Bridgewater Review

Volume 4 | Issue 1 Article 6

Apr-1986 The oliP sh Resistance Movement in Second World War Chester M. Nowak Bridgewater State College

Recommended Citation Nowak, Chester M. (1986). The oP lish Resistance Movement in Second World War. Bridgewater Review, 4(1), 4-7. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol4/iss1/6

This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The Polish Resistance Movem.ent in the Second World War

Chester M. Nowak

he European Resistance Movement duals formed clandestine groups which ing German property. Individually these T provides us with one of the more shaped their own goals and activities. It is activities may have seemed unimportant, engaging and captivating stories of the here within the nature and the dynamics of but in their totality they had a positive Second World War, and the Polish Resis­ these early secret organizations that we find impact upon the Poles and made the Ger­ tance Movement has a central place in that the source of the variety and complexity of mans feel unwelcomed and insecure. story. Yet, the history and the struggles of both the resistance organizations and their Political parties of all persuasions also the Polish Resistance are not well known. clandestine activities. In Poland this spon­ went underground. They published their Few people are aware, therefore, of the taneous aspect ofresistance in its scope and own presses and journals and formed their Polish Underground's reports about the intensity soon reached the level ofa revolu­ own military detachments. By the end of German extermination of Jews and about tionary mass movement that was unique to 1939, at the very beginning of the German German preparations for the invasion of Poland. Hence, writers and artists organ­ and Soviet occupation, there were approxi­ the Soviet Union; the penetration of the ized to carryon literary and artistic activi­ mately 140such secret groups and organiza­ German rocket center at Peenemunde by ties forbidden by the occupying authori­ tions. This spontaneous process continued Polish agents, or the fact that Poles deliv­ ties. Actors performed forbidden plays and throughout the war, and as one group was ered into Allied hands the plans and actual musicians played forbidden music in pri­ liquidated another took its place. We must parts of German V-2 rocket engines. Even vate and in public concerts. Writers pro­ remember that all of this occurred under many professional historians remain unfam­ duced hundreds of books which were pub­ the most difficult and strenuous conditions iliar with such facts. No study of European lished, printed, and distributed by the of clandestine operations, and under the resistance during the Second World War underground. Journalists too published in watchful eyes of a cruel occupier who had which does not include the resistance in the underground press, and during the at his disposal the mobilized machine of a Poland can be considered complete. As years 1939-1945 there were more than totalitarian state. All of these activities Colonel Harold B. Perkins of the British 2,000 underground papers and periodicals were, ofcourse, Verboten and punishable by SOE pointed out, the Resistance in Poland published in German occupied Poland; a trip to a concentration camp -- or death. was"...the largest and best organization in some ofthem were published continuously The growth and the diversification of Europe" (Nowak, CourieT From Warsaw, p. through the war in large editions. Polish such spontaneous activities and organiza­ 236). But at the time few people knew educators ran a whole system of secret tions made unification an important early much about it. secondary schools based on a prewar curric­ objective of the movement. This unifica­ After their defeat by the German Army, ulum which the Germans considered too tion was to be achieved by the command and the subsequent occupation of Poland elitist for a "sub-human" species such as aspect of the resistance, which brought by the might of the German Reich and that the Poles. In Warsaw alone there were two order into the chaos of spontaneity by ofthe Soviet Union, the Poles responded in secret universities and one polytechnic insti­ providing the movement with the struc­ a most natural way. The whole ofthe Polish tute continuing their educational functions tural means for the unification of its ac­ society went underground, and within this under the German noses. tions, organization, and plans. What we are clandestine realm they created a Secret Since the majority of the officers of the witnessing here is a healthy reaction of a State which took control of the resistance prewar Polish Army were either in German society in a state of war responding to the against the occupying powers. and Russian prisons or abroad, there was a conditions of foreign occupation that The genesis of this Resistance followed shortage oftrained military personnel, and called for a total mobilization and total the usual patterns of spontaneity and the underground had to train most of its resistance. Interestingly, many historians of command. In a society whose state institu­ own cadres. Consequently, all through the the Resistance Movement seem to have tions are destroyed by a violent act of war war there were numerous officers' candi­ missed this point and the obvious fact that and occupation, any resistance must initial­ date schools, non-commissioned officers' the major objective ofthe Resistance was to ly be a spontaneous one. Under such schools, and other military schools training resist, and to resist by all the means at its circumstances, groups of individuals tied the military cadre for the clandestine army. disposal. Thus in Poland, resistance in­ by some previous common bonds -- be they Even the scouts got involved, and from the cluded the whole of society which reacted prewar membership in social, fraternal, or very beginning performed "little sabotage," spontaneously in a variety of ways to a political organizations, or more recent war­ which included such activities as writing common danger. It was a society which was time experiences -- such aggregates ofindivi- anti-German slogans on walls and destroy- directed by a set of common values and

4 rules strongly entrenched by a long tradi­ Smigly, the Commander-in-Chief of the 40,000 men of the Peasant Battalions (Ba tion ofnational resistance. These tradition­ Polish Army, appointed General Michael tationy Chtopskie, B.Ch.) of the Polish al values and rules were in turn reinforced Tokarzewski to organize the underground Peasant Party (Potskie Stronnictwo Ludowe by the underground courts and the legiti­ resistance in both parts ofoccupied Poland. PSL). Another 40,000 troops of the Peas­ mate structures of the Underground State. Colonel Stefan Rowecki became his Chief­ ant Battalions joined the Home Army in In the Polish case, the source for the of-Staff. Later, Rowecki was to be the first the spring of 1944. Simultaneousiy the legitimacy of the Underground State was commander of the unified underground majority ofthe 70,000 nationalist troops of the fact that both the Resistance and the army, which by 1942 was known as the the National Democratic Party also joined Polish Government abroad were recog­ Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK). the Home Army. But some detachments nized by the majority of the Poles as the The first of the underground military belonging to the Radical Faction of the bona fide legal extension of the prewar units formed was named the Service for the Nationalist Party would not place them­ Polish State. Because there was no question Victory of Poland (Stuzba Zwyciestwu selves under the unified command of the oflegitimacy, the differing political orienta­ Potsce, SZP). But it was Tokarzewski's Un­ Home Army. The Polish Workers' Party tions of most resistance groups did not ion for Armed Struggle (Zwiazek Watki (Potska Partia Robotnicza, PPR -- the war­ hinder the process of unification. Conse­ Zbrojnej, ZWZ), organized in November of time name of the Polish Communist Party, quently, by 1944 the resistance movement 1939, which became the vehicle for the which earlier in 1938 was dissolved by the in Poland was successful in unifying most unification and centralization of the under­ Comintern) with its Peoples' Army (Armia of its military units under a single com­ ground detachments. And in February of Ludowa, AL) also stayed outside the Secret mand and in consolidating most of its 1942, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the State. In addition, the detachments of the political activities under the central authori­ Prime Minister of the Polish Government Polish Peoples' Army (Potska Armia Lu­ ty of the Secret State. in London, and the Commander-in-Chief dowa, PAL), which was under the control Politically, the process of unification and of the Polish Army abroad, renamed the of a radical left-wing socialist faction, also centralization had begun in February of ZWZ the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, refused to unite with the rest of the Resis­ 1940 with the formation of a Political AK). By that time the ZWZ had about tance. Although the Communists and the Coordinating Committee (Polityczny Komi­ 100,000 men, who by 1943 were joined by Radical Socialists were neither politically tet Porozumiewawczy, PKP). By 1944 the nor militarily powerful, they were sup­ PKP had unified most of the political WARSAW UPRISING ported by the Soviet Union. The Polish groups, with the exception of the Commu­ Socialist Party (Potska Partia Sociatistyczna, nists and a small radical faction of the PPS) and their military units, however, National Democrats who refused to join were an integral part of the centralized the unified resistance organization. Thus, Resistance. the formation of the PKP in 1940 was the By the spring of 1944 the Home Army real beginning of the Polish Underground (AK) had about 350,000 men who for a State. It was headed by a Delegate, who by clandestine army were not badly trained. 1944 held the rank of a Deputy-Premier But they were poorly armed. The Poles had within the Polish Government of National access only to arms they were able to hide Unity in London. The first ofthe Delegates after the 1939 campaign and those cap­ was the prewar Speaker of the Polish tured from the Germans. The British Parliament, Cyryl Ratajski; and the last dropped some supplies through the war, Delegate, after Stanislaw Jankowski, was but they were helpful only in small sabotage Stephan Korbonski, who today resides in activities and were inadequate for arming Washington, D.C. such a large number of men. It seems that It must be understood, however, that the military potential of the Polish Home under clandestine conditions, this process Army was never understood by the Allies. of unification and centralization was a In fact, in early 1944 at a meeting in gradual one. But in the end, in Poland the Washington held between the American resistance movement became the most uni­ authorities and the then Prime Minister of fied and tht> most centralized in Europe. It the Polish Government in London, Stani­ was the only resistance organization with all slaw Mikolajczyk, and the Chief of Opera­ the comprehensive infrastructure ofa legiti­ tions of the Home Army, General Stani­ mate state, ranging from civic and civil slaw Tatar, a final and irrevocable decision Territories held by Polish Insurgents institutions on both the central and local up to the evening of August 4. 1944. was made not to include the Polish Home levels, to a well organized military struc­ Army in Allied Operational Plans. By that Territories held by German forces as of ture. the evening of August 4. 1944. time the die was cast. Earlier, as a result of By the end of the September Campaign, Territories held by Polish Insurgents the Teheran Conference of 1943, it was just before the Polish Government left the from August 4-18. 1944. decided that Poland and Eastern Europe Polish territory during the days of Septem­ Territories lost by Polish Insurgents were to be left in the Soviet sphere of ber 17-18 of 1939, Marshal Eduard Rydz- between August 4-18. 1944. influence. Thus, at the 1944 meeting in

5 Polish Resistance continued

pie wrote to President Roosevelt denounc­ ing the Polish insurgents as a "group of criminals who have embarked on the War­ saw adventure in order to seize power... " (Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 130). The uprising was designed to last three days until the Red Army, already at the Warsaw suburbs, would enter the city. Instead the fighting lasted for sixty-three days, from August 1st to October 3rd. At Stalin's order the Red Army stopped its advance, and Warsaw and its people were sacrificed to the Germans. The halting of the Soviet Army was not based on military grounds, as is still claimed by Soviet his­ torians. Rather it was basically a political Platoon 227 B.S. of the Home Army (AK) in which the author served during the decision aimed at the destruction of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. (Note author designated by circle.) Polish Underground. Even later when the Red Army finally reached the other side of the Vistula River and gained control of the eastern suburbs of Warsaw, the Russians Washington the Americans were quite ada­ uprising, known by its cryptonym Burza extended only sporadic help which merely mant about not giving in to the Polish (Tempest). prolonged the agony, and did not insure demands for large scale military assistance The interim military objectives were de­ victory. Earlier, the Western Allies had for the Home Army. Once more, as in voted to self-defense, sabotage, and intelli­ reluctantly flown-in limited supplies in 1939, the Poles were abandoned by their gence work. The self-defense operations of planes manned by Polish pilots and Allied allies and left to face formidable obstacles the Underground were responsible for the volunteers, most of them from South Af­ alone. And there was no hope for help from liquidation of about 6,000 German func­ rica and New Zealand; but their losses were the Soviet Union either. By then the Sovi­ tionaries. The intelligence work of the extremely high. On September 18 the Rus­ ets had broken relations with the Polish Polish Underground was extensive and sians finally permitted the USAAF to fly a Government over the issue of the missing reached beyond the borders ofPoland; and large sortie, flown by the planes from the 10,000 Polish officers who earlier in 1940 its contributions to the war efforts were 390th Bomb Group. Most of the needed had been murdered by NKVD (the Soviet not small, but are not well known. supplies landed on German positions. Secret Police) in the Katyn Forest Massa­ The sabotage was carried out under the As a result of the sixty-three days of cre. Furthermore, the Russians viewed the Directorate for Sabotage (Kierownietwo fighting Warsaw was destroyed, and what non-communist Polish Underground as Dywersji, KeDyw), which up to June 1944 remained was burned and blown up by the their political and class enemy. And when alone was responsible for the destruction of Germans on a direct order of Adolph in 1944 the Red Army entered the former 1167 railroad petroleum cars, 6930 rail­ Hitler. In the end the Warsaw Insurgents Polish territories, which the Soviet consi­ road engines, 19,058 railroad cars, 4326 lost over 20,000 men killed and wounded; dered as their own since the Soviet-German cars and trucks, 600 telephone and electric 16,000 of the soldiers became POWs, Agreement of 1939, the Russians refused lines, and the blowing up of 443 trains and including the staff of the Home Army and to cooperate with the Home Army and 732 transports. These figures do not in­ its commander, General T. Bor-Komorow­ treated it as an enemy. Some members of clude the damage inflicted upon the Ger­ ski. About 5,000 of the troops escaped. the Home Army were executed, some man forces by the Partisan Units, the The losses among the civilian population of forced to join Polish units under the Soviet Tempest Operation, and the Warsaw Upris­ the city were equally high. Over 250,000 command, and some were sent to Siberia. ing. The sabotage actions cost the resistance civilians were dead. Fifty thousand were Yet, all that the Poles wanted was to be left forces 62,000 men killed; civilian losses are killed in mass executions, and sixty thou­ alone as masters of their own home, free to not included. sand were sent to German concentration govern themselves, and free to determine The best known and most dramatic camps. Half a million were shipped to labor their own destiny. episode of the Polish resistance was the camps in Germany, and another half mil­ During the war the main military objec­ Warsaw Uprising of 1944. It was aimed at lion were left homeless and were dispersed. tive of the Polish Home Army was to the liberation of the Polish capital so that The Germans lost 310 tanks and armored prepare itself for a general uprising at the the Poles could act in their own country as vehicles, 340 trucks and cars, 22 artillery final stages of the war, to be carried out hosts to the advancing Soviet armies. The pieces, three planes, and over 30,000 men behind the German lines in support of Russians and their communist allies, who killed. Allied and Soviet operations. Through the initially called for such an uprising, were to The rest of the Home Army outside of war all plans and training of the Home condemn it as an adventurous act hostile to Warsaw continued to fight under the plans Army were directed toward this general the Soviet Union. Marshal Stalin for exam- of Operation Tempest, but by then they

6 ...in Poland the resistance movement knew that their cause was lost. Now, they became the most his reference to Poland as a country which fought only for posterity. By February of centralized in Europe. was "a source of trouble for over five 1945, after the Russians had overrun most hundred years..." (Churchill, Triumph and of Poland, the Underground Army was It was the only Tragedy, p. 372). And Winston Churchill officiaHy dissolved, but many continued to had similar views of Poland as a country fight. Many ofthe Home Army troops were resistance organization which was "Glorious in revolt and ruin; disarmed by the Russians and shipped to with all the squalid and shameful in triumph. The Siberia. And in March of 1945 the leaders bravest of the brave, too often led by the ofthe Polish Secret State were arrested and comprehensive vilest ofthe vile! And yet there were always taken to Moscow, where in June of 1945 infrastructure two Polands; one struggling to proclaim the they were put on trial before a Soviet court of truth and the ether grovelling in villainy" and condemned to Russian prisons. Back at a legitimate state... (Churchill, The Gathering Storm, p. 323). home former members of the Under­ Now, if this was true of Poland, would not ground -- over a million of them -- were such a description fit everybody else? shipped to Soviet concentration camps of No wonder that with such attitudes at the infamous Gulag Archipelago. Most of Teheran and Yalta both Roosevelt and them never returned home. Churchill so easily condemned Poland and The Second World War cost the Poles a book in the American Historical Review, the whole of Eastern Europe to a new great deal in human and material sacrifices. and the ensuing correspondence, reveals tyranny and slavery. But were their actions Most ofthe country was destroyed, and as a how little American historians seem to right, and were they just? These are the result of the German and Soviet policies of know about the matter. Of course, Ameri­ questions that have puzzled many ever extermination the Polish losses were enor­ can unfamiliarity with everything Polish or since. And on that subject General Bor­ mous. Over twenty percent of the popula­ East European is well known by now, and it Komorowski was to write after the war: tion was killed. Two and a half million is best represented by the "joy-fool" accep­ "To conduct world peace at the expense of Polish Jews alone were killed by the Ger­ tance of the wartime German propaganda injustice and wrong done to small nations is mans in the ovens of Auschwitz and other about the Polish cavalry charging German a dangerous experiment. It can only result places ofexecution. It must be remembered tanks. This story, by the way, is still being in acute political tensions and a perpetual that Poland became the most decimated repeated in the American press and in smouldering ofgrievances -- a most precar­ country in Europe, and these losses were American schoolrooms today! The answer ious state of international affairs, so clearly inflicted upon Poland by both the Germans to the question why such stories are so demonstrated by our present times" and the Russians. easily accepted by some might provide us (Komorowski, The Secret Army, p. 396). After the war the Russians and their with food for thought, and might also ideological foHowers attempted to deny the provide us with some insights into the very existence of a viable Resistance in American psyche. After all, attitudes like Poland. For the last forty years they have this seem to have a long and continuous tried to denigrate the memories of the history in America. And after the war -- just Polish Underground State, and to defame as before -- Poland and the Poles were the wartime sacrifices ofthe Polish people. seldom presented in a positive light, be it in They claim now that the country without a American press, literature, or films. The Quisling was a country of Quislings; that Poles were usually presented -- if not as the Poles, who fought the Germans with outright stupid -- at least as dull, slovenly, such a fanatic persistence, fought them the and untrustworthy. Such negative stereo­ least. This kind ofpropaganda was not well types serve to dehumanize people. That is received by the Polish people, and in fact it how the Nazis arrived at their ideas of had a reverse effect. The Poles took it as an subhuman races. Once these racist teach­ insult and as a denial of their wartime ings were accepted it was easier for Ger­ sacrifices, freely placed upon the collective mans to accept as morally acceptable all altar of human freedom. Today in Poland atrocities against such "subhuman" groups C. M. Nowak is Professor, Department of the interest in the heroic deeds of the as the Jews and the Poles. History. He was educated in Poland, Germany, wartime Resistance is greater than ever Stereotypes like these were also common Italy, England, Canada, and the United States before. during the war, even in some surprising and received his doctorate in Slavic History from However, forty years of propaganda can quarters. During the war leading western Boston University. Professor Nowak is the author of Czechoslovak-Polish Relations, 1918­ leave its marks, and we can even see it in politicians loved to refer to Poland as the 1939 (Stanford, '976). During World War II, such supposedly scholarly works as those "Inspiration ofNations" and as "a country he was a member of The Polish Resistance of the young sociologist Jan Gross, and in without a Quisling." However, their true Movement. Professor Nowak fought in the War­ the vitriolic anti-Polish work ofamateurish feelings were quite different. President saw Uprising of '944 within the ranks ofArmia historians like Shmuel Krakowski. Further­ Roosevelt, for example, never was an ad­ Krajowa. more, the 1985 review of Krakowski's mirer ofthe Poles. This is best illustrated by

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