Home Army

For other meanings of Home Army see: Home Army (disambiguation)

The Armia Krajowa or AK (Home Army) functioned as the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland, which was active in all areas of the country from September 1939 until its disbanding in January 1945. The Armia Krajowa, one of the largest underground resistance movement during World War II, formed the armed wing of what subsequently became known as the "underground state" (państwo podziemne).

History

The AK originated from the Służba Zwycięstwu Polski (Polish Victory Service), set up on 27 September 1939 by General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski. On 17 November 1939 General Władysław Sikorski replaced this organization with the Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Union for Armed Struggle), which after joining with the Polski Związek Powstanczy (Polish Union of Resistance) became the AK on 14 February 1942.

Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski.

Stefan Rowecki (known as Grot, or "arrowhead"), served as the AK's first commander until his arrest in 1943; Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski commanded from July 1943 until his capture in September 1944. Leopold Okulicki, known as Niedzwiadek ("bear cub") led the organisation in its final days. The AK officially disbanded on 19 January 1945 to avoid armed conflict with the Soviets and a civil war. However, many units decided to continue their struggle under new circumstances.

Structure

The executive branch of the AK was the operational command, composed of many units. Estimates of the AK membership in the first half of 1944 range from 250,000 to 350,000, with more than 10,000 officers. Most of the other Polish underground armies became incorporated into the AK, including:

• The Konfederacja Narodu (Confederation of the People) (1943).
• The Bataliony Chłopskie (Peasants' Battalions).
• A large military organization of the Stronnictwo Ludowe (People's Party).
• The Socjalistyczna Organizacja Bojowa (Socialist Fighting Organization), established by the Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party).
• The Narodowa Organizacja Wojskowa (National Army), established by the Stronnictwo Narodowe (National Party).
• From March 1944, part of the extreme right-wing organization, the Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (National Armed Forces).

The AK divided itself organizationally in Poland into sixteen regional branches, subdivided in turn into eighty-nine inspectorates, which further comprised 278 districts. The supreme command defined the main tasks of the AK as preparation for action and, after the termination of the German occupation, general armed revolt until victory. At that stage plans envisaged the seizure of power in Poland by the delegatura establishment, the representatives of the London-based Polish government in exile; and by the government-in-exile itself, which would return to Poland.

File:1Baon1PPLeg Radom-Kielce 1944.jpg

Soldiers of the 1st Battallion of the 1st Legions Home Army Regiment, from the Kielce-Radom Armia Krajowa inspectorate; August 1944

File:1Comp obwSambor inspecDrohobycz Burza3.jpg

Soldiers of the 1st company of Sambor command of Drohobycz Armia Krajowa inspectorate armed with German-made arms and and dressed in captured German field uniforms

Area	Districts	Code-names	Sub-units	Operation Tempest
Warsaw area Warsaw Col. Łaszcz	Eastern Warsaw-Praga Col. Szeliga	Struga (stream), Krynica (source), Gorzelnia (distillery)		10th Infantry Division
	Western Warsaw Col. Roman	Hallerowo (Hallertown), Hajduki, Cukrownia (Sugar factory)		28th Infantry Division
	Northern Warsaw Lt. Col. Kazimierz	Olsztyn, Tuchola, Królewiec, Garbarnia (tannery)		8th Infantry Division
South-Eastern area Lwów Col. Janka	Lwów Lwów Col. Luśnia	Dukat (ducat), Lira (lire), Promień (ray)		5th Infantry Division
	Stanisławów Stanisławów Capt. Żuraw	Karaś (crucian carp), Struga (stream), Światła (lights)		11th Infantry Division
	Tarnopol Tarnopol Maj. Zawadzki	Komar (mosquito), Tarcza (shield), Ton (tone)		12th Infantry Division
Western area Poznań Col. Denhoff	Pomerania Gdynia Col. Piorun	Borówki (berries), Pomnik (monument)
	Poznań Poznań Col. Kowalówka	Pałac (palace), Parcela (lot)
Independent areas	Wilno Wilno Col. Wilk	Miód (honey), Wiano (dowry)	"Kaunas Lithuania"
	Nowogródek Nowogródek Lt.Col. Borsuk	Cyranka (duck), Nów (new moon)		Zgrupowanie Okręgu AK Nowogródek
	Warsaw Warsaw Col. Monter	Drapacz (sky-scraper), Przystań (harbour), Wydra (otter), Prom (shuttle)
	Polesie Pińsk Col. Leśny	Kwadra (quarter), Twierdza (keep), Żuraw (crane)		30th Infantry Division
	Wołyń Równe Col. Luboń	Hreczka (buckwheat), Konopie (hemp)		27th Infantry Division
	Białystok Białystok Col. Mścisław	Lin (tench), Czapla (aigrette), Pełnia (full moon)		29th Infantry Division
	Lublin Lublin Col. Marcin	Len (linnen), Salon (saloon), Żyto (rye)		3rd Legions' Infantry Division 9th Infantry Division
	Kraków Kraków various commanders, incl. Col. Róg	Gobelin, Godło (coat of arms), Muzeum (museum)		6th Infantry Division 106th Infantry Division 21st Infantry Division 22nd Infantry Division 24th Infantry Division Kraków Motorized Cavalry Brigade
	Silesia Katowice various commanders, incl. Col. Zygmunt	Kilof (pick), Komin (chimney), Kuźnia (foundry), Serce (heart)
	Kielce-Radom Kielce, Radom Col. Mieczysław	Rolnik (farmer), Jodła (fir)		2nd Legions' Infantry Division 7th Infantry Division
	Łódź Łódź Col. Grzegorz	Arka (ark), Barka (barge), Łania (bath)		25th Infantry Division 26th Infantry Division
Foreign areas	Hungary Budapest Lt.Col. Korkozowicz	Liszt
	Reich Berlin	Blok (block)

Weapons and equipment

File:1Comp obwSambor inspecDrohobycz Burza2.jpg

Soldiers of the 1st company of Sambor command, Drohobycz inspectorate during the Operation Tempest; the soldier on the right is equipped with Kb wz.98a while the one on the left with a German MP40 machine pistol

As a clandestine army operating in a country occupied by the enemy, separated by over a thousand kilometers from any friendly territory, the AK faced unique challenges in acquiring arms and equipment. In a tremendous achievement, the AK was able to overcome these difficulties to some extent and put tens of thousands of armed soldiers into the field. Nevertheless, the difficult conditions meant that only infantry forces armed with light weapons could be fielded. Any use of artillery, armor or aviation was obviously out of the question (except for a few instances during the Warsaw Uprising). Even these light infantry units were as a rule armed with a mixture of weapons of various types, usually in quantities sufficient to arm only a fraction of the unit's soldiers.

In contrast their opponents, the German armed forces and their allies, were almost universally supplied with plenty of arms and ammunition, and could count on a full array of support forces. Unit for unit, its German opponents enjoyed a crushing material superiority over the AK and this severely restricted the kind of operations that it could successfully undertake.

The arms and equipment for Armia Krajowa mostly came from four sources: arms buried by the Polish armies on the battlefields after the September Campaign in 1939, arms purchased or captured from the Germans and their allies, arms clandestinely manufactured by Armia Krajowa itself, and arms received from Allied air drops.

From the arms caches hidden in 1939, the AK obtained: 614 heavy machine guns, 1,193 light machine guns, 33,052 rifles, 6,732 pistols, 28 antitank light field guns, 25 antitank rifles and 43,154 hand grenades.^[1] However, because of inadequate conservation which had to be improvised in the chaos of the September campaign, most of these guns were in poor condition. Of those that were hidden in the ground and dug up in 1944 during preparation for Operation Tempest, only 30% were usable.

Polish afterwar communist propaganda poster showing soldier of Armia Ludowa and soldier of Armia Krajowa, saying: "The Giant and the dwarf of reactionism."

Arms purchases from German soldiers were conducted on a "grass roots" level. Purchases were made by individual units and sometimes by individual soldiers. As Germany's prospects for victory diminished and the morale in German units dropped, the number of soldiers willing to sell their weapons correspondingly increased and thus made this source more important. All such purchases were highly risky, as the Gestapo was well aware of this black market in arms and tried to check it by setting up sting operations. For the most part this trade was limited to personal weapons, but occasionally light and heavy machine guns could also be purchased. It was much easier to trade with Italian and Hungarian units stationed in Poland, which willingly sold their arms to the Polish underground as long as they could conceal this trade from the Germans.

The efforts to capture weapons from Germans also proved highly successful. Raids were conducted on trains carrying equipment to the front, as well as guardhouses and gendarmerie posts. Sometimes weapons were taken from individual German soldiers accosted in the street. During the Warsaw Uprising, the AK even managed to capture a few German armored vehicles.

Arms were clandestinely manufactured by the AK in its own secret workshops, and also by its members working in German armament factories. In this way the AK was able to procure submachine guns (copies of British Sten and indigenous Błyskawica), pistols (Vis), flamethrowers, bombs, road mines and hand grenades. Hundreds of people were involved in this manufacturing effort.

The final source of supply were Allied air drops. This was the only way to obtain more exotic but highly useful equipment such as plastic explosives or antitank weapons (PIAT). During the war 485 Allied planes made air drops destined for the AK, delivering 600.9 tons of supplies. During these operations, 70 planes and 62 crews (of which 28 were Polish) were lost. Besides equipment, the planes also parachuted highly qualified instructors (the Cichociemni), of whom 346 were inserted into Poland during the war.^[2] Due to the large distance from bases in Britain and the Mediterranean, and lukewarm political support, the airdrops were only a fraction of those carried out in support of French or Yugoslavian resistance movements.

Operations

Kotwica, one of the symbols of the Armia Krajowa

While the AK did not engender a general revolt, its forces did carry out intensive economic and armed sabotage. In 1944 it acted on a broad scale, notably in initiating the Warsaw Uprising, which broke out on 1 August 1944. It had the aim of liberating Warsaw before the arrival of the Soviet Red Army. While the insurgents released a few hundred prisoners from the Gesia St. concentration camp and carried out fierce street-fighting, the Germans eventually defeated the rebels and burned the city, finally quelling the Uprising only on 2 October 1944.

AK units carried out thousands of armed raids and daring intelligence operations, bombed hundreds of railway shipments, and participated in many partisan clashes and battles with the German police and Wehrmacht units. AK also conducted "vengeance" operations to assassinate Gestapo officials in response to Nazi terror tactics on Polish civilians.

There are some accusations of negative actions committed by the AK towards ethnic minorities, particularly the Lithuanians (see bellow).

Major military and sabotage operations included:

• Operation Belt
• Operation Tempest
  • Wilno Uprising
  • Lwów Uprising
  • Warsaw Uprising

Armia Krajowa supplied valuable intelligence information to the Allies, for example, about V-1 and V-2 flying bombs.

Important Armia Krajowa sub-units included:

• Wachlarz
• Kedyw

Relations with Jews

The accusations of the complicity of the AK and its members in the Holocaust events in Poland are frequently brought up to this day. [3]. The issue remains a controvercial one and is subject to a difficult debate. In February 1942, the Operational Command of the AK Information and Propaganda Office set up the Section for Jewish Affairs, directed by Henryk Woliński. This section collected data about the situation of the Jewish population, drafted reports and sent information to London. It also centralized contacts between Polish and Jewish military organizations. The AK also organised financial aid for Jews (see Żegota). The AK accepted only a few Jews (about one thousand) into its own ranks: it generally turned down Jewish applicants.

The AK provided the Warsaw Ghetto with about sixty revolvers, several hundred hand grenades, and ammunition and explosives. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, AK units tried twice to blow up the ghetto wall, carried out holding actions outside the ghetto walls, and together with GL forces sporadically attacked German sentry units near the ghetto walls. Security Cadre (Kadra Bezpieczeństwa or KB), one of the organizations subordinate to the AK, took a direct part in fights inside the ghetto together with Jewish fighters from ŻZW and ŻOB.

Three out of seven members of the Collective Command of the AK (KG AK) had Jewish origins.

Relations with Lithuanians

Relations between Lithuanians and Poles were strained during most of the interwar period due to conflicts over the Vilnius region and Suvalkai region, where there was a large Lithuanian minority. During the war these conflicts resurfaced as Armia Krajowa's ideal of a Polish state included the Vilnius region.

On June 23, 1944, Some of AK troops by their initiative committed a massacre of Lithuanian civilians, at Dubingiai where 27 Lithuanian civilians, including women and children were murdered. Some Lithuanian authors suggest a higher number of victims (Juozas Lebionka claims 100, some other Lithuanian historians make claims as high as 200). The scale of other possible killings is also a subject of disagreement. One estimate by a Lithuanian investigator Rimas Bružas is that about 500 Lithuanian civilans were killed by Poles during the war. Estimates of Juozas Lebionka suggest even a higher number of 1000. All victims in Dubingiai were peasants. They were killed in their own houses. Much of victims were bilingual (in Lithuanian and Polish) , many of them were from mixed Lithuanian-Polish families. So murderers choosed victims just by some documents : if peasants had lithuanian prayer-book, they were killed. There's still alive witnesses who survived by miracle.

Polish historians claim that the massacre at Dubingiai was unique. This view is supported by AK documents that were recently found in Bernardines monastery in Vilnius, which consist of AK reports of actions between 1943 and 1944. It seems probable that the killings were not planned, and were rather more related to a general dislike of Lithuanians by some people in the AK ranks. This was supposedly further provoked by actions of some Lithuanian military units which were fighting against AK and who in turn were accused of murdering Polish civilians. Therefore some of the alleged AK actions might have been direct retaliation to the actions of Lithuanian groups, the police, or other Lithuanian Nazi collaborators. The same may have applied vice-versa - some of actions of the Lithuanian groups were done as a retalliation for AK actions. Because of these reasons, the AK, despite of its record in saving Poles of Vilnius, are considered to be a controversial organisation in today's Lithuania in a manner somewhat similar to the view of the Soviet partisans.

See also

• Home Army and V1 and V2
• Armia Ludowa
• Cichociemni
• Leśni
• Polish contribution to World War II
• Polish government in exile
• Polish resistance movement
• Polish Secret State
• Filipinka, Sidolówka

External links

• Armia Krajowa
• Armia Krajowa
• Die "Stunde W"
• Home Army (Polish) the Home Army, site in Polish
• POLAND: HERE IS THE RECORD
• Polish resistance - Site edited by the London Branch of the Polish Home Army Ex-Servicemen Association
• Warsaw Uprising 1944
• World War II - Poland

References

• Korboński, Stefan, The Polish Underground State , Columbia University Press, 1978, ISBN 091471032X
• Michael Alfred Peszke, Polish Underground Army, the Western Allies, and the Failure of Strategic Unity in World War II, McFarland & Company, 2004, ISBN 078642009X Google Print
• Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski. Secret Army. Macmillan Company, New York 1951. ISBN 0898390826.