|
Poland Resistance at Home and Abroad
Poland was the only country to combat Germany from the
first
day of the Polish invasion until the end of the war in
Europe.
After the disaster of September 1939, a constitutionally
legitimate Polish government-in-exile established a seat
in
London under the direction of General Wladyslaw Sikorski.
In the
early years of the war, Stalin maintained a strained
cooperation
with the Polish government-in-exile while continuing to
demand
retention of the eastern Polish territories secured by the
Hitler-Stalin pact and assurances that postwar Poland
would be
"friendly" toward the Soviet Union.
Shortly after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the
Kremlin
sought to organize Polish forces to aid in repelling the
Nazis on
the Eastern Front. Although 75,000 Polish troops were
amassed on
Soviet soil from Soviet camps, they never were deployed on
the
Soviet front because of disagreements about their
utilization.
Instead, the forces under the command of the "London
Poles"
fought with great distinction in the British Eighth Army
in North
Africa and Italy. The armored Polish I Corps played an
important
role in the Normandy invasion. Although some Polish units
fought
with the Red Army on the Eastern Front in the early years
of the
war, by 1943 Stalin had broken relations with the Sikorski
government and the Soviet Union formed a rival front
group, the
Union of Polish Patriots, led by Polish communists in the
Soviet
Union. That group formed an entire field army that aided
the Red
Army in the last year of the war.
Polish intelligence personnel also made a major
contribution
to the Allied side. In the 1930s, Polish agents had
secured
information on the top-secret German code machine, Enigma,
and in
the war émigré Polish experts aided the British in using
this
information to intercept Hitler's orders to German
military
leaders.
In Poland itself, most elements of resistance to the
German
regime organized under the banner of the Home Army (Armia
Krajowa), which operated under direction of the London
government-in-exile. The Home Army became one of the
largest and
most effective underground movements of World War II.
Commanding
broad popular support, it functioned both as a guerrilla
force,
conducting a vigorous campaign of sabotage and
intelligence
gathering, and as a means of social defense against the
invaders.
The Home Army became the backbone of a veritable
underground
state, a clandestine network of genuine Polish
institutions and
cultural activities. By 1944 the Home Army claimed 400,000
members. Acting independently of the overall Polish
resistance,
an underground Jewish network organized the courageous but
unsuccessful 1943 risings in the ghettos of Warsaw,
Bialystok,
and Vilnius.
Data as of October 1992
|
