Bridgewater Review

Volume 4 | Issue 1 Article 6

Apr-1986

The Polish Resistance Movement in Second WorldWarChester M. NowakBridgewater State College

This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

Recommended CitationNowak, Chester M. (1986). The Polish Resistance Movement in Second World War. Bridgewater Review, 4(1), 4-7.Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol4/iss1/6

The Polish ResistanceMovem.ent

in theSecond World War

Chester M. Nowak

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T he European Resistance Movementprovides us with one of the more

engaging and captivating stories of theSecond World War, and the Polish Resis­tance Movement has a central place in thatstory. Yet, the history and the struggles ofthe Polish Resistance are not well known.Few people are aware, therefore, of thePolish Underground's reports about theGerman extermination of Jews and aboutGerman preparations for the invasion ofthe Soviet Union; the penetration of theGerman rocket center at Peenemunde byPolish agents, or the fact that Poles deliv­ered into Allied hands the plans and actualparts of German V-2 rocket engines. Evenmany professional historians remain unfam­iliar with such facts. No study of Europeanresistance during the Second World Warwhich does not include the resistance inPoland can be considered complete. AsColonel Harold B. Perkins of the BritishSOE pointed out, the Resistance in Polandwas" ... the largest and best organization inEurope" (Nowak, CourieT From Warsaw, p.236). But at the time few people knewmuch about it.

After their defeat by the German Army,and the subsequent occupation of Polandby the might of the German Reich and thatof the Soviet Union, the Poles responded ina most natural way. The whole of the Polishsociety went underground, and within thisclandestine realm they created a SecretState which took control of the resistanceagainst the occupying powers.

The genesis of this Resistance followedthe usual patterns of spontaneity andcommand. In a society whose state institu­tions are destroyed by a violent act of warand occupation, any resistance must initial­ly be a spontaneous one. Under suchcircumstances, groups of individuals tiedby some previous common bonds -- be theyprewar membership in social, fraternal, orpolitical organizations, or more recent war­time experiences -- such aggregates of indivi-

duals formed clandestine groups whichshaped their own goals and activities. It ishere within the nature and the dynamics ofthese early secret organizations that we findthe source of the variety and complexity ofboth the resistance organizations and theirclandestine activities. In Poland this spon­taneous aspect of resistance in its scope andintensity soon reached the level of a revolu­tionary mass movement that was unique toPoland. Hence, writers and artists organ­ized to carryon literary and artistic activi­ties forbidden by the occupying authori­ties. Actors performed forbidden plays andmusicians played forbidden music in pri­vate and in public concerts. Writers pro­duced hundreds of books which were pub­lished, printed, and distributed by theunderground. Journalists too published inthe underground press, and during theyears 1939-1945 there were more than2,000 underground papers and periodicalspublished in German occupied Poland;some of them were published continuouslythrough the war in large editions. Polisheducators ran a whole system of secretsecondary schools based on a prewar curric­ulum which the Germans considered tooelitist for a "sub-human" species such asthe Poles. In Warsaw alone there were twosecret universities and one polytechnic insti­tute continuing their educational functionsunder the German noses.

Since the majority of the officers of theprewar Polish Army were either in Germanand Russian prisons or abroad, there was ashortage of trained military personnel, andthe underground had to train most of itsown cadres. Consequently, all through thewar there were numerous officers' candi­date schools, non-commissioned officers'schools, and other military schools trainingthe military cadre for the clandestine army.Even the scouts got involved, and from thevery beginning performed "little sabotage,"which included such activities as writinganti-German slogans on walls and destroy-

ing German property. Individually theseactivities may have seemed unimportant,but in their totality they had a positiveimpact upon the Poles and made the Ger­mans feel unwelcomed and insecure.

Political parties of all persuasions alsowent underground. They published theirown presses and journals and formed theirown military detachments. By the end of1939, at the very beginning of the Germanand Soviet occupation, there were approxi­mately 140 such secret groups and organiza­tions. This spontaneous process continuedthroughout the war, and as one group wasliquidated another took its place. We mustremember that all of this occurred underthe most difficult and strenuous conditionsof clandestine operations, and under thewatchful eyes of a cruel occupier who hadat his disposal the mobilized machine of atotalitarian state. All of these activitieswere, of course, Verboten and punishable bya trip to a concentration camp -- or death.

The growth and the diversification ofsuch spontaneous activities and organiza­tions made unification an important earlyobjective of the movement. This unifica­tion was to be achieved by the commandaspect of the resistance, which broughtorder into the chaos of spontaneity byproviding the movement with the struc­tural means for the unification of its ac­tions, organization, and plans. What we arewitnessing here is a healthy reaction of asociety in a state of war responding to theconditions of foreign occupation thatcalled for a total mobilization and totalresistance. Interestingly, many historians ofthe Resistance Movement seem to havemissed this point and the obvious fact thatthe major objective of the Resistance was toresist, and to resist by all the means at itsdisposal. Thus in Poland, resistance in­cluded the whole of society which reactedspontaneously in a variety of ways to acommon danger. It was a society which wasdirected by a set of common values and

rules strongly entrenched by a long tradi­tion of national resistance. These tradition­al values and rules were in turn reinforcedby the underground courts and the legiti­mate structures of the Underground State.

In the Polish case, the source for thelegitimacy of the Underground State wasthe fact that both the Resistance and thePolish Government abroad were recog­nized by the majority of the Poles as thebona fide legal extension of the prewarPolish State. Because there was no questionof legitimacy, the differing political orienta­tions of most resistance groups did nothinder the process of unification. Conse­quently, by 1944 the resistance movementin Poland was successful in unifying mostof its military units under a single com­mand and in consolidating most of itspolitical activities under the central authori­ty of the Secret State.

Politically, the process of unification andcentralization had begun in February of1940 with the formation of a PoliticalCoordinating Committee (Polityczny Komi­tet Porozumiewawczy, PKP). By 1944 thePKP had unified most of the politicalgroups, with the exception of the Commu­nists and a small radical faction of theNational Democrats who refused to jointhe unified resistance organization. Thus,the formation of the PKP in 1940 was thereal beginning of the Polish UndergroundState. It was headed by a Delegate, who by1944 held the rank of a Deputy-Premierwithin the Polish Government of NationalUnity in London. The first of the Delegateswas the prewar Speaker of the PolishParliament, Cyryl Ratajski; and the lastDelegate, after Stanislaw Jankowski, wasStephan Korbonski, who today resides inWashington, D.C.

It must be understood, however, thatunder clandestine conditions, this processof unification and centralization was agradual one. But in the end, in Poland theresistance movement became the most uni­fied and tht> most centralized in Europe. Itwas the only resistance organization with allthe comprehensive infrastructure ofa legiti­mate state, ranging from civic and civilinstitutions on both the central and locallevels, to a well organized military struc­ture.

By the end of the September Campaign,just before the Polish Government left thePolish territory during the days of Septem­ber 17-18 of 1939, Marshal Eduard Rydz-

Smigly, the Commander-in-Chief of thePolish Army, appointed General MichaelTokarzewski to organize the undergroundresistance in both parts ofoccupied Poland.Colonel Stefan Rowecki became his Chief­of-Staff. Later, Rowecki was to be the firstcommander of the unified undergroundarmy, which by 1942 was known as theHome Army (Armia Krajowa, AK).

The first of the underground militaryunits formed was named the Service for theVictory of Poland (Stuzba ZwyciestwuPotsce, SZP). But it was Tokarzewski's Un­ion for Armed Struggle (Zwiazek WatkiZbrojnej, ZWZ), organized in November of1939, which became the vehicle for theunification and centralization of the under­ground detachments. And in February of1942, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, thePrime Minister of the Polish Governmentin London, and the Commander-in-Chiefof the Polish Army abroad, renamed theZWZ the Home Army (Armia Krajowa,AK). By that time the ZWZ had about100,000 men, who by 1943 were joined by

WARSAW UPRISING

Territories held by Polish Insurgentsup to the evening of August 4. 1944.

Territories held by German forces as ofthe evening of August 4. 1944.

Territories held by Polish Insurgentsfrom August 4-18. 1944.

Territories lost by Polish Insurgentsbetween August 4-18. 1944.

40,000 men of the Peasant Battalions (Batationy Chtopskie, B.Ch.) of the PolishPeasant Party (Potskie Stronnictwo LudowePSL). Another 40,000 troops of the Peas­ant Battalions joined the Home Army inthe spring of 1944. Simultaneousiy themajority of the 70,000 nationalist troops ofthe National Democratic Party also joinedthe Home Army. But some detachmentsbelonging to the Radical Faction of theNationalist Party would not place them­selves under the unified command of theHome Army. The Polish Workers' Party(Potska Partia Robotnicza, PPR -- the war­time name of the Polish Communist Party,which earlier in 1938 was dissolved by theComintern) with its Peoples' Army (ArmiaLudowa, AL) also stayed outside the SecretState. In addition, the detachments of thePolish Peoples' Army (Potska Armia Lu­dowa, PAL), which was under the controlof a radical left-wing socialist faction, alsorefused to unite with the rest of the Resis­tance. Although the Communists and theRadical Socialists were neither politicallynor militarily powerful, they were sup­ported by the Soviet Union. The PolishSocialist Party (Potska Partia Sociatistyczna,PPS) and their military units, however,were an integral part of the centralizedResistance.

By the spring of 1944 the Home Army(AK) had about 350,000 men who for aclandestine army were not badly trained.But they were poorly armed. The Poles hadaccess only to arms they were able to hideafter the 1939 campaign and those cap­tured from the Germans. The Britishdropped some supplies through the war,but they were helpful only in small sabotageactivities and were inadequate for armingsuch a large number of men. It seems thatthe military potential of the Polish HomeArmy was never understood by the Allies.In fact, in early 1944 at a meeting inWashington held between the Americanauthorities and the then Prime Minister ofthe Polish Government in London, Stani­slaw Mikolajczyk, and the Chief of Opera­tions of the Home Army, General Stani­slaw Tatar, a final and irrevocable decisionwas made not to include the Polish HomeArmy in Allied Operational Plans. By thattime the die was cast. Earlier, as a result ofthe Teheran Conference of 1943, it wasdecided that Poland and Eastern Europewere to be left in the Soviet sphere ofinfluence. Thus, at the 1944 meeting in

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Polish Resistance continued

Platoon 227 B.S. of the Home Army (AK) in which the author served during theWarsaw Uprising of 1944. (Note author designated by circle.)

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Washington the Americans were quite ada­mant about not giving in to the Polishdemands for large scale military assistancefor the Home Army. Once more, as in1939, the Poles were abandoned by theirallies and left to face formidable obstaclesalone. And there was no hope for help fromthe Soviet Union either. By then the Sovi­ets had broken relations with the PolishGovernment over the issue of the missing10,000 Polish officers who earlier in 1940had been murdered by NKVD (the SovietSecret Police) in the Katyn Forest Massa­cre. Furthermore, the Russians viewed thenon-communist Polish Underground astheir political and class enemy. And whenin 1944 the Red Army entered the formerPolish territories, which the Soviet consi­dered as their own since the Soviet-GermanAgreement of 1939, the Russians refusedto cooperate with the Home Army andtreated it as an enemy. Some members ofthe Home Army were executed, someforced to join Polish units under the Sovietcommand, and some were sent to Siberia.Yet, all that the Poles wanted was to be leftalone as masters of their own home, free togovern themselves, and free to determinetheir own destiny.

During the war the main military objec­tive of the Polish Home Army was toprepare itself for a general uprising at thefinal stages of the war, to be carried outbehind the German lines in support ofAllied and Soviet operations. Through thewar all plans and training of the HomeArmy were directed toward this general

uprising, known by its cryptonym Burza(Tempest).

The interim military objectives were de­voted to self-defense, sabotage, and intelli­gence work. The self-defense operations ofthe Underground were responsible for theliquidation of about 6,000 German func­tionaries. The intelligence work of thePolish Underground was extensive andreached beyond the borders of Poland; andits contributions to the war efforts werenot small, but are not well known.

The sabotage was carried out under theDirectorate for Sabotage (KierownietwoDywersji, KeDyw), which up to June 1944alone was responsible for the destruction of1167 railroad petroleum cars, 6930 rail­road engines, 19,058 railroad cars, 4326cars and trucks, 600 telephone and electriclines, and the blowing up of 443 trains and732 transports. These figures do not in­clude the damage inflicted upon the Ger­man forces by the Partisan Units, theTempest Operation, and the Warsaw Upris­ing. The sabotage actions cost the resistanceforces 62,000 men killed; civilian losses arenot included.

The best known and most dramaticepisode of the Polish resistance was theWarsaw Uprising of 1944. It was aimed atthe liberation of the Polish capital so thatthe Poles could act in their own country ashosts to the advancing Soviet armies. TheRussians and their communist allies, whoinitially called for such an uprising, were tocondemn it as an adventurous act hostile tothe Soviet Union. Marshal Stalin for exam-

pie wrote to President Roosevelt denounc­ing the Polish insurgents as a "group ofcriminals who have embarked on the War­saw adventure in order to seize power. .. "(Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 130).

The uprising was designed to last threedays until the Red Army, already at theWarsaw suburbs, would enter the city.Instead the fighting lasted for sixty-threedays, from August 1st to October 3rd. AtStalin's order the Red Army stopped itsadvance, and Warsaw and its people weresacrificed to the Germans. The halting ofthe Soviet Army was not based on militarygrounds, as is still claimed by Soviet his­torians. Rather it was basically a politicaldecision aimed at the destruction of thePolish Underground. Even later when theRed Army finally reached the other side ofthe Vistula River and gained control of theeastern suburbs of Warsaw, the Russiansextended only sporadic help which merelyprolonged the agony, and did not insurevictory. Earlier, the Western Allies hadreluctantly flown-in limited supplies inplanes manned by Polish pilots and Alliedvolunteers, most of them from South Af­rica and New Zealand; but their losses wereextremely high. On September 18 the Rus­sians finally permitted the USAAF to fly alarge sortie, flown by the planes from the390th Bomb Group. Most of the neededsupplies landed on German positions.

As a result of the sixty-three days offighting Warsaw was destroyed, and whatremained was burned and blown up by theGermans on a direct order of AdolphHitler. In the end the Warsaw Insurgentslost over 20,000 men killed and wounded;16,000 of the soldiers became POWs,including the staff of the Home Army andits commander, General T. Bor-Komorow­ski. About 5,000 of the troops escaped.The losses among the civilian population ofthe city were equally high. Over 250,000civilians were dead. Fifty thousand werekilled in mass executions, and sixty thou­sand were sent to German concentrationcamps. Half a million were shipped to laborcamps in Germany, and another half mil­lion were left homeless and were dispersed.The Germans lost 310 tanks and armoredvehicles, 340 trucks and cars, 22 artillerypieces, three planes, and over 30,000 menkilled.

The rest of the Home Army outside ofWarsaw continued to fight under the plansof Operation Tempest, but by then they

knew that their cause was lost. Now, theyfought only for posterity. By February of1945, after the Russians had overrun mostof Poland, the Underground Army wasofficiaHy dissolved, but many continued tofight. Many of the Home Army troops weredisarmed by the Russians and shipped toSiberia. And in March of 1945 the leadersof the Polish Secret State were arrested andtaken to Moscow, where in June of 1945they were put on trial before a Soviet courtand condemned to Russian prisons. Back athome former members of the Under­ground -- over a million of them -- wereshipped to Soviet concentration camps ofthe infamous Gulag Archipelago. Most ofthem never returned home.

The Second World War cost the Poles agreat deal in human and material sacrifices.Most of the country was destroyed, and as aresult of the German and Soviet policies ofextermination the Polish losses were enor­mous. Over twenty percent of the popula­tion was killed. Two and a half millionPolish Jews alone were killed by the Ger­mans in the ovens of Auschwitz and otherplaces ofexecution. It must be rememberedthat Poland became the most decimatedcountry in Europe, and these losses wereinflicted upon Poland by both the Germansand the Russians.

After the war the Russians and theirideological foHowers attempted to deny thevery existence of a viable Resistance inPoland. For the last forty years they havetried to denigrate the memories of thePolish Underground State, and to defamethe wartime sacrifices of the Polish people.They claim now that the country without aQuisling was a country of Quislings; thatthe Poles, who fought the Germans withsuch a fanatic persistence, fought them theleast. This kind of propaganda was not wellreceived by the Polish people, and in fact ithad a reverse effect. The Poles took it as aninsult and as a denial of their wartimesacrifices, freely placed upon the collectivealtar of human freedom. Today in Polandthe interest in the heroic deeds of thewartime Resistance is greater than everbefore.

However, forty years of propaganda canleave its marks, and we can even see it insuch supposedly scholarly works as thoseof the young sociologist Jan Gross, and inthe vitriolic anti-Polish work of amateurishhistorians like Shmuel Krakowski. Further­more, the 1985 review of Krakowski's

...in Polandthe resistance movement

became the mostcentralized in Europe.

It was the onlyresistance organization

with all thecomprehensive

infrastructure ofa legitimate state...

book in the American Historical Review,and the ensuing correspondence, revealshow little American historians seem toknow about the matter. Of course, Ameri­can unfamiliarity with everything Polish orEast European is well known by now, and itis best represented by the "joy-fool" accep­tance of the wartime German propagandaabout the Polish cavalry charging Germantanks. This story, by the way, is still beingrepeated in the American press and inAmerican schoolrooms today! The answerto the question why such stories are soeasily accepted by some might provide uswith food for thought, and might alsoprovide us with some insights into theAmerican psyche. After all, attitudes likethis seem to have a long and continuoushistory in America. And after the war -- justas before -- Poland and the Poles wereseldom presented in a positive light, be it inAmerican press, literature, or films. ThePoles were usually presented -- if not asoutright stupid -- at least as dull, slovenly,and untrustworthy. Such negative stereo­types serve to dehumanize people. That ishow the Nazis arrived at their ideas ofsubhuman races. Once these racist teach­ings were accepted it was easier for Ger­mans to accept as morally acceptable allatrocities against such "subhuman" groupsas the Jews and the Poles.

Stereotypes like these were also commonduring the war, even in some surprisingquarters. During the war leading westernpoliticians loved to refer to Poland as the"Inspiration of Nations" and as "a countrywithout a Quisling." However, their truefeelings were quite different. PresidentRoosevelt, for example, never was an ad­mirer of the Poles. This is best illustrated by

his reference to Poland as a country whichwas "a source of trouble for over fivehundred years... " (Churchill, Triumph andTragedy, p. 372). And Winston Churchillhad similar views of Poland as a countrywhich was "Glorious in revolt and ruin;squalid and shameful in triumph. Thebravest of the brave, too often led by thevilest of the vile! And yet there were alwaystwo Polands; one struggling to proclaim thetruth and the ether grovelling in villainy"(Churchill, The Gathering Storm, p. 323).Now, if this was true of Poland, would notsuch a description fit everybody else?

No wonder that with such attitudes atTeheran and Yalta both Roosevelt andChurchill so easily condemned Poland andthe whole of Eastern Europe to a newtyranny and slavery. But were their actionsright, and were they just? These are thequestions that have puzzled many eversince. And on that subject General Bor­Komorowski was to write after the war:"To conduct world peace at the expense ofinjustice and wrong done to small nations isa dangerous experiment. It can only resultin acute political tensions and a perpetualsmouldering of grievances -- a most precar­ious state of international affairs, so clearlydemonstrated by our present times"(Komorowski, The Secret Army, p. 396).

C. M. Nowak is Professor, Department ofHistory. He was educated in Poland, Germany,Italy, England, Canada, and the United Statesand received his doctorate in Slavic History fromBoston University. Professor Nowak is the authorof Czechoslovak-Polish Relations, 1918­1939 (Stanford, '976). During World War II,he was a member of The Polish ResistanceMovement. Professor Nowak fought in the War­saw Uprising of '944 within the ranks of ArmiaKrajowa.

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