and lasted until October 2. The losses of the insurgents amounted to some 17,000 killed and 6,000 wounded, with about 180,000 civilians dead. After the uprising, the entire population, nearly one million people, was expelled from the city. The Germans started destroying what was left of Warsaw.

During the uprising and later, during the destruction of Warsaw, the Red Army took no action. Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, leading the government in exile, had made attempts at reaching an agreement with the Soviet government. In the way, however, stood Moscow's demands to recognize the Curzon Line as a frontier and the Polish National Liberation Committee was transformed into a Provisional Government of the Polish Republic, recognized by the Soviet Union.

In January 1945, Soviet troops crossed the Vistula and took shattered Warsaw. In March 1945, the Soviet authorities proposed talks with the leadership of the Polish underground. When the talks became reality, sixteen Polish leaders, including the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Army, General Leopold Okulicki, and the Delegate for the Homeland, Jan Jankowski, were treacherously imprisoned.

Poland's destiny was resolved by the three major powers without the participation of the Poles at the Yalta Conference, held February 4-11, 1945. It was decided there to establish a Provisional Government of National Unity, made up of members of the pro-Soviet government and émigré politicians. That government was to hold free elections. Stanislaw Mikolajczyk made a compromise and entered the Government of National Unity as a Deputy Prime Minister. The Government-in- Exile, led by Prime Minister Tomasz Arciszewski, opposed the dictate. In response, Britain and the United States withdrew their support and diplomatic recognition. Yet that government continued, persisting as the symbol of the struggle for sovereignty.

When the German Reich fell on May 8 or 9, 1945, and the most bloody of wars was thus ending, Poland was theoretically in the group of the victorious allies. Polish soldiers had been fighting the Germans from the first to the last day of the war. Among all nations, however, Poland lost the highest percentage of her citizens, who fell in the struggle or were murdered as a result of the occupiers' policy of terror--a total of 6.5 million people, including almost all the Jewish Poles. The capital city was annihilated, material and cultural losses were tremendous. In addition, Poland emerged from the war with a government imposed from the outside and composed of people whom the nation did not trust. They were planning to introduce changes by force--changes the Polish people did not want.