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GNU Materiel Notice Material sourced from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. The work contains material from numerous Wikipedia articles found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia Wojska Lądowe Sourcebook CHAPTER 1 MILITARY HISTORY IN THE EARLY 1990s, Poland addressed its national security Polish state. National leaders were anxious to recapture that issues as an independent state for the first time in more than fifty tradition to boost domestic morale. Also, a capable military years. The loss and restoration of independence, and the establishment would help Poland present itself to the world as a fluctuations of national security that accompany such trauma, were viable, independent state. To achieve these goals, Polish leaders not unusual in Polish history, however. When it was included in the sought a complete restructuring of the defense establishment in the Soviet Union's new empire after World War II, Poland lost control early 1990s. A new national military doctrine was formulated to of its national security for the second time in two centuries. After reflect the end of the Warsaw Pact and the end of the political and functioning as two separate entities during the war, the Polish military division of Europe into rival camps, as well as Poland's military was consolidated after the war as a subordinate component possible inclusion in existing Western security structures. The of a multinational military organization devoted primarily to reform program was intended to streamline the Ministry of defense of the Soviet Union. Following the Soviet model, the National Defense and military administration and to include Polish communist government also established strong military-style civilians more closely in the process of defense decision making. internal security forces to protect the regime from internal and The reform program sought to extricate the Polish Army from the external threats. constraints of Soviet dominated Warsaw Pact military doctrine and training standards. Reform leaders also sought to reestablish the In 1989 Poland's communist government fell unexpectedly after prestige of the armed forces as a national institution separate from several decades of civil unrest that periodically had brought the and above politics. The quasi-military forces that the Ministry of threat of punitive intervention by the Soviet Union. The ensuing Internal Affairs had used to quell civil unrest during the communist political chaos forced Poland to develop a new doctrine of national era were abolished or redirected against genuine threats to the defense emphasizing cooperation with Western military and welfare of society. security organizations and friendly relations with previously hostile neighbor states. By 1991 the Warsaw Treaty Organization, better The Communist Era and Postwar Consolidation known as the Warsaw Pact, the multinational military structure created by the Soviet Union to dominate its East European empire, also had crumbled. Poland's new doctrine developed slowly and fitfully in the first years of the 1990s. The country's economic need to trim its defense establishment clashed with perceptions of possible new threats and alliances in post-communist Europe. After emerging from the Warsaw Pact, Poland found itself without military alliances at the same time as its military infrastructure was rapidly decaying. In this setting, harsh budget restrictions caused alarm that national security again might be compromised before restructuring and rearmament could take place. Poland's location between two powerful neighbors, Germany and Russia, had influenced the country's national security for centuries. By the early 1990s, however, the changing political circumstances of the region had mitigated Polish concerns about German or Russian aggression for the foreseeable future. Beginning in 1990, Partisan forces of the Polish Home Army Germany's attention was largely absorbed by the massive problems of reunification. The disintegration of the Soviet Union at the end For forty-five years following World War II, the Polish military of 1991 enabled the nations of Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine to subordinated its organization and its doctrine to the larger emerge as newly independent states on Poland's eastern border. geopolitical and military aims of the Soviet Union. Until 1981, Thus, in less than three years the number of countries on Poland's however, Polish society largely retained the traditional notion that borders increased from three to six. Under those circumstances, the first mission of its army was to represent and defend the Polish Poland was concerned about a security vacuum that might promote people, regardless of political conditions. The final eight years of internal instability, border disputes, or even an armed regional communist rule marked an unnatural combination of military and conflict close to Polish territory. Poland's national security political doctrines, triggering a reorganization process that depended not only on the stability of neighboring states but also on continued into the noncommunist 1990s. domestic political and economic stability. The noncommunist Home Army officially disbanded in January A healthy military was important for two reasons. Historically, the 1945, and the course of the war left the eastern front armies in army had represented Polish self-esteem and the survival of the control of all Polish territory. In the immediate postwar era, the army took second place to Poland's new internal security forces in 2 Wojska Lądowe Sourcebook purging political opponents and consolidating communist power. In the late 1940s, the main roles of the military were resettlement This purging process lasted until the formation of the Polish United of Poland's newly acquired western territory, helping in economic Workers' Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza—“PZPR”) reconstruction, and waging a three-year civil war against former in 1948. Home Army supporters, Ukrainian nationalists, and various outlaw bands in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. Some 70,000 people were arrested by internal security and military authorities in the repression of civil uprisings between 1945 and 1948. In 1981 General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who later would head the last communist government, cited the threat that such uprisings would recur in his rationale for imposing martial law in Poland. The sociological composition of Poland's army changed dramatically after World War II. The interwar officer corps had come mostly from the gentry and professional classes. By 1949, however, only 29 percent of Polish officers had begun service before the war, and peasants and workers were favored highly in postwar officer training programs. From 1948 through 1953, in keeping with Stalin's intrusive totalitarian influence throughout Eastern Europe, the PZPR and the Soviet Army exercised increasing influence in Polish military affairs. Soviet officers headed the Polish General Staff, all service branches, and all military districts during this period. A Soviet general, Konstantin Rokossovskii, served as minister of defense of Poland between 1949 and 1956. His first assignment was to purge the Polish armed forces of remaining prewar personnel who were considered ideologically unreliable. Accordingly, between 1950 and 1955, many faithful communist officers were imprisoned or executed. In 1949, as the Cold War set in, the Polish People's Army (as it was renamed after World War II) went on a war footing, conscription was reinstituted, and preparations were made to operate as part of the Soviet army