Home Army: the story on HearLore

Home Army

On the 27th of September 1939, as the coordinated German and Soviet invasions of Poland neared completion, General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski established the Service for Poland's Victory, creating the first organized resistance against the occupiers. This initial structure evolved rapidly, becoming the Armed Resistance on the 17th of November 1939, and finally transforming into the Home Army on the 14th of February 1942. By the summer of 1944, this clandestine force had swollen to an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 members, making it not only the largest resistance movement in Poland but one of the two largest underground armies in all of Europe. The Home Army was designed to be a mass organization, yet its operational reality was starkly different; at any given time, only a fraction of its members were armed, with as few as one percent of the total force participating in active operations during 1943. The organization was intended to be apolitical and nationwide, loyal to the Polish government-in-exile in London, yet it often acted independently, with neither the commanders in Poland nor the London government fully aware of the other's situation. The Home Army's supreme command defined its chief tasks as partisan warfare against the German occupiers, the re-creation of armed forces underground, and, near the end of the German occupation, a general armed rising to be prosecuted until victory. This vision of restoring the pre-war government following the return of the government-in-exile to Poland drove the Home Army's strategic decisions throughout the war.

The Intelligence Network

The Home Army supplied valuable intelligence to the Allies, with 48 percent of all reports received by the British secret services from continental Europe between 1939 and 1945 coming from Polish sources. The total number of those reports is estimated at 80,000, and 85 percent of them were deemed to be high quality or better. Near the end of the war, the Polish intelligence network had over 1,600 registered agents, making it the only Allied intelligence asset on the Continent for a significant period. The network provided the Allies with information on German concentration camps and the Holocaust, including the first reports on this subject received by the Allies, as well as details on German submarine operations and the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket. In one Project Big Ben mission, a stripped-for-lightness RAF twin-engine Dakota flew from Brindisi, Italy, to an abandoned German airfield in Poland to pick up intelligence prepared by Polish aircraft-designer Antoni Kocjan, including 1,500 kilograms of V-2 rocket wreckage from a Peenemünde launch. The Polish network even extended beyond Europe, with an intelligence network organized by Mieczysław Zygfryd Słowikowski in North Africa described as the only Allied network in that region. The researchers who produced the first Polish-British in-depth monograph on Home Army intelligence argued that the work performed by Home Army intelligence undoubtedly supported the Allied armed effort much more effectively than subversive and guerrilla activities. The network included two agents in the German high command itself, and the intelligence provided was considered the best source of information on the Eastern Front by the Western Allies.

When was the Home Army officially disbanded?

The Home Army was officially disbanded on the 19th of January 1945 to avoid civil war and armed conflict with the Soviets. This decision followed the Red Army clearing most Polish territory of German forces and the deterioration of Polish-Soviet relations.

How many members did the Home Army have by the summer of 1944?

By the summer of 1944, the Home Army had swollen to an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 members. This made it the largest resistance movement in Poland and one of the two largest underground armies in all of Europe.

What percentage of Home Army reports received by British secret services were high quality?

85 percent of the 80,000 reports estimated to have been sent by the Home Army were deemed to be high quality or better. These reports constituted 48 percent of all intelligence received by British secret services from continental Europe between 1939 and 1945.

When did the Warsaw Uprising begin and end?

The Warsaw Uprising began on the 1st of August 1944 and ended on the 2nd of October 1944. Polish forces resisted German-led forces for a total of 63 days before the Germans defeated the insurrectionists and burned the city.

Who established the Service for Poland's Victory on the 27th of September 1939?

General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski established the Service for Poland's Victory on the 27th of September 1939. This organization became the first structured resistance against the German and Soviet occupiers of Poland.

When was the last Home Army partisan killed after World War II?

The last Home Army partisan, Józef Lalek Franczak, was killed in 1963. This occurred almost two decades after World War II had ended, marking the final end of the cursed soldiers era.

The Postwar Purge

After the war, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, communist government propaganda portrayed the Home Army as an oppressive and reactionary force. Thousands of ex-Home Army personnel were deported to gulags and Soviet prisons, while other ex-members, including a number of senior commanders, were executed. By the end of the war, around 60,000 Home Army soldiers were arrested, 50,000 of whom were deported to Soviet gulags and prisons. Most of these soldiers had been taken captive by the Soviets during or after Operation Tempest when many Home Army units tried to work together with the Soviets in a nationwide uprising against the Germans. Other Home Army veterans were arrested when they approached Polish communist government officials after having been promised amnesty. Home Army soldiers stopped trusting the government after a number of broken promises in the first few years of communist control. The third post-Home Army organization was Freedom and Independence, whose primary goal was not fighting; rather, it was designed to help Home Army soldiers transition from partisan to civilian life. WiN was in great need of funds to pay for false documents and provide resources for the partisans, many of whom had lost their homes and life savings in the war. WiN was far from efficient: it was viewed as an enemy of the state, starved of resources, and a vocal faction advocated armed resistance against the Soviets and their Polish proxies. In the second half of 1945, the Soviet NKVD and the newly created Polish secret police, the Department of Security, managed to convince several Home Army and WiN leaders that they wanted to offer amnesty to Home Army members, and gained information about large numbers of Home Army and WiN people and resources in the following months. By the time the imprisoned Home Army and WiN leaders realized their mistake, the organizations had been crippled, with thousands of their members arrested. WiN was finally disbanded in 1952. By 1947 a colonel of the communist forces declared that The terrorist and political underground had ceased to be a threatening force, though there were still men of the forests to be dealt with. The persecution of the Home Army was only part of the Stalinist repressions in Poland. In 1944-56, approximately 2 million people were arrested; over 20,000, including Pilecki, organizer of the resistance in Auschwitz, were executed in communist prisons, and 6 million Polish citizens, every third adult Pole, were classified as reactionary or criminal elements, and were subjected to spying by state agencies. Most Home Army soldiers were captured by the NKVD or by Poland's UB political police. They were interrogated and imprisoned on various charges such as fascism. Many were sent to Gulags, executed, or disappeared. For example, all the members of Batalion Zośka, which had fought in the Warsaw Uprising, were locked up in communist prisons between 1944 and 1956. In 1956 an amnesty released 35,000 former Home Army soldiers from prisons. Even then, some partisans remained in the countryside, and were unwilling or unable to rejoin the community; they became known as the cursed soldiers. Stanisław Marchewka Ryba was killed in 1957, and the last AK partisan, Józef Lalek Franczak, was killed in 1963, almost two decades after World War II had ended. It was only four years later, in 1967, that Adam Boryczka, a soldier of AK and a member of the elite, Britain-trained Cichociemny Silent Unseen intelligence and support group, was released from prison. Until the end of the People's Republic of Poland, Home Army soldiers remained under investigation by the secret police, and it was only in 1989, after the fall of communism, that the sentences of Home Army soldiers were finally declared null and void by Polish courts.

The Controversial Legacy

The Home Army's attitude toward Jews remains a controversial topic, with both profoundly disturbing acts of violence as well as extraordinary acts of aid and compassion reported. Members of the Home Army were named Righteous Among the Nations for risking their lives to save Jews, examples include Jan Karski, Aleksander Kamiński, Stefan Korboński, Henryk Woliński, Jan Żabiński, Władysław Bartoszewski, Mieczysław Fogg, Henryk Iwański, and Jan Dobraczyński. However, Polish historian Ewa Kołomańska noted that many individuals associated with the Home Army, involved in rescuing the Jews, did not receive the Righteous title. The Home Army provided the Warsaw Ghetto with firearms, ammunition, and explosives, though only after it was convinced of the eagerness of the Jewish Combat Organization to fight. The Home Army also supported the Relief Council for Jews in Poland and the formation of Jewish resistance organizations. The Home Army's leadership did not want to do much to aid the Jews, as the leadership believed that the Holocaust could only be halted by a significant military action. The Home Army started carrying out death sentences for szmalcowniks in Warsaw in the summer of 1943, and the Home Army's Bureau of Information and Propaganda was led by operatives who were pro-Jewish and represented the liberal wing of Home Army. The Home Army had a more favorable attitude towards Jewish civilians and was more hesitant or hostile towards independent Jewish partisans, whom it suspected of pro-Soviet sympathies. General Rowecki believed that antisemitic attitudes in eastern Poland were related to Jewish involvement with Soviet partisans. Some AK units were friendly to Jews, and in Hanaczów Home Army officers hid and protected an entire 250-person Jewish community, and supplied a Jewish Home Army platoon. The Home Army leadership punished a number of perpetrators of antisemitic violence in its ranks, in some cases sentencing them to death. Most of the underground press was sympathetic towards Jews, and the Home Army's Bureau of Information and Propaganda was led by operatives who were pro-Jewish and represented the liberal wing of Home Army; however, the bureau's anti-communist sub-division, created as a response to communist propaganda, was led by operatives who held strong anti-communist and anti-Jewish views, including the Żydokomuna stereotype. The perceived association between Jews and communists was actively reinforced by Operation Antyk, whose initial reports tended to conflate communists with Jews, dangerously disseminating the notion that Jewish loyalties were to Soviet Russia and communism rather than to Poland, and which repeated the notion that antisemitism was a useful tool in the struggle against Soviet Russia. The Home Army's attitude towards Jewish fugitives often determined their fate. According to Antony Polonsky the Home Army saw Jewish fugitives as security risks. At the same time, AK's paper mills supplied forged identification documents to many Jewish fugitives, enabling them to pass as Poles. Home Army published a leaflet in 1943 stating that Every Pole is obligated to help those in hiding. Those who refuse them aid will be punished on the basis of treason to the Polish Nation. Nevertheless, Jewish historians have asserted that the main cause for the low survival rates of escaping Jews was the antisemitism of the Polish population. Attitudes towards Jews in the Home Army were mixed. A few AK units actively hunted down Jews, and in particular two district commanders in the northeast of Poland, Władysław Liniarski of Białystok and Janusz Szlaski of Nowogródek, openly and routinely persecuted Jewish partisans and fugitives; however, these were the only two provinces, out of seventeen, where such orders were issued by provincial commanders. The extent of such behaviors in the Home Army overall has been disputed; Tadeusz Piotrowski wrote that the bulk of the Home Army's antisemitic behavior can be ascribed to a small minority of members, often affiliated with the far-right National Democracy party, whose National Armed Forces organization was mostly integrated into the Home Army in 1944. Adam Puławski has suggested that some of these incidents are better understood in the context of the Polish-Soviet conflict, as some of the Soviet-affiliated partisan units that AK units attacked or was attacked by had a sizable Jewish presence. In general, AK units in the east were more likely to be hostile towards Jewish partisans, who in turn were more closely associated with the Soviet underground, while AK units in the west were more helpful towards the Jews. The Home Army had a more favorable attitude towards Jewish civilians and was more hesitant or hostile towards independent Jewish partisans, whom it suspected of pro-Soviet sympathies. General Rowecki believed that antisemitic attitudes in eastern Poland were related to Jewish involvement with Soviet partisans. Some AK units were friendly to Jews, and in Hanaczów Home Army officers hid and protected an entire 250-person Jewish community, and supplied a Jewish Home Army platoon. The Home Army leadership punished a number of perpetrators of antisemitic violence in its ranks, in some cases sentencing them to death.