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In November-December 1943 the Allied [[Tehran Conference]] took place. US President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and Prime Minister Churchill agreed with Stalin's ideas of using the [[Curzon Line]] as the basis of Poland's new eastern border and compensating Poland with lands taken from Germany. The strategic war alliance with the Soviets inevitably outweighed the Western loyalty toward the Polish government and people; they were not consulted.
In November-December 1943 the Allied [[Tehran Conference]] took place. US President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and Prime Minister Churchill agreed with Stalin's ideas of using the [[Curzon Line]] as the basis of Poland's new eastern border and compensating Poland with lands taken from Germany. The strategic war alliance with the Soviets inevitably outweighed the Western loyalty toward the Polish government and people; they were not consulted.


In 1944, the Polish government in exile considered its position boosted, as the Polish forces in the West were making [[Polish contribution to World War II|a substantial contribution to the war]]: in May, the Second Corps under general [[Władysław Anders]] [[Battle of Monte Cassino|stormed the fortress]] of [[Monte Cassino]] and opened a road to Rome, in August general [[Stanisław Maczek]]'s [[Polish 1st Armoured Division|1st Armored Division]] distinguished itself at the [[battle of Falaise]], in September general [[Stanisław Sosabowski]]'s [[Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade|Parachute Brigade]] fought hard at the [[battle of Arnhem]]. At the same time, however, the [[Red Army]] was marching into Poland defeating the Nazis and Stalin toughened his stance against the Polish exiled government in London, now demanding not only the recognition of the [[Curzon Line]] as the border, but the resignation from the government of all 'elements hostile to the Soviet Union', which meant in practice president [[Władysław Raczkiewicz]] and most of the Polish ministers.<ref name="Lukowski"/>
In 1944, the Polish forces in the West were making [[Polish contribution to World War II|a substantial contribution to the war]]: in May, the Second Corps under General Anders stormed the fortress of [[Monte Cassino]] and opened a road to Rome, in August General [[Stanisław Maczek]]'s [[1st Armoured Division (Poland)|1st Armoured Division]] distinguished itself at the [[Falaise pocket|Battle of Falaise]], in September General [[Stanisław Sosabowski]]'s [[1st Independent Parachute Brigade (Poland)|Parachute Brigade]] fought hard at the Battle of [[Arnhem]]. At the same time, however, Churchill applied pressure to Mikołajczyk, demanding agreement with the Soviets, including the borders issue. The Red Army was marching into Poland defeating the Nazis and Stalin toughened his stance against the Polish exiled government, wanting not only the recognition of the proposed frontiers, but a resignation from the government of all 'elements hostile to the Soviet Union', which meant in practice President Raczkiewicz, armed forces commander [[Kazimierz Sosnkowski]] and other ministers.


==Polish state reestablished with new borders and under Soviet domination==
==Polish state reestablished with new borders and under Soviet domination==

Revision as of 23:39, 17 June 2014

Part of a series on the
History of Poland
Topics
Prehistory and protohistory
Middle Ages
Piast period10th century–1385
Jagiellonian period1385–1572
Early Modern
Early elective monarchy1572–1648
Deluge and decline1648–1764
Three partitions1764–1795
Modern
Partitioned Poland1795–1918
World War I1914–1918
Second Republic1918–1939
World War II1939–1945
Communist Poland1945–1989
Contemporary
Third Republic1989–present

Timeline of Polish history

Soviet Prime Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signs the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Behind him stand (left) Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop of Germany and (right) Joseph Stalin. The Pact effectively created a Nazi-Soviet alliance and arrangements for a partition of Poland's territory were made.

The History of Poland (1939–45) encompasses the period from the Invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany to the end of World War II.

German and Soviet invasions

Main articles: Invasion of Poland, Soviet invasion of Poland, and Slovak invasion of Poland (1939)

On 1 September 1939, without a formal declaration of war, Nazi Germany invaded Poland with the immediate pretext being the Gleiwitz incident, a provocation staged by the Germans claiming that Polish troops had allegedly committed "provocations" along the German–Polish border. Germany also used issues like the dispute between Germany and Poland over German rights to the Free City of Danzig and the demand for a passage between East Prussia and the rest of Germany through the Polish Corridor as excuses for the invasion. Pursuant to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union troops also invaded Poland on 17 September 1939. Before the end of the month most of Poland was divided between the Germans and the Soviets.

The German attack was not anticipated in a timely manner. Defense preparations of the western border were discontinued under Józef Piłsudski's leadership after 1926 and resumed only in March 1939.[1] Afterwards the Polish Armed Forces were organized for the defense of the country. Their strategic position was made more hopeless by the recent German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Poland was now surrounded on three sides by the German territories of Pomerania, Silesia and East Prussia, and the German-controlled Czechoslovakia. The newly formed Slovak state assisted their German allies by attacking Poland from the south. The Soviet Union encroached from the east, and the Polish forces were blockaded on the Baltic Coast by the German and Soviet navies. The German "concept of annihilation" (Vernichtungsgedanke) that later evolved into the Blitzkrieg ("lightning war") provided for rapid advance of Panzer (armoured) divisions, dive bombing (to break up troop concentrations), and aerial bombing of undefended cities to sap civilian morale. The Polish army, air force and navy had insufficient modern equipment to match the onslaught.

The German forces were numerically and technologically superior. Germany utilized 85% of its existing forces in war against Poland. It commanded 1.6 million men, 250,000 trucks and other motor vehicles, 11,000 artillery pieces, 2,500 tanks and a cavalry division. Some of the Luftwaffe pilots were the veterans of the elite Condor Legion, which had seen action during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). The Luftwaffe comprised 1,180 fighter aircraft (mainly Messerschmitt Bf 109s), 290 Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers, 290 conventional bombers (mainly He 111 type), and 240 assorted naval aircraft. The German navy positioned its old battleship Schleswig-Holstein to shell Westerplatte, a section of the Free City of Danzig, an enclave separate from the main city and awarded to Poland by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

The Polish forces found themselves severely outnumbered and outclassed. They consisted of 800,000 troops, including 11 cavalry brigades, two motorized brigades, 4,000 artillery pieces, and 880 tanks, of which 120 were of the advanced 7TP-type. The Polish air force included 400 fighter aircraft: 160 PZL P.11c, 31 PZL P.7a and 20 P.11a fighters, 120 PZL.23 Karaś reconnaissance-bombers, and 45 PZL.37 Łoś medium bombers. The navy's participation was limited by the withdrawal of major ships to the United Kingdom to prevent their destruction, and their linking up with the Royal Navy (known as the Peking Plan). It consisted of four destroyers, one torpedo boat, one minelayer, two gunboats, six minesweepers, and five submarines.

Although the UK and France declared war on Germany, little movement took place on the western front. To the east of Poland, the Soviet Union was preparing its own military advance to occupy eastern Poland in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

Survivor of bombing of Warsaw

The Soviet Union, having its own reasons to fear the German expansionism further east, negotiated previously with France and the United Kingdom and through them made an offer to Poland of an anti-German alliance, similar to the earlier one made to Czechoslovakia. The British and the French sought the formation of a powerful political-military bloc, comprising the Soviet Union, Poland and Romania in the east and France and Britain in the west.[2] However, the Polish leaders feared Joseph Stalin's communism and throughout 1939 refused to agree to any arrangement which would allow Soviet troops to enter Poland. The Polish unwillingness to accept the Soviet offer is illustrated by the quote of Marshall Edward Rydz-Śmigły, Commander-in-Chief of the Polish armed forces, who said: "With the Germans we run the risk of losing our liberty. With the Russians we will lose our soul".[3] The attitude of the Polish leadership was also reflected by Foreign Minister Józef Beck, who, apparently confident in the French and British declarations of support, asserted that the security of Poland was not going to be guaranteed by a "Soviet or any other Russia". The Soviets then turned to concluding the German offer of a treaty and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed on 23 August 1939.

The Polish government feared that Germany would launch only a limited war, to seize the territories it claimed, and then ask France and Britain for a ceasefire. To defend these territories, the Polish military command compounded the Polish strategic weakness by massing the Polish forces along the western border, in defence of Poland's main industrial areas around Poznań and Łódź. But there they could be easily surrounded and cut off. By the time the command decided to withdraw to the line of the Vistula, it was too late. By 28 September, Warsaw was surrounded.

Polish infantry in action in September 1939

In accordance with a secret protocol annex to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Germany asked the Soviet Union on 3 September[4] to engage its troops against the Polish state. The Soviet Union assured Germany that the Red Army advance into Poland would soon follow under the pretext of aiding the Ukrainians and the Belarusians threatened by Germany.[5][6]

On 17 September, the Soviet troops marched into Poland, which the Soviet Union claimed to be by then non-existent. Concerns about the Soviets' own security were also used to justify the invasion.[7] The Soviet advance was coordinated with the movement of the German forces[8] and met little resistance from the Polish forces (such as the Battle of Szack fought by the Border Protection Corps). The Polish forces were ordered by their command, who were now at the Romanian border, to avoid engaging the Soviets, but some fighting between Soviet and Polish units did take place.[9]

The Polish government and military high command retreated to the southeast Romanian Bridgehead territory and crossed into neutral Romania. There was no formal surrender, and resistance continued in many places. Warsaw was defended but bombed into submission. The event that served as a trigger for its surrender on 27 September was the damage to the water supply system caused by one of the German bombs and the subsequent lack of water. Some army units fought until well into October (Battle of Kock). In the more mountainous parts of the country, army units began underground resistance almost at once. The Polish Army lost 65,000 troops, 400 air crew, and 110 navy crew also died. The German losses were 16,000 troops, 365 air crew, and 126 navy crew. 285 German aircraft were destroyed, of which 126 were claimed by Polish fighter pilots, 90 were shot down by anti-aircraft fire, and 70 kills remained unclaimed. Three hundred more German aircraft were so badly damaged they were written off. The Polish Air Force lost 327 aircraft, 260 of which were lost due to direct or indirect enemy action, with around 70 in air-to-air fighting. Anti-aircraft fire destroyed the other 67.

Occupation of Poland

Main articles: Occupation of Poland (1939–45), Administrative division of Polish territories during World War II, War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II, Nazi crimes against the Polish nation, and Polish culture during World War II

About 1⁄5 of Polish citizens lost their lives in the war,[10] most of the civilians targeted by various deliberate actions. The German plan involved not only the annexation of Polish territory, but also a total destruction of Polish culture and the Polish nation (Generalplan Ost).

German-occupied Poland

See also: Nazi crimes against the Polish nation and The Holocaust in occupied Poland
Poland was partitioned in 1939 as agreed by Germany and the Soviet Union in their treaty; division of Polish territories in 1939–41
Changes in administration of Polish territories following the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union

Under the terms of two decrees by Hitler (8 October and 12 October 1939), large areas of western Poland were annexed to Germany. These included all the territories which Germany had lost under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, such as the Polish Corridor, West Prussia and Upper Silesia, but also a large area of indisputably Polish territory east of these territories, including the city of Łódź.

The annexed areas of Poland were divided into the following administrative units:

The area of these annexed territories was 94,000 square kilometres and the population was about 10 million, the great majority of whom were Poles.

Under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Demarcation, the Soviet Union annexed all Polish territory east of the line of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Bug and San, except for the area around Vilnius (known in Polish as Wilno), which was given to Lithuania, and the Suwałki region, which was annexed by Germany. These territories were largely inhabited by Ukrainians and Belarusians, with minorities of Poles and Jews (for numbers see Curzon Line). The total area, including the area given to Lithuania, was 201,000 square kilometres, with a population of 13.5 million. A small strip of land that was a part of Hungary before 1914 was given to Slovakia.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Polish territories previously occupied by the Soviets were organized as follows:

Hans Frank

(see also: Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany)

The future fate of Poland and Poles was decided in Generalplan Ost, a Nazi plan to engage in genocide and ethnic cleansing of the territories occupied by Germany in Eastern Europe in order to exterminate the Slavic peoples. The remaining block of territory was placed under a German administration called the General Government (in German Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete), with its capital at Kraków. The General Government was subdivided into four districts, Warsaw, Lublin, Radom, and Kraków. (For more detail on the territorial division of this area see General Government.)

A German lawyer and prominent Nazi, Hans Frank, was appointed Governor-General of the General Government on 26 October. Frank oversaw the segregation of the Jews into ghettos in the larger cities, including Warsaw, and the use of Polish civilians for compulsory labour in German war industries.

The population in the General Government's territory was initially about 12 million in an area of 94,000 km², but this increased as about 860,000 Poles and Jews were expelled from the German-annexed areas and "resettled" in the General Government. Offsetting this was the German campaign of extermination of the Polish intelligentsia and other elements thought likely to resist (e.g. Operation Tannenberg and Action AB). From 1941, disease and hunger also began to reduce the population. Poles were also deported in large numbers to work as forced labour in Germany: eventually about a million were deported, and many died in Germany.

According to a recent (2009) estimates by IPN, between 5.62 million and 5.82 million Polish citizens (including Polish Jews) died as a result of the German occupation.[11][12]

Soviet-occupied Poland

See also: Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–46)

By the end of the Polish Defensive War, the Soviet Union took over 52.1% of the territory of Poland (circa 200,000 km²), with over 13,700,000 people. Population estimates vary; one analysis gives the following numbers in regard to the ethnic composition of these areas at the time: 38% Poles (ca. 5.1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees from areas occupied by Germany, most of them Jews (198,000).[13] Areas occupied by the Soviet Union were annexed to Soviet territory, with the exception of the Wilno/Vilnius region, which was transferred to the Republic of Lithuania. Lithuania itself was soon annexed by the Soviets and, including the contested Wilno area, became the Lithuanian Soviet Republic.

The Germans enforced their policies based on the Nazi racism ideology. The Soviet administrators used slogans about class struggle and dictatorship of the proletariat,[14] as they applied the policies of Stalinism and Sovietization in occupied eastern Poland.[15][16] On October 22, the Soviets organized staged elections to Moscow-controlled Supreme Soviets (legislative bodies) of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine[17] to legitimize the Soviet rule.[18]

All institutions of the dismantled Polish state were closed down and reopened with new directors who were mostly Russian and in rare cases[13] Ukrainian or Polish.[13] Lviv University and other schools restarted anew as Soviet institutions. Studies were devoted to Soviet propaganda.[13] Polish literature and language studies were dissolved.

The Soviet authorities attempted to remove all signs of Polish existence and activity in the area.[13] On 21 December, the Polish currency was withdrawn from circulation without any exchange to the newly introduced ruble.[19] In schools, Polish language books were burned.[13]

All the media became controlled by Moscow. Soviet occupation implemented a police state type political regime,[20][21][22][23] based on terror. All Polish parties and organisations were disbanded. Only the communist party and subordinate organisations were allowed to exist. Soviet teachers in schools encouraged children to spy on their parents.[13]

Organized religions were persecuted. Most churches were closed; priests and ministers were discriminated against by the authorities and subjected to high taxes, drafts into military service, arrests and deportations.[13] All enterprises were taken over by the state, while agriculture was made collective.[24] The results of the Soviet economic policies soon resulted in serious difficulties, as shops lacked goods, food was scarce and people were threatened by famine.[13]

According to the Soviet law, all residents of the annexed area, referred to as citizens of former Poland,[25] automatically acquired the Soviet citizenship. Residents were still required and pressured to consent[26] and those who opted out were threatened with repatriation to Nazi controlled territories of Poland.[7][27][28]

The Soviets exploited past ethnic tensions between Poles and other ethnic groups, inciting and encouraging violence against Poles by calling upon the minorities to "rectify the wrongs they had suffered during twenty years of Polish rule".[29] The hostile propaganda resulted in instances of bloody repression.[30]

Parts of the Ukrainian population initially welcomed the end of Polish rule[31] and the phenomenon was strengthened by a land reform. However, the Soviet authorities soon started a campaign of forced collectivisation, which largely nullified the reform gains. There were large groups of prewar Polish citizens, notably Jewish youth and, to a lesser extent, Ukrainian peasants, who saw the Soviet power as an opportunity to start political or social activity outside of their traditional ethnic or cultural groups. Their enthusiasm faded with time as it became clear that the Soviet repressions affected everybody.[32] The organisation of Ukrainians desiring independent Ukraine (the OUN) was persecuted as "anti-Soviet".

A rule of terror was started by the NKVD and other Soviet agencies. The first victims were the approximately 250,000 Polish prisoners of war.[33] The Soviet Union had not signed any international convention on rules of war and they were denied the status of prisoners of war. When the Soviets conducted recruitment activities among the Polish military, an overwhelming majority of the captured officers refused to cooperate; they were considered enemies of the Soviet Union and a decision was made by the Soviet Politburo (5 March 1940) to secretly execute them.[34] The officers and a large number of ordinary soldiers[35] were then murdered (see Katyn massacre) or sent to Gulag.[36] Of the 10,000-12,000 Poles sent to Kolyma in 1940–41, most POWs, only 583 men survived, released in 1942 to join the Polish Armed Forces in the East.[37]

Similar policies were applied to the civilian population. The Soviet authorities regarded service for the prewar Polish state as a "crime against revolution"[38] and "counter-revolutionary activity",[39] and subsequently started arresting large numbers of Polish intelligentsia, politicians, civil servants and scientists, but also ordinary people suspected of posing a threat to the Soviet rule. Schoolchildren as young as 10 or 12 years old who laughed at Soviet propaganda presented in schools were sent into prisons, sometimes for as long as 10 years.[13]

The prisons soon got severely overcrowded[32] with detainees suspected of anti-Soviet activities and the NKVD had to open dozens of ad hoc prison sites in almost all towns of the region.[18] The wave of arrests led to forced resettlement of large categories of people (kulaks, Polish civil servants, forest workers, university professors or osadniks, for instance) to the Gulag labour camps.[16]

According to recent (2009) estimates by IPN, around 150,000 Polish citizens died as a result of the Soviet occupation.[11][12] The number of deportees was estimated at around 320,000.[11][12]

Resistance in Poland

Further information: Polish resistance movement in World War II

Resistance to the German occupation began almost at once and included guerrilla warfare. In June 1940 Władysław Sikorski, prime minister in exile, appointed General Stefan Rowecki to head the underground forces. The Home Army (in Polish Armia Krajowa or AK), loyal to the Polish government in exile in London and a military arm of the Polish Underground State, was formed from the Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej, in existence from 1939) and other groups in 1942. Gwardia Ludowa and then Armia Ludowa were the much smaller leftist formations, backed by the Soviet Union and controlled by the Polish Workers' Party. The ultra-nationalist National Armed Forces also operated separately. By mid-1944, the AK had some 400,000 members but was not well-armed.[40]

The Underground State was endorsed by Poland's main prewar political blocks, including the peasant, socialist, nationalist and Catholic parties and absorbed many supporters of the Sanation rule, humbled by the 1939 defeat. The parties established clandestine cooperation in February 1940 and dedicated themselves to a future postwar parliamentary democracy in Poland. From autumn 1940, the "state" was led by a Delegate appointed by the government in London. The communists, more active after the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and the right wing extremists, neither joined the broad coalition nor recognized the Government Delegate.[40]

The Underground State maintained the continuity of the Polish statehood and conducted a broad range of political, military, administrative, social, cultural, educational and other activities, within the practical limits of the conspiratorial environment.[40]

With Stalin's encouragement, Polish communist institutions rival to the Government in Exile and the Underground State were established. They included the Polish Workers' Party (from January 1942) and the State National Council in occupied Poland, and the Union of Polish Patriots in the Soviet Union.[40]

In August 1943 and March 1944, the Underground State announced its long-term plan, partially designed to counter the attractiveness of some of the communists' proposals. It promised land reform, nationalisation of the industrial base, demands for territorial compensation from Germany, and re-establishment of the pre-1939 eastern border. Thus, the main difference between the Underground State and the communists, in terms of politics, amounted not to radical economic and social reforms, which were advocated by both sides, but to their attitudes towards national sovereignty, borders, and Polish-Soviet relations.[40]

In April 1943, the Germans began deporting the remaining Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, provoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from 19 April–16 May, one of the first armed uprisings against the Germans in Poland. The Polish-Jewish leaders knew that the rising would be crushed but they preferred to die fighting than wait to be deported to their deaths in the death camps.

In early 1943, the Home Army built up its forces in preparation for a national uprising.[40] The plan was code-named Operation Tempest and began in late 1943. Its most widely known elements were the Operation Ostra Brama and the Warsaw Uprising. In August 1944, as the Soviet forces approached Warsaw, the government in exile approved an uprising in the city to try to prevent a communist takeover of the Polish government. The AK, led by Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, launched the Warsaw Uprising. Soviet forces were nearby, but on the orders of the Soviet high command gave little assistance. Stalin described the rising as a "criminal adventure." The Poles appealed to the western allies for help. The Royal Air Force and the Polish Air Force based in Italy dropped some arms but very limited help was possible without Soviet involvement.

The fighting in Warsaw was desperate, with selfless valour being displayed in street-to-street fighting. The AK had between 12,000 and 20,000 soldiers, most equipped with only small arms. They faced a well-equipped German army of 20,000 SS and regular army units. The Polish command's hope that the AK could take and hold Warsaw for the arrival of the London government was never likely to be achieved. After 63 days of savage fighting, the city was reduced to rubble and German reprisals were savage. The SS and auxiliary units recruited from the Soviet Army deserters were particularly brutal.

After the Uprising's surrender, the AK fighters were given the status of prisoners-of-war by the Germans but the civilian population was ruthlessly punished. Overall, the Polish casualties are estimated to be between 150,000 and 300,000 killed, with 90,000 civilians being sent to labour camps in the Reich, while 60,000 were shipped to death in concentration camps such as Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, and others. The city was almost totally demolished by the German punitive bombing raids. The Warsaw Rising allowed the Germans to largely destroy the AK as a fighting force, but the main beneficiaries were the Soviets and the communists, who were able to impose a communist government on postwar Poland with little fear of armed resistance.

Collaboration with the occupiers

German recruitment poster: "Let's do agricultural work in Germany: report immediately to your Vogt"
Main article: Occupation of Poland (1939–45)

In occupied Poland, there was no official collaboration at either the political or economic level.[41][42] Poland never officially surrendered to the Germans or to the Soviets (a state of war was formally declared on Germany, but not on the Soviet Union). In the German occupation zone, the Polish resistance movement in World War II was the largest in all of occupied Europe.[43] As a result, Polish citizens were unlikely to be given positions of any significant authority.[41][42] The vast majority of the prewar citizenry collaborating with the Nazis was the German minority in Poland, the members of which were offered one of several possible grades of the German citizenship (Volksdeutsche).[44] During the war there were about 3 million former Polish citizens of German origin who signed the official list of the Volksdeutsche.[42] People who became Volksdeutsche were treated by Poles with special contempt, and the fact of them having signed the Volksliste constituted high treason according to the Polish underground law.

Depending on a definition of collaboration (and of a Polish citizen, including the ethnicity and minority status considerations), scholars estimate number of "Polish collaborators" at around several thousand in a population of about 35 million (that number is supported by the Israeli War Crimes Commission).[41][42][45][46] The estimate is based primarily on the number of death sentences for treason by the Special Courts of the Polish Underground State.[45] John Connelly quoted a Polish historian (Leszek Gondek) calling the phenomenon of Polish collaboration "marginal" and wrote that "only relatively small percentage of Polish population engaged in activities that may be described as collaboration when seen against the backdrop of European and world history".[45]

In October 1939, the Nazis ordered the mobilization of the prewar Polish police to the service of the occupational authorities. The policemen were to report for duty or face a death penalty.[47] The so-called Blue Police was formed. At its peak in 1943, it numbered around 16,000.[48] Its primary task was to act as a regular police force and to deal with criminal activities, but they were also used by the Germans in combating smuggling and patrolling the Jewish ghettos. Many individuals in the Blue Police followed German orders reluctantly, often disobeyed them or even risked death acting against them.[7][49][50] Many members of the Blue Police were double agents for the Polish resistance.[51][52] Some of its officers were ultimately awarded the Righteous Among the Nations awards for saving Jews.[53][54] According to Timothy Snyder though, acting in their capacity as a collaborationist force, the Blue Police may have killed more than 50,000 Jews.[55]

Following Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the German forces quickly overran the territory of Poland controlled by the Soviets since their 1939 invasion. There were no known joint Polish-German actions, and the Germans were unsuccessful in their attempt to turn the Poles toward fighting exclusively against the Soviet partisans.[7]Tadeusz Piotrowski quotes Joseph Rothschild as saying "The Polish Home Army (AK) was by and large untainted by collaboration" and that "the honor of AK as a whole is beyond reproach".[7] In 1944, the Germans clandestinely armed a few regional AK units operating in the area of Vilnius in order to encourage them to act against the Soviet partisans in the region. AK turned these weapons against the Nazis during the Operation Ostra Brama.[56] Such arrangements were purely tactical and did not evidence the type of ideological collaboration as shown by the Vichy regime in France or the Quisling regime in Norway.[7] The Poles' main motivation was to gain intelligence on German morale and preparedness and to acquire much needed equipment.[57]

Gunnar S. Paulsson estimates that in Warsaw the number of Polish citizens collaborating with the Nazis during the occupation might have been around "1 or 2 percent" (p. 113).[49] However, the damage that they did was substantial. Most were interested in money. Blackmailers significantly increased the danger facing Jews and their chances of getting caught and killed. They harassed rescuers, stripped Jews of assets needed for food and bribes, raised the overall level of insecurity, and forced hidden Jews to seek out safer accommodations. Some individuals took advantage of a hiding person's desperation by collecting money, then reneging on their promise of aid—or worse, turning them over to the Germans for an additional reward. Individuals who turned in Jews in hiding to the Gestapo received a standard payment consisting of some cash, liquor, sugar and cigarettes. Many Jews were robbed and handed over to the Germans by such "szmalcowniks", many of whom practiced blackmail as an "occupation". Those criminals were condemned by the Polish Underground State and a fight against the informers was organized by the AK. Death sentences for collaborators were meted out on a scale much greater than in occupied countries of Western Europe.

The village of Jedwabne was occupied by the Soviet Union before Operation Barbarossa and some members of the Jewish community were subsequently accused of collaboration with the Soviets. During the Jedwabne pogrom of July 1941, a mob of Poles murdered around 300 local Jews in a burning barn-house.[58]

The Holocaust in Poland

Main articles: The Holocaust in occupied Poland and War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II
The entrance to the Auschwitz I concentration camp

Persecution of the Jews by the Nazi occupation government, particularly in the urban areas, began immediately after the occupation. In the first year and a half, the Germans confined themselves to stripping the Jews of their property, herding them into ghettos and putting them into forced labor in war-related industries. During this period the Jewish community leadership, the Judenrat, had an official recognition by the Germans and was able to some extent to bargain with the Germans. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, special extermination squads (the Einsatzgruppen) were organised to kill Jews in the areas of eastern Poland which had been annexed by the Soviets in 1939.

In 1942, the Germans engaged in the systematic killing of the Jews, beginning with the Jewish population of the General Government. Six extermination camps (Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór and Treblinka) were established in which the most extreme measure of the Holocaust, the mass murder of millions of Jews from Poland and other countries, was carried out between 1942 and 1944. Of Poland's prewar Jewish population of 3 million, only about 10% survived the war.[59]

During the German occupation, most Poles were engaged in a desperate struggle for survival and were in no position to oppose or impede the Nazi extermination of the Jews even if they had wanted to. There were, however, many cases of Poles risking death to hide Jewish families and in other ways assist the Jews. Only in Poland was death a standard punishment for a person and his whole family, and sometimes also neighbours, for helping the Jews.

Further information: Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust

In September 1942, the Provisional Committee for Aid to Jews (Tymczasowy Komitet Pomocy Żydom) was founded on the initiative of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka. This body later became the Council for Aid to Jews (Rada Pomocy Żydom), known by the code-name Żegota. It is not known how many Jews were helped by Żegota, but at one point in 1943 it had 2,500 Jewish children under its care in Warsaw alone. (See also an example of the village that helped Jews: Markowa). Because of such actions, Polish citizens have the highest number of Righteous Among the Nations awards at the Yad Vashem Museum.[60]

Polish-Ukrainian conflict

The Polish-Ukrainian conflict, also referred to as a civil war, occurred with the onset of the massacres of Poles in Volhynia (Polish: Rzeź wołyńska, literally: Volhynian slaughter), an ethnic cleansing operation in the eastern part of occupied Poland. The entire conflict took place mainly between late March 1943 and August 1947, extending beyond World War II.[61] The actions, orchestrated and conducted in most part by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) together with other Ukrainian groups and local Ukrainian peasants in three provinces (voivodeships), resulted in between 35,000 and 60,000 Polish civilians being murdered in the former Wołyń Voivodeship alone. Along with Galicia and eastern Lublin area, total Polish civilian losses are estimated to exceed 60,000. The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943, when a senior UPA commander, Dmytro Klyachkivsky, ordered the extermination of the entire ethnic Polish population between 16 and 60 years of age.[62] The massacres committed by the UPA led to ethnic cleansing and retaliatory killings by Poles against local Ukrainians both east and west of the Curzon Line. Estimates of the number of Ukrainians killed in Polish reprisals vary from 10,000 to 20,000, in all areas affected by the conflict.[63] The ethnic cleansing reached its full scale with the Soviet and Polish communist implementation of the Operation Vistula, aimed at securing ethnic homogeneity on both sides of the Poland-Soviet Ukraine border. Due in part to the successive occupations of the region, ethnic Poles and Ukrainians were brutally pitted against each other, first under the German occupation, and later under the Soviet occupation. Hundreds of thousands on both sides lost their lives over the course of this conflict.

See also: Historiography of the Volyn tragedy, Janowa Dolina massacre, Massacre of Ostrówki, Pavlivka, Przebraże Defence, and 27th Home Army Infantry Division (Poland)

Government in exile

Władysław Sikorski
Further information: Polish government-in-exile
See also: Polish Armed Forces in the West and Polish Armed Forces in the East

Because of the Polish government leaders' internment in Romania, the government reassembled in Paris and formed a government in exile under a new leadership. Under French pressure, On October 1 1939 Władysław Raczkiewicz was appointed as president and General Władysław Sikorski, an anti-Sanation politician, became prime minister and commander-in-chief of the Polish armed forces, reconstructed in the West. The government in exile, recognized by France and Britain, was evacuated from Paris to London, where it remained.[64]

Most of the Polish Navy ships reached the United Kingdom and tens of thousands of soldiers escaped through Hungary to continue the fight. Many Poles took part in the Battle of France, the Battle of Britain, and, allied with the British forces, in other operations (see Polish contribution to World War II).[64]

After Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22 1941, the British government allied itself with the Soviet Union on July 13 and Winston Churchill pressed Sikorski to also reach an agreement with the Soviets. The Sikorski–Mayski treaty was signed on July 30 and Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations were restored. Polish soldiers and others imprisoned in the Soviet Union since 1939 were released and a formation of a Polish army there was agreed, intended to fight on the Eastern Front, help the Red Army to liberate Poland and establish a sovereign Polish state. Under changed plans the 70,000 Polish soldiers (and 40,000 civilians), led by General Władysław Anders, left the Soviet Union through Iran in the summer of 1942. They formed the basis for a Polish army that fought alongside the Western Allies at Monte Cassino, Arnhem and other battles.

As the Soviet forces began their westward offensive with the victory at Stalingrad, it became increasingly apparent that Stalin's visions of a future Poland and of its borders were fundamentally different from those of the Polish government in London and the Polish Underground State and Polish-Soviet relations kept deteriorating. Polish communist institutions rival to the main national independence and pro-Western movement were established in Poland and in the Soviet Union. The Soviets began recruiting for a communist Polish army led by Zygmunt Berling, a Polish Army colonel. With the Western Allies stalling a serious offensive undertaking from the west, it was clear that it would be the Soviet Union who would enter Poland and drive off Nazi Germans.

Polish volunteers to Anders' Army, released from a Soviet POW camp

In April 1943, the Germans discovered the graves of 4,000 Polish officers at Katyn near Smolensk. Sikorski, suspecting the Soviets to be the perpetrators of an atrocity, requested the Red Cross to investigate. Stalin reacted by "suspending" diplomatic relations with Sikorski's government on April 25.

Prime Minister Sikorski, the most prominent of Polish exile leaders, was killed in an air crash near Gibraltar on July 4. Sikorski was succeeded as head of the government in exile by Stanisław Mikołajczyk.

In November-December 1943 the Allied Tehran Conference took place. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill agreed with Stalin's ideas of using the Curzon Line as the basis of Poland's new eastern border and compensating Poland with lands taken from Germany. The strategic war alliance with the Soviets inevitably outweighed the Western loyalty toward the Polish government and people; they were not consulted.

In 1944, the Polish forces in the West were making a substantial contribution to the war: in May, the Second Corps under General Anders stormed the fortress of Monte Cassino and opened a road to Rome, in August General Stanisław Maczek's 1st Armoured Division distinguished itself at the Battle of Falaise, in September General Stanisław Sosabowski's Parachute Brigade fought hard at the Battle of Arnhem. At the same time, however, Churchill applied pressure to Mikołajczyk, demanding agreement with the Soviets, including the borders issue. The Red Army was marching into Poland defeating the Nazis and Stalin toughened his stance against the Polish exiled government, wanting not only the recognition of the proposed frontiers, but a resignation from the government of all 'elements hostile to the Soviet Union', which meant in practice President Raczkiewicz, armed forces commander Kazimierz Sosnkowski and other ministers.

Polish state reestablished with new borders and under Soviet domination

Battalion Zośka soldiers in Wola during the Warsaw Uprising

As the Soviets advanced through Poland in late 1944, the German administration collapsed. Over 600,000 Soviet soldiers died fighting German troops in Poland.[65] The Communist-controlled Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN, Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego), headed by Bolesław Bierut, was installed by the Soviet Union in July in Lublin, the first major Polish city to be seized by Soviets from the Nazis, and began to take over the administration of the country as the Germans retreated. The government in exile in London had only one card to play, the forces of the AK. This was why the government in exile was determined that the AK would cooperate with the advancing Red Army on a tactical level, while Polish civil authorities from underground took power in Allied-controlled Polish territory (see Operation Tempest) to ensure that Poland would remain an independent country after the war. The failure of the Warsaw Uprising marked the end of any real chance that Poland would escape postwar Communist rule, especially given the unwillingness of the Western Allies to risk conflict with Soviets over Poland. Soviets performed executions, deportations and arrests of Home Army members that assisted them in fights against the Germans.[66] Until 1946 Soviet forces fought against the Polish independence movement, and some former AK and NSZ continued to fight as Cursed soldiers well into 1956.

The legacy of World War II: Poland's old and new borders

At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Stalin was able to present his Western Allies, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, with a fait accompli in Poland. His armed forces were in control of the country, and his agents, the Polish Communists, were in control of its administration. The USSR was in the process of incorporating the lands in eastern Poland (Kresy), which it had occupied and annexed in 1939 (see Polish areas annexed by Soviet Union), with some minor border adjustments in Poland's favour (the most important of which allowed Poland to retain Białystok). In compensation, the USSR awarded Poland all the German territories in Pomerania, Silesia and Brandenburg east of the Oder-Neisse Line, plus the southern half of East Prussia (those would be known as the Recovered Territories). The entire country had shifted to the west, and now resembled the territory of Medieval Poland. This entailed the expulsion of 8 million Germans who were forced to relocate their families to the new Germany. Approximately 1000 Germans were certified as "Poles" and were given Polish citizenship. These territories were repopulated with Poles expelled from the eastern regions by the Soviet Union and other territories. The new Poland emerged 20% smaller by 77,500 km² (29,900 mi²). Most of the ethnic Polish population was expelled from the territories incorporated into Soviet Ukraine and Belarus (Repatriation of Poles (1944–1946)) in the population exchange that included the transfer of the Ukrainian and Belarusian population from Poland into these republics.[67] The Soviet-controlled Polish government not wishing to entertain the recreation of Belarusian and Ukrainian minorities within the postwar boundaries of Poland, withdrew the citizenship of those displaced persons (DPs) and political refugees who found themselves in western Europe, leaving them stateless, and collaborated actively in 1947 in the expulsion of remaining Belarusians and especially Ukrainians from the southwestern region of postwar Poland, expelling thousands of Ukrainians into Soviet Ukraine (Operation Vistula), thereby undercutting the ongoing Ukrainian nationalist resistance to Soviet rule (Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)) and ensuring that postwar Poland would not have any significant minorities to contend with.

January 1945 aerial photo of destroyed Warsaw

Stalin was determined that Poland's new government should be Communist, and therefore ultimately under his control. He had severed relations with the Polish government-in-exile in London in 1943 in the aftermath of the Katyn Massacre, but to appease Roosevelt and Churchill he agreed at Yalta that a coalition government would be formed. The Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, resigned his post and, with several other Polish exile leaders, went to Lublin in eastern Poland, where the Communist-controlled provisional government had been established. This government was headed by a Socialist, Edward Osóbka-Morawski, but the Communists held a majority of key posts. It was recognized by the Western Allies in July 1945. Stalin also agreed that Poland would receive a US$10 billion reparation payment from Germany.

The attitude of the Polish population towards Soviet entry was generally hostile, while some cases existed of welcoming them, they soon turned into hatred and despise as Red Army soldiers engaged in plunder, rape, banditry, while NKVD implemented a reign of political terror. In the eyes of Polish society which wasn't yet under the Soviet occupation in 1939-1941 the Soviets became a new occupiers, and soon protests and demands of their withdrawal have spread among the country. A popular belief was that Western Allies will soon defeat Soviets using atomic weapons and free Poland from the Soviets.[68]

In April 1945, that provisional government signed a mutual pact with the Soviet Union. The new Polish Government of National Unity was finally constituted on 28 June with Mikołajczyk as Deputy Prime Minister. The Communists' principal rivals were Mikołajczyk's Polish People's Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe PSL), veterans of both the World War II resistance group Home Army (AK), and the Polish armies which had fought in the west. But at the same time, Soviet-oriented parties, especially the PPR, under Władysław Gomułka and Bolesław Bierut, held the balance of power, controlling Polish army and police, and being supported by the Red Army. Potential political opponents of Communists were subject to Soviet terror campaigns, with many of them arrested, executed or tortured.[69] At least 25,000 people lost their lives in labour camps created by Soviets as early as 1944.[70] Harry S. Truman and Winston Churchill were aware of the predominance of Soviet controlled parties and decided on a policy of strong resistance to Stalin.

The Western Allies in the persons of Roosevelt and Churchill have been criticised, both by Polish writers and some western historians, for what most Poles see as the abandonment of Poland to Stalin. Well before Yalta, they secretly consigned Eastern Europe and the Baltics to the Soviet Union. At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Roosevelt committed that Stalin could have Romania, Bulgaria, Bukovina, eastern Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Finland,[71] in addition to making changes to the Polish frontier.[72] Meeting with Stalin in Moscow on 9 October 1944, Churchill penciled a list of which power was to have what degree of "dominance" in each country lying between the Soviet Union and western Europe.[73] This bifurcation of secret versus public diplomacy (viz. Stimson Doctrine, Atlantic Charter) sealed the post-war fate of Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. Yalta merely confirmed prior Western commitments.

The PKWN Manifesto was issued on 22 July 1944

Mikołajczyk and his colleagues in the Polish Government-in-Exile insisted on making a stand in defence of Poland's pre-1939 eastern border (Curzon line) as a basis for the future Polish-Soviet border, a position which could not be defended in practice because Stalin was in control of the territory in question, and he had already been promised those areas by Churchill and Roosevelt back in 1943. The Government-in-Exile's refusal to accept the proposed new Polish borders irritated the Allies, particularly Churchill, making them less inclined to oppose Stalin on the question of the composition of the postwar government. In the end the exiles lost on both issues: Stalin annexed the eastern territories, and gained control over the new Polish government. Whilst Poland avoided the fate of becoming the 17th republic of the Soviet Union as proposed by some influential Polish communists around Wanda Wasilewska,[74] it was to remain under heavy Soviet control until the mid-1950s.

Hans Frank was captured by American troops in May 1945 and was one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials. During his trial he converted to Catholicism. Frank surrendered forty volumes of his diaries to the Tribunal and much evidence against him and others was gathered from them. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and on 1 October 1946 he was sentenced to death by hanging.

Of all the countries involved in the war, Poland lost the highest percentage of its citizens: over six million perished, over three million of them Polish Catholics and the remaining three million were Polish Jews.

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ Antoni Czubiński, Historia drugiej wojny światowej 1939–1945 [History of World War II 1939–1945], Dom Wydawniczy REBIS, Poznań 2009, ISBN 978-83-7177-546-8, pp. 37–38
  2. ^ Antoni Czubiński, Historia Polski XX wieku [The History of 20th Century Poland], Wydawnictwo Nauka i Innowacje, Poznań 2012, ISBN 978-83-63795-01-6, p. 158
  3. ^ Boris Meissner, "The Baltic Question in World Politics", The Baltic States in Peace and War (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978), 139–148
  4. ^ Template:En icon Joachim Ribbentrop. "The Reich Foreign Minister to the German Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Schulenburg)". The Avalon Project. Yale Law School.
  5. ^ Template:En icon Friedrich Werner von Schulenburg. "The German Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Schulenburg) to the German Foreign Office". The Avalon Project. Yale Law School.
  6. ^ Template:En icon Friedrich Werner von Schulenburg. "The German Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Schulenburg) to the German Foreign Office". The Avalon Project. Yale Law School.
  7. ^ a b c d e f Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland's Holocaust, McFarland & Company, 1997, ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. Google Print, p.88, p.89, p.90 Cite error: The named reference "Piotrowski" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  8. ^ Template:En icon Friedrich Werner von Schulenburg. "The German Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Schulenburg) to the German Foreign Office". The Avalon Project. Yale Law School.
  9. ^ Template:Ru icon Мельтюхов М.И. (2000). "Упущенный шанс Сталина. Советский Союз и борьба за Европу: 1939–1941 (Dropped chance of Stalin: USSR and the struggle for Europe)". Militera.ru. Moscow, Veche.
  10. ^ Template:En icon Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide…. McFarland & Company. p. 305. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3.
  11. ^ a b c AFP/Expatica, Polish experts lower nation's WWII death toll, expatica.com, 30 August 2009
  12. ^ a b c Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami, ed. Tomasz Szarota and Wojciech Materski, Warszawa, IPN 2009, ISBN 978-83-7629-067-6 (Introduction reproduced here)
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Template:Pl icon Elżbieta Trela-Mazur (1997). Włodzimierz Bonusiak, Stanisław Jan Ciesielski, Zygmunt Mańkowski, Mikołaj Iwanow (ed.). Sowietyzacja oświaty w Małopolsce Wschodniej pod radziecką okupacją 1939-1941 (Sovietization of education in eastern Lesser Poland during the Soviet occupation 1939-1941). Kielce: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna im. Jana Kochanowskiego. p. 294. ISBN 83-7133-100-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link), also in Wrocławskie Studia Wschodnie, Wrocław, 1997
  14. ^ Template:Pl icon Wojciech Roszkowski (1998). Historia Polski 1914–1997. Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Naukowe PWN. p. 476. ISBN 83-01-12693-0.
  15. ^ Template:Pl icon Various authors (1998). Adam Sudoł (ed.). Sowietyzacja Kresów Wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej po 17 września 1939. Bydgoszcz: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna. p. 441. ISBN 83-7096-281-5.
  16. ^ a b Template:En icon various authors (2001). "Stalinist Forced Relocation Policies". In Myron Weiner, Sharon Stanton Russell (ed.). Demography and National Security. Berghahn Books. pp. 308–315. ISBN 1-57181-339-X. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  17. ^ Template:Pl icon Bartłomiej Kozłowski (2005). ""Wybory" do Zgromadzeń Ludowych Zachodniej Ukrainy i Zachodniej Białorusi". Polska.pl. NASK. Retrieved 2006-03-13.
  18. ^ a b Template:En icon Jan Tomasz Gross (2003). Revolution from Abroad. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 396. ISBN 0-691-09603-1.
  19. ^ Template:Pl iconKarolina Lanckorońska (2001). "I — Lwów". Wspomnienia wojenne; 22 IX 1939 – 5 IV 1945. Kraków: ZNAK. p. 364. ISBN 83-240-0077-1. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  20. ^ Template:En icon Craig Thompson-Dutton (1950). "The Police State & The Police and the Judiciary". The Police State: What You Want to Know about the Soviet Union. Dutton. pp. 88–95.
  21. ^ Template:En icon Michael Parrish (1996). The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939-1953. Praeger Publishers. pp. 99–101. ISBN 0-275-95113-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |chapterurl= (help)
  22. ^ Template:En icon Peter Rutland (1992). "Introduction". The Politics of Economic Stagnation in the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 9. ISBN 0-521-39241-1. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  23. ^ Template:En icon Victor A. Kravchenko (1988). I Chose Justice. Transaction Publishers. p. 310. ISBN 0-88738-756-X.
  24. ^ Template:Pl icon Encyklopedia PWN, Okupacja Sowiecka w Polsce 1939–41, last accessed on 1 March 2006, online Template:Pl icon
  25. ^ Template:Pl icon various authors; Stanisław Ciesielski; Wojciech Materski; Andrzej Paczkowski (2002). "Represje 1939–1941". Indeks represjonowanych (2nd ed.). Warsaw: Ośrodek Karta. ISBN 83-88288-31-8. Retrieved 2006-03-24. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  26. ^ Jan Tomasz Gross (2003). Revolution from Abroad. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 396. ISBN 0-691-09603-1.
  27. ^ Jan T. Gross, op cit, p188
  28. ^ Template:En icon Zvi Gitelman (2001). A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. Indiana University Press. p. 116. ISBN 0-253-21418-1.
  29. ^ Jan Tomasz Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia, Princeton University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-691-09603-1, p. 35
  30. ^ "O Sowieckich represjach wobec Polaków" IPN Bulletin 11(34) 2003 page 4–31
  31. ^ Piotrowski, Tadeusz (1988). "Ukrainian Collaborators". Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947. McFarland. pp. 177–259. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3.
  32. ^ a b Template:En icon Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt (corporate author); Gottfried Schramm (1997). Bernd Wegner (ed.). From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia and the World, 1939–1941. Berghahn Books. pp. 47–79. ISBN 1-57181-882-0. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |chapterurl= (help); Invalid |display-authors=3 (help); Unknown parameter |author-separator= ignored (help)
  33. ^ Encyklopedia PWN Kampania Wrześniowa 1939, last retrieved on 10 December 2005, Polish language
  34. ^ Antoni Czubiński, Historia drugiej wojny światowej 1939–1945 [History of World War II 1939–1945], p. 68
  35. ^ Template:En icon "Decision to commence investigation into Katyn Massacre". Institute of National Remembrance website. Institute of National Remembrance. 2004. Archived from the original on May 27, 2005. Retrieved 2006-03-15.
  36. ^ Template:En icon Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (2004). Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939–1947. Lexington Books. ISBN 0-7391-0484-5.
  37. ^ beanbean (2008-05-02). "A Polish life. 5: Starobielsk and the trans-Siberian railway". My Telegraph. Retrieved 2012-05-08.
  38. ^ Template:En icon Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1996). A World Apart: Imprisonment in a Soviet Labor Camp During World War II. Penguin Books. p. 284. ISBN 0-14-025184-7. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |chapterurl= (help)
  39. ^ Template:Pl icon Władysław Anders (1995). Bez ostatniego rozdziału. Lublin: Test. p. 540. ISBN 83-7038-168-5. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |chapterurl= (help)
  40. ^ a b c d e f Jerzy Lukowski; Hubert Zawadzki (2009). A Concise History of Poland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 264–269. ISBN 978-0-521-61857-1.
  41. ^ a b c Carla Tonini, The Polish underground press and the issue of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, 1939-1944, European Review of History: Revue Europeenne d'Histoire, Volume 15, Issue 2 April 2008 , pages 193 - 205
  42. ^ a b c d Klaus-Peter Friedrich. Collaboration in a "Land without a Quisling": Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II. Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, (Winter, 2005), pp. 711-746. JSTOR
  43. ^ Zamoyski, Adam. The Polish Way, p. 360. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1994. ISBN 0-7818-0200-8
  44. ^ http://google.com/search?q=cache:0IQ986AcKo4J:www.polishresistance-ak.org/PR_WWII_texts_En/26_Article_En.rtf
  45. ^ a b c John Connelly, Why the Poles Collaborated so Little: And Why That Is No Reason for Nationalist Hubris, Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 771-781, JSTOR
  46. ^ Richard C. Lukas, Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust University Press of Kentucky 1989 - 201 pages. Page 13; also in Richard C. Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944, University Press of Kentucky 1986 - 300 pages
  47. ^ Template:Pl icon Hempel, Adam (1987). Policja granatowa w okupacyjnym systemie administracyjnym Generalnego Gubernatorstwa: 1939–1945. Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Związków Zawodowych. p. 83.
  48. ^ Encyclopedia of the Holocaust entry on the Blue Police, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York NY, 1990. ISBN 0-02-864527-8.
  49. ^ a b Gunnar S. Paulsson (2004). "The Demography of Jews in Hiding in Warsaw". The Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies. London: Routledge. p. 118. ISBN 0-415-27509-1.
  50. ^ Template:Pl icon Hempel, Adam (1990). Pogrobowcy klęski: rzecz o policji "granatowej" w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie 1939-1945. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. p. 456. ISBN 83-01-09291-2.
  51. ^ Paczkowski (op.cit., p.60) cites 10% of policemen and 20% of officers
  52. ^ Template:Pl icon <Please add first missing authors to populate metadata.> (2005). "Policja Polska Generalnego Gubernatorstwa". Encyklopedia Internetowa PWN. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwa Naukowe.
  53. ^ Template:Pl icon IAR (corporate author) (2005-07-24). "Sprawiedliwy Wśród Narodów Świata 2005". Forum Żydzi - Chrześcijanie - Muzułmanie (in Polish). Fundacja Kultury Chrześcijańskiej Znak. Retrieved 2007-02-20. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  54. ^ The Righteous Among The Nations - Polish rescuer Waclaw Nowinski
  55. ^ Leszczyński, Adam (7 September 2012). "Polacy wobec Holocaustu" ["Poles and the Holocaust"]. (A conversation with Timothy Snyder). wyborcza.pl. Retrieved 11 June 2014.
  56. ^ Template:Lt icon Rimantas Zizas. Armijos Krajovos veikla Lietuvoje 1942–1944 metais (Acitivies of Armia Krajowa in Lithuania in 1942–1944). Armija Krajova Lietuvoje, pp. 14–39. A. Bubnys, K. Garšva, E. Gečiauskas, J. Lebionka, J. Saudargienė, R. Zizas (editors). Vilnius – Kaunas, 1995.
  57. ^ Review by John Radzilowski of Yaffa Eliach's There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok, Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 1, no. 2 (June 1999), City University of New York.
  58. ^ Jan Tomasz Gross, "Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland", Penguin Books, Princeton University Press, 2002.
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  61. ^ Timothy Snyder. (2003)The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943, The Past and Present Society: Oxford University Press. pg. 220
  62. ^ Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland's holocaust. Published by McFarland. Page 247
  63. ^ Magosci, Motyka, Rossolinski
  64. ^ a b Jerzy Lukowski; Hubert Zawadzki (2009). A Concise History of Poland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 255–256. ISBN 978-0-521-61857-1.
  65. ^ WW II: The Chronicle of Stone
  66. ^ The NKVD Against the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), Warsaw Uprising 1944
  67. ^ Forced migration in the 20th century
  68. ^ Łukasz Kamiński "Obdarci, głodni, żli, Sowieci w oczach Polaków 1944–1948" Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej" 2002, nr 7;
  69. ^ Encyklopedia PWN
  70. ^ Polski Gułag
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Further reading

  • Chodakiewicz, Marek Jan. Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939-1947. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004 ISBN 0-7391-0484-5. online review
  • Coutouvidi, John, and Jaime Reynold. Poland, 1939-1947 (1986)
  • Davies, Norman (1982), God's Playground. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-05353-3 and ISBN 0-231-05351-7.
  • Davies, Norman Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (2004)
  • Douglas, R.M. Orderly and Humane. The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War. Yale University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-300-16660-6.
  • Fritz, Stephen G. (2011). Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East. University Press of Kentucky.
  • Gross, Jan Tomasz, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia, Princeton University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-691-09603-1.
  • Gross, Jan T. Polish Society under German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement, 1939-1944 (Princeton UP, 1979)
  • Hiden, John. ed. The Baltic and the Outbreak of the Second World War, Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-521-53120-9
  • Kochanski, Halik. The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War (Harvard U.P., 2012) excerpt and text search
  • Koskodan, Kenneth K. No Greater Ally: The Untold Story of Poland's Forces in World War II, Osprey Publishing 2009, ISBN 978-1-84908-479-6.
  • Lukas, Richard C. Did the Children Cry: Hitler's War Against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939-1945 (1st ed.; N.Y.:Hippocrene, 1994). ISBN 0-7818-0242-3
  • Lukas, Richard C. Forgotten Holocaust:The Poles under German Occupation, 1939-1944 (3rd rev. ed.; N.Y.:Hippocrene, 2012). ISBN 978-0-7818-1302-0
  • Lukas, Richard C. Forgotten Survivors:Polish Christians Remember the Nazi Occupation (1st ed.; Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004). ISBN 0-7818-0242-3
  • Sword, Keith (1991). The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern Provinces, 1939-41. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-05570-6.
  • Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010)
  • Terlecki, Olgierd. (1972), Poles in the Italian Campaign, 1943-1945, Interpress Publishers.
  • Steven J. Zaloga, Poland 1939: The birth of Blitzkrieg, Osprey Publishing 2002, ISBN 1-84176-408-6.
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