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The Polish Underground
State (1939-45)
J6zef Garlinski
Throughout the history of Europe Great Britain has probably never
been so popular among the European nations as during the last war.
After the fall of France,not only did she rejectHitler'speace proposals
and stand up to him with only minimalhelp from the allied forces who
found themselves in the British Isles, but she also created a secret
organization, 'Special Operations Executive' (SOE), which provided
assistancefor all resistancemovementsin Nazi-occupiedEurope.
It would have seemed likely that these most creditable wartime
exploits would be well documented in postwar Britishhistoricalwork.
And yet this has not been the case. Only a few documentaryworks
have so far been published on this subject. Among them are:
Proceedings of a Conference on Britain and European Resistance,
1939-1945 (a report of a conference held at St. Antony's College,
Oxford in 1962), which unfortunatelyexists only in roneoed form; and
Professor M. R. D. Foot's valuablework, SOE in France, publishedin
the same year. There is also a lecture given by the Head of the SOE,
Sir
Major-General Colin Gubbins,at the Royal United ServicesInstitute
in 1948, entitled 'Resistance Movementsin the War',which has not
been published in book form, and a symposium on resistance
movements in Europe during the years 1939-45, organized in Spring
1973 by the University of Salford. The papers presented at this
symposium will shortly be appearingin print. There are also many
reminiscences and additional publications, but they have little
documentary value for the assessment of the British role in the
Europeanresistance.
Amongst Europeanresistancemovements,the activitiesof the Polish
undergroundtake a leading place because of its scope and versatility,
but yet againvery little has been written in Englishabout it. Thereis a
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220
Jozef Garlinski
book by the Commander of the Home Army, General Tadeusz
Bor-Komorowski,The Secret Army (London, 1950); there are the
in
collected stories of the parachutists The Unseenand Silent (London,
1954); and there is Stefan Korbonski's Fighting Warsaw(London,
1956), but all these are only reminiscencesand do not embrace the
whole scope of Polish undergroundactivities. Jan Karski's
book, Story
of a Secret State, published right at the end of the war in 1945, is a
combination of memoirs and fiction and has very little historicalvalue.
Only two fully documented works have appeared- my own Poland,
He
SOE and the Allies in 1969 and KazimierzIranek-Osmecki's Who
Saves One Life in 1971, which deals with the rescueof Jews in Poland
between 1939 and 1945, but both these works, in particularIranek's,
activities.
touch only on a fragmentof the underground
Yet the resistancemovement in Polandgrew to such a degreethat it
was justifiably called 'The Polish UndergroundState'. It embracednot
only political and military activities, but also, in the closing phases of
the war, incorporatedan undergroundparliament,possessed a secret
administrationand judiciary, organizedsecret education courses, both
at secondary and higher levels, published journals and books, formed
undergroundtheatres,held illicit lectures, exhibitions and concerts, and
preservedand protected works of art.
This article aims to present as succinctly as possible the
achievementsof the Polish undergroundorganization,in all its facets.
When consideringthese achievements,we must rememberthat, for the
first twenty-one months of the war, Poland was occupied by two
enemies, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This is reflected in the
article, but only partially,since, first of all, the greatestdevelopmentof
the underground movement took place during the years when the
whole of Poland was under German occupation, and secondly, the
documentation concerning the Soviet administration is largely
incomplete.
When discussing the details of the achievements of the Polish
the
undergroundmovement, we cannot disregard fact that the occupied
country was subjected to a degree of terror unknown to other
European countries. Firstly, both the invading powers began by
annexing Polish land, which resulted in deportations and exile.
Furthermore, thousands of Polish citizens found themselves in jail
without any proof of guilt. After the Germanattack in the East, many
of these people were murderedby the Soviet authoritieswhile still in
prison or during the evacuation.The Germanauthoritiesimmediately
began to destroy Polish cultural life, closing universities, secondary
ThePolish Underground
221
schools, theatres and museums. They also set up concentrationcamps
on Polish soil, amongst them the infamous Auschwitz, and places for
the mass extermination of Jews who were brought from all over
Europe. Frequent round-ups in the towns and villages provided
prisoners for the camps, and workers who were transportedto the
Reich with hardly any legal protection. The terroristactivities of both
invaders,calculatedto destroy the Polish element, were reflectedin the
activities of the Polish undergroundstate and are discussed in this
article.
THEBEGINNING THEUNDERGROUND
OF
MOVEMENT
On 27 September 1939, one day before the surrenderof Warsaw,
General Michat Karasiewicz-Tokarzewski about forming a secret
set
military organization, 'In the Service of Poland's Victory' (Siuzba
Zwyciqstwu Polski, SZP). He had received authority for this action
from the commander of the capital's defences, General Juliusz
R6mmel, who, the previousday, had receiveda written orderfrom the
C-in-C, MarshalEdward Smigfy-Rydz,who was already in Romania.
The order dealt with the organizationof diversionary
tactics againstthe
enemy.
By the middle of October,GeneralTokarzewski
(code-nameTorwid)
his own staff, hidden in Warsaw,whose chief was
already possessed
Colonel Stefan Rowecki (code-nameGrabica).The organizational
work
was based on a plan which foresawthe creationof areasand districtsin
the field and also laid down the essential lines of action. This
organisationwas to embrace the whole of the Polish state, encourage
the people to resist, initiate diversionaryand sabotage actions and
preparethe country for a generaluprisingin the final phasesof the war.
It was easiest to begin organizingin the GeneralGovernment,and thus
SZP had its first branches in Cracow, Lublin and Radom.2 The
organization was also extended into the lands incorporatedinto the
Reich. Unfortunately, in these areas the undergroundmovement had
great difficulty in developing. Mass deportations of the Polish
population, carriedout most brutally, police control and terrorcaused
the newly established secret network to be very weak and constantly
breakingdown.3
A few officers also went to the Soviet-occupiedterritories,to Lw6w,
Bialystok and Wilno, which, until 15 June 1940, when it was finally
occupied by the Soviet Union, remained in Lithuanian hands. The
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J6zef Garlinski
spontaneous seeds of an underground organization already existed
there, but had little force. The local population had already been
infiltrated by the NKVD, a process facilitated by the large number of
national minorities;there were many arrestsand the Polish element was
further crippled by mass deportations into the depths of the Soviet
Union.4 The setting-up of an underground
military network was going
very slowly. There were better results in Wilno, but in Lw6w the
infiltrationreachedeven the top echelons of the ZWZ.
NKWD's
General Tokarzewski understood that the military organization
could not operate in a political vacuumand thereforebasedthe SZP on
RadaPolityczna, GRP), comprising
the Chief Political Council(GC-wna
representatives of the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia
Ludowe, SL), the
Socjalistyczna, PPS), the PeasantParty(Stronnictwo
National Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe, SN) and, somewhat later, the
Democratic Party (Stronnictwo Demokractyczne, SD). The leading
of
representatives these partiesin the GRPwere KazimierzPuzak(PPS),
Maciej Rataj (SL), Leon Nowodworski (SN) and Mieczystaw
Michatowicz(SD). It was essential to look for supportfrom the parties
which, before the war, had been in opposition, since a deep crisis of
confidence in the pre-war leadership was evident in Polish society.
There had been only one ruling party, formed by J6sef Pitsudski,
which, after his death, ruled Poland alone, and in the last few weeks
before the German attack refused to form a government of national
unity.
OF
IN
THE RE-BUILDING A NATIONALGOVERNMENT FRANCE
Parallelingthe undergroundwork in Poland, talks were takingplace
in France, aimed at forming a new government,installingit on allied
Sikorski,
soil, and forming the Polish armed forces. GeneralWladystaw
who had spent many years in
an opponent of the PiTsudski
group
was known and supportedby the French authorities,had
France and
already arrivedin Paris. Since the Presidentand the Polish government
had been interned in Romania, the ambassadorin Paris, Juliusz
Lukasiewicz, had temporarily assumed all political power. After
discussions with the politicians on 28 September, he entrusted the
command of the Polish army in France to Sikorski. Two days later,
WiadystawRaczkiewicz,who succeededIgnacyMoscickias Presidentof
the Polish Republic, proposed the appointment of Sikorski as Prime
Minister. The General accepted and, in the course of a few days, had
united in his hands the two most importantpositions in the republic,as
ThePolish Underground
the allied governmentsof Franceand GreatBritainrecognized.5
THE UNIONFOR ARMEDSTRUGGLE6
223
After the formation of a cabinet and the initiation of discussionson
the re-forming of the armed forces, Sikorski turned his attention to
Poland itself, which played the most importantpart in his political and
military activity. Only from there could he drawthe moral and political
strength to conduct Polish affairs. It was there that all decisive events
affectingthe future of Polandwould take place.
A situation in which both the militaryand the political underground
movements had created their own organizationwas not to his liking,
especially since General Tokarzewskibelonged to the Pitsudskicamp.
On 13 November 1939, Sikorski therefore brought into being the
'Union for Armed Struggle'(ZwiqzekWalki
Zbrojnej,ZWZ),which was
to replacethe organizationcreatedby Tokarzewski
(SZP) and take over
its whole field network. Wishingto have the ZWZcompletely underhis
control, Sikorski established its headquartersin France, with General
Kazimierz Sosnkowski as its head, who also assumed control of the
Committee of Ministers for Polish Affairs. Although a supporter of
Pifsudski, Sosnkowski's relationswith Pitsudski'sfollowers had cooled
prior to the war. The whole of Poland was divided into six areas -
Warsaw, Bialystok, Cracow, Lw6w, Poznan and Torufn and the
commandersof these areas were directly responsibleto Sosnkowski.7
This was a very artificialarrangement so, in January1940, it was
and
altered and the country was divided into two zones of occupation -
German and Soviet. Colonel Rowecki was named commanderof the
German zone, with his HQ in Warsaw,and General Tokarzewskithe
commanderof the Soviet zone, with his HQ in Lw6w. He was ordered
to go there immediately and tried to carry out this order,but fell into
Soviet hands on the night of 6-7 March 1940 while crossing the
demarcationline.8
The new arrangementlasted barely a few months. The German
attack in the West took place and after a few weeks Francefell. Hopes
for a speedy end to the war vanished,GeneralSikorskicrossedover to
England and, immediately after his arrivalon 30 June 1940, sent a
message to General Rowecki, in which he established a unified ZWZ
command for the whole of Poland and appointed Rowecki as its
commander.9
The most important initial tasks of the ZWZ concerned its own

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