The Home Army
During World War II the Polish Home Army consisted of those Poles who remained in Poland to continue the resistance against the Germans on the home front, and who eventually started the Warsaw uprising. On September 1, 1939, a massive German army invaded Poland. Sixteen days later, the USSR invaded Poland from the east.
When the time of occupation came, the soldiers of the Second Republic were the ones to carry on, at home and abroad, the fight started on a September morning. The personnel of this Army managed to restore the Polish Armed Forces in the West, and build the Home Army of almost half a million people, despite the fact that a tremendous proportion of them were killed, murdered in the Katyn Forest and in other places of execution which are unknown today, or ended up behind the barbed wire of officer camps. All of this reinforced the respect of the Poles for their Army and reinforced the authority of the Army.
During this tumultuous period, Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski became leader of the Polish government-in-exile in London. He developed a good working relationship with the Allies until April 1943, when Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin broke off Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations after Sikorski requested that the Red Cross investigate the alleged Soviet slaughter of Polish officers in the Katyn forest of eastern Poland in 1942.
As the war progressed and the Soviets battled the Germans in western Poland, the Polish government in-exile began to fear that Soviet domination might follow if the Soviets defeated Germany for control of the Polish territory. Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, Sikorski's successor as the provisional government head, pleaded with the Allies to secure Poland's postwar borders and sovereignty, but no such assurances were granted.
On the eve of the major offensive into Poland, the Soviet Union decides to recognize the pro-Soviet Lublin Committee as the Provisional Government of Poland instead of the government-in-exile that was temporarily being headquartered in London.
On 01 August 1944, the Polish Home Army, fearful that the Soviets would march on Warsaw to battle the Germans and never leave the capital, led an uprising against the German occupiers. They hoped that if they could defeat the Germans, the Allies would help install the anti-Communist government in exile after the war. The Polish Home Army seized large areas in downtown Warsaw, the insurgents failed to secure the four bridges over the Vistula and were unable to hold the eastern suburbs of the city (Praga). No Eastern Front action has generated more heated controversy then Soviet operations east of Warsaw in August and September 1944, at the time of the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis by the Polish Home Army.
The Soviets, rather than aiding the uprising that they encouraged in the name of beating back their common enemy, stood idly by and watched as the Germans slaughtered the Poles and sent survivors to concentration camps. During the 63 day struggle for Warsaw, the Nazis wiped out virtually all of the Polish Home Army. Quite fortuitous for Stalin, this underground Polish militia also represented the only organized political and military anti-communist forces remaining in Poland.
Western historians have routinely blamed the Soviets for deliberately failing to assist the Poles, and in essence, aiding and abetting destruction of the Polish rebels by the German Army for political reasons. Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, a Russian of Polish descent, commanded the Soviet Army Group which sat for five weeks on the eastern bank of the Vistula while the home army, containing the bravest of the Polish patriots, bled to death, waiting vainly for support from the Red Army.
Soviet historians have countered that every attempt was made to provide assistance but that operational considerations precluded such help. Political considerations and motivations aside, prior to early September, German resistance was sufficient to halt any Soviet assistance to the Poles in Warsaw, were it intended. Thereafter, it would have required a major reorientation of military efforts from Magnuszew in the south or, more realistically, from the Bug and Narew River axis in the north in order to muster sufficient force to break into Warsaw. And once broken into, Warsaw would have been a costly city to clear of Germans and an unsuitable location from which to launch a new offensive.
With native Polish resistance eradicated, and in anticipation of one last offensive against the Germans, the Soviet Union created its own pro-communist Polish provisional government to counter the anti-communist government-in-exile. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Allies agreed that an interim government would be formed from both the pro- and anti-communist sides, with free elections to follow. The Soviets had other plans, though, and promptly turned the exhausted and battered Poland into a non-democratic satellite country. With all serious opposition eradicated, the Soviet backed Lublin Committee (with only minimal participation from the London government in exile) had little difficulty establishing itself as the official Polish provisional government at the close of the war.
After the War, Marshal Rokossovsky was installed as Commander in Chief and Minister of Defense in Poland. Although the remnants of the Polish Home Army continued to fight a guerilla style civil war for a period of time, complete control of the country was achieved by the Communists by early 1947. Soldiers were the first to offer resistance against the enslavement of Poland — soldiers of the Polish Army and the Home Army. They were the backbone, cadres, heart, and brain of the underground defending Poland; they paid the highest price for it. Despite the fact that they were defeated in this unequal battle, memory of their loyalty to the Polish cause and their gallant resistance survived the years, giving strength to those who carried on their fight in other times and by different methods.
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