The German attack on Poland in the early hours of 1 September 1939 led directly to the outbreak of the Second World War. When Germany refused to end hostilities and to relinquish captured territories, the British and French Governments declared war on Germany on 3 September. This decision, and the prominence of the Polish question in wartime negotiations between the three big allies, Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, would suggest that Poland was an important issue during and after the Second World War. In reality nothing could be further from the truth. When the war ended, Poland's subordination to Soviet long-term plans was fully accepted by the victor powers. Poles were not given a genuine opportunity to express their wishes. In addition to having lost nearly a quarter of its population during the war, the boundaries of the newly emerged state were altered by losses of territories to the Soviet Union and the acquisition of German lands. As the war ended, the fate of Poles in Poland became a matter of no importance to the West European states, and those who had fought with the British found the alteration of their status from that of welcome allies to unwelcome foreigners was relatively swift. In September 1939, Poland suffered the double blow of a German invasion and Soviet entry into Poland's eastern territories. The Polish political and military leadership left Poland hoping to continue the fight against the enemy on other fronts. Polish territories were in the first place divided by the two invading powers and each proceeded to impose their own long-term plans on the population. German occupation led to the displacement of Poles from the western regions, which were incorporated, into the Nazi State. The remaining territories were put under the direct control of the Nazi authorities. The role of the Polish civilian population was to provide Nazi Germany with slave manpower, raw materials, and production for the continuation of the war. The fate of the Poles was, for the time being, a matter of indifference to the Nazis. Driven by racial policies, the Nazis first classified Polish Christians as fit only for slavery, while Polish Jews were first herded into ghettos and then exterminated in a carefully planned and executed policy of genocide. Poland's spiritual, political and cultural elite was singled out for particularly harsh treatment.
Soviet policies initially aimed at the incorporation of occupied areas into the Soviet Union, but by the winter of 1939-40 this changed because of a growing anxiety about a possible war with Germany. The ethnically Polish population was therefore forcibly moved into the Soviet interior, where they experienced hardship and persecution. Once more a policy of identifying the most valuable national element was followed and these people? were singled out for harsh treatment. Polish officers captured by the Russians were imprisoned and, as it later transpired, approximately 40,000 were murdered. In July 1941, after the German attack on the Soviet Union, the Russians agreed to the creation of Polish units in the Soviet Union, and as a result Poles flocked to the recruitment centres. But these troops never took part in the fighting in the east. Instead, their commander General Anders moved them to Iran, where they became part of the British Middle East war effort. In due course these men participated in the British landing in Italy, distinguishing themselves in the battle of Monte Casino. With the Polish militate units, polish civilians left the Soviet Union and became the responsibility of the British government. For the duration of the war, women and children were dispersed throughout British African and Indian possessions.
USHMM | Smoke rises over Warsaw from the burning ghetto. The Warsaw ghetto uprising (April 19-May 16, 1943) was a 20-day battle initiated by the Jewish fighting forces in Warsaw when German troops entered the ghetto to begin the final round of deportations. |
The Poles' willingness and keenness to continue fighting Nazi Germany was exploited first by the French and later by the British. Both governments appreciated the influx of highly motivated manpower to swell their military potential. In Britain, the Polish government in exile, led by General Sikorski, had under its command approximately 25,000 fighting men who had been evacuated with British units from the coast of France in June 1940. These units took part in the Normandy landing in 1944 and fought in France under British command. A Polish Air Force consisting of Fighter and Bomber units was also established in Britain and a number of naval units that had managed to escape from the Baltic in 1939 were attached to the British Navy.Direct involvement in fighting Germany led the Polish government in exile and the men to hope, against all odds, that Britain and the United States would feel a debt of gratitude towards them. They thought the defeat of Germany would be followed by a war against Poland's other enemy, the Soviet Union. The few, more realistic among the Polish exile leaders, hoped that Britain would at least look after Polish interests in negotiations with the Soviet Union. They were to be bitterly disappointed. While the war lasted, for Britain and the United States, maintaining unity with the Soviet Union was a priority. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the German attack. It was on the Eastern Front that the German might was broken. Anxiety about the possibility of the Soviet Union negotiating a peace with Germany, once it was pushed out of Soviet territories, acted as a strong incentive for Churchill and Roosevelt not to raise contentious issues. Thus demands for the Soviet Union to relinquish claims to Polish territories occupied in September 1939 and to make a commitment not to interfere in the internal affairs of post-war Poland, could never be put to Stalin as serious demands. Stalin's military victories in the east placed Poland under direct Soviet control in 1945. Poland was undisputedly the victim of Britain and the US dependence on the Soviet military commitment to the defeat of Hitler. Furthermore, anticipating the need for the Red Army in fighting Japanese troops on the Chinese mainland further reduced the allies' willingness to confront Stalin over his future plans for Poland.
lish territories were devastated by Nazi rule. War activities and Soviet exploitation of resources destroyed whatever infrastructure had survived. But because Poland was in the Soviet sphere of influence, the Western powers were unwilling to finance Polish recovery. As the Cold War set in, Poland was prevented from applying for assistance under the Marshall Aid program by the Soviet Union and was unable to insist on restitution of property from Western Germany. Polish survivors of concentration camps and compulsory labour were denied compensationon grounds that that money thus paid would support Communism. During the 1950s the Western powers washed their hands of the Polish issue, instead concentrating on West German reconstruction. Poles, who unlike the Soviet citizens had fought with the British during the war, were not forced to return to Poland and were allowed to stay in Britain. Though even they felt unwanted and victimised, as successive governments protected jobs for demobilised British soldiers. Most importantly, they felt that both Britain and the United States had used them during the war but had not discharged the debt of gratitude once the war against Germany and Japan had ended.
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| Thinking Point | |
| Do you agree that Poland was a victim of British and US dependence on the Soviet military commitment to defeat Hitler? | |
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The sense of grievance and frustration has only too easily created a mood of intolerance towards the sufferings of others. Poles, who ended in exile, retreated into closed communities formed around places of settlement in Scotland, the Midlands and in London. Reflection upon the prewar government's role in weakening Poland's military and political situation prior to the war had never formed part of the communities' lore. Instead, the search for those responsible for Poland's tragedy shifts variously from Churchill to Stalin and to Roosevelt. Contact between Poles in exile and those living in Poland was limited. Those in Poland had to learn to live with the realities of daily life under Communism. For better and worse, economic reconstruction and then industrialisation based on the Soviet model was implemented. Nevertheless the community in exile and in Poland maintained a strong sense of grievance, and with that came a complex of being victims of fate.
