The Polish Underground, 1939–1947

David G. Williamson, Christopher Summerville

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781848842816
• eBook ISBN: 9781473817289
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This study of the Polish resistance movement chronicles the operations of various factions from WWII through the postwar battle for power.
 
The Polish partisan army famously fought with tenacity against the Wehrmacht during World War II. Yet the wider story of the Polish underground movement, which opposed both the Nazi and Soviet occupying powers, has rarely been told. In this concise and authoritative study, historian David Williamson presents a major reassessment of the actions, impact and legacy of Polish resistance.
 
The Polish resistance movement sprang up after the German invasion of 1939. As the war progressed, it took many forms, including propaganda, spying, assassination, disruption, sabotage and guerrilla warfare. Many groups were involved, including isolated partisan bands, the Jewish resistance, and the Home Army which confronted the Germans in the disastrous Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
 
Going beyond the Second World War, Williamson's graphic account chronicles the clandestine civil war between the Communists and former members of the Home Army that continued until the Communist regime took power in 1947.

Contents

Maps and Plates
Acknowledgements
Background
	Poland: a Fragile State
	Planning Guerrilla Warfare
	Invasion and Partition
	Siege of Warsaw, 7–27 September 1939
	Formation of the Polish Government-in-Exile
	‘Post-September’ Resistance
	Creation of the Polish Underground
	Enemy-Occupied Poland
	General Government
	German Army of Occupation
	Soviet Zone
	Poles and the Occupation
Campaign Chronicle
	Resistance, September 1939–June 1940
	Attempts to Centralize Armed Resistance and Avoidance of Premature Action
	Sabotage Operations in Romania and Hungary
	Organization, Supply and Sabotage in Poland
	Fall of France
	Impact of the Fall of France on the Polish Underground
	London and the Polish Resistance After the Fall of France
	Communications with Occupied Poland
	Plans for Future Action
	Polish Resistance Amongst the Diaspora
	Growth of Resistance in German-Occupied Poland
	Soviet-Occupied Poland
	Diplomatic Consequences of Barbarossa
	Conditions in Poland, June 1941–January 1943
	Growing Popular Resistance
	Attempts to Supply the Underground by Air
	Diversionary Activities in Poland
	Operation Wachlarz
	Intelligence and Liaison, 1941–1942
	Development of the Polish Home Army, June 1941–December 1942
	British POWs and the Polish Resistance
	The Written Word as a Weapon
	The Spectre of Communism: Communist Partisan Bands, 1941–1942
	The Zamość Crisis
	Polish Resistance in France
	Ambitious Diplomatic Schemes
	Deteriorating Relations Between the Polish Government-in-Exile and the USSR
	Katyń
	Anglo-American Appeasement of the USSR
	The State of Poland, January 1943–August 1944
	The Streamlining of the Underground State
	Assassinations
	The Gestapo Fights Back
	Intelligence, 1943–1944
	Aircraft and Ballistic Rocket Projects
	The Communist Challenge, 1943–1944
	Jewish Resistance and the Poles
	The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April–May 1943
	Resistance in the Other Ghettos
	Źegota and Polish Assistance to the Jews
	Partisan Operations: the AK
	Operation Tempest
	Supplying the AK from Italy
	Operations Jula and Ewa, April 1944
	Partisan Operations: GL/AL and the ‘Forest People’
	The Red Army Enters Polish Territory
	The Political Failure of Operation Tempest, January–July 1944
	The SOE Intervenes, May 1944
	Resistance Behind German Lines in the General Government, January–July 1944
	The Red Army Crosses the Bug
	Polish Resistance in Europe
	The Warsaw Uprising: the Decision to Revolt
	The Outbreak of the Revolt: 1–5 August
	The German Counter-Offensive
	The Attack on the Old Town, 8–19 August
	The Insurgents Retreat from the Old Town
	The City Centre, Mokotów and Zoliborz
	Attitude of the Soviet Union
	Help from the Western Allies: Too Little and Too Late
	September: Hanging on
	Surrender
	The Civilian Population During the Uprising
	The Three Polands, October 1944
	Opposition to the Polish Committee of National Liberation
	The Re-establishment of the Underground State in the General Government
	The Moscow Conference, October 1944
	The AK’s Attempt to Regroup, October 1944–January 1945
	Supply and Liaison
	Dispatch of the British Military Mission to Poland
	Intelligence, Sabotage and Guerrilla War in the General Government, October 1944–January 1945
	The AL and NSZ
	Soviet Advance, January 1945
	Continuing the War Against Germany Outside Poland
Aftermath
	Dissolution of the AK and the Emergence of NIE
	Flight and Concealment
	End of the Underground State, March–June 1945
	The Revolt of April–July 1945
	Creation of the Provisional Government of National Unity and the First Amnesty
	Support for the Underground from Poles Abroad
	General Anders and the Former Polish Government-in-Exile
	The Referendum and the General Election, 1946–1947
	Assessment
Appendices
	I	Chronology of Major Events
	II	Biographies of Key Figures
	III	Glossary and Abbreviations
	IV	Orders of Battle and Statistics
	V	Survivors’ Reminiscences
Sources
Index

Maps and Plates

Maps

1. Pre-war Poland and its Provinces

2. Occupied Poland

3. The City of Warsaw

Plates

Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935).

Władysław Sikorski (1881–1943).

Kazimiersz Sosnkowski (1885–1969).

Michał Tadeusz Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski (1893–1964).

Stefan Starzyński (1893–1943?)

Witold Pilecki – veteran of Auschwitz and the Warsaw Uprising.
Executed by the Soviet NKVD in 1948.

Henryk Dobrzański, alias ‘Hubal’ (1897–1940).

Franciszek Kleeberg (1888–1941).

Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski (1895–1966).

Stanisław Kopanski (1895–1976).

Władysław Rackiewicz (1885–1947).

Stefan Rowecki, alias ‘Grot’ (1895–1944)

Jan Karski (1914–2000).

Colin Gubbins (1896–1976).

Hans Michael Frank (1900–1946).

Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1892–1946).

Erich Julius Eberhard von dem Bach (1899–1972).

AK partisans.

Katyn massacre – exhumation of bodies 1943.

Two views of AK partisans.

Jewish partisan group active in the Nowogródek region.

Partisan Group ‘Zbeda’.

‘Edelman’ Partisans – Jewish fighters active in the Lublin region.

Warsaw Ghetto – civilians being marched off.

AK insurgents during the Warsaw Uprising.

Two views of AK insurgents during the Warsaw Uprising.

Two views of AK insurgents during the Warsaw Uprising.

AK insurgents during the Warsaw Uprising.

AK child-fighters, Warsaw 1944.

AK nurse, Warsaw 1944.

German troops deploy during the Warsaw Uprising.

Oskar Paul Dirlewanger (1895–1945).

German Stuka bombs Warsaw’s Old Town.

Warsaw in ruins after the Uprising.

Acknowledgements

Sincerest thanks are due to Jan Brodzki, Hanna Skrzyńska, Halina Serafinowicz and Maria Karczewska-Schejbal, who all found the time and patience to talk to me about their traumatic experiences in occupied Warsaw. At the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust in Ealing, I was treated with the greatest of consideration and offered invaluable advice and assistance.

Dr Suchitz at the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, as well as the staff at the National Archives and in the Reading Room of the Imperial War Museum were unfailingly helpful whenever I approached them. I would also like to thank Ewa Haren, who helped with Polish spellings and accents, and Sebastian Bojemski, who had much invaluable information to impart. Above all my thanks and gratitude are due to Christopher Summerville, my ever patient and highly perceptive editor, who has saved me from making many a careless error.

Thanks are also due to the copyright owners of the following papers, which are held in the Department of Documents in the Imperial War Museum, for granting me permission to quote in some cases quite extensively from them: S.H. Lloyd-Lyne, G. Manners, Z.R. Pomorski, R. Smorczewski and R.K. Stankiewicz.

Every effort has been made to trace and obtain permission from copyright holders of material quoted or illustrations reproduced.

Background

In December 1942 Lord Selborne (Minister for Economic Warfare with responsibility for special operations in German-occupied Europe) observed that the Poles alone, amongst the subjugated European nations, had the ‘glory’ of never producing a ‘Quisling’. This was partly because the Germans made no secret of their ultimate intention to eliminate Poland from the map of Europe and to condemn the Poles to perpetual slavery. There was, therefore, little room for political collaboration. But in Poland there was also a powerful and romantic tradition of revolt, which particularly inspired the intellectuals and officer class. For some 200 years, from the 16th to 18th century, Poland had been a great power but then, as a result of internal political instability, she had been partitioned between Austria, Russia and Prussia in 1795, and then again in 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The history of the various revolts and conspiracies (1794, 1830 and 1863) against the occupying powers was well known to every Polish school child. Collectively, these uprisings contributed to a heroic interpretation of the martyrdom of Poland – the Christ among nations – destined to rise again and liberate the European peoples from bondage.

In 1918 – with the simultaneous disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the defeat of Germany and paralysis of Russia caused by the Bolshevik revolution and subsequent civil war – the Polish state re-emerged. In the west, her frontiers were fixed by the Treaty of Versailles but in the east, due to the absence of Russia from the peace conference, there was no accepted settlement. It was only the defeat of the Red Army by Polish troops in September 1920 that led to the Treaty of Riga, which awarded Poland considerable territory in Byelorussia and the Ukraine. Poland was indeed resurrected but her very existence depended on the continuing weakness of her two great neighbours, Germany and the USSR. Once these states recovered their economic and military power, unless backed decisively by the Western powers, Poland faced the threat of yet another partition.

Poland: a Fragile State

The new Poland was essentially a fragile structure. It was largely a peasant state with only a small industrial base. It was divided ethnically and thus politically unstable. According to the census of 1931, the Poles composed only 69% of the population while, in the eastern territories, they were in a minority compared to the Ukrainians and Byelorussians. There were also 3 million Jews, many of whom were unassimilated.

Political crisis followed political crisis until Józef Piłsudski – the first Polish head of state and hero of the Polish–Russian war of 1919–1920 – seized power in the coup of May 1926. While he managed to stabilize the situation and build up Poland’s armed forces, the coup was deeply resented by the democratic parties. On his death in 1935, power passed to the Colonels, who increasingly ruled in a more authoritarian manner, and politics degenerated into a cycle of protest and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Contents