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The Armia Krajowa (Home Army) or AK functioned as the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II in German-occupied Poland, which was active in all areas of the country from September 1939 until its disbanding in January 1945. The Armia Krajowa, one of the largest underground resistance movements during World War II, formed the armed wing of what subsequently became known as the "underground state" (państwo podziemne).
Stefan Rowecki (known as Grot, or "arrowhead"), served as the AK's first commander until his arrest in 1943; Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski commanded from July 1943 until his capture in September 1944. Leopold Okulicki, known as Niedzwiadek ("bear cub") led the organisation in its final days.
While the AK did not engender a general revolt, its forces did carry out intensive economic and armed sabotage. In 1944 it acted on a broad scale, notably in initiating the Warsaw Uprising, which broke out on 1 August1944. It had the aim of liberating Warsaw before the arrival of the Soviet Red Army. While the insurgents released a few hundred prisoners from the Gesia St. concentration camp and carried out fierce street-fighting, the Germans eventually defeated the rebels and burned the city, finally quelling the Uprising only on 2 October1944.
AK units carried out thousands of armed raids and daring intelligence operations, bombed hundreds of railway shipments, and participated in many partisan clashes and battles with the German police and Wehrmacht units. AK also conducted "vengeance" operations to assassinate Gestapo officials in response to Nazi terror tactics on Polish civilians.
There are some accusations of negative actions committed by the AK towards ethnic minorities, particularly the Lithuanians (see below).
The AK officially disbanded on 19 January1945. Another prominent Polish communist, Roman Zambrowski, said that AK must be "exterminated". to avoid armed conflict with the Soviets and a civil war. However, many units decided to continue their struggle under new circumstances.
First AK structure designed primarily to deal with the Soviet threat was NIE, formed in the mid-1943. NIE's goals was not to engage the Soviet forces in combat, but rather to observe and conduct espionage while the Polish governent in exile decides how to deal with the Soviets; at that time the exiled govenrment still believed that the solution can be found through negotiations. On 7 May 1945 NIE was disbanded and transformed into Delegatura Sił Zbrojnych na Kraj, this organization however lasted only until 8 August 1945, when the decision was made to disband the organization and stop partisan resistance on Polish territories.
The first Polish communist government, PKWN, formed in July 1944, has declined jurisdiction over AK soldiers, therefore for more then a year it was the Soviet Union agencies like NKVD that took care of dealing with AK. By the end of the war approximately 60,000 soldiers of AK were arrested, 50,000 of them were deported to Soviet Union's Gulags and prisons; most of those soldiers were captured by Soviets during or in the aftermath of the Operation Tempest, when many AK units tried to cooperate with the Soviets in a nationwide uprising against the Germans. Other veterans were arrested when they decided to approach the government officials after being promised amnesty; after the fake promises of the first few years no AK soldier would trust the government promises.
The third AK organization was Wolność i Niezawisłość. Again its primary goal was not combat, rather it was designed to help the AK soldiers in transition from the life of partisans into that of civilians; the secrecy and conspiration was necessary in the light of incresing persectution of AK veterans by the communist government. The WiN was however in much needs of funds, for false documents and to provide resources for the partisans, many of whom have lost their entire life's saving and families in the war. Viewed as enemies of the state, striked for resources, and with a vocal faction advocating armed resistance against the Soviets and their Polish proxies, WiN was far from efficient. A significant victory for the NKVD and the newly created Polish secret police, Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, came in the second half of 1945, when they managed to convince several leaders of AK and WiN that they truly want to offer amnesty to AK members. In few month they managed to gain information about vast amount of AK/WiN resources and people, several month later when the (imprisoned) AK and WiN leaders realised their mistake, the organizations were crippled and thousands more of their members were arrested. WiN was finally disbanded in 1952.
NKVD and UB were certainly not beyond using force. In Autumn of 1946 a group of 100-200 soldiers of NSZ group were loured into a trap and then massacred. By 1947 a colonel of the communist forces declared that "Terroriststic and political underground has ceased to be a threatening force, although there are still man of the forests" that need to be dealt with.
The persecution of AK was only a part of the big picture of stalinism in Poland. In the period of 1944-1956, approximately 2 million people were arrested, over 20 thousand, like the hero of Auschwitz, Witold Pilecki, were exectuted or murdered in communist prisons, and 6 millions of Polish citizen (i.e. every third adult Pole) were classifed as a 'reactionary or criminal element' and subject to invigilation by state agencies. In 1956 an amnesty released 35,000 former AK soldiers from prisons: for the crime of fighting for their homeland they spent sometimes over 10 years in prisons. Still, some partisans remained in the countryside, unwilling or simply unable to rejoin the community. Stanisław Marchewska "Ryba" was killed in 1957, and the last AK partisant, Józef Franczak "Lalek", was killed in 1963 - almost 2 decades after the Second World War ended. It was four years later, in 1967, that Adam Boryczka, a soldier of AK and a member of elite, Britain-trained Cichociemny group, was realeased from prison. Until the end of the People's Republic of Poland AK soldiers were under investigation of the secret police, and it was only in 1989, after the fall of communism, that the sentences of AK soldiers were finally declared invalid and annulled by the Polish courts.
Structure
The executive branch of the AK was the operational command, composed of many units. Estimates of the AK membership in the first half of 1944 range from 250,000 to 350,000, with more than 10,000 officers. Most of the other Polish underground armies became incorporated into the AK, including:
The AK divided itself organizationally in Poland into sixteen regional branches, subdivided in turn into eighty-nine inspectorates, which further comprised 278 districts. The supreme command defined the main tasks of the AK as preparation for action and, after the termination of the German occupation, general armed revolt until victory. At that stage plans envisaged the seizure of power in Poland by the delegatura establishment, the representatives of the London-based Polish government in exile; and by the government-in-exile itself, which would return to Poland.
File:1Baon1PPLeg Radom-Kielce 1944.jpgSoldiers of the 1st Battallion of the 1st Legions Home Army Regiment, from the Kielce-Radom Armia Krajowa inspectorate; August 1944File:1Comp obwSambor inspecDrohobycz Burza3.jpgSoldiers of the 1st company of Sambor command of Drohobycz Armia Krajowa inspectorate armed with German-made arms and dressed in captured German field uniforms
As a clandestine army operating in a country occupied by the enemy, separated by over a thousand kilometers from any friendly territory, the AK faced unique challenges in acquiring arms and equipment. In a tremendous achievement, the AK was able to overcome these difficulties to some extent and put tens of thousands of armed soldiers into the field. Nevertheless, the difficult conditions meant that only infantry forces armed with light weapons could be fielded. Any use of artillery, armor or aviation was obviously out of the question (except for a few instances during the Warsaw Uprising). Even these light infantry units were as a rule armed with a mixture of weapons of various types, usually in quantities sufficient to arm only a fraction of the unit's soldiers.
In contrast their opponents, the German armed forces and their allies, were almost universally supplied with plenty of arms and ammunition, and could count on a full array of support forces.
Unit for unit, its German opponents enjoyed a crushing material superiority over the AK and this severely restricted the kind of operations that it could successfully undertake.
The arms and equipment for Armia Krajowa mostly came from four sources: arms buried by the Polish armies on the battlefields after the September Campaign in 1939, arms purchased or captured from the Germans and their allies, arms clandestinely manufactured by Armia Krajowa itself, and arms received from Allied air drops.
From the arms caches hidden in 1939, the AK obtained: 614 heavy machine guns, 1,193 light machine guns, 33,052 rifles, 6,732 pistols, 28 antitank light field guns, 25 antitank rifles and 43,154 hand grenades. However, because of inadequate conservation which had to be improvised in the chaos of the September campaign, most of these guns were in poor condition. Of those that were hidden in the ground and dug up in 1944 during preparation for Operation Tempest, only 30% were usable.
Polish afterwar communist propaganda poster showing soldier of Armia Ludowa and soldier of Armia Krajowa, saying: "The Giant and the spat dwarf of reactionism."
Sometimes arms purchases from German soldiers were conducted on a "grass roots" level. Purchases were made by individual units and sometimes by individual soldiers. As Germany's prospects for victory diminished and the morale in German units dropped, the number of soldiers willing to sell their weapons correspondingly increased and thus made this source more important. All such purchases were highly risky, as the Gestapo was well aware of this black market in arms and tried to check it by setting up sting operations. For the most part this trade was limited to personal weapons, but occasionally light and heavy machine guns could also be purchased. It was much easier to trade with Italian and Hungarian units stationed in Poland, which willingly sold their arms to the Polish underground as long as they could conceal this trade from the Germans.
The efforts to capture weapons from Germans also proved highly successful. Raids were conducted on trains carrying equipment to the front, as well as guardhouses and gendarmerie posts. Sometimes weapons were taken from individual German soldiers accosted in the street. During the Warsaw Uprising, the AK even managed to capture a few German armored vehicles.
Arms were clandestinely manufactured by the AK in its own secret workshops, and also by its members working in German armament factories. In this way the AK was able to procure submachine guns (copies of British Sten, indigenous Błyskawica and KIS), pistols (Vis), flamethrowers, bombs, road mines and hand grenades (Filipinka and Sidolówka). Hundreds of people were involved in this manufacturing effort.
The final source of supply were Allied air drops. This was the only way to obtain more exotic but highly useful equipment such as plastic explosives or antitank weapons (PIAT). During the war 485 Allied planes made air drops destined for the AK, delivering 600.9 tons of supplies. During these operations, 70 planes and 62 crews (of which 28 were Polish) were lost. Besides equipment, the planes also parachuted highly qualified instructors (the Cichociemni), of whom 346 were inserted into Poland during the war. Due to the large distance from bases in Britain and the Mediterranean, and lukewarm political support, the airdrops were only a fraction of those carried out in support of French or Yugoslavian resistance movements.
While most historians agree that AK was largely untainted in collaboration with Nazis in the Holocaust events the accusations of the complicity of single AK members or groups in anti-Jewish violence in Poland are frequently brought up to this day. The issue remains a controversial one and is subject to a difficult debate.
One of AK members, Witold Pilecki, was the only person to volunteer for imprisonment in Auschwitz. The information he gathered proved crucial in convincing Western Allies about the fate of Jewish population.
In February 1942, the Operational Command of the AK Information and Propaganda Office set up the Section for Jewish Affairs, directed by Henryk Woliński. This section collected data about the situation of the Jewish population, drafted reports and sent information to London. It also centralized contacts between Polish and Jewish military organizations. The AK also organised financial aid for Jews (see Żegota). The AK accepted only a few Jews (about one thousand) into its own ranks: it generally turned down Jewish applicants.
The AK provided the Warsaw Ghetto with about sixty revolvers, several hundred hand grenades, and ammunition and explosives. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, AK units tried twice to blow up the ghetto wall, carried out holding actions outside the ghetto walls, and together with GL forces sporadically attacked German sentry units near the ghetto walls. Security Cadre (Kadra Bezpieczeństwa or KB), one of the organizations subordinate to the AK, took a direct part in fights inside the ghetto together with Jewish fighters from ŻZW and ŻOB.
Three out of seven members of the Collective Command of the AK (KG AK) had Jewish origins.
Relations with Lithuanians
Relations between Lithuanians and Poles were strained during most of the interwar period due to conflicts over the Vilnius region and Suvalkai region, where there was a large Lithuanian minority. During the war these conflicts resurfaced as Armia Krajowa's ideal of a Polish state included the Vilnius region.
Lithuanian and Polish resistance movements had the same enemies - Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, but they never became allies. The main obstacle in forming alliance was question of Vilnius - Polish government in exile and Polish resistance regarded Vilnius as part of Poland, while Lithuanian resistance regarded Vilnius as capital of Lithuania and aimed for independent Lithuania, which would include Vilnius. Lithuanian resistance saw Soviet Union as main enemy and Nazi Germany as secondary enemy. Polish resistance saw Nazi Germany as main enemy and had no consensus on Soviet Union. Only in 1944-1945, after the Soviet reoccupation, Lithuanian and Polish resistance started cooperating in fight against Soviet occupants and Soviet activists .
In May of 1944 under command of a Aleksander Krzyżanowski, commander of Vilnius region, there were 9000 armed Armia Krajowa partisans. Members of Armia Krajowa often terrorised, killed, beat Lithuanians and looted their property in Vilnius and Vilnius region .
On June 23, 1944, AK troops committed a massacre of Lithuanian civilians, at Dubingiai (Dubinki) where 27 Lithuanian civilians, including women and children were murdered . Some Lithuanian authors suggest a higher number of victims (Juozas Lebionka claims 100, some other Lithuanian historians make claims as high as 200. A 2004 publication in Lithuanian newspaper XXI amžius claims that there were other massacres at Joniškis, Inturkė, Bijutiškis, and Giedraičiai, where approximatelly 80-100 Lithuanian civilians, including women and children were murderedCite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).. It should be noted that two days before Dubingiai massacre, on 20 June 1944, 37 Poles were killed in Glitiškės (Glinciszki) by Lithuanian policemen in retalliation for four policement killed, and that Dubingiai murder was an act of retribution for Glinciszki.
The scale of other killings is also a subject of disagreement. Polish historian Jarosław Wołkonowski puts the number of the Lithuanians killed by rogue AK elements at under 100. Lithuanian Vilnija organization claims that the number is at least around 250. One estimate by a Lithuanian investigator Rimas Bružas is that about 500 Lithuanian civilans were killed by Poles during the war . Estimates of Juozas Lebionka suggest even a higher number of 1000 . In 1993 State commission was created to evaluate activities of Armia Krajowa. Commission published conclusions that Armia Krajowa was against integrity of Lithuania and in Eastern Lithuania commited crimes against humanity, terrorised and killed innocent civilians, mostly Lithuanians. Lithuanian General Prosecutor Office in 1999 established that "partisan units of AK, not recognising return of Vilnius region in 1939, were performing genocide of population of Lithuania, i.e. terrorised, robbed, murdered civilians of Lithuanian, Jewish and Russian ethnicities, hoping that these actions will help reoccupy area after the war." . Despite the accusations, not a single member of Armia Krajowa, many veterans of which live in Lithuania, have been charged with any crimes.
Another issue of the AK's operation in Lithuania is related to incidents of co-operation with Nazis against the common enemy, the Soviet partisans. Germans used to arm several AK units operating in Lithuanian area, in order to encourage them to act against the Soviets, similarly as they did with such Lithuanian forces as the Local Lithuanian Detachment. Germans also did not allow Lithuanian Security Police to arrest known commanders of AK and often released arrested AK commanders from prison .
Despite the real and alleged crimes of Armia Krajowa against non Polish civilians in Vilnius region, commander of the 5th Vilnian Home Army Brigade Zygmunt Szendzielarz "Łupaszka" was awarded with Virtuti Militari, the highest Polish military award. Similarly the Lithuanian general Povilas Plechavičius who was engaged in fighting the Polish and Soviet partisans received a medal from Lithuanian president. Because of these reasons, the AK, despite of its record in saving Poles of Vilnius, are considered to be a controversial organisation in today's Lithuania in a manner somewhat similar to the view of the Soviet partisans.
In 2004 veterans of AK and some veterans of Local Lithuanian Detachment signed Declaration of Peace . Veterans of Local Lithuanian Detachment who signed declaration did so without approval of Union of Soldiers of Local Lithuanian Detachment (Template:Lang-lt) .
Armia Krajowa relations with the Soviets went proverbialy from bad to worse. Not only did the Soviet Union invade Poland together with Germany during the Polish September Campaign in 1939, but even after Germans invaded Soviet Union the Soviets saw Polish partisans loyal to the government in exile as more of an enemy to their plans to take control of post-war Poland then as a potential ally. As ordered by Moscow on June 22 1943 the Soviet partisants engaged Polish partisans in combat, and actually they attacked the Poles more often then they did the Germans. Similarly, the main forces of the Red Army and the NKVD conducted operations against the AK partisans, even during or directly after the Polish Operation Tempest which was designed by the Poles to be a join Polish-Soviet action against the retreating Germans.
In late 1943, the actions of Soviet partisans, who were ordered to liquidate tha AK forces resulted in a limited amount of uneasy cooperation between some units of AK and the Germans. While AK still treated Germans as the enemy and conducted various operations against them, when Germans offered AK some arms and provisions to be used against the Soviet paristans, some Polish units in the Nowogródek and Wilno are decided to accept them. However any such arrangments were purerly tactical and did not evidenced a type of ideological collaboration as shown by Vichy regime in France, Quisling regime in Norway or closer to the region, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The Poles main motivation wast to gain intelligence on German morale and preparedness and to acquire some badly needed weapons. There are no known joint Polish-German actions, and the Germans were unsuccesfull in their attempt to turn the Poles toward fighting exclusively against Soviet partisans. Even so, most of such collaboration of local commanders with the Germans was condemned by AK High Command. Tadeusz Piotrowski quotes Joseph Rotschild saying "The Polish Home Army was by and large untained by collaboration" and adds that "the honor of AK as a whole is beyond reproach"..
Soviet forces continued to engage the elements of AK long after the war.
Template:Lt iconRimas Bružas, R.Bružas: Mano tikslas buvo sukelti istorikų diskusiją (R.Bružas: My aim was to initiate discussion of historians), ELTA, 14 March 2005
Template:Lt iconJuozas Lebionka. Vilniškės AK bendradarbiavimo su vokiečiais pirmtakas (The starter of cooperation between Vilnian AK and Germans), Atgimimas, 1996, No. 8(372), p. 15
Korboński, Stefan, The Polish Underground State , Columbia University Press, 1978, ISBN 091471032X
Michael Alfred Peszke, Polish Underground Army, the Western Allies, and the Failure of Strategic Unity in World War II, McFarland & Company, 2004, ISBN 078642009X Google Print
Polish Underground State
