Download Bitter taste of victory The war started in defense of the sovereignty

Bitter taste of victory
The war started in defense of the sovereignty and independence of Poland, and it ended with the handing over of Poland
to the government of a foreign power.
Note of the Ambassador Edward
Raczyński to the British Government, 1945
Anyone tries to introduce his system as far as his weapons allow him to.
Joseph Stalin
Poland, the nation who was defended in 1939
by France and the United Kingdom, lost in
1945 all the fruits of its victory. The Polish
Armed Forces, with 240,000 military men
under the command of the |Government of
the Republic in the exile, had been in 1940
the greatest ally of the UK. This did not
prevent, however, that the Government of
Her Majesty started an appeasement policy
towards Stalin that eased his treacherous
actions against the Polish allies. Taking
advantage of the indecisive attitude of the
Western powers, the Soviet Union put into a
practice a policy of faits accomplis in relation
with the occupied territory of Poland. After
the break in 1943 of the diplomatic relations
with the Polish government in the exile, the Territorial changes of Poland as consequence of the WWII.
Soviet Union named in 1944 a puppet
Jurij (CC BY-SA 3.0)
government in Poland, which was accepted
by the Western allies in 1945. Therefore, at the same time the USSR was fighting against the German
troops and taking them out of Poland, it also was also ruining the efforts to reconstruct an independent
Poland. In March 1945 the NKVD kidnapped 16 leaders of the Polish Underground State and took them
to Moscow, accusing them in trial of alleged terrorist actions against the Red Army.
It is worth to mention a very symbolic action happenned when the 1st Division commanded by the General
Stanisław Maczek conquered in March 1945 the main German base of the Kriegsmarine in
Wilhelmshaven. The war that Germany had started in Gdańsk to cut Poland from the Baltic Sea was
ended by the surrender of the German naval forces to a Pole. The fate of the Republic, though, was sealed
by the decision of the 3 powers during the Potsdam Summit in summer of 1945. It was decided to keep
under Polish administration the German territory at the West of the rivers Oder-Nys-Łużycka, part of
East Prussia and the city of Gdańsk. At the same time, it was agreed that the final delimitation of the Soviet
Western border with Poland will be postponed until the peace conference with Germany. It has to be noted
that Poland has never signed the Potsdam Peace Treaty who ended the war with Germany. The proRussian Bierut government issued on 23 August an unilateral declaration stating that Poland renounced
to claim war reparations to Germany. For some time, the People’s Republic of Poland and the rest of the
East Block recognized as only German country the German Democratic Republic (GDR), who ceased to
exist in 1990; Poland did not establish diplomatic relations with the German Federal Republic(GFR) until
as late as 1972.
The usurper government of the People’s Republic of Poland
signed with the Soviet Union in August 1944 the delimitation
agreement and, in September, the republican agreement
with the Soviet Republics of Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus
giving them Kresy Wschodnie (the Eastern Border Lands).
In that way Poland lost, among others, the major culture
cradles placed in the Polish ethnographic area: Vilnius and
Lviv. Poland lost a total of 77,990 km², 20% of its pre-war
extension. The Soviet Union seized 48% of the Polish soil
East of the Bug river, adding up to 178,000 km² inhabited by
Poles. Such losses were not compensated by the 101,000 km²
of the Recovered Territories at the West. These moves
implied the repatriation of 2 million of Polish citizens and 3.5
million German citizens.
In relative terms, Poland suffered the biggest amount of
German light cruise Köln sunk at the
human casualties among all the countries who took part in Wilhelmshaven base in May 1945 (PD-US)
the World War II. During the German occupation (19391945) and the Soviet occupation (1939-1941 y 1944-1945), 7,600,000 Polish citizens died, meaning the 22%
of the population of the II Republic. German weapons killed 6,028,000 Poles, while Soviets killed 680,000
Polish civilians and 150,000 military men and officials (such figures were probably doubled between 1941
and 1945). Polish intelligentsia was persecuted as a norm. One third of Poland’s University professors,
scientists and physicists, and almost half of its lawyers, disappeared. Among the 24 million of Poles who
survived the War, approximately 5 million of them were abroad at the end of it. Warsaw, the capital city
and main cultural center, was almost entirely destroyed and 700,000 of its citizens were dead. After the
Warsaw Uprising in 1944, it was burnt by
the Germans, who intentionally destroyed
the historical monuments –palaces,
churches, statues, museums, archives and
libraries. They burnt the seat of the
Krasicki Library, the biggest national
manuscript archive. They destroyed 85%
of the urban frame, 90% of the industry,
72% of the habitable buildings and 90% of
the national patrimony. The German
aggressors destroyed 64,5% of the
chemical industry, 64,3% of the
typographical one, 59,7% of the electrotechnical industry, 55,4% of the textile,
53,1% of the food industry and 48% of the
metallurgy. They destroyed half of the Ruins of Warsaw’s Old Town in 1945. (PD-Polish)
railway, aeronautical, ground and marine
infrastructure. Moreover, 352 hospitals, 17 superior schools, 271 high schools and 4880 primary schools
disappeared. The losses of all the Polish libraries added up to the 75% of its catalogues. Since 1939, the
Germans systematically stole and made disappear art collections. Overall, the losses of Poland were
estimated in USD 845 billion.
It is hard to calculate the losses occasioned to Poland by the two Soviet occupations, and later by the
economic exploitation of the People’s Republic. In 1945 the Red Army burnt 90% of Gdańsk and 40% of
Olsztyn; when they chased the Germans out of Gniezno, the Soviets burnt the city’s Cathedral. The
Russian government stole the factories and other installations previously occupied by the Germans, and
took 51% of the shares of the Polish enterprises established on those lands. Reparations (15% of the
occupation area) depended on the quantities and the competitive price of carbon. A destroyed Poland,
selling cheap carbon (at around 10% of the world market price) de facto paid the contribution to its 1939
aggressor.
The future of Poland, who was one of the members of the winning coalition, came to depend to the result
of the process held by the Court in Nuremberg in 1946. The USSR, who was a Hitler ally at the beginning
of the World War II and helped him to the initial defeat of Poland, took part in that process as a plaintiff
of its original German ally.
Maciej Szczepańczyk