Blackwell, James W. (2010) The Polish Home Army and the struggle for the Lublin region. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1540/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] By James Blackwell Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of PhD Department of Central and East European Studies Faculty of Law, Business and Social Studies Glasgow University The Polish Home Army and the struggle for the Lublin Region - 1943–1945 1 Abstract Between 1939 and 1944 the underground forces of the Polish Government-in-Exile created an underground army in the Lublin region, which, at its height, numbered 60,000 men. The underground Army was created in order to facilitate the reestablishment of an independent Poland. The Army that was created, the AK, was in effect, an alliance organisation comprising, to varying degrees, members of all pro-independence underground groups. It was, in Lublin, to always suffer from internal stresses and strains, which were exaggerated by the actions of the region’s occupiers. These strains were highlighted and exploited by the ‘liberating’ Red Army. From the moment that they set foot in the province in July 1944, the forces of the Soviet Union aimed to put into place a Polish regime that was compliant and communist. The most interesting fact about the operation mounted by the AK to liberate Lublin province from the Germans, lies in the regional command’s reaction to both their orders and the demands made of them by the incoming Soviets. The regional commander’s decision in July 1944 to order his forces to hand in their weapons and disperse meant that the human stock of the underground would remain, that it would survive the first wave of NKVD arrests. This meant that, despite the massive setback of the post liberation era, a core, armed, and well structured underground still existed. What destroyed this attempt to preserve the AK in Lublin was the halting of the eastern front for five months. This meant that 2.2 million Soviets were operating in and around Lublin whilst the AK central command was fighting to liberate Warsaw. The halting of the front, therefore, was to hasten the fate of those in the underground, both in the capital and to the east. Ultimately it was the mass repression in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising that fatally weakened the Lublin underground as an organised, coherent entity. In many senses the crucial period for the AK in Lublin was the one from July until November 1944. The alliance of the underground in the area had been an often-difficult one but after months of silence from London, and the failure of the Warsaw Uprising and the Moscow talks, this alliance began to collapse. Whilst the framework of the underground had been almost destroyed by the winter of 1944- 1945, crucially a framework of resistance had survived the NKVD’s concerted attempts to destroy it totally. The importance of this framework was clearly shown after the Red Army restarted its attack at the heart of the Third Reich in January 1945, removing the vast majority of troops from the region. The second underground was much more disjointed in its nature with weaker command structures. Yet because a framework was in place, because some respected officers and their men had survived the winter of 1944-45, the underground was to remain more organised in Lublin than in most other areas of Poland. Whilst the anti-communist underground was ultimately defeated, in Lublin it was to remain a sizeable threat to the communist regime until 1947. 2 Table of contents Introduction – Page number Abstract 2 4 List of Maps/Tables/Charts 5 Glossary of terms 7-19 The existing Historiography Creating an underground 20-53 state, September 1939-March 1944 Chapter 1 54-88 Preparing for the Soviets: The last months of the German occupation of Lubelszczyzna, March-July 1944 Chapter 2 89-122 Operation Tempest, July- August 1944 Chapter 3 123-159 Lubelszczyzna during the Warsaw Uprising, August- October 1944 Chapter 4 160-199 Where do we go from here? The complex aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising, October- December 1944 Chapter 5 200-224 AK/DSZ: continued resistance to Communist rule, January- May 1945 Chapter 6 225-246 Conclusions, June 1945- December 1947 Annex 247-264 Bibliography 265-270 3 List of Maps Page number Lublin region AK 28 Chełm Inspectorate 94 Lublin Inspectorate 96 Puławy Inspectorate 101 Zamość Inspectorate 103 Biała Podlaska 107 List of tables n/a Development of partisan units in 41 Lublin Partisan units in Puławy 64 inspectorate Partisan Operations undertaken 84-85 before “Tempest” Arrests by Communist authorities 189 List of charts n/a Structure of AK command by 1944 25 Structure of Lublin AK command 27 by 1944 Structure of BCh command in 32 Lublin Polish GHQ and the AK radio 59 network Command structure of the 3rd 94 Infantry during “Tempest” 4 Polish military and civilian administrative units: * As there is often no exact match between British and Polish administrative units, the following translations have been made with this in mind and should be taken as approximations. For example both gmina and rejon can be translated as district, however obwód seemed to better describe to an English-speaker the unit of a district. Województwo – region, province Powiat – County Obwód – The literal translation in Polish is perimeter however in this thesis obwód has been translated to the English district Gmina – The literal translation in Polish is community however in this thesis gmina has been translated to the English Parish Rejon – This can be translated as area, district or beat. In this thesis, rejon is used to describe the smallest level of AK administration, and thus is translated as post or outpost. 5 Select glossary of terms used in this thesis Acronym English name Polish name AK Home Army Armia Krajowa AL People’s Army Armia Ludowa BCh Peasant Battalions Bataliony Chłopskie BiP Bureau of Information and Biuro Informacji i Propaganda propaganda “Kedyw” Special Operations Directorate Kierownictwo Dywersji MO Citizen’s Militia Milicja Obywatelska NOW National Military Organisation Narodowa Organizacja Wojskowa NSZ National Armed Forces Narodowe Siły Zbrojne PKWN Polish Committee of National Polski Komitet Liberation Wyzwolenia Narodowego PPR Polish Socialist Party Polska Partia Robotnicza RBP Department of Public Security Resort Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego RJN Council of National Unity Rada Jedności Narodowej SL Peasant Party Stronnictwo Ludowe SP Labour Party Stronnictwo Pracy SZP The Polish Victory Service Służba Zwycięstwu Polski TRJN Provisional Government of Tymczasowy Rząd National unity Jednosci Narodowej UB Security Office Urząd Bezpieczeństwa WP Polish Army Wojsko Polskie WW Internal Army Wojska Wewnętrzne ZWZ Union of Armed Combat Związek Walki Zbrojnej 6 The existing Historiography The topic of this thesis, namely the study of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa or AK) in the Lublin region (Lubelszczyzna) during the Second World War is one that has been long overdue. The English language histories of Poland are still relatively few in number even though the Second World War in Poland is one of the most heavily researched topics of modern central European history. Existing histories in the main focus on two elements of the wartime experience of Poland. In English there is quite rightly no dearth of material on the Holocaust. Whilst the other area of research into Poland’s wartime experience has focused primarily on Warsaw and in particular in the efforts made by the AK during the ultimately fruitless Warsaw Uprising of 1944. These two events, the Holocaust and the Warsaw Uprising, were perhaps the two most emblematic and horrific events in Poland’s war. They are symbols of the horrific nature of the rule of the General-Government, the occupying administration established by the Nazis, and the horrors of the Nazi occupation, yet they are not the full story. As with the story of the Second World War in general, until relatively recently and the fall of the Iron Curtain, the war was often represented as a war between the good of the west (the democratic Anglo-Saxon powers) and the evil of Nazism. Both the Holocaust and the Warsaw Uprising were symbols of the evil of Nazi power, and so both have been traditionally given far more coverage in the west than other aspects of Poland’s war. To many casual observers and even to many students of history in the west, the story of Poland during the Second World War is one of concentration camps and the failure in Warsaw. This is partly due to the relative lack of interest in the experience of Poland, as compared to Russia or the Soviet Union, with the result that for much of the post-war period English language historiography has been led in both Britain and America by Polish émigrés. There is no shortage of post war Soviet accounts of the war in Poland, or rather as their war passed through Poland. These all put forward a very similar, dialectically correct, version of the war. Marshalls Zhukov, The 7 Memoirs of Marshall Zhukov (London 1969), Konev, The Fall of Berlin (MacGibbon 1967), Chuikov and Rokossovskii, A Soldiers Duty (Moscow 1970), all recorded their accounts of the battle through Poland within thirty years of the war ending, and all were predictably dismissive or scathing about the Warsaw Uprising and the AK in general.