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The Polish Resistance Movement in Second World 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.
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