Interview with PAP. “We are moved by this selflessness and magnificence of the Poles who helped the refugees”, he added.

Brzezinski stressed in an interview with PAP on Tuesday that Poles showed a quick ability to mobilize in helping Ukraine and the Ukrainian refugees.

“And I wanted to emphasize again that this gives hope for the broad renewal of the country, the awakening of such potential for Poland to flourish – all thanks to this rapid mobilization,” the ambassador said.

According to him, this is “a critical moment in the history of the Polish country.”

Asked whether Poland should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the help it showed to Ukraine and Ukrainians, he said:

“In Poland, we have seen a rapid mobilization of Poles to help refugees in the face of their mass exodus. Unfortunately, this will not be the last time we will see such an influx of refugees. But no one will be able to ignore what Poles have done, how much they have mobilized, how much they have helped, giving each of them a roof over their heads and a meal,” Brzezinski noted.

“I certainly think this deserves a Nobel Peace Prize,” the ambassador declared.

“Of course,” he added, “I am a bit biased because I am the US ambassador to Poland. But I can say on behalf of all Americans that we are tremendously touched by this selflessness and magnificence of the Poles who helped the refugees,” he said.

Brzezinski was also asked whether Poland is vulnerable to disinformation attacks from Russia.

“Poland is a target of Russian disinformation. We see examples of it all over the country, but Poles are intelligent; they have such a sixth sense because they have already been the target of propaganda and disinformation in the past, so they are sensitive to it,” Mark Brzezinski replied.

According to him, Poles know that actions have more impact than words. They know that Ukrainian refugees are not taking away jobs but helping stimulate the Polish economy. “For example, in the technology and other sectors of the economy,” Brzezinski said.

The ambassador pointed out that Poles and Americans are closer together than ever in the past.

“We are more united when it comes to military cooperation, cooperation in humanitarian efforts, our business cooperation, our values,” Brzezinski said.

For the Polish original, please see:  https://wgospodarce.pl/informacje/117527-brzezinski-polska-zasluguje-na-pokojowa-nagrode-nobla

The post Brzezinski: “Poland deserves the Nobel Peace Prize” appeared first on Polonia Institute.

Poland’s Sejm, in its resolution, calls upon the EU and NATO states, in particular Germany, to take urgent measures to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline out of solidarity with Ukraine and other countries threatened by Russian expansionist policy.

On calling upon the governments of the European Union and NATO states, including, in particular, the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, to take urgent measures to halt the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

The Sejm of the Republic of Poland, with a sense of solidarity with our Central European neighbors threatened by Russian expansionism, including, in particular, with Ukraine, calls upon the European Union and its Member States, including, in particular, the Federal Republic of Germany as our NATO ally and European Union partner, to withdraw any support for implementing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project and to take steps to immediately and effectively stopped its construction. We appeal for this in the name of respect for the values on which the European Union is based, in the name of solidarity with Ukraine and of care for stability and security in Europe, as well as for increasing the Union’s resilience to pressure from Russia.  We also call upon the United States of  America as our NATO ally,  to maintain and extend sanctions against the entities participating in the construction of the pipeline. Any further political and economic pressure from the US may contribute to the discontinuation of this harmful project and to strengthening cooperation among the North Atlantic Alliance Member States on issues that are essential to their security.

For 30 years,  the European Union and  NATO have been making numerous efforts to shape relations with Russia.  All of them have been treated by Russia as preparation of the ground for its imperialist expansion, and the underpinning principles of international law have been brutally crushed by it in the acts of armed aggression against Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine since 2014, the effects of which, in the form of illegal occupation of parts of their territories, as well as the illegal secession of Transnistria detached from Moldova, are continued.

The export of hydrocarbons is a source of financing for Russian armaments and as such is an important instrument of Russia’s aggressive policy, not only against its neighboring countries but also other European  Union  Member  States.  Nord Stream 2 is aimed exclusively at changing supply routes rather than diversifying them.  The existing transmission capacity of natural gas from the eastern direction is, in fact, sufficient to ensure its necessary supplies to  Europe.   The project also violates antitrust rules of the Third energy package by combining the ownership of gas fields and distribution networks, which is in contradiction with the European Union law.

This spring, the Russian Federation was putting massive military pressure on Ukraine, by threatening it with an outbreak of a serious armed conflict at the borders of Poland and the European Union.  Nord Stream 2, by allowing Russia to quit gas transit across the territory of Ukraine to its major customers, including the Federal Republic of Germany, will open the way for Russia to conduct large-scale armed aggression against Ukraine,  without the risk of incurring the cost of interrupting this transit due to military operations.

We know about many cases of assassination of political opponents and acts of terrorism carried out by the Russian Federation’s state services in the territory of the European Union Member States, including blowing up of Ammunition depots in Vrbetice in the Czech Republic and in six locations in Bulgaria.  The life of the leader of the Russian opposition, Alexei Navalny, who has been illegally imprisoned in a penal colony, is also at risk. Moreover, Russia supports the oppressive regime of Aleksandr Lukashenka, who usurps the right to rule Belarus against the will of the majority of its citizens expressed during the elections held on August 9^th, 2020.

We believe that the acceptance for the continuation of the North Stream 2 project in the above-mentioned circumstances is consent for pursuing by the Russian Federation a policy based on violating international standards and human rights, infringing the integrity of neighboring states, and putting pressure on the European Union and the NATO States.

The post RESOLUTION OF THE SEJM OF THE REPUBLIC OF POLAND TO STOP NORD STREAM 2 appeared first on Polonia Institute.

Encounter with Katyn, The Wartime and Postwar Story of Poles Who Saw the Katyn Site in 1943

By Tadeusz Wolsza

The Katyn Forest Massacre, An Annotated Bibliography of Books in English

By Andrew Kavchak

Reviewed by Marek Jan Chodakiewicz

The rule is that one gets ensnared in various ways anytime anyone has anything to do with the Katyń affair. The latter denotes the notorious mass murder and genocide by Stalin and his henchmen of at least 22,000 Allied POW officers of the Polish army and a subsequent cover-up in which the USSR and the UK, the US, and other Western Allied powers colluded to bury the truth. Katyń became the by-word of Soviet and Western perfidy against the Poles, even if it was just the tip of an iceberg as far as crimes against the Polish people are concerned.

Yet, despite the efforts of the mighty of the world, we now know much about crime.  However, the truth will always come out even if it takes time to emerge from the bowels of Communist and Allied mendacity.

In pursuit of the truth, two new works have recently been published regarding Katyń: by Professor Tadeusz Wolsza, a Polish scholar, and by Andrew Kavchak, a Canadian grandchild of one of the victims, Stanisław Kawczak.  First, a disclaimer: I know Professor Wolsza personally; we cooperate on the academic board of the Second World War Museum in Gdańsk. As for the latter writer, I have corresponded with him some to help him popularize his work.

Andrew Kavchak’s The Katyń Forest Massacre: An Annotated Bibliography of Books in English (Middletown, DE: By the Author, 2020) is an indispensable tool for foreigners, general readers, and academics to learn about the mass murder of Polish POWs by the Soviets.  It is also helpful for Polish scholars and history buffs to learn about the historiography of Katyń; to bemoan the scarcity (fewer than 40 titles over eighty years!) of publications on this particular aspect of Soviet terror.

First, there is a brief introduction to the killings and their aftermath. Then, the writer lists the resources chronologically and elaborates on them competently. Some of the titles he discusses pertain to Katyń specifically; in a few instances, only segments concern the massacre, for example, Wesley Adamczyk’s memoir, where he bemoans the loss of his father, who was shot by the Soviets but spent most of his recollections on his own travails as a child in the Gulag and afterward. One wishes Kavchak spent more time delving into the profiles of some of the authors. For example, it does matter that Professor Stanisław Kot was a leftist who, nonetheless, spoke the truth about Katyń.

Kudos to my friend Alexander “Maciek” Jablonski of Canada’s Oscar Halecki Institute for all his encouragement for Andrew Kavchak’s work. Yet, credit must go to the author himself, who successfully turned his pain into our public gain: “As I am of Polish origin and had a relative who was among the victims, I felt it was my duty to develop a thorough understanding of what happened at Katyń. In the process, it helped me to understand Polish history, politics, and culture better. Knowledge about Katyń is also a prerequisite to ensuring that future generations would be aware of the story. As one writer put it, ‘we are not permitted to forget.’ The deception that reverberated around the Katyń story for decades was neither the beginning nor the end of attempts by the Kremlin to fool the masses. The phenomena of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ have been a standard component of its modus operandi since the Russian revolution. The culture of deception may even find its roots in earlier times as attested to by the legend of the ‘Potemkin villages.’” (p. 12). Hear, hear!

In his Encounter with Katyń: The Wartime and Postwar Story of Poles Who Saw the Katyń Site in 1943 (Durham, NC: Janusz Kurtyka Foundation for Carolina Academic Press, 2018), Tadeusz Wolsza focuses not on the victims but the witnesses of Katyń. And, pace the title, the historian casts a broad net including Poles and individuals of other nationalities who visited, under German jurisdiction, the site of the massacre in 1943. Altogether the monograph retraces the histories of over 50 people involved in this sordid business. Grounded in impressive research in Polish Communist secret police archives, Encounter with Katyń consists of two stages: an investigation and a cover-up.

The investigation took place in situ at Katyń and afterward, where the experts and others worked with the sordid evidence. They participated in exhumations, examined decomposed bodies, and scrutinized various items retrieved from mass graves. Some of the experts brought the evidence back home, e.g., a Danish physician carried a skull of a Polish officer back to his institute in Copenhagen.

The cover-up commenced immediately upon Berlin’s propaganda barrage releasing information about Katyń in April 1943. Moscow hypocritically cried foul. Stalin mendaciously accused Hitler of the crime; the Kremlin broke off diplomatic relations with the Polish Government in Exile in London for daring to ask for an independent investigation by the Red Cross.  Western Allies would not touch Katyń with a ten-foot pole. They knew the truth and buried it. Besides, they also abandoned their most faithful ally – Poland, who was “First to Fight.”  The cover-up continued after the war. It entailed, aside from cyclical Communist propaganda salvos about the alleged Nazi guilt, a sustained campaign to force the Katyń witnesses to recant or, if that failed, discredit or even eliminate them, which we shall return to shortly.

At the outset, Wolsza shows us the initial reactions of the witnesses to the crime and their subsequent fate. Generally, the visitors were a mixed lot. Some were distinguished experts with impeccable credentials in their fields, including forensic medicine. Others were journalists and popularizers, who were brought in with hopes to serve as Nazi propaganda tubes. There were also a few workers and other lower-class people. In other words, the visitors represented a broad section of European society.

Some Polish witnesses accepted the German invitation only after confidential consultation with and permission from the Polish Underground State authorities. A few others were explicitly ordered by the clandestine Polish Home Army to join the expedition. Almost all the latter tended to wear several hats, including working in secret Polish organizations and German-sanctioned institutions (e.g., the official charity, Rada Główna Opiekuńcza [Main Charity Council — RGO]).

Further, in addition to the denizens of German-occupied Poland, the participants included representatives of countries, such as France or Denmark, conquered by the Third Reich. Furthermore, there were the subjects of Axis states, Bulgaria and Hungary, for example, and neutral nations such as Spain and Switzerland. Lastly, Allied POWs, both officers and enlisted men, Americans, Brits, and others, flew in from their Oflags and Stalags in the Reich to Smolensk to shock them with the Soviet perfidy.

Most of the witnesses became convinced of Soviet culpability while assessing the evidence personally. Some issued an expert opinion on the crime, while others refused to. A few collected the evidence from the latter group, hid it, and wrote reports for the Polish underground.

Some went on the record publicly to denounce the mass murder. A few consciously propagandized for the Nazis. Specific individuals were merely craven collaborators who would do anything to ingratiate themselves with Berlin. Others were genuine anti-Communists who believed that the Soviet Union was a greater evil than the Third Reich. That last group consisted of most of the neutrals, Axis, and occupied witnesses.

At any rate, Germany amplified the anti-Communist narrative, including the churlish slur that “Jewish Bolsheviks” were behind the Katyń murders. However, with the demise of Hitler and his comrades and the defeat of the “One Thousand-Year Reich” and its satellites and allies, there was practically no institutional or state backing for the truth of Katyń to be heard.

The Soviet secret police immediately fanned out across the Intermarium to find the witnesses to Katyń and made them recant. Not surprisingly, the NKVD was quite successful. Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, and Hungarian experts took back their testimonies. To the great fanfare of red media, they announced that they had been wrong and the Germans, not the Soviets, perpetrated the Katyń murders. Most of those who recanted enjoyed comfortable careers or at least quiet lives under the Communist occupation. Those who did not were given the treatment, including jail time after collaborationist show trials. That concerned mostly journalists and other propagandists.

However, most experts and other Katyń witnesses who found themselves out of direct reach of the Soviet secret police experienced a different ordeal. Many did not change their mind but tried to blend in and retreat into obscurity. Some of them refused to lie and continued publicly to maintain the truth of Soviet guilt.  The wrath of Stalin and, later, his successors was upon them. And it was sustained for nearly half a century until Mikhail Gorbachev finally admitted the truth.

The stalwart experts, who refused to give in, were invariably branded as Nazi collaborators or outright “fascists,” real or imagined. In one case, an Italian scholar experienced ostracism and severe employment problems. In another case, already in the 1970s, a Danish professor, who had witnessed Katyń, lost his daughter in a mysterious car “accident,” which he was convinced must have involved the KGB.

The Western Allied governments participated in the cover-up for almost as many years as the Soviet regime. In the United States, it started early in the game when FDR himself suppressed the truth and exiled an American diplomat and his former close friend to Samoa to prevent him from talking about Katyń. At the time, in the US Army’s newspaper, Stars and Stripes, Communist agents published a cartoon of a Polish officer, very much alive, who perpetrated the Katyń “hoax.”

When in May 1945, an American POW witness to Katyń, Lieutenant Colonel John H. Van Vliet, Jr., followed up his secret, war-time messages, dispatched surreptitiously from his Oflag about the mass murder, with an exhaustive report delivered personally to his superiors in Paris. The document simply vanished. This scandalous cover-up came to light thanks to Krystyna Piórkowska, a Katyń victim’s child, whose invaluable research Tadeusz Wolsza relies upon.

American Communists, their progressive sympathizers, and some liberals wanted to make sure the truth about Katyń would never surface. A few years after the war with the Madden Committee and the anti-Communist push by Senator Joseph McCarthy, it finally did. By the mid-1950s, American conservatives and anti-Communists presented inconvertible evidence about the Soviet guilt for Katyń. Alas, the US lost its anti-Communist focus, and the mass murder disappeared from the public square. It reemerged only in the late 1980s.

It was even worse in Great Britain, where Her Majesty’s successive governments, in their craven appeasement of the Soviets, not only passively hid the truth about Katyń but also actively harassed British subjects who spoke about the crime and participated in commemorative ceremonies to honor the Polish POWs killed by the NKVD.

Of course, the worst ordeal befell those who remained in Soviet-occupied Poland. Not only was the truth suppressed and the mendacious narrative of German guilt purveyed, the Communist government actively censored, persecuted, and terrorized the families of the victims, as well as all others, who endeavored to remember Katyń. Anyone bringing up the executed officers openly could expect a visit from the secret police; anyone brave enough to remember the victims publicly risked arrest, beating, ostracism, job loss, and slurs of “Nazi collaboration.”

Overall, Encounter with Katyń is a worthy contribution to the growing body of scholarship on the massacre of Polish POWs by the Soviets. However, it is a pity that the monograph lacks a coherent conclusion. Perhaps it is a harbinger of more to come.

Both Tadeusz Wolsza and Andrew Kavchak have done a fine job restoring and maintaining memories about Katyń, which is perhaps a singular example of the true nature of the Soviet Communist system both domestically and internationally. Thanks to both authors, and other intrepid souls like them, we shall not be deceived.

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz

Washington, DC, 13 April 2021

The post The Legacy of Katyń appeared first on Polonia Institute.

As it is unknown whether Russia is preparing another war with Ukraine – this time completely different than in 2014, an open interstate war – we are dealing again in Europe with such a moment in politics when the curtains fall, and everything is visible as it is. Only the most essential pieces of this image can be accommodated in a short text.

The military consultations held a few days ago between the US, Great Britain, Canada, Poland, and Lithuania on the Russian escalation of the conflict with Ukraine shows that when it comes to a real threat, only the Americans and their ad hoc allies remain. The only question is what roles in this system will each party play and the actual division of benefits and costs of involvement in the conflict. The no-show of Germany and France also deserves attention. Especially significant is the sudden silence of Berlin, which has been responsible for the entire situation in Eastern Europe since 2014. When juxtaposed with the increasing exaltation of German politicians over the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, the sale of the aluminum plant in Rheinfelden to the Russians, and the determination to complete the Nord Stream 2 construction, the image of Germany’s eastern policy becomes very clear.

For a long time, I have also been insisting and giving my opinion that Germany is interested in Poland and our whole region primarily in one context: the enlargement of the Eurozone, which would make it possible to use the achievements of 30 years of transformation to build up the resources of a German Europe. However, behind this “proposal,” there are no security guarantees, for which Germany has neither its own capabilities nor the political will. It is a proposal of unilateral exploitation.

The picture is completed by the state of the EU, which today is living the scandal of Ursula von der Leyen seated on a couch at the meeting at Erdogan’s house and is excited about the start of a conference on the future of Europe, which, as a typical technocratic enterprise, hides the lack of political leadership in the Union. All of these disturbing images of a grim picture should force us to reflect and act, no matter how much our attention is absorbed by the pandemic today. The pandemic will eventually subside, and the conditions of our political position will remain.

Marek A. Cichocki

The original article, in Polish, can be read here:

https://teologiapolityczna.pl/znaczace-milczenie-berlina-1

Marek Cichocki – philosopher, political scientist, an expert in Polish-German relations. Co-founder and editor of “Teologia Polityczna,” program director at the European Center in Natolin and editor-in-chief of the “Nowa Europa. Natolin Review.” Associate professor at Collegium Civitas (specializes in the history of ideas and political philosophy). Former social advisor to the President of the Republic of Poland. He publishes in numerous media. Together with Dariusz Karłowicz and Dariusz Gawin, he runs the program “Third Point of View” on TVP Kultura. Author of books, including: “North and South. Texts about Polish culture and history,” honored with the Józef Mackiewicz award.

https://teologiapolityczna.pl/znaczace-milczenie-berlina-1 

The post Berlin’s meaningful silence appeared first on Polonia Institute.

The appellate court in Cracow upheld the court’s verdict that the German State television ZDF must apologize for the content shown in the film “Our Mothers, our Fathers.” The apology will be published in Polish on Channel 1 of Polish Television and in German on ZDF channels.

“This is what we cared about the most,” stated Monika Brzozowska-Pasieka, attorney for plaintiffs Captain Zbigniew Radłowski and the World Association of Home Army Soldiers, as reported by the tvp.info portal.

This judgment that concludes the seven-year-long battle led by the senior Home Army veteran, 96-year-old Capt. Zbigniew Radłowski. The Warsaw Uprising veteran and prisoner of the German death camp in Auschwitz accused the State television ZDF and the film producer UFA Fiction of violating the right to identity, national dignity and pride, and the right to freedom from hate speech.

The appellate court recognized similar rights, but only in the case of an organization such as the World Union of Home Army Soldiers.

“According to the court, an individual cannot claim respect or dignity in the sense of national pride. We disagree with this [position]; therefore, we are considering submitting a cassation appeal in this case. However, first, we must have a written court opinion,” said Jerzy Pasieka, one of the attorneys for the Polish veterans.

This verdict is a huge success.

Despite the dismissal of his standing in the case, Capt. Radłowski achieved real success. Thanks to his responsible attitude and his attorneys’ efforts, the German media giant must apologize for the content included in its film.

The apology shall be released in prime time both on Polish Television and on the air of the State broadcaster from Germany – ZDF, and on both TV stations’ websites. The apology is to be published in a font size at least equal to the opening credits of the series. The title of the apology should be in bold and read: “ZDF and UFA Fiction apologize to the World Union of Home Army Soldiers in Warsaw.”

The content of the apology shall be as follows: “As ordered by the court, the producers of the movie Our Mothers, our Fathers, i.e., ZDF Television and the UFA Fiction Company apologize to the World Union of Home Army Soldiers in Warsaw for having violated its personal rights by identifying a Polish partisan unit in the above mentioned film as a unit of the Home Army, which gives rise to the unwarranted suggestion that this Polish military organization was anti-Semitic.”

https://www.tvp.info/52925842/wyrok-sadu-zdf-ma-przeprosic-za-film-nasze-matki-nasi-ojcowie

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Forty years ago, on March 19, 1981, in Bydgoszcz, the police (called the people’s militia at the time) and security service officers severely beat the activists of NSZZ “Solidarity.”

These events took place in the Provincial Office building in Bydgoszcz during the Provincial National Council session (WRN). The government side was represented by a delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister Stanisław Mach. The Bydgoszcz “Solidarity” was represented by Jan Rulewski. The opposition side wanted to persuade the authorities to register the agricultural “Solidarity.” Trade unions from “S” intended to present the demands of farmers, who were conducting a sit-in strike at the United People’s Party’s office in Bydgoszcz. However, the Solidarity side could not raise this topic as the WRN session was abruptly interrupted.

The Pope’s reaction

The unionists, seeing that the activists of the PZPR (Poland’s ruling communist party) were leaving the meeting room, decided to stay there until the authorities were willing to talk about registering the trade union of individual farmers. Jan Rulewski called for “reinforcements” to the Provincial Office building to increase the pressure on the authorities.

These, however, did not cave into another occupation strike and sent in the people’s militia and the SB. The security forces began to force the protesters out onto the street. During this action, Jan Rulewski, Michał Bartoszcze and Mariusz Łabentowicz were beaten. Their condition was so severe that they had to be taken to hospital.

This event electrified public opinion in Poland and the world. Among those who spoke out against the brutal attack on the activists of “S” was Pope John Paul II. The opposition side decided to organize a demonstration of force. On March 27, there was a nationwide warning strike. It is estimated that about 62 percent of workers took part in it.

“The protest showed the authorities the scale of social support for Solidarity. It also showed strong support for trade unionists negotiating with the most important people in the government and the party, including Wojciech Jaruzelski, Mieczysław Rakowski, and Stanisław Ciosek. Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński was the negotiator, calling for a compromise,’ explains the Gdańsk Institute of National Remembrance.

The role of Wałęsa

The role of Lech Wałęsa, who made every effort to prevent a general strike, remains controversial to this day.

“These events were happening during the major Soviet military exercises taking place at that time. I believe that one of the factions in the PZPR was looking for an incident that would allow it to engage in full confrontation with the Solidarity side. It could have ended with an accelerated declaration of martial law. We should remember that the position of General Wojciech Jaruzelski was not very strong at that time. Ultimately, however, it turned out that this faction did not have enough clout,” says Krzysztof Wyszkowski, an anti-communist opposition activist in the People’s Republic of Poland.

“The result of the March days was a division within Solidarity and a further increase in social tension. It was extremely beneficial for the regime authorities due to the preparations for introducing martial law that was already underway at that time. Undoubtedly, however, the Bydgoszcz events paved the way for farmers’ agricultural registration ‘Solidarity,’ which took place on May 12, 1981,” explains the Institute of National Remembrance.

The original article, in Polish, appeared in dorzeczy.pl/historia

https://dorzeczy.pl/historia/176424/prowokacja-bydgoska-pobicie-dzialaczy-nszz-solidarnosc.html 

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By Klaus Richter

Reviewed by Marek Jan Chodakiewicz

  Throughout history, empires have been the norm in international relations, while nation- states a rarity. Small and even medium nation-states exist at the whim of the imperial powers that be either as their temporary satellites or subordinates of an international order or both. Therefore, the drive for integration is the most permanent and predictable fact of international affairs.

Yet, as excited or unhappy as small actors may be in their subaltern roles, they often react to overweening imperial appetites by countering it with self-assertion of sovereignty. The powerful see that as “fragmentation,” “particularism,” “nationalism,” and other signs of making trouble in the world dominated by empires. It is also annoying from the point of view of the imperial players’ economic efficiency, who prefer to deal with likewise huge economic units rather than fragmented, small areas. Large economic units are much more viable than small ones. Still, they tend to disregard the interests of smaller units, riding roughshod over them to pursue profits and efficiency. Let us keep this in mind as we delve into yet another study of the Intermarium.

In his superbly researched and persuasively argued Fragmentation in East-Central Europe: Poland and the Baltics, 1915-1929 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), Klaus Richter analyzes the phenomenon of the interaction between national sovereignty and fragmentation during the First World War and its aftermath. “The book will tell the story of the consequences and responses to this fragmentation both thematically and chronologically.” (p. 8) The historian penetrated seventeen archives and referred to at least 83 different newspaper titles multiple times, making his monograph also a commendable exercise in Zeitungsgeschichte. He is fluent with secondary sources, both old and current, and, as far as I can tell, hardly missed anything of historiographical importance with, perhaps, the seminal study of Western (lack of) investments in Poland by Leopold Wellisz, Foreign Capital in Poland (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1938) (a disclosure: the latter author is our family). In addition to German, English, and French, Richter is at least serviceable in Polish and Baltic languages, which is a feat in itself. His methodology is logocentric and empirical, which is quite refreshing in post-modernist academia. Each point he illustrates with a multitude of individual examples.

The scholar is interested in continuities and discontinuities at economic, social, political, and diplomatic levels in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The pivot of his story is the Great War. One reason is that “The First World War transformed the East-Central European demographic structure like no previous historical event.” (p. 107)  But there were others as well.

Richter argues that the newly independent successor states merely followed the logic of events, trends, and institutions that they had inherited from their former imperial hegemons. After they were rejected as inviable by the international system as reflected in the League of Nations, the East-Central European successor states turned sharply toward étatisme and even autarchy.  The state everywhere became the organizing principle. Small nations made themselves viable by using the state to organize and reorder their jurisdictions within.

Although liberalism had been the dominant ideology, in particular in the economic realm from the second half of the 19^th century, it gradually was undermined by statism, in particular as far as defense sectors were concerned. The trend for state intervention and centralization increased exponentially, of course, with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The virtual collapse of the liberal economic system yielded to an outright autarchy as the combating powers vied for supremacy and, in the process, denied usual markets to the enemy. Klaus Richter calls it “state socialism” and names Walther Rathenau, Germany’s war-time economic dictator, as its creator. (p. 207)

After the fall of the Romanov, Hohenzollern, and Habsburg realms, the successor states acquired their war-time systems and arrangements. They set themselves up on the foundations of statism. “However, beyond repatriation, policies empowering the titular nationalities yielded limited results. It was rather the states themselves that succeeded in taking control of much of the economic agency lost by others in the process of fragmentation…. Thus, the states became the most important economic actors in the region, while the private sector, hoping for a return to a liberal pre-war order, was sidelined. With its emphasis on centralism and territorial engineering, Polish statism provided an ideological and scientific foundation of policies that harnessed fragmentation.” (p. 311)

Arguably, Germany’s occupation had made the most indelible mark on the nascent nations. By mid-1915, Berlin conquered from St. Petersburg the lands that had belonged once to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, partitioned by the powers at the end of the 18^th century. In particular, the conquest comprised of central Polish lands, sans the Lublin area ruled over by Vienna, and a chunk of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, including ethnic Samogitian and Lettish lands as well as about half of White Ruthenia up to Pinsk. Thus, the German occupier established two distinct administrative units under its aegis: the Kingdom of Poland in the west and the Ober Ost in the east.

After the punitive treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Bolshevik Russia in March 1918, the Second Reich extended its jurisdiction in the east of the Intermarium to the rest of the old Grand Duchy, past Minsk.  In the north-east its power stretched virtually to the outskirts of St. Petersburg, which entailed dominating the rest of the home of the Letts and the country of the Ests. Additionally, in the south-east, again in the condominium with Austro-Hungary, Germany occupied Ukrainian lands. Thus, it extended its dominion not only to the Black Sea but also into the Caucasus. Ukraine was turned into a puppet state under the German diktat. The freshly captured north-eastern areas were subordinated to the Ober Ost.

Everywhere the Germans instituted a military government. Its ideal was an autarchy. They centralized and instituted far ranging controls over all aspects of economic, social, and political life. Its ambition was to control everything and everyone. The German military authorities significantly constrained free population movements and seriously curtailed free trade, forcing traditional merchants and salesmen, most of them Jewish, to resort to smuggling and price gouging. “German economic policies thus aggravated local antisemitism in a sustained way, as Jews were increasingly linked to speculation and war-time profiteering. This marginalization of Jewish merchants, an aim that Lithuanian nationalism shared with other East-Central European nationalisms, did not go unnoticed.” (p. 113)

In the Ober Ost, much of the centralizing animus was aimed at the Poles, particularly the landed nobility as the leading Intermarium elite representing the past glories of the old partitioned Commonwealth and providing leadership for the local people. Their estates were either confiscated or subject to enormous taxation. The nobility were also forbidden from trading on the free market. Instead, the Germans ordered them (as, indeed, everyone else) to surrender the fruits of their labor, forced food quota in particular, to the occupation authorities. These constraints brought the historical Polish engines of the largely agricultural and sylvan economy to a grinding halt.

At the same time, the Germans encouraged minority folk nationalisms, in particular Lithuanian and White Ruthenian ones. The occupiers, however, favored the minorities only to the extent that Lithuanian and Ruthenian institutions, cooperatives in particular, could facilitate a more efficient exploitation of the economy and labor in the Intermarium as well as maintain their anti-Polish attitude. (p. 211­)

In the Estonian and Latvian lands, the Germans initially supported the Baltic barons, who owned most of the land. Later, to maintain some influence in the post-war period, they switched to backing Germanophilic native leaders. Some of these were outright servile; others opportunistic, eager to use Berlin as a steppingstone to independence as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Throughout the war and occupation, the Second Reich, aside from a few empty declarations, consistently avoided empowering their captive subjects and allowing them to form their own governments. Berlin did allow for collaborationist bodies.  In the Kingdom of Poland, they did play important self-government and institution-building roles, but in the Ober Ost, they were almost wholly rubber stamp puppets of the occupiers. Nonetheless, it was partly from these German-sponsored institutions that free Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania would eventually emerge after their multi-cornered wars for independence.

In any event, all this German effort became moot following the collapse of Central Powers in November 1918.  The Hohenzollern empire and its system were no more. “The construction of the Brest-Litovsk order as an anti-Polish order intensified the antagonism of Polish nationalists and their counterparts in the eastern ‘borderlands’ (especially Lithuania and Ukraine). Elevated to a political level through German-sponsored state-building, the conflict between Poles and their eastern neighbors expanded from a socio-economic conflict to a political conflict between states. After the German defeat, the conflict continued, reflecting in battles for international recognition of statehood and boundaries. These battles were fought not only against a skeptical Western Entente, but at last, as much among the new states themselves, as they faced and exploited allegations of Bolshevism, antisemitism, or of functioning as little more than a tool for continued German geopolitical scheming.” (p. 57)

Although the control of these lands would be terminated after the Kaiser lost the war, the occupation system left in place endured well beyond. “The German occupation established structures – for better or worse – the new states adapted.” (p. 309)

At this point of Richter’s narrative (or at least in his conclusion) one wishes in vain to compare the creation of the Baltic states and the reemergence of Poland with the decolonialization processes in Africa and India. For instance, it could put into a broader relief the continuation of partition and occupation time laws in the lands of the old Commonwealth. (p. 294)  However, Richter does admit that to manage the Białowieża Forest the Germans called in their experts with colonial experience, namely in forest exploitation in Cameroon. (p. 158)

Meanwhile, folk nationalist parliamentary republics appeared in the Baltics that earned the peoples’ support largely by turning on the traditional elites and foreigners. In Latvia and Estonia, that meant expropriating the German barons, foreign investors, and manufacturers. In Lithuania the main target of the Samogitian folk nationalists was the Polish nobility. They were expelled “under pogrom-like conditions” (p. 84) in the process that Richter refers to (jointly with similar actions in the other Baltic states) as “ethnic cleansing.” (p. 255) Those undertakings were “the most transformative policies enacted in interwar East-Central Europe.” (p. 301) They also should be seen as endeavors to integrate the successor states within, just as they became fragmented without. Thus, the historian shows that the so-called “land reforms” served as an integrative nation-state building tool. In this manner, the Baltic successor states plied not only national liberation but also social revolution.

In distinction, a point largely missing from Richter’s monograph, instead of waging a national socialist revolution, the Poles struggled to restore their old Commonwealth. This included reestablishing its external and internal frontiers. Failing to grasp it, the historian chafes that “Polish bureaucrats delineated the state’s administrative units in a way so as to deliberately obfuscate former [partitioning] borders.” (p. 138) It is indispensable to bring back the old patterns and paradigms to shake-off dependency rather than maintain a foreign diktat’s legacy. That should be obvious. In at least one place the author understands such realities, however: “The future Polish state would thus continue the work of Antoni Tyzenhaus, the Lithuanian Grand Duchy’s last treasurer, who had established the first factories around Vilnius and Grodno.” (p. 163)

Richter also fails to appreciate that the driving force was not ethno-nationalism but cultural nationalism grounded in history. For example, he keeps misapplying the term “ethnic Poles” to the Polish landed nobility in the Ober Ost. (p. 257) But they were gente Ruthenus or gente Lithuanus natione Polonus. Treating them as “ethno-nationalist” Poles is completely anachronistic. Thus, the historian is mistaken when he writes about “ethnicization” (p. 61) in regards to the Polish perception of the Kresy [Eng.: the Borderlands]. It is plain wrong to posit that the Poles “imagined” the Kresy to be ethnically Polish. Instead, they believed them to be Polish in a cultural and historical sense. And by “Polish” they meant the old Rzeczpospolita.

Richter does stumble upon such evidence of pre-modern Polish self-identification but has problems interpreting it quite properly. Instead, the best he can do is to argue that “People’s clear belonging to the new states’ body of citizens was increasingly seen to reflect in the decisiveness with which they opted for a state’s citizenship. Citizenship was seen as tied to national self-identification and could thus be neither conditional nor tied to economic considerations.” (p. 100) That is correct. Polishness was chiefly a conscious cultural choice, and neither solely an ethnic nor an opportunistic one. The word “obywatelstwo” (citizenship) denoted one’s descent from the “Polish” nobility who enjoyed rights, unlike the commoners. In the early 20^th century, those rights accrued to anyone who consciously fought for the restoration of the Commonwealth, and, hence, an independent Poland.

In reality, the Polish elites were multi-ethnic but also uni-cultural: Polish and, hence, Western and, usually, Latin Christian. The most common denominator among the common Polish common folk was, firstly, the Catholic religion and, only secondly, the ethnic origin. The latter factor of Polishness dominated at the grass roots level chiefly in the Kingdom of Poland and western Galicia, but not in the Grand Duchy. There, Polishness was largely a cultural choice and reflected an individual’s historical legacy and a preference for the West over “the East,” aka Russia. The author largely misses such subtleties. He is also rather confused about the Grand Duchy mentality, particular the conservative krajowcy option, and the ethno-nationalist Lithuanian (Samogitian) orientation. (p. 45) He falsely treats them interchangeably. However, the former is cultural and inclusive, the latter ethno-nationalist and exclusive.

Thus, with respect to the role of ethno-nationalism, comparing the Baltics to Poland is a game of apples and oranges. The resurrected Polish Republic was not an ethno-nationalist state. It was a somewhat diminished old Commonwealth with the Polish (Western) cultural element dominant. Ethnic minorities comprised overall 30% of the population, but in the east they constituted a clear majority. Each harbored irredentist, or at least centrifugal and folk nationalist tendencies, which gravely impacted Poland’s poor image in the West. “Poland and the Baltic states had attempted to shake off their solidifying international images as chauvinistic and particularistic. Yet the entrenching narrative of ethno-centrism brought about by the internationalization of the refugee and minorities questions proved as disastrous for them as the League’s failure to act on minority questions proved for the national minorities… In this climate, German revisionist arguments that the new states were bound to fail as a consequence of their political immaturity gained appeal among an international audience… Even if non-organized, violent expulsions largely subsided with the consolidation of independent statehood in 1920, the narrative of minorities under threat had only started to gain traction.” (p. 105)

Also, because Poland and others, sans serious foreign capital, were slow to rebuild their economic potential, Western charges of inefficiency and autarchy abounded. In reality, however, in all-new countries, there emerged a state-private partnership in the economy. National minorities, who had held commercial sway over those lands and peoples before 1914, continued to be viable players. However, “titular nationalities” made some inroads into their bailiwicks in the interwar period. The common people tended nonetheless to stay away from trade and commerce, in particular, as well as the cities, in general. “It took the Second World War and Soviet coercion to move peasants into destroyed cities and take up urban professions in significant numbers. However, the most significant factor in enabling the titular nations to take control of trade was the Holocaust, which wiped out the many obstacles on the route to commercial empowerment… The economic marginalization of the national minorities thus did not reflect a social strengthening of the titular nations. Rather, it went hand in hand with a staggering degree of state involvement in commercial matters.” (p. 202)

Since foreign capital sneered at emerging opportunities with disdain in the interwar period, much of the private effort tended to be native: Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Polish capitalists, including Jews in the last-mentioned group. Their efforts varied, but some of them succeeded eminently, in particular these with government connections. In some cases, there was well-founded fear that foreign capital could breed foreign dependency, an unacceptable price for the newly freed nations. “Ultimately, such anxieties arose from fears that Germany’s Mitteleuropa project was far from dead yet – rather, its structure was stripped down to a purely economic form.” (p. 173)

Further, which Richter notices readily, the Second Republic was a rather large state. “Perhaps surprisingly, the Second Polish Republic also faced allegations of ‘small statehood,’ even though  its interwar territory encompassed almost 390,000 square kilometers and thus as much as interwar Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and all the Baltic states combined, and only 20 per cent less than the Weimar Republic. The ‘smallness’ of states thus did not derive from territorial size alone. Rather, it was a metaphor for the disruptive, fragmenting effects of their borders, for sprawling bureaucracies, and alleged particularistic pettiness. The new states did not disrupt Europe’s economy because they were ‘small states’ – rather, they were deemed ‘small’ because they were seen as obstacles to the continent’s recovery.” (p. 147)

Accordingly, German propaganda conflated Poland with the Baltics and reduced them to Saisonstaaten. The crux of the charge against them was economic. They were not viable because of their bloated bureaucracies, irrational borders, statist economics, and failure to revive trade and manufacturing to pre-1914 levels. “The allegation of Polish ‘statism’ enshrined a whole set of negative notions ranging from a ‘state of thieves’ to an ‘illegitimate state.’  ‘Statism’ became a vital keyword in the rhetoric of German territorial revisionism as well as of British and American liberal circles. Polish economic propaganda abroad struggled with an increasingly entrenched stereotype of Poland as Europe’s most protectionist state. Poland’s protectionist policies, it countered, were neither indicators for socialism nor authoritarianism, but represented a vital tool to overcome the fragmentation caused by the Partitions, which had turned historical Poland into ‘three different economic organisms’…. It is striking that the intensity of the free market rhetoric of the interwar Polish state increased in parallel with interventionist practice.” (p. 216)

At the same time, the West countered its perceived fatal flaws in the successor states’ economic structureby advocating free economic zones. “In the early 1920s, calls for the creation of extraterritorial units to facilitate transit trade in an age of fragmentation had become louder. Due to their simple logic, turning coastal cities into free ports increasingly seemed the most promising solution for the disruption of global trade links and for the problems of landlocked riparian states faced.” (p. 238) Therein laid the logic behind denying Gdańsk (Danzig) to Poland, which led to a zero-sum game vis-à-vis Gdynia. (p. 224)   Incidentally, the case of the access to the sea of Poland, Lithuania (Memel), and other Baltic states demonstrates plainly the loss of utility of the slogan of national self-determination and anti-Bolshevism in favor of the paramountcy of economic considerations among the Western powers.

It is no wonder that the idea of the newly established successor states’ utter uselessness enjoyed wide currency among Western intellectuals and opinionmakers. “International representations of territorial fragmentation directly contributed to a pessimistic view on the future prospects of the new, territorially smaller, and economically truncated states, and thus of Europe in general. The challenges of economic reconstruction, which seemed unsurmountable against the background of territorial disintegration, led to an unequivocal consensus across the Western Entente and Germany that none of the political formations that emerged from the ruins would be able to survive on their own. As former imperial provinces or regions, they constituted parts of an allegedly coherent economic and political organism now torn apart. On their own, heads and limbs were bound to wither and die.” (p. 141)

This was the case, in particular, in the Anglo-Saxon world, which pined for the good old days of the Russian empire and its inexhaustible markets predicated on free trade. “In the interwar years, politicians from East-Central Europe frequently found the legitimacy of their state’s existence challenged purely because of their inability to mitigate the consequences of the loss of the Russian market for the economic recovery of Europe.” (p. 202) This was tantamount to blaming a dentist for your own car problems. In other words, fueled by German revanchist propaganda by the liberal Weimar Republic, English and American governments, bankers, and capitalists blamed Poland for the fact that Communist Russia prevented the restoration of salubrious economic relations in that part of the world.

Unfortunately, Richter fails to elaborate on the Kremlin’s role in this process. After the Polish victory of 1920, the Soviet factor is almost entirely missing from Fragmentation in East Central Europe: Poland and the Baltics, 1915-1929. Instead, the scholar focuses mainly on Germany. “The real threat to the new states arose neither from the national minorities, nor from the League of Nations, but rather from German political support for territorial revisionism.” (p. 297) It is true, as far as it goes. But Berlin could not have succeeded without Moscow, as history shows. This includes not only, ultimately, the Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 1939, but also, in the meantime, promoting a malicious image of Poland through use and abuse of propaganda.

According to the historian, the successor states “were seen as economic disasters that had repercussions far beyond East-Central Europe. International images of Poland and the Baltic states as ‘small states,’ as particularistic and immature, stemmed from the failure to mitigate these economic disruptions as well as from representations of the experience of border crossing itself. This contributed to a political and geographical imaginary of East-Central Europe as a region that was fragmented, bureaucratized, and dominated by an irrational ethnic nationalism.” (p. 155)

And further, “Both views, although idiosyncratic, were highly representative concerning their core assumption: that the independent existence of ‘small states’ in East-Central Europe [Intermarium] was a transitory phenomenon and that the historical trajectory, temporarily skewed by the war, continued to point towards territorial integration. In a region such as East- Central Europe [Intermarium], which, geographers claimed, lacked natural borders, the imposition of ‘artificial borders’ meant a historical regression to be measured in centuries rather than decades. Most likely, the trajectory of integration would be corrected once Germany and Russia regained their power. The German concept of the region as ‘seasonal states’ (Saisonstaaten) was widely shared in the Anglo-Saxon world. Thus, most foreign policy experts initially advocated the ‘natural course’ of the restoration of Russia comprising the Baltics. Until then, independent Baltic states were but ‘temporary phases’ that lacked ‘elements of finality.’” (p. 150)

As a result of such perceptions, new states’ birth pangs were chalked up to their allegedly inherent pathologies, thus reinforcing the hostile propaganda narrative. An international consensus emerged, paving the way for future German and Soviet aggression, that small units were not viable. Therefore, they must be reordered by larger entities. “Although it has received much less attention, such normative views concerning the survivability of ‘small states’ had an equally disastrous impact on the other ‘border states’ that emerged from the peripheries of the disintegrating empires.” (p. 142) All that translated into a self-fulfilling prophecy that came to pass during the Second World War and its aftermath.

Nonetheless, in the interwar period, despite the hostility of Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia, and the sneering irritation of the Anglo-Saxon powers, the successor states learned how to cope under most inopportune circumstances. “The effect of territorial fragmentation reverberated into the 1920s. Reconstructing them allows for a view on East-Central Europe as a previously highly interconnected region. The severance of these connections prompted a reconfiguration that diminished many economic centers and created new ones at unprecedented speed.” (p. 250)

Arguably the greatest tragedy was that the Intermarium states failed to unite to face the common enemies: “From the view of the German and the Bolshevik governments, a unification of the breakaway states in whatever form would have been nothing short of a disaster. German politicians feared that if the Little Entente, founded by Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Yugoslavia in 1921, were to integrate Poland and the Baltic states, it could form a closely integrated anti-German bloc stretching from the Adriatic to the Baltic Sea. As a consequence, they observed abounding divisions between the new states with blatant glee…. East-Central Europe became known as the archetype of a particularistic region unwilling and unable to unite.” (pp. 152-153)

There are interesting analogies that Richter brings up. For example, he points out similarities of 1918 to the post-1989 period. After the First World War, “the message was clear: East-Central Europe had to be reintegrated into its larger neighboring states – not only for the sake of the latter, but for the sake of a prosperous and powerful Europe based on principles of law and national progress. Importantly, this was a view that many Europeans shared on all sides of the political spectrum.” (p. 312) Translation: Poland and the Baltic states had no right to exist as sovereign nations.  The historian finds this useful to interpret the post-Cold War order. Like in 1918, the world questioned whether, as nation-states, newly liberated countries of the Intermarium were feasible: hence, the push to join the European Union.

In addition to the points brought up above, there are a few other problems with the historian’s arguments, but no one is perfect. For example, it is high time to abandon the concept of the “Corridor,” which is a successful German propaganda moniker for Polish Pomerania. A corridor one walked or traveled through. Pomerania is an actual place where people, mostly Polish, have lived for centuries. Also, repeating stories of alleged Polish “pogroms,” in Pinsk in particular, without proper research is conduct unbecoming of a logocentric and empiricist scholar. But that is a topic for a separate treatment.

All in all, Klaus Richter has given us a solid political, social, and economic history of a part of the Intermarium on micro and macro scales between 1915 and 1929. We hope there will be more to come of monographs like his.

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz

Washington, DC, 10 March 2021

The post Fragmentation vs. Integration appeared first on Polonia Institute.

This article is from the American Council for Polish Culture (ACPC) polishcultureacpc.org, you can find it here. 

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Today it cannot be said that somebody’s culture, e.g., of African or Asian countries, is worse or inferior. It is out of the question. But not for everyone.  Colonial political culture can be realized … in Europe. It is allowed to say about Poles, Czechs, Lithuanians, Hungarians, or Ukrainians that this is “the inferior Europe,” these are primitive countries, which must be controlled by natural representatives of a truly European “master race,” because they themselves are not capable of it. I do not mean only the Germans. This is about the “master race” of Belgians – the Congo-genocide lords, the Dutch lord race – the lords of Indonesia, the master race of the French – the lords of ten million square kilometers of  colonial empire, moreover today, in some form, a race of Italian masters – ruling over Libya and trying to conquer Ethiopia, or of course Spanish masters. Etc., etc. Their old political mentality very strongly shapes today’s imperial attitude, the imperial relations between Western Europe and Eastern Europe. The latter turns out to be the remaining area where authoritarian fantasies about ruling, teaching and enlightening the backward inhabitants of the European provinces can be realized with impunity.

The legitimacy of some over the others’ rule is one of the most important questions about the political community. When do we voluntarily consent to someone ruling us? When do we only accept it as a result of being forced by the aggressor’s power? When do we agree to this submission to the sovereign after being manipulated into it by what the English philosopher, lawyer, and economist Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) described as being convinced we are doing it for our own good? After all, today, Brussels is to rule over us “for our good”; for this reason, we are to receive enlightened councils of the master race from Berlin, The Hague, Brussels or Paris. After all, it was for no other reason than for “our own good that Catherine II’s Russia annexed the territories of the Commonwealth, beginning with the First Partition. After all, these were the basic words of the manifestos that were issued after the First, Second, and Third Partitions: “to calm down,”  “to secure property,” “for the good of Europe” as well. But, above all, it was for the benefit of the people of that backward country who were incapable of handling their own problems (…).

In my book, “Between Disorder and Bondage” [Pol.: Między nieładem a niewolą], I often return to the 18^th century and defend the former Republic of Poland  because already then, in Gombrowicz’s language, “we were bad-mouthed” [Pol.: “dorobiono nam gębę”]. This is not some new invention of our time; at that time, there were efforts in Western Europe (financed with tsarist rubles and Prussian thalers) to slander the Republic of Poland and humiliate its inhabitants. This should not be forgotten.  It must be remembered that Eastern Europe has always simply meant primitivism and backwardness in relation to Western Europe. We are a dark province that will never be able to govern itself, and that always requires controllers, overseers, enlightened teachers, or Western doctors or therapists. Such a view arose in the 18^th century due to the intellectual formation of the time in the West. (…) Poland of the 18^th century emerged from a crisis which was partly caused by itself, but not only the Republic of Poland’s citizens were to blame. After all, e.g., the Swedish Deluge, which significantly weakened the country, was an external factor. Poles gradually emerged from this crisis on their own. (…) Our ancestors in the 18^th century were able to make a wise self-correction of the system, resulting in a constitution, the first in Europe and the second in the world only four years after the constitution in the United States. And that was the real reason why Polish statehood was then destroyed. The Republic of Poland did not fall! It ceased to exist not because it deserved it, but because it had been militarily raped by neighboring empires: because it had risen from its fall! It was dangerous for the neighbors who wanted a Poland completely subordinated to them, unable to develop independently, a colonized Poland. When it turned out that the Republic of Poland was able to return to the path of independent development, to implement systemic self-correction, and at the same time to respond to the imperial attempts of the then political culture of our neighbors, the conclusion was that such a Poland was too dangerous and had to be liquidated first as an independent state entity, and then as an independent national entity. Of course, in the end, it was much more about the simple plunder of the Commonwealth than about the ideals of the Enlightenment.

The latter became a “cover,” as we would say today, for this plunder, its deceptive justification. This is an age-old topic and dilemma in the history of political thought, which is also reflected in almost every chapter of the book “Between Disorder and Bondage.” After all, in the discussion presented by Plato in the “Republic,” the question arises: what does justice amount to in politics? (…) Then the theme of justifying injustice, a cynical game of interests and exaltation of the politics of power develops. It is presented most perfectly in the deliberations in Machiavelli’s main work, “The Prince.” Machiavelli leaves this “recipe” to the next generations: you need to pursue your interests by force, but at the same time you need to frame this ruthless power and brutality of interests in such beautiful words that an impression of acting in the name of the common good is projected. The combination of force and pretending, force and manipulation, force and propaganda, this is the essence of politics, as seen by Machiavelli, who completely abandons moral references to the world of politics. This, of course, is also reflected in the Partitions of Poland. Tsarina Catherine, King Frederick William, Emperor Joseph II applied Machiavelli’s recommendations while making beautiful ideological justifications for the plunder they mildly called the Partitions. (…)

The existence of this little piece of a state, this hulled Poland that remained after the Second Partition, actually should not have bothered Russia, Prussia, and Austria, which did not participate in the Second Partition. The Little Republic, where everything that was needed by the neighbors to satisfy their geopolitical appetites had already been plundered, could have been useful as a buffer state between the partitioning powers because they too could have butted heads and – as we know – finally got down to it. But a buffer is useful as long as it wants to remain just a buffer. The invaders felt the fear that Poland, this beast unworthy of existence, would be reborn! The passive buffer was good, subordinated to the therapists who came from Berlin, St. Petersburg or Vienna to cure us, to cleans us of estates, independence, culture – such a Poland could exist. But the view was justified that Poles would want to return to tradition and importance, to claim not only their place in Europe, but also the right to vote in the matters concerning Europe as a whole, the sovereign right to vote as Germany,  Austria, Russia, or any other European country had. However, such a Poland would be dangerous in the eyes of empires, even if it were small, so it was deemed better to eliminate it in its entirety, and here we can draw analogies to the present time. After all, the Third Polish Republic is stronger than the truncated Poland after the Second Partition – also militarily. Although we are not a power, declaring our independence and self- determination, we arouse anxiety and anger in imperial capitals. We cause fury in the eyes of today’s progressive colonizers, who eagerly call themselves: emancipators. Therefore, there are attempts at pacifying us by using the ideological camouflage known already in antiquity and recommended by Machiavelli. So, what are we to do? How are we to defend ourselves?

The solution may be the Three Seas Initiative based initially on the already existing core, i.e., the Visegrad Group. Let me remind you that this is not a new concept in Polish thought, but also in Anglo-Saxon thought. In 1919 it was introduced by the creator of geopolitics, Halford Mackinder (1861–1947), an outstanding geographer, economist, and political scientist, who defined the area between the Baltic Sea and the Adriatic and Black Seas as the most critical  area in Eurasia. He believed that the Anglo-Saxon powers, Great Britain and the United States if they want to maintain the world order after World War I, must create and support the Three Seas bloc and bind it with alliances with England and the USA. The idea was to block the possibility of a direct agreement between Russia and Germany. It would destroy everything that the post-Great War order, the Versailles order, was supposed to protect – and create the combined tyranny of these two countries with strong traditions of despotism.

The concept of the Three Seas Initiative is more or less present in the minds of the Polish elite of the patriotic camp, but also in the consciousness of the political elites of the German or the Russian states. However, their point of view and their approach to the Three Seas in Europe is, of course, different from ours. If this axis around the Visegrad Group grows into a bloc of states, which will work on strengthening their importance,  connected by an infrastructure of convenient highways and railways, and serving not only as a Moscow-Berlin-Brussels-Paris transit line, then the region will become a political player that no one will be able to undermine and which will be very difficult to dominate.

Up until now, European projects have carried out everything that was in Berlin’s interests – precisely based on the law basis of strength- but the prospect of breaking out of  German domination has appeared. The Americans have invested, perhaps not so much but still a billion dollars,  to transform the Three Seas Initiative from an idea into a reality. For this region to play a role in Europe, if not equal, or at least equivalent in its rights to Berlin and Paris, is unfortunately unacceptable for the imperial-colonial mentality discussed here. For the master race, we remain a natural colony.

(…) The break with the bad traditions of the master race has been limited in German historical policy to the time and experience of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. However, from the point of view of Poland and other eastern neighbors of Germany, it should be noted and emphasized that this tradition has much deeper roots; it is not only about genocide, the most terrible symbol of which is Auschwitz, but about the practice of  systematic, brutal colonization, subordination to imperial rule over those who are considered lower, inferior, the sub-race of Slavs, Jews, Gypsies – the “eastern barbarians.”  This is the aspect of the German tradition that they need to be reminded of – for Germany’s benefit and the good of Europe. For the good of the Germans in the sense that, since we are reminded of often fabricated bad aspects of our history. We have the same right to remind the Germans, French, Dutch, Belgians, Chancellor Merkel, Prime Minister Rutte, Prime Minister Verhofstadt of their tradition of genocide committed in or by their own country. “Where is your confrontation with your tradition of master race mentality? ”  This is what I accuse these politicians of. I accuse them of their failure to acknowledge their own master race mentality and their re-occurring desire to colonize other, “inferior” ones. However, in the name of another tradition, namely the tradition of freedom and independence of nations, we should remind you that no one in the common Europe can be pushed to a corner as a student or a patient, a backward “easterner.” We have a duty to enforce the law of equality.

It is about equality between individual social groups and above all between nations – this is a paramount issue.

The original article, in Polish, appeared in wpolityce.pl

https://wpolityce.pl/swiat/541754-rasa-panow-europejskich-chce-nas-leczyc-z-majatkow 

The post A witty analysis by Prof. Andrzej Nowak: The race of European masters wants to save us – from wealth, independence, and culture appeared first on Polonia Institute.

On 1st September 1939, the German Army, without officially declaring war, attacked Polish soil. A heroic fight ensued to defend the nation from the overwhelming enemy forces. When on 17th September the Soviet Army joined the Nazis by attacking Poland from the East, the fate of our nation had been sealed. At the beginning of Fall 39’, the Polish state found itself under the rule of two ruthless occupation forces: The Soviet Union and the Nazi Third Reich, that without wasting any time began to fulfil their dreadful plans – to wipe the Polish society out of their native land.

The part of Poland that fell into German hands was further divided into the Third Reich and the General Governorate. The territories added to the Third Reich were to be forcefully germanised while the General Governorate land was treated as a source for cheap slave-like labour. On top of countless executions, random arrests, forced resettlements and food rationing, the Germans have been working tirelessly to erase any national identity from the people of Poland. A ban on any political parties had been introduced while at the same time education was purposefully limited, cultural institutions were shut, and any press being printed was under the careful eye of Nazi propaganda experts. Furthermore, Germans obstructed all religious practices and conducted careful looting and even destruction of Polish cultural and historic heritage.

The situation was not much better in the Eastern parts of Poland that fell under the Soviet occupation. Terror was used as a widespread tool of cohesion. Forced deportations were being conducted where thousands of poles were relocated deep into the uninhabited territories of the Soviet Union. Those who according to Soviet commanders could potentially disrupt their plans of wiping out any remnants of Polish society and culture were executed without trail.

Despite the constant threat, the Poles had quickly undertaken actions aimed at fighting the occupational forces. These were not random and uncoordinated actions, but instead were planned and run by the Polskie Państwo Podziemne, or Polish Underground State, with its capital still in Warsaw. The PPP always acted with consent and in direct contact between itself and the legitimate Polish Government, that due to the Soviet and Nazi aggression was forced into exile and operated alongside Polish allies in the West – first in France, and then in the United Kingdom. It was from there, that after some personal changes, the Rząd na Uchodźstwie, or Polish Government in Exile, was able to control both the civil and military administration on the Polish territory. The Polish Government in Exile was widely recognised by the international community and was established in full accordance with the Polish pre-war Constitution – thus guaranteeing the continuity of all state institutions. This was important as it was these institutions that had the major impact on the legal functioning of the PPP, giving it the full, lawful legitimacy – something unheard of amongst other European resistance movements

Hidden Operationality

The first secret anti-occupation organisations were beginning to take shape as early as September 1939, while some defensive fighting was still ongoing in the central parts of the state. Until the end of 1939 in the city of Warsaw alone, as many as 40 different secret resistance organisations were formed, majority of which were either strictly military or a mix of armed force and political ideas. By 1940 this number skyrocketed to reach an impressive 140. It was also then, that the lengthy process of unifying the entire Polish underground movement begun, thus decreasing the number of completely independent organisations to a minimum. The most important and arguably also most symbolic moment in the entire process of creating the PPP was the establishment of the Służba Zwycięstwu Polski, or Service for Poland’s Victory, under the command of General Michal Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz. The Service was formed on 27th September 1939 in Warsaw, only days before the unconditional surrender of the city. The organisation became a de facto mother organisation for the Związek Walki Zbrojnej, or Union of Armed Struggle, later renamed as the Armia Krajowa, or as known across the world, the Home Army – the famous armed forces of the Polish Secret State.

For the next five years, life in occupied Poland was split into two completely different worlds. The first of these, the unconcealed world, was characterised by daily random arrests and forced relocations associated with slave labour. The second of these worlds was concealed – this is where all operations aimed at weakening and destroying the occupation force were being carried out. These included the popularisation of anti-German slogans, armed attacks aimed diminishing the Nazi Germany’s military might, all the way into executing the Polish collaborators, which were far fewer than in any other state, as well as important figures working for the German terror apparatus. Despite the brutal occupation, the Poles were also able to rebuild their cultural, social, charitable, self-helping and ideological sentiments that pushed them into supporting the PPP.

Structure and Main Goals of the Polish Secret State

The main goal of the PPP was to continue the struggle for independence and the re-establishment of the physical Polish state. As such, constant preparations for the armed struggle were being made, but before it could begin, a different warfare was being fought. It included intelligence gathering, sabotage, diversion and most importantly, the civilian struggle which focused on fighting the occupation force in all spheres of Poles’ everyday life. On top of fighting the enemy, the PPP was also actively taking care of its inhabitants by supporting secret education courses, establishing its own media, and promoting various cultural and historical activities, including the documentation of German crimes. Furthermore, several actions were undertaken that focused exclusively on the drafting on Polish state post-war, its social and economic characteristics as well as the general place on the geopolitical map of the post-war Europe.

The Polish Secret State rested on two main pillars: the civilian and the military one. ‘It was only when the civilian activities of the Polish underground movement were combined with its military capabilities was when this entirely unique creation, now known as the Polish Underground State born. It was unmatched to anything known before in the history of the Polish state and the history of WWII as such’ – recalled one of its members, Stefan Korboński.

The civilian part of the PPP was known as the Delegatura Rządu na Kraj, or Government Delegation for Poland, that consisted of numerous departments that were similar in structure and name to the pre-war government Ministries. These departments dealt with issues such as judiciary, social care, farming, press and information services, education and culture as well as war relief, rebuilding efforts and foreign affairs. The Government Delegation for Poland was run by a Government’s Delegate for Poland who was later given the title of the Deputy Prime Minister, with his deputies becoming Ministers. The Delegate was the highest-ranking representative of the Polish Government in Exile in France and later in the UK. He was responsible for all underground activities in occupied Poland and personally headed the efforts to establish directions and means of social resistance against the occupation forces. He was also preparing his government for the overtaking of power in Poland when the country is finally liberated.

Political parties were amongst on the of the key elements of the PPP. It is estimated that there were approximately 50 of them operating within the underground state. The representatives of the main political forces such as the socialists, the Christian democrats, nationalists and peasants were amongst the men who made up the Radę Jedności Narodowej, i.e. the Council of National Unity, a parliamentary-like structure that had an advisory and opinion-forming functions.

The Army of Volunteers

An army was the integral part of the Polish Secret State and derived directly from the Polish Armed Forces that fought against the occupation forces continuously, starting on 1st September 1939. They were first known as the Służba Zwycięstwu Polski; the Service for Poland’s Victory, but was later renamed into the Związek Walki Zbrojnej; the Union of Armed Struggle. In February of 1942, the Union was renamed yet again, this time into the now famous Home Army (Armia Krajowa). Before this last change was able to take place, a large-scale operation needed to be conducted in order to fully combine its different units and teams. These actions were coordinated by General Stefan ‘Grot’ Rowecki and was later continued by the Head of the Home Army, General Tadeusz ‘Bór’ Komorowski all the way until the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Thanks to their heroic actions, the largest underground armed formation in Europe was conceived, consisting of approximately 300 000 soldiers in 44’.

This mighty army consisted of people who voluntarily agreed to join its ranks. It was led by professional army officers, some of whom were not mobilised in 39’ but did so later as they preferred underground struggle rather than being prisoners of war somewhere in Germany or Russia. With time, the junior officer positions were filled with soldiers who gained their ranks in secret officer schools. The ‘Cichociemni’ – polish commando operatives trained in the UK and then stealthily moved to Poland came out to be a great support for the underground Polish Army. Once on the occupied territory, they would take over the command of a local resistance movement and performed intelligence and sabotage-focused operations. From amongst over 300 trained Cichociemni soldiers, 1/3 died fighting the German forces. The functioning of this enormous volunteer army would not have been possible without the mass support from the Polish society.

The main objective of the Home Army was to fight for the independence of Poland. The underground Polish Armed Forces were gathering weapons and training constantly, thanks to having a complex network of gun and explosives production workshops. All of this was done in preparation for the armed national uprising to come. Its outbreak was planned for when a decisive allied offensive would come swooping through Poland. In the meantime, numerous sabotages, intelligence and diversion operations were conducted on the daily basis. The Home Army’s Intelligence Service did not focus solely on Polish territory but instead operated both in the homeland and hundreds of kilometres away from the Polish borders. Its significant role has been much appreciated by the allied forces since it conducted numerous successful operations and helped the allies in uncovering the technical mysteries behind the Nazi weapons, such as the famous V-1 and V-2 rockets.

Younger Poles, including Scouts have been involved in operations often related to as ‘small sabotage’. This included, but was not limited to, the distribution of anti-German propaganda, the distribution of leaflets, attacking cinemas playing German movies with smelly substances and painting of the special ‘anchor’ symbol. It was an official symbol of the Polish resistance movement and comprised of letters ‘P’ and ‘W’ crossed together to depict an anchor. The letters ‘PW’ stand for Polska Walcząca, or Fighting Poland. It became not only a symbol of Polish resistance and the fight against the German forces but was also used to boost the morale of Polish civilian population. In no time the ‘anchor’ become a symbol of the entire Polish Underground State. According to the order given out by the Commander General of the Home Army in March of 1943: ‘Our aim is to taunt the enemy and deal harmful blows to his troops by sabotage and diversion operations. We shall also employ revenge attacks for when the civilian population is harmed by the enemy. (…) The revenge operation should by conducted under unit’s own name but, where possible, the Fighting Poland symbol should be left in a visible spot’.

The Nazi attack on Soviet Russia has changed the situation in Poland by putting its whole territory under the German occupation. Furthermore, it was also being used as the supply zone for the whole of the Nazi Eastern Front. This new situation has led to the increase numbers of sabotage operations conducted by the Home Army that were predominantly aimed at the wartime industry of the Third Reich. According to some sources, from the beginning of 1941 all the way until June 44’ more than 700 trains had been blown up and 400 were set on fire. This led to the destruction of a total of 14 000 train carts and the destruction of 38 bridges.

The Underground Judiciary System

The underground judiciary system has been one of the most features of the Polish Secret State. It has been rebuilt from scratch at a huge cost, following its collapse after the German invasion. The main goal of the underground judiciary was to maintain the loyalty of Polish civilians towards the PPP and the rules it has been setting. It was also aimed ad showing the society, that any acts of treason and collaboration with the occupation forces will be punished. The aim was to deter anyone from working for the Germans and to strengthen the belief that justice will eventually be served by the Polish state if any crimes were committed.

The first death sentences on traitors and Gestapo collaborators have been conducted by the end of 1939 by the local units of the Służba Zwycięstwu Polski, or Poland’s Victory Service, and later the Związek Walki Zbrojnej, or Union of Armed Struggle. By the spring of 1940 a full underground judiciary system became operational. Both civilian and military Special Courts have since then been sentencing people to death for treason, collaboration, espionage and the torturing of the civilian population. Those demanding ransoms from Jews in hiding or from Poles giving them shelter as well as providing paid information about hiding Jews to the Germans were also severely punished. Such acts were treated just like any other treason and were punishable by death.

More than 350 death sentences have been given out to people by the Warsaw Military Special Court alone. Death sentences were being carried out by the special units of the Home Army and all information regarding the killings was being released to the underground press.

Underground Education

The most common sign of the continuous existence of the Polish society was the existence of the secret education system that run despite the ongoing occupation. It is important to remember that the German occupiers have completely abolished middle and higher education in Poland, leaving the Polish youth with only primary and vocational schools, all with very limited schooling programme. SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler has demanded that: ‘(…) the Polish society in the East should not have access to schools higher than the 4-year primary school. The objective of such school should be to teach Poles how to do simple calculation, up to no higher than 500 and how to write their own surname. Furthermore, teachers should tell them that it is a God’s command that they should always obey Germans while being hard working and honest. Learning the ability to read is by no means a priority’.

Thanks to the tremendous involvement from thousands of teachers, a well-developed network of underground schools was created where Polish youth could learn freely. Thousands of high school pupils were able to continue with their education in areas such as history and native language. They were even able to pass their secondary school certificate exams called ‘Matura’ in Polish. There were over 6,500 such certificates issued by underground schools in Warsaw alone. What is more, Poles were also able to establish underground higher education centres that taught students to be linguists, historians, mathematicians and doctors. During the entire duration of the WWII, over 10,000 students were able to complete their underground universities. Many of those involved in secret education were put in prisons, concentration camps or even killed.

The Underground Press

Another key mean of completely erasing Polish national identity by Germans was the destruction of all Polish press and editors. Printed text become an important tool in the Nazi plan to break the Polish nation. Throughout the entire period of occupation, the Germans employed as much as 40 different press titles, all printed in Polish, to spread their propaganda. They were all commonly referred to as ‘gadzinowki’ and reading them was considered as wrongdoing. These newspapers were often filled with articles aimed at persuading the readers that the Polish nation is unable to exist on its own, without the German presence.

In response to the destruction of Polish independent press, an underground press movement was quickly established in its place. Different secret organisation had their own press titles. Articles in such secret newspapers focused predominantly on crimes against Poles that Germans hid from the society as well as providing information about Allies military victories. They were also aimed at establishing and strengthening of patriotism among the population. The scale of these projects was immense. Over 700 different newspaper titles as well as books were published throughout the war in the city of Warsaw alone.

‘Żegota’

By the end of 1942 the Government Delegation for Poland has established a Polish Council to Aid Jews (in Polish, the Rada Pomocy Żydom przy Delegaturze Rządu RP na Kraj) and given it a codename: ‘Żegota’. It was a continuation of the Provisional Committee to Aid Jews (in Polish, the Tymczasowy Komitet Pomocy Żydom) that has been established months earlier. It was a single government-supported organisation in the whole of occupied Europe that was established with a goal of helping the Jewish population. One of its founding members, Władysław Bartoszewski recalled: ‘(…) this was the first organisation, where the members of the Bund party, Zionists, Catholics, Polish democrats, socialists, peasants – all either Jewish or Polish worked together against the Nazi occupiers’.

On top having its central HQ in Warsaw, ‘Żegota’ also operated in different Polish cities. Its members were tasked with organising help for Jews being kept in ghettos or those hiding away from them. Within the organisation, several specialised bureaus existed that dealt with all sorts of issues: legalisation, financial, housing, counter-ransom, propaganda, provincial, medical and clothing. A child-focused bureau also existed and dealt with helping Jewish children by finding shelter for them in Polish families, orphanages and in other similar institutions. Irena Sendlerowa, who was nominated to the Nobel Peace Prize, has become a symbol of the movement as it was thanks to her immense courage and devotion that over 2,500 Jewish children were saved from the certain death in the ghettos by her alone. It is worth remembering that helping Jews was punishable by death and the sentence was carried out not only on the offender but also a randomly captured group of Poles to emphasise the severity of the crime.

The Fight

In January 1944 the Soviet Red Army has crossed the pre-War borders of Poland. Yet again, Poles were forced to face the threat of Soviet aggression. The General Command of the Home Army has drafted a plan codename ‘Burza’, or ‘Tempest’, that aimed at conducting attacks on the back of withdrawing German forces. Nevertheless, both the military victories as well as a well running cooperation with the Red Army did not help the Home Army in securing the political objectives so much desired by the PPP. The NKVD operatives together with the Soviet counterintelligence that entered Poland together with the advancing troops quickly begun arresting anyone claiming to represent either civilian or military underground government of Poland. The Home Army soldiers were disarmed and forced to join the Red Army or sent to labour camps deep inside the Soviet Union.

In the summer of 1944, the Red Army has arrived on the outskirts of Warsaw. After nearly 5 years of enduring German terror the Polish capital was ready to finally fight the occupier. German failures on the Eastern and Western fronts as well as the failed assassination attempt on Hitler were only some of the signs that the Third Reich was already doomed. The commanders of the Polish Secret State wanted to liberate Warsaw using only their own forces, before the Red Army troops enter the city. It was supposed to be a strong sign that all this time the Poles continue to fight the Germans and that they are still determined to win back their independence.

On 1st August 1944, the Varsovian citizens responded to the patriotic call to arms and the Warsaw Uprising had begun. The uprising meant that the PPP and its armed forces – the Home Army could leave the hiding and begin an open fight with the German army. For over two months Polish democratic institutions were able to operate freely. Although controlling only on a small patch of land within the besieged Warsaw, Poles were able to establish state administration there and even openly run political parties that published their own press. There have even been two radio station (Polish Radio and ‘Błyskawica’) operating in the constantly shelled city of Warsaw. Their broadcasts could have been heard as far as in the United Kingdom. The Post Office was also running and so where the military and civilian law enforcement agencies as well as charities and social aid bureaus helping the inhabitants of the city.

Despite all these efforts, faced with lack of adequate support from the Allies, huge civilian casualties and the overwhelming technological advantage of the German forces the General Command of the Home Army was left with no choice but to eventually stop the heroic fight. The Warsaw Uprising lasted for 63 days and was one of the bloodiest street battles ever in the history. It was also the biggest and most violent battle in the whole history of Poland.

Epilogue

After the fall of the Warsaw Uprising and despite the huge casualties, both the Home Army and the Government Delegation for Poland decided to reassume their operations. On 19th January 1945 when most of the Polish territory was already under the Red Army control, the last commander of the Home Army, General Leopold ‘Niedźwiadek’ Okulicki decided to disband the Home Army. Only the Government Delegation for Poland and its Council of National Unity remained operational, still in deep secrecy.

At the end of March 45’ the NKVD has arrested the heads of the Polish Secret State. Amongst those captured were: the last Commander of the Home Army, General Leopold „Niedźwiadek”, Okulicki, the Chairman of the Council of National Unity Kazmierz Pużak, the Government Delegate for Poland and de facto Deputy Prime Minister Jan Stanisław Jankowski as well as the heads of all main political parties. A Joseph Stalin-orchestrated trial of those arrested took place in mid-June 1945 in Moscow. The main goal of putting the heads of the PPP on trial was to smear all those involved in the operations of the Polish Secret State and to denunciate all Poles who opposed Soviet domination in front of the Western European states. Fake allegations of collaborating with Nazi Germany were amongst some of the techniques used to achieve this cunning goal. All arrested have been sentenced to prison but in practice three of the convicts (including General Okulicki) were killed (Gen. Okulicki died in Soviet prison in unexplained circumstances).

At the same time, in accordance with the agreement reached between the ‘Big Three’ in Yalta, a communist Provisional Government of National Unity was established in Poland that was completely subordinate to the Soviet Union. By agreeing to this, the free world withdrew its support for the Polish Government in Exile which led to the dissolution of the Government Delegation for Poland and the Council for National Unity.

On 1st July 1945 the last appeal of the Council for National Unity was published that contained the Last Will of the Fighting Poland. The appeal was to be one final message of the Polish Underground State. ‘The decision to dissolve the Council for National Unity should not be viewed as the spiritual capitulation of the Polish nation. The aims that the Fighting Poland movement strived to achieve still stand. We strongly believe that those involved in the PPP will not cease their struggle until our main goals of regaining full independence and establishing a democratic system in Poland will not be met’.

The fulfilment of all pledges that were included in the Fighting Poland’s Last Will, such as the regaining of independence and freedom, was possible only half a century later.

The article is a reprint of the original article published by the Warsaw Institute Foundation and linked here: https://warsawinstitute.org/phenomenon-polish-underground-state/?fbclid=IwAR3gV4S1zfjCPCNPv0XmwQYDjeNjfTFJL8TwLOCrEQXrixrdmdaSbpSwI0E

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