The Lira Ensemble

The Polish Underground State, 1939-1945 - presentation delivered by Marek Suszko, Ph.D., of the Department of History, Loyola University Chicago, on October 11, 2009:

On August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact that surprised the world and removed the last obstacle to Hitler’s war plans against Poland. The secret clauses of this pact provided for the joint German and Soviet division of East-Central Europe and partition of Poland. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland starting World War II. The Soviet Union followed with its aggression against Poland on September 17, 1939. Abandoned by their western allies the Polish armed forces fought the uneven battle until early October 1939. For the Polish population Poland’s defeat in September 1939 marked the beginning of terror of the Nazi and Soviet occupation. The occupying forces directed this terror at the entire Polish population with a goal of exterminating Poland’s political and intellectual elites, and in a German case all Polish Jews, and turning the rest of the population into fully enslaved and obedient masses.
The initial Soviet occupation of eastern Poland lasted only twenty-one months until June 1941, but resulted in mass murders of tens of thousands of Polish officers, civil servants, and leaders of political, cultural, social, and religious organizations. During that period the Soviets deported up to 500,000 Polish citizens of various social, ethnic, and religious background to Siberia and other parts of the Soviet Union. Many of them perished in the notorious Soviet Gulag system. In result, by mid-1941 the Soviet regime achieved its initial goal of de-Polonizing large parts of pre-war eastern Poland.
The Nazi occupation lasted longer, and, because of it, proved to be even more devastating to the population of Poland than the Soviet one. The Nazis divided their part of occupied Poland into two areas and incorporated the westernmost of them directly into the Third Reich with a goal of its quick and full Germanization. In the central part of the country the Nazi regime established a separate entity called “the General Government” that became a slave colony and a dumping ground for all undesirable Poles and Jews. Here the Nazis engaged in a policy of “spiritual sterilization” of the Polish nation by closing Polish cultural institutions, universities, most secondary schools, and murdering Polish intellectual and professional elites. Indeed the losses among Poland’s intellectual elites are staggering and include: 15 per cent of Polish teachers, 18 per cent of the Catholic clergy, 45 per cent of physicians, 50 per cent of engineers, and 57 per cent of lawyers. In addition, between 1939 and 1944 the Nazis sent to Germany almost three million Poles to work as slave laborers and kidnapped about 200,000 Polish children to raise them as “Arian” Germans in German homes. Finally, the Nazi General Plan “Ost” of April 1942 envisioned all of Poland as the area of future German colonization without room for ethnic Poles who were to be scattered throughout the vast lands of far eastern Europe and Siberia.

The Polish response to the country’s military defeat and the brutal Nazi and Soviet occupation varied. Tens of thousands of Polish soldiers managed to escape to France via Hungary in order to continue their military struggle. They formed the Polish Armed Forces in the West that bravely fought against the Nazis in Norway, France, and at the Battle of Britain. On October 1, 1939, Poland’s President Moscicki who found himself interned in Romania transferred his powers to the newly formed Polish Government-in-Exile, which was to ensure the legal continuity of Poland’s state institutions and coordinate the struggle against Poland’s enemies abroad. At the same time the Poles who remained in their occupied country began to form numerous resistance groups that quickly took the form of an Underground State.
The Polish Underground State was a clandestine association of various military, political, social, and cultural organizations united by their desire to fight together Poland’s enemies on the home front. Once established the Underground State included military and civilian structures that resembled those of the state and were loyal to the Polish Government-in-Exile.
The military structures of the Polish Underground State trace their origins to September 27, 1939, a day before the surrender of Warsaw to the Nazis. It was then that General Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, established the Service for Poland’s Victory (SZP), a secret military organization many believe marked the beginning of the Polish Underground State. On November 13, 1939, the Polish Government-in-Exile reorganized the Service for Poland’s Victory into the Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ) in order to attract wider groups of fighters into its ranks. In January 1940 the Union was divided into two parts to separately cover the areas under the German (Colonel Stefan Rowecki) and Soviet (General Michal Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski) occupation. The Union’s most important role was to defend the Polish population against German and Soviet killings and deportations. On February 14, 1942, the Union of Armed Struggle was renamed the Home Army (AK). The Home Army was a non-political organization with a task of recreating the armed forces underground and using them in a national armed struggle for Poland’s independence. By 1944 the Home Army brought together up to four hundred thousand fighters, both men and women. Te Home Army played the role of an armed branch of the Polish Underground State until it was disbanded in January 1945.
The civilian structures of the Polish Underground State could be divided into political and administrative. The political branch formed on February 26, 1940, as the Political Consultative Committee (PKP). It included members of Poland’s four largest pre-war political parties: the peasant party, the nationalist party, the socialist party, and the Christian-democratic party. Its function was to coordinate the civilian activities of the resistance movement. On March 21, 1943, the Political Consultative Committee was renamed the Home Political Representation (KRP), an underground coalition parliament and the controlling body of the underground administration and the Home Army. Finally, on January 9, 1944, the Home Political representation became the Council of National Unity (RJN). The political structures of the Polish Underground State functioned until July 1945. The administrative branch of the Polish Underground State formed in November 1939 received the name The Government Delegation for Poland shortly thereafter. The Government Delegation for Poland that functioned until June 1945 initially comprised of twelve departments, which to a large extent resembled Poland’s pre-war ministries.
The scope of the activities of the Polish Underground State was enormous. In the area of intelligence almost half of all British intelligence reports from occupied Europe came from Polish agents. Polish agents operated in all Nazi-occupied countries in Europe and established one of the largest and most effective intelligence networks within Germany. Among its many other successes, the Home Army was responsible for locating the German rocket facility at Peenemunde that the Allies destroyed on 18 August 1943. In July 1944 the Home Army delivered to the United Kingdom key parts of a Nazi V-2 rocket, which became vital to improving Allied anti-V-2 defenses.
Between 1939 and 1944 the Poles engaged in at least 700,000 acts of sabotage against the occupying forces. Their Directorate of Sabotage and Diversion or “Kedyw” run weapon and munitions factories, military schools, intelligence, counter-intelligence, field hospitals, and a communication network. Members of the Polish clandestine scout movement, “Szare Szeregi,” were responsible for many of the sabotage activities. Some of the most spectacular sabotage actions organized by the Polish Underground State included blowing up all railroad tracks leading to Warsaw on October 7-8, 1942 (Operation “Wieniec”). In total, due to the Polish sabotage activities one in eight of all German military transports headed for the eastern Front never reached its destination. These actions forced the Nazi regime to station between 350,000 and 620,000 troops within the territory of the General Government alone.
To weaken the morale of the German occupying forces the Polish Underground State engaged in a psychological warfare named Operation “N.” Between 1942 and 1944 the Poles printed in German and distributed among the German troops one million copies of propaganda material. At the same time they made sure that all this material looked as if it was printed in Germany by German anti-Fascist underground organizations. Unfortunately the scientific world is still awaiting a detailed study of the effects this propaganda literature had on the German troops in occupied Poland.
In the area of self-defense the Polish Underground State directed its activities at freeing prisoners and hostages and fighting against pacification measures of the occupying forces. The Polish underground forces tried to protect Polish civilians against atrocities committed by German and non-German military organizations, such as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army or the Lithuanian Security Police. In retaliation to Nazi terror tactics the special units of the Polish Underground State assassinated prominent Nazi collaborators and Gestapo officials (notable individuals assassinated by the Home Army include a Nazi collaborator Igo Sym and the head of the Gestapo branch in Warsaw, Franz Kutschera). In all the Home Army was responsible for the execution of some 2000 Nazi officials in occupied Poland during World War II.
To ensure continuous loyalty of the local population the Polish Underground State established its National Security Corps or Panstwowy Korpus Bezpieczenstwa, which at the height of its operations employed some 12,000 officers. This virtual underground police investigated suspected cases of collaboration and carried on sentences issued by underground courts.
The horrors of the holocaust prompted the Polish Underground State to act in defense of its citizens of the Jewish origin through its Council to Aid the Jews (“Żegota”). It is estimated that approximately fifty per cent of all Polish Jews who survived the holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland received some support from the Polish Underground State. Today ethnic Poles make up some 28 per cent of over 22,000 people recognized as Righteous Among the Nations for their help to save European Jews from the holocaust. It is estimated that a total of between 100,000 and 300,000 Poles would qualify to receive this recognition.
To fight the Nazi policy of “spiritual sterilization” the Polish Underground State promoted underground educational and cultural activities in occupied Poland. The Secret Teaching Organization was responsible for providing clandestine education in private homes to some 1.5 million students. The occupation and the closure of all Polish institutions of higher learning did not prevent over 10,000 young Poles from earning their Masters’ and Doctorate degrees. The underground theaters flourished and the Poles continued to attend, although at the risk of death, clandestine performances of Chopin music. In addition, the Polish Underground State used the network of the only two social institutions that the Nazi regime allowed to function in occupied Poland, the Central Welfare Council and the Polish Red Cross, to provide monetary relief to millions of Poles affected by war.
Despite the enormous and unique scope of its activities the Polish Underground State failed to achieve its most important objective, which was to achieve a full independence for Poland following World War II. The national insurrection against the Nazi occupation ended with a devastating defeat of the Warsaw Uprising in early October 1944 and the subsequent occupation of Poland by the Soviet troops. Abandoned for the second time by the Great Powers post World-War-II Poland emerged as a communist state subservient to its Soviet master. Between 1944 and 1947 the communists persecuted members of the Polish Underground State as criminals and the Soviet NKVD deported some 50,000 of them to its Gulag system. However, the Polish Underground State left a very powerful legacy. It became a model of heroic resistance for future generations of Poles, including members of the Solidarity Movement. Some 500,000 Poles who after the war settled as political and war refugees in various parts of the world, including the United States, made sure that the legacy of the Polish Underground State remained alive. It is partially due to them that today’s Poland is again an independent and a democratic country.

Links to Other Websites

We hope you have enjoyed your visit to the Lira Ensemble website. Please check out our performance and event calendar! Links to other interesting websites related to Lira are listed below:

http://www.polonia.com the website of Polonia Bookstore, an excellent source of books in Polish and books about Poland in English, as well as recordings and videos.

http://www.philipseward.com has information about Philip Seward, co-conductor of the Lira Ensemble, his performances, activities and compositions.

http://www.pgsa.org The Polish Genealogical Society of America website

http://www.usc.edu/go/polish_music is the website of the Polish Music Center at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

www.polishfest.org for information on Polish fest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

http://www.pahaol.com/ the web address of the Polish American Historical Association. They have initiated the "Polish American Memoirs Project" and would like to have your written personal experiences in their archives. Visit their website or click here for information

http://www.danielpollack.com visit the acclaimed concert pianist at his website

http://www.cuerdasclasicas.org/ has information in Spanish and English about the Cuerdas Clasicas String Ensemble, who frequently perform joint concerts of Mexican and Polish music with the Lira Singers.

The Lira Ensemble, 6525 North Sheridan Road #CH-LL, Chicago, Illinois 60626 773-508-7040 or email lira@liraensemble.com