Poland

I

World War II

The Polish army received no effective assistance from the West, and by mid-September German armies had overrun most of western and central Poland. On September 17, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east, and the two invading powers divided the country between them. Enormous reprisals were exacted against the Poles throughout the German-occupied region. In the Soviet-occupied area, many thousands of Poles were forcibly deported to Siberia. In 1940 thousands of captured Polish army officers were murdered by Soviet security services. A mass grave containing many of the bodies was discovered later in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia.

Numerous members of the Polish government and the military forces succeeded in escaping from Poland during the final phases of German and Soviet military operation against the country. Most of the refugee Polish troops, numbering about 100,000, succeeded in reaching France, where they were regrouped into combat units. These units and others that were later organized in the USSR rendered valiant service to the Allied war effort in North Africa and Europe. In the meantime a government-in-exile, led by General Władystaw Sikorski, had been organized in France. Following the collapse of France in 1940, the Polish government established headquarters in London.

The German armed forces occupied all of Soviet-held Poland during the initial phase of their attack on the USSR in 1941. During their occupation of the country, the German armies pursued a policy of systematic extermination of Polish citizens, particularly Jews, most of whom perished at Auschwitz (Oświęcim), Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibór, and other concentration camps scattered throughout the country. In April 1943 the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, rather than wait for destruction in the camps, rose in rebellion against hopeless odds. The Germans quelled the rising after three weeks of fighting. At the end of the war estimated civilian casualties numbered more than 5 million, most of which were inflicted by the Germans. Polish military casualties in the war totaled about 600,000. The material losses suffered were similarly enormous.

I

1

The Liberation

The liberation of Poland from German domination began shortly after the Anglo-American invasion of France in June 1944. During June, July, and August the Soviet armies, taking advantage of the situation, inflicted a series of devastating defeats on the Germans in the east. Before the beginning of September the Soviet army, aided by contingents of Polish troops, had begun operations on Polish territory. In August 1944 Polish resistance forces, known as the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), took control of Warsaw, but the Soviets did not support them. The Germans recaptured the city by October and burned it to the ground after evacuating the population. The remains of Warsaw were occupied by the Soviet army in January 1945, and the last of the German invaders were driven from the country in March.

---

---

In July 1944 the Soviet government had sponsored the formation of a Polish Committee of National Liberation, an organization largely dominated by Communists. The committee, which established headquarters at Lublin after the liberation of that city, proclaimed itself the provisional government of Poland in December 1944. After several attempts, a reconciliation between the Polish governments in London and Lublin was accomplished. In June 1945, after the Germans had been expelled, a coalition established a Polish Government of National Unity. This government was officially recognized by the British and U.S. governments in the following month, having gained Soviet promises of free elections at the Yalta Conference in early 1945.

J

Postwar Boundary Changes

At the Potsdam Conference, held after Germany’s surrender in 1945, the Allied powers placed Upper and Lower Silesia, Danzig, and parts of Brandenburg, Pomerania, and East Prussia under Polish administration pending the conclusion of a final peace settlement. Of a population totaling about 8.9 million in the German areas assigned to Poland, more than 7 million were Germans. Most of the Germans fled the Soviet Army or were subsequently expelled to Germany. The eastern frontier of Poland was determined by the terms of a treaty concluded by the Polish and Soviet governments on August 16, 1945. On the basis of this document, which established the Polish-Soviet frontier considerably to the west of the prewar boundary, the USSR acquired a large amount of former Polish territory. The inhabitants of this territory totaled approximately 12.5 million. Of this number, nearly 4 million were Poles, most of whom were repatriated to Poland and resettled in the areas obtained from Germany.

K

The Emergence of the Communist State

Communist-Socialist strength in the government grew steadily during 1946 and 1947. In the 1947 parliamentary elections—denounced by the United States as undemocratic—the two-party coalition won more than 85 percent of the vote.

K

1

Stalinist Takeover

Beginning in September 1948 the Polish Communist Party purged itself of many thousands of so-called national Communists who were accused of approving Yugoslavia’s defiance of the USSR. Among those jailed in the purge was Władysław Gomułka, secretary general of the party and first deputy premier. In December the Socialists and Communists merged to form the Polish United Workers’ Party, in which pro-Stalin Communists were dominant. Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky was installed as head of the Polish armed forces in 1949. Thereafter Poland appeared to be one of the most faithful satellites of the USSR.

Pro-Soviet Communist leaders then sought to implement industrial and economic goals for Poland in conformity with the economic and social system of the USSR. The major problem was the effort to collectivize agriculture, which was unsuccessful and later abandoned.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain