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Following
the defeat of the Polish army by the joint forces of Hitler’s
Germany and Stalin’s USSR in September 1939, an order went out for Polish soldiers to make their way, as best they
could, to France where a Polish Government in Exile was formed
under the premiership of gen. Sikorski and a Polish army was
being assembled to continue fighting alongside Poland’s allies –
Britain and France. The army that formed in France participated
in the abortive Narvik campaign and, following the defeat of
France in 1940, evacuated to Britain. Those that didn’t make it
across Italy to France headed for Syria where they were formed
into the Carpathian Rifle Brigade which later fought at Tobruk.
In the meantime Stalin was consolidating his hold on the part of
Poland that the Soviet Union had annexed under the Ribbentrop –
Molotov pact by deporting to Siberia anyone thought likely to resist the
annexation . By the time Hitler attacked the Soviet
Union on 22nd
June 1941 close to a million Poles had been deported.
Germany’s attack on the Soviets brought them into the Allied
camp together with Britain and Poland, consequently, Stalin
agreed to a Polish army being formed in the USSR. A so
called “amnesty” for all Poles in Prisoner of War Camps, NKVD
Prisons and in Soviet Exile was declared and all those who heard
of the “amnesty”, and were able to undertake the journey, set out
for the recruitment centres. In 1942 the army and its
dependents left the Soviet Union for Persia (Iran) to be
re-equipped and made ready for battle. The Polish Armed
Forces in Exile thus became the third largest fighting force in
the West after Britain and America. Their Battle Honours
include Narvik, the Battle of Britain, Battle of the Atlantic,
Tobruk, Monte Cassino, Normandy and Arnhem.
The political settlement between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill
meant that when the war ended the Soviets annexed Eastern Poland
and incorporated it into the Soviet Union while the rest of
Poland became a puppet state with a communist government imposed
by Russia. The vast majority of Poles rejected this
settlement and chose to remain in The West where they could
continue the political struggle for an independent Poland while
maintaining their language, culture, and traditions for an
eventual return to their homeland. |
