|
|
|
|
Fighting on the frontlines and conducting the ideological battle
Polish forces fought on every European front during the Second World War (Narvik, the French campaign and the Battle of Britain in 1940, Tobruk in 1941/42, Normandy and Monte Cassino in 1944). The biggest Polish Army unit in the West was General Anders' Second Corps which fought in Italy, This unit was created in 1941 in the USSR, following an agreement between Sikorski and Stalin, and consisted mainly of Polish prisoners and deportees freed from Stalin's camps. Poles made a major contribution to the Allied effort in intelligence (two Polish mathematicians deciphered the German Enigma code). But for the future of Poland, the political decisions were the most important. Diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union were broken off after the discovery of the Katyn massacre, and the death of Gen. Sikorski in a mysterious plane crash (1943) weakened the Polish position on the international arena. Neither Prime Minister Mikołajczyk nor Commander-in-Chief Sosnkowski managed to successfully put Poland's case to Churchill and Roosevelt,
 |
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
|
At the Potsdam Conference the western border of Poland was fixed on the Oder and Neisse Rivers . |
| | |
|
|
| who left Poland under Soviet influence in exchange for the USSR's participation in the war against Nazi Germany. The military campaigns of the Polish undeground movement in the eastern territories were of no avail in securing a favourable attutude from the Western powers, and neither was the Warsaw Uprising (63 days of fighting). The Allied conferences in Tehran (1943) and Yalta (1945) decided the fate of Poland: the Republic's eastern territories were ceded to the USSR, and Poland found itself in the Soviet sphere of influence. The only concession on the part of Stalin was his agreement to grant Poland territories along the River Oder, together with part of former East Prussia. It was a sop to the government of Polish Communists which was being formed in the USSR under Stalin's tutelage (two Polish armies were fighting side by side with the Red Army under Russian command). Once again, a war between the superpowers left Poland devastated (a loss of 1/5 of its pre-war territory; a population diminished by a third, and the national economic assets depleted by 38%).
|
|
|
|
|
|
