Polish resistance movement in World War II
The Polish resistance movement in World War II pulled off something that German intelligence chiefs could not ignore. Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler himself acknowledged it on the 31st of December 1942, writing that the Polish resistance had assumed "major significance" within the broader framework of enemy intelligence operations directed against Germany. He described the movement as "ramified down to the smallest splinter group and brilliantly organized." When the man overseeing the Nazi security apparatus felt compelled to record his admiration for his opponents, something extraordinary was happening.
By some estimates, the movement grew to encompass 650,000 fighters by the summer of 1944. It disrupted one in every eight German rail transports heading to the Eastern Front. It supplied 43 percent of all intelligence reports received by British agencies from occupied Europe. And it did all of this while operating beneath a brutal occupation in a country that had been erased from the map.
How did this movement grow so fast, and out of what wreckage? Who were the people who built it, and what exactly did they manage to accomplish before the Soviets moved in and finished what the Germans had started?
On the 9th of November 1939, just weeks after Poland's defeat, two soldiers named Witold Pilecki and Major Jan Włodarkiewicz founded the Secret Polish Army, known by its Polish initials TAP. It was one of the first underground organizations in Poland after the German invasion, and Pilecki became its organizational commander. By 1940, TAP had grown to approximately 8,000 men, more than half of them armed, along with some 20 machine guns and several anti-tank rifles.
TAP was eventually folded into the Union of Armed Struggle, which in 1942 became the Home Army, or Armia Krajowa. The AK was the largest resistance organization in occupied Europe, loyal to the Polish government in exile in London. When it was formally created in February 1942, it already numbered about 100,000 members. By early 1943 that figure had doubled to around 200,000.
The AK was not alone. Most other underground armed organizations were created by political parties and factions. The Bataliony Chłopskie, or Peasants' Battalions, were created around 1940-1941 by the leftist People's Party and would partially merge with the AK around 1942-1943. The Narodowa Organizacja Wojskowa, the National Military Organisation, was established by the National Party in 1939 and mostly integrated with the AK around 1942. The Konfederacja Narodu was created in 1940 by a far-right group and eventually joined the AK in the fall of 1943.
Two large groups refused outright. The Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, the National Armed Forces, was created in 1943 from units that refused to be subordinated to the AK. The communist Armia Ludowa, backed by the Soviet Union, never merged with the AK at all. At its peak in 1944, the communist force numbered about 30,000 people. The NSZ counted approximately 70,000 men around 1943-1944. The Bataliony Chłopskie, estimated at around 160,000 men in summer 1944, were by then mostly absorbed into the AK. The total strength of the AK and its allies, including the NSZ, was estimated at 650,000 for the summer of 1944.
In 1940, Witold Pilecki walked into captivity on purpose. He had presented a plan to his superiors in the Polish resistance: enter Auschwitz concentration camp deliberately, organize inmate resistance from inside, and transmit intelligence back to the outside world. The Home Army approved the plan, provided him with a false identity card, and on the 19th of September 1940, Pilecki allowed himself to be caught during a street roundup in Warsaw and was transported to Auschwitz with other civilian prisoners.
Inside the camp, he built an underground organization called the Związek Organizacji Wojskowej, abbreviated ZOW. From October 1940 onward, ZOW sent reports about conditions in the camp. In November 1940 the first report on the genocide reached Home Army headquarters in Warsaw through the resistance network. From March 1941, Pilecki's reports were forwarded to the Polish government in exile and from there to British and other Allied governments. These reports became the principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz-Birkenau for the Western Allies.
On the 20th of June 1942, the most spectacular escape from Auschwitz took place. Four Poles - Eugeniusz Bendera, Kazimierz Piechowski, Stanisław Gustaw Jaster and Józef Lempart - dressed as members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, fully armed, and drove out the main gate in a stolen Steyr 220 automobile. They carried a smuggled report from Pilecki about the Holocaust. Three of the four remained free until the end of the war. Jaster, who joined the Polish Underground after his escape, was recaptured in 1943 and died shortly afterward in German custody.
In July 1941, Mieczysław Słowikowski, using the codename "Rygor" - Polish for "Rigor" - set up what became known as "Agency Africa," one of World War II's most successful intelligence organizations. His Polish allies included Lt. Col. Gwido Langer and Major Maksymilian Ciężki. The information Agency Africa gathered was used by Americans and British in planning the amphibious landings of Operation Torch in November 1942 in North Africa, the first large-scale Allied landings of the war.
In early 1943, two Polish janitors working at Peenemünde's Camp Trassenheide provided maps, sketches, and reports to Armia Krajowa intelligence. By June 1943, British intelligence had received reports from them identifying the "rocket assembly hall," "experimental pit," and "launching tower" of the German V-2 program. This intelligence contributed directly to Operation Hydra, the bombing of Peenemünde in August 1943. Then, in November 1943, Operation Most III began. The AK transported some 50 kilograms of the most important captured V-2 parts, along with analyses, sketches, and photos, to Brindisi aboard a Royal Air Force Douglas Dakota aircraft. The V-2 parts reached London in late July 1944.
The cumulative sabotage record between the 1st of January 1941 and the 30th of June 1944 is staggering in its specificity. The ZWZ and AK damaged or destroyed 6,930 locomotives, derailed 732 transports, set fire to 443 transports, and damaged 19,058 railway wagons. They blew up 38 railway bridges and damaged 4,326 army vehicles. Built-in faults were introduced into 4,710 parts for aircraft engines, 92,000 artillery missiles, and 70,000 condensers. Pre-planned assassinations of German personnel totaled 5,733.
On the night of the 7th to the 8th of October 1942, Operation Wieniec targeted rail infrastructure near Warsaw, striking railroads, bridges, and supply depots near transport hubs including Warsaw and Lublin. Such operations continued through the following months and years, directly accounting for one in every eight German rail transports that failed to reach the Eastern Front.
In September 1942, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz, known by her codename "Alinka," founded the Żegota Council for the Aid of the Jews. Poland was the only country in occupied Europe to maintain such a dedicated secret organization specifically devoted to protecting Jewish people. Half of the Jews in Poland who survived the war, a figure the source puts at over 50,000, received some form of help from Żegota.
The best-known activist of the organization was Irena Sendler, who led its children's division. Sendler saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, providing them with false documents, and placing them in individual homes and group children's homes outside the ghetto walls.
In 1942, Jan Karski carried firsthand witness testimony about the Holocaust to the Polish, British, and American governments. He met with Polish politicians in exile including the prime minister, spoke with British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, and delivered a detailed statement on what he had witnessed in Warsaw and at Bełżec. In 1943, Karski traveled to the United States and reported directly to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He met with Felix Frankfurter, Cordell Hull, William Joseph Donovan, and Stephen Wise, among many others. He also presented his report to bishops of various denominations, members of the Hollywood film industry, and the media. Many of those he spoke to did not believe him or supposed his testimony was exaggerated or represented propaganda from the government in exile.
During the Warsaw Ghetto Rising, which lasted from the 19th of April to the 16th of May 1943, AK units attempted to assist the Jewish fighters. One AK unit under the command of Henryk Iwański, known as "Bystry," fought inside the ghetto alongside the ŻZW and subsequently retreated with 34 Jewish fighters. Three cell units under Kapitan Józef Pszenny tried to breach the ghetto walls with explosives. The participation of the Polish underground in the uprising was confirmed by the German commander Jürgen Stroop in his own report.
By 1943, the Home Army began building up its forces for a national uprising. The plan was code-named Operation Tempest. Its military actions began in 1944, with major elements including Operation Ostra Brama, the Lwów Uprising, and the Warsaw Uprising.
On the 7th of July, Operation Ostra Brama began when approximately 12,500 Home Army soldiers attacked the German garrison and seized most of the city center of Vilnius. Heavy street fighting lasted until the 14th of July. The Red Army entered the city on the 15th of July, and the NKVD immediately began interning all Polish soldiers. The following day, the headquarters of the Soviet 3rd Belorussian Front invited Polish officers to a meeting and arrested them.
The Lwów Uprising started on the 23rd of July. The fighting lasted until the 27th of July and resulted in the liberation of the city. Shortly afterward, Polish soldiers were arrested by the Soviets and either forced to join the Red Army or sent to the Gulags.
In August 1944, the government in exile called for an uprising in Warsaw, hoping to return to a liberated city and prevent a communist takeover. The AK, led by Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, launched the Warsaw Uprising. Soviet forces were less than 20 kilometers away but gave no assistance on Stalin's orders. Stalin described the uprising as a "criminal adventure." The AK fielded between 12,000 and 20,000 armed soldiers, most carrying only small arms, against a well-armed German force of 20,000 SS and regular Army units. After 63 days, the city was reduced to rubble. Polish casualties are estimated at between 150,000 and 300,000 killed; 90,000 civilians were sent to labor camps in the Reich; 60,000 were shipped to death and concentration camps including Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen. German sappers then systematically demolished what remained of the city.
In March 1945, the Soviet Union staged a show trial in Moscow of 16 leaders of the Polish Underground State. Soviet General Ivan Serov, with the agreement of Joseph Stalin, had invited the Government Delegate, members of the Council of National Unity, and the commander-in-chief of the Armia Krajowa to a conference on the prospect of their entry into the Soviet-backed Provisional Government. They were given a warrant of safety. On the 27th and the 28th of March, NKVD agents arrested them in Pruszków. Leopold Okulicki, Jan Stanisław Jankowski, and Kazimierz Pużak were taken on the 27th; 12 more followed the next day. They were brought to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow, subjected to months of brutal interrogation and torture, and presented with forged accusations of collaboration with Nazi Germany.
The fighting did not end in 1945 for those who refused to accept the Soviet-backed government. The so-called Cursed Soldiers continued armed resistance for years. On the 7th of May 1945, the Battle of Kuryłówka began in southeastern Poland, the largest battle in the history of the National Military Alliance. Anti-communist partisans killed 70 NKVD agents in combat against Soviet forces.
On the 21st of May 1945, a unit of the Armia Krajowa led by Colonel Edward Wasilewski attacked an NKVD camp in Rembertów on the eastern outskirts of Warsaw, where hundreds of Home Army members were being held and systematically deported to Siberia. The attack freed all Polish political prisoners held there.
The last Cursed Soldier, Józef Franczak, was killed with a pistol in his hand by the ZOMO in 1963, nearly two decades after the war's end.
Common questions
How large was the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) during World War II?
The Armia Krajowa numbered about 100,000 members when it was formed in February 1942. By early 1943 it had grown to approximately 200,000. At its peak in summer 1944, estimates of AK membership ranged from 300,000 to 500,000, and its total strength including allied groups such as the National Armed Forces was estimated at 650,000.
What did Witold Pilecki do inside Auschwitz concentration camp?
Witold Pilecki deliberately allowed himself to be captured in a Warsaw street roundup on the 19th of September 1940 and was sent to Auschwitz. Inside the camp he organized an underground resistance network called the Związek Organizacji Wojskowej (ZOW), which transmitted intelligence reports about the Holocaust to the Home Army beginning in November 1940. His reports became the principal source of Western Allied intelligence on Auschwitz-Birkenau.
How much intelligence did the Polish resistance provide to Britain in World War II?
The Polish resistance provided 43 percent of all intelligence reports received by British intelligence agencies from occupied Europe during World War II. Among its most significant contributions was the intelligence on German V-2 rockets, including some 50 kilograms of captured V-2 parts transported to Brindisi by a Royal Air Force Douglas Dakota and delivered to London in late July 1944.
What was the Żegota organization and what did it accomplish?
Żegota, formally the Council for the Aid of the Jews, was founded in September 1942 by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz. Poland was the only occupied country in Europe to maintain such a dedicated secret organization for protecting Jewish people. Żegota aided more than 50,000 Jews who survived the war, roughly half of Jewish survivors in Poland. Its best-known activist, Irena Sendler, saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto.
What happened to the leaders of the Polish Underground State after World War II?
In March 1945, sixteen leaders of the Polish Underground State were lured to a meeting with Soviet General Ivan Serov under a warrant of safety, then arrested by the NKVD on the 27th and the 28th of March in Pruszków. They were taken to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow, subjected to months of interrogation and torture, and charged with fabricated accusations of collaborating with Nazi Germany at a staged show trial known as the Trial of the Sixteen.
What was the scale of Polish resistance sabotage against German forces from 1941 to 1944?
Between the 1st of January 1941 and the 30th of June 1944, the Union of Armed Struggle and Home Army damaged or destroyed 6,930 locomotives, derailed 732 transports, damaged 19,058 railway wagons, blew up 38 railway bridges, and damaged or destroyed 4,326 army vehicles. Built-in sabotage faults were introduced into 92,000 artillery missiles and 70,000 condensers. Pre-planned assassinations of German personnel totaled 5,733.
All sources
43 references cited across the entry
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