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L- 1 VOL. 7 International Bank for Reconstruction-ana Development Public Disclosure Authorized 'A A' 00 Preliminary Paper No. 7 FILECOPY for the rking Party on the Polish Loan Application Public Disclosure Authorized Transport in Poland Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Issued by: Eastern European Division Loan Department May 30, 1947 Acknowledgment The study which follows vwasprepared by the Division of Operational Analysis, IJNRRA Mission, Warsaw, in collaborationwith the Division of Industrial Rehabilitationof the Mission and various agencies of the Polish Government. The report, based upon a paper on the same subject originally issued by the European Regional Office of UNRRA in London, is presented here because it is believed to give the most impartial and complete account of Polish transport currently available. CONTENTS Page I. Introduction. 1 II. Inland Transport. 7 Railway Transport. 7 Devastation . 8 Permanent Way . 9 Rolling Stock . 114 Repair Shops. .. 17 Standard Gauge. 19 Narrow Gauge. 24 Former Private Rolling Stock Repair Shops. 26 Road Transport . 31 Road Network. .. 31 Repair and Maintenance Equipment. 33 Horse-dravw-Vehicles. 36 Motor Vehicles. 37 Inland Waterways . 42 III. Overseas Transport . 45 General. 45 Ports. 46 Gdansk (Danzig) . 46 Gdynia. 48 Szczecin (Stettin). , . 49 Merchant Navy. 50 IV. Civil Aviation. 52 V. UNRRA Assistance . .5. .. 541.. Road Transport . 56 Road Building. 61 Advisory Services. 61 Railways . 62 Water Transport. 63 Indirect Assistance. 64 VI. Four Year Plan. 65 Railways.. 66 Road Transport. .. 69 Inland Waterways . 70 Ports. .. 73 Appendix I. Required Imports of Equipment for Rehabilitation of Transport in Poland .78 a. Rail Transport . 78 b. Road Maintenance . 80 c. Air Transport. 81 d. Inland Waterways . 82 e. Ports and Shipping . 83 I. INTRODUCTION In order to understand the problems and achievementsof transport rehabilitationin Poland it is necessary to understand the nature of the economy. Before the war Poland was a country partly agriculturaland partly industrial. About 60 percent of her population was in agriculture, pursued a peasant system of small-scale farming, and produced only about two-fifths of the total national income. Her industry which produced, together with trade and transport, the remaining three-fifthsof the national income was mainly centered on the coal, iron and steel and lumber industries and was characterizedby its emphasis on heavy raw materials and coal, much of which was exported by land and sea. There were, therefore, two almost quite separate trans- port systems. One was the industrial which used mainly railways and inland waterways, while the other was the agriculturalwhich relied almost exclusively on the horse. Because of the heavy products motor transportwas economicallyunsuited to handle Polish industrial traffic and, because of the peasants' need for dual purpose tractive power (for cultivationand transport) it was unsuitable for use by the agricultural population. There- fore one of the outstanding features of Polish transport was the almost complete absence of motor vehicles. Any study of transport problems in Poland should commence with a survey of prewar conditions,wartime destruction, postwar territorial and organizationalchanges, and postwar rehabilitat- ion in Polish agriculture and in Polish industry. These are, -2- however, dealt with with in detail elsewhere and in the following introductorypages it will suffice to mention only the most important facts. In prewar days Poland had a well-developedrailway system, its length of line of more than 20 thousand kilometers exceeding that of all other European countries except U.S.S.R., Germany, France and U. K. The great bulk of freight and passenger traffic, amounting to 228 million passengers and 78 million tons of goods, wrascarried by this means of transportation. The extensive net- work of inland waterwrayslent itself to commercial navigation and considerable traffic was moved over the rivers and canals. There were more than six thousand kilometers of navigable rivers. In 1938, 991 thousand passengers, 742 thousand tons of goods, 29 thousand head of live animals, and more than one million cubic meters of timber were transported by inland waterways. Since Poland had only one seaport of her own and access to one other, the Free City of Gdansk (Danzig),it followed that her merchant marine fleet would be small. In 1938, she had a river fleet of only 2,794 vessels in Poland and 490 in Gdansk. The maritime fleet amounted to 59 vessels in Poland and 24 in Gdansk, totalling only 110 thousand gross registered tons. Poland had one of the smallest fleets of motor vehicles in all Europe, having less than 42 thousand vehicles of which less than nine thousand were for commercial goods transport. About 25 thousand were passenger cars, two thousand were motor buses, 1/ See Operational Analysis Papers No. Agriculture and Food in Poland, and No. Industrial Rehabilitation in Poland, Operational Analysis Division, European Regional Office, London, 1947. -3- and over five thousand were taxi-cabs. Civil aviation had not been extensively developed by 1938, and covered only about 2.5- million kilometers in that year. Horses representedan essential and integral part or Poland's transportationsystem. They were and still are used primarily for tractive power on the farms and the transportationof goods between country and town. The 1938 horse population within present-day boundaries was 3.2 million head. Poland was the first country to be attacked during the war and one of the last to be liberated. The front lines moved across Polish territory several times, in 1939, 1941 and 1944. Areas of particularlyheavy destruction were Warsaw, as a result of its prolonged resistance in 1939 and the severe fighting during the uprising of 1944, some of the larger towns like Gdansk, Gdynia, Poznan and Wroc4aw (Breslau),astretch of middle Silesia, where fighting was particularlyheavy in 1945, and a belt of territory near the present eastern frontiers of Poland where the Russian advance stopped for some time in 1944. 0 Poland's inland transport system - railways, roads and waterwrays- was severely damaged by the Germans in the invasion of September, 1939, and during the occupation it received only a minimum of maintenance. It was destroyed further during the heavy fighting in 1944 and 1945 in the concluding stages of the Polish campaign, since the Germans, naturally, destroyed the communicationssystem as they retreated. At the time of liber- ation, the Polish Government found transport in a state of chaos. This applied not only to railways, roads, bridges and waterways, which were completely disrupted, but also to sea ports. At the close of hostilities, Poland did not have one berth at which a - 4 - ship could dock. Gdynia and Gdansk (Danzig)were damaged beyond use as was the former German port of Szczecin (Stettin)which is now within Polish boundaries. The highly developed railway net- work in Upper Silesia was severely damaged. Of the total of 2,500 bridges and viaducts in that region, 238 key bridges were destroyed. The absence of such bridges completely paralyzed transport in the initial stages when efforts were under way to start traffic even on a small scale. As constructionsteel was very scarce, the railways were forced to resort to reinforced concrete constructionin order to build the most urgently needed bridges on trunk lines. 530 kilometers of track were damaged and 140 kilometers dismantled in this same area. The Germans faced serious transport difficultiesduring their campaigns in the U.S S.R. and drained Poland of the bulk of its best horse pop- ulation in their efforts to maintain supplies to their armies. The losses were most severe and enormously increased the problems of transportation. In June, 1945, there were 1.4 million head of horses, only 36 percent of the prewar numbers, and these were the * poorest animals. Territorial adjustments made in 1945 as a result of inter- national agreements at the Yalta, Moscow and Potsdam conferences, have brought about radical changes in the economic resources of the country which have affected the transport system. Poland was 390 thousand square kilometers in area before the war. The transfer of 181 thousand square kilometers of predominantly agricultural land in the east to the U.S.S.R. and the acquisition of 104 thousand square kilometers of predominantlyindustrial territory in the west from Germany have caused a shift in the balance of the country's economy. Poland is 77 thousand square kilometers smaller in territory than before the war and the pop- ulation which in 1939 was estimated to be 35.3 million is now 23.9 million according to a census made in February, 1946. Approximately79 percent of the population lives in prewar Poland and 21 percent in the recently acquired territories. Poland has always been a relatively densely populated country, averaging 235 inhabitants per square mile in 1938, and now, as a result of postwar changes, 200 per square mile. Large scale displacementsof population have involved about one person in every four. At one time it was estimated that as many as five million Poles were externally displaced. Such dis- turbances have had a pronounced social effect as well as a devastating effect on the productive efficiency and economic stability of the country. Mass migrations occurred in Poland which have exceeded in magnitude anything of the kind in modern history. After the in- surrection of Warsaw, the entire population of over one million persons was evacuated from the city. Changes in the boundaries of the country, both on the eastern and western borders, have caused the migration of millions of others. Up to October, 1946, 518 thousand Ukrainians, Byelorussians,and Lithuanians resettled in the U.S.S.R.; in the west 1.6 million Germans have been moved out of the recovered territories,and 1.4 million Poles have moved in to fill their places. About 1.4 million persons have been repatriated to Poland from the U.S.S.R.