Polish Army History
The Army always was, is, and will remain the depository and conduit for glorious traditions of the 1,000 years of Polish arms. Despite solemn and frequently repeated assurances ofthe PRL [Polish People's Republic] and PZPR [PolishUnited Workers Party] leaders that the blood of soldiers spilled for Poland cannot be segregated, this blood was segregated, and the treasury of martial tradition was drawn on, to put it mildly, in a highly selective manner. For many years, one motif dominated: Polish-Soviet brotherhood in arms enriched by the battle of Lenino, Kolobrzeg, the Pomeranian Wall, and the symbolic participation of the Poles in taking Berlin. As time went by, new pages were opened: furious battles of PolishSeptember, Monte Cassino, and Falaise. However, numerous pages in the book of glory remained closed for the Army.
By 1990 this was changing. While not renouncing the tradition of Polish-Soviet cooperation on many battlefields (there is no reason to do so) and recalling fondly the courage and combat effort of the soldiers of the 1st and 2nd Armies of the Polish Armed Forces, the Army was discovering other glorious pages of its history which until recently were either entirely closed or shown in a superficial and biased manner: the 1920 war, the abundant accomplishments of Polish military thought in the years of the Second Republic, and, though doomed to failure ahead of time, the tough resistance offered that memorable September to the Red Army invading across Poland's borders. Items of special value which were without precedent in the history of other armies — the truth about the armed action, the battles, and the sacrifice of the most splendid and most tragic army which the Republic hasever raised, the Home Army — were added to the canons of historical awareness of the Armed Forces with a tremendous delay but in a very proper manner.
In Poland the attitude of the society towards the Army was influenced unfavorably by the bad experience of the recent past. There was no concealing that the register of grudges and complaints of society against the Army was impressive; any attempt to do so would be embarrassing and nonsensical. The register, opened with the participation of the Polish People's Army in the armed struggle againstthe independence-minded underground in 1945 through 1947, included items as painful as June 1956 in Poznan, the 1968 intervention in Czechoslovakia, the bloody events on the coast in December 1970, and, finally, martial law.
The "Appeal to Soldiers" by Jozef Pilsudski issued on 5 July 1920, when the steam roller of the Bolshevik offensive moved into the interior of Poland, said: "Soldiers of theRepublic! Poland has begun with you; our young freedom has been born and has grown strong with yourlabor and sweat, with the steel might of your bayonets." Several weeks later, the soldiers of the Republic defended this young freedom in the victorious battle of the Vistula. They did not fail the people, and the people remained profoundly grateful to them. The Army did not fail the people in September 1939 either. The lone Polish Army did more at the time than it was supposed to do. However, it could not carry out the unfeasible order to defend the motherland.
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