National Armed Forces

Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (English National Armed Forces, NSZ) was anti-communist, paramilitary organization which was part of the Polish resistance movement in World War II, fighting the Nazi German occupation of Poland in General Government, and later the Soviet puppet state known as the Polish People's Republic.

The NSZ was created on September 20, 1942, as a result of the merger of the Military Organization Lizard Union (Organizacja Wojskowa Związek Jaszczurczy) and part of the National Military Organization (Narodowa Organizacja Wojskowa). At its maximum strength it reached approximately between 70,000 and 75,000 members, making it the third largest organization of the Polish resistance (after the Armia Krajowa and the Bataliony Chlopskie). NSZ units participated in the Warsaw Uprising.

In March 1944, the NSZ split with the more moderate faction coming under the command of the Armia Krajowa. The other part of the organization became known as the NSZ-ZJ (after "Związek Jaszczurczy" or the "Salamander Union"). This wing of the NSZ that had split off conducted operations against Polish communists, and Jews associated with communist regime, and their own former leaders that claimed dozens of victims. One article in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust asserts that hundreds of Polish Jews who had sought asylum amongst the Polish population, after having escaped from the ghettos, were murdered by the NSZ. At the same time, a number of prominent members of the NSZ made personal efforts to aid and hide Jews. Similarly, Many National Armed Forces soldiers and their families are credited with saving lives of countless Jews including Leon Goldman, Jonte Goldman, Dr. Turski, and others.

In January 1945, the NSZ Holy Cross Mountains Brigade (Brygada Świętokrzyska) retreated before the advancing Red Army, and after negotiating temporary cease fire with Germans moved into the Nazi-controlled (Czech) Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. However, it resumed operations against the Nazis again on May 5, 1945 in Bohemia, where the NSZ brigade liberated female prisoners from a concentration camp in Holiszowo, including 280 Jewish prisoners. The brigade suffered heavy casualties.

The NSZ occupied the right wing of the political spectrum, and after the split, the NSZ-ZJ, the extreme right. Its program included the fight for Polish independence against the Nazi Germany as well as against the Stalinist Soviet Union, with its focus on keeping the Second Polish Republics pre-war eastern territories and borders while gaining additional former German territories to the west which they deemed "ancient Slavic lands".

During the war, the NSZ fought the Polish communists including their paramilitary organizations such as the Gwardia Ludowa (GL) and the Armia Ludowa (AL).. After the war former NSZ members were targeted by the newly installed communist government of the People's Republic of Poland. Reportedly, communist partisans engaged in planting false evidence like documents and forged receipts at the sites of their own robberies in order to blame the NSZ. It was a method of political warfare practiced against NSZ also by Polish secret police (UB) and Milicja Obywatelska (MO) right after the war as revealed by PRL court documents. While some groups of NSZ are alleged to have taken part in various pacification operations, the NSZ was never brought before the war crime tribunal for lack of evidence.

Due to policy of non-cooperation with the Soviets, and unlike Home Army (AK), which was completely transparent to communist security services, NSZ remained an independent and secret military and political power also after Poland was taken over by the Red Army and the communist Polish forces under Soviet control. The NSZ described and evaluated the communist activities in the following way:

"One can die by the method proven in Katyn, that is by a single shot in the back of the head, or in the Soviet Forced Labour Camps, or in German Nazi concentration camps (...) there is no real difference in the way one dies (...) therefore it is our duty to stamp out the Soviet agents in Poland. This is simply demanded by the Polish reasons of state."

The members of NSZ, as other cursed soldiers, were persecuted in the Stalinist years after the war. In Autumn 1946, a group of 100-200 soldiers of NSZ unit under command of Henryk Flame, nom de guerre "Bartek," were lured into a trap and then massacred by Polish communist police and Polish army units loyal to the communist government in Warsaw. However, in 1992, after Poland regained independence from the Soviet occupation, the National Armed Force underground soldiers were rehabilitated and given the official status of war veterans, receiving pensions and decorations.

Commanders:

• Colonel Ignacy Oziewicz
• Colonel Tadeusz Kurcyusz
• Colonel Stanislaw Kasznica

See also

• Forest Brothers
• Holy Cross Mountains Brigade
• Ukrainian Insurgent Army

External links

• Narodowe Siły Zbrojne
• [ http://www.doomedsoldiers.com/liquidation-of-henryk-flame-bartek-unit.html/ http://www.doomedsoldiers.com/liquidation-of-henryk-flame-bartek-unit.html Liquidation of the NSZ Underground units under command of Henryk Flame, nom de guerre “Bartek”]