The Munich Agreement was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic, and the Kingdom of Italy. It provided "cession to Germany of the Sudeten German territory" of Czechoslovakia, despite the existence of a 1924 alliance agreement and 1925 military pact between France and the Czechoslovak Republic, for which it is also known as the Munich Betrayal. Most of Europe celebrated the Munich agreement, which was presented as a way to prevent a major war on the continent. The four powers agreed to the annexation of the Czechoslovak borderland areas named the Sudetenland, where more than three million people, mainly ethnic Germans, lived. Adolf Hitler announced it was his last territorial claim in Europe.
The Phoney War was an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there was only one limited military land operation on the Western Front, when French troops invaded Germany's Saar district. Nazi Germany carried out the Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939; the Phoney period began with the declaration of war by the United Kingdom and France against Nazi Germany on 3 September 1939, after which little actual warfare occurred, and ended with the German invasion of France and the Low Countries on 10 May 1940. Although there was no large-scale military action by Britain and France, they did begin some economic warfare, especially with the naval blockade, and shut down German surface raiders. They created elaborate plans for numerous large-scale operations designed to cripple the German war effort. These included opening an Anglo-French front in the Balkans, invading Norway to seize control of Germany's main source of iron ore and a strike against the Soviet Union, to cut off its supply of oil to Germany. Only the Norway plan came to fruition, and by April 1940, it was too little, too late.
The invasion of Poland, also known as the September campaign, 1939 defensive war and Poland campaign, was an attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had approved the pact. The Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September. The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty.
The history of Poland from 1939 to 1945 encompasses primarily the period from the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the end of World War II. Following the German–Soviet non-aggression pact, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939 and by the Soviet Union on 17 September. The campaigns ended in early October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland. After the Axis attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the entirety of Poland was occupied by Germany, which proceeded to advance its racial and genocidal policies across Poland. Under the two occupations, Polish citizens suffered enormous human and material losses. According to the Institute of National Remembrance estimates, about 5.6 million Polish citizens died as a result of the German occupation and about 150,000 died as a result of the Soviet occupation. The Jews were singled out by the Germans for a quick and total annihilation and about 90 percent of Polish Jews were murdered as part of the Holocaust. Jews, Poles, Romani people and prisoners of many other ethnicities were killed en masse at Nazi extermination camps, such as Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibór. Ethnic Poles were subjected to both Nazi German and Soviet persecution. The Germans killed an estimated two million ethnic Poles. They had future plans to turn the remaining majority of Poles into slave labor and annihilate those perceived as "undesirable" as part of the wider Generalplan Ost. Ethnic cleansing and massacres of Poles and to a lesser extent Ukrainians were perpetrated in western Ukraine from 1943. The Poles were murdered by Ukrainian nationalists.
The Polish–Soviet War was fought primarily between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in the aftermath of World War I, on territories formerly held by the Russian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Władysław Eugeniusz Sikorski was a Polish military and political leader.
The Polish government-in-exile, officially known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile, was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of September 1939, and the subsequent occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union, which brought to an end the Second Polish Republic.
Western betrayal is the view that the United Kingdom, France, and sometimes the United States failed to meet their legal, diplomatic, military, and moral obligations with respect to the Czechoslovak and Polish states during the prelude to and aftermath of World War II. It also sometimes refers to the treatment of other Central and Eastern European states at the time.
Józef Beck was a Polish statesman who served the Second Republic of Poland as a diplomat and military officer, and was a close associate of Józef Piłsudski. Beck is most famous for being Polish foreign minister in the 1930s, when he largely set Polish foreign policy.
The Blue Army, or Haller's Army, was a Polish military contingent created in France during the latter stages of World War I. The name came from the French-issued blue military uniforms worn by the soldiers. The symbolic term used to describe the troops was subsequently adopted by General Józef Haller von Hallenburg himself to represent all newly organized Polish Legions fighting in western Europe.
The French Military Mission to Poland was an effort by France to aid the nascent Second Polish Republic after it achieved its independence in November 1918, at the end of the First World War. The aim was to provide aid during the Polish-Soviet War (1919–1921), and to create a strong Polish military to serve as a useful ally against Germany. It was an advisory body consisting of about 400 French officers attached to staffs of Polish units at various levels. Although the French mission was small numerically, its effect was substantial in improving the organisation and logistics of the Polish army. It worked in parallel with the smaller British Military Mission to Poland. It existed from 1918 to 1939.
The Interallied Mission to Poland was a diplomatic mission launched by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George on 21 July 1920, at the height of the Polish-Soviet War, weeks before the decisive Battle of Warsaw. The purpose of this mission was to send a number of high level personages from Britain and France to Poland in an attempt to influence Polish policy, possibly through effecting a change in government.
The Franco–Polish alliance was the military alliance between Poland and France that was active between the early 1920s and the outbreak of the Second World War. The initial agreements were signed in February 1921 and formally took effect in 1923. During the interwar period the alliance with Poland was one of the cornerstones of French foreign policy.
This article covers the history of Polish Intelligence services dating back to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The Allies, later known formally as the United Nations, were an international military coalition formed during the Second World War (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan, and Fascist Italy. Its principal members by 1941 were the United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, and China.
The Allied leaders of World War II listed below comprise the important political and military figures who fought for or supported the Allies during World War II. Engaged in total war, they had to adapt to new types of modern warfare, on the military, psychological and economic fronts.
The Polish Armed Forces in the West refers to the Polish military formations formed to fight alongside the Western Allies against Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II. Polish forces were also raised within Soviet territories; these were the Polish Armed Forces in the East.
British–Polish relations are the bilateral relations between the countries of United Kingdom and Poland. Exchanges between the two countries date back to medieval times, when Britain and Poland, then one of Europe's largest countries, were linked by trade and diplomacy. As a result of the 18th-century Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by its neighbours, the number of Polish immigrants to Britain increased in the aftermath of two 19th-century uprisings which forced much of Poland's social and political elite into exile. A number of Polish exiles fought in the Crimean War on the British side.
The Józef Piłsudski Institute of America was created in New York City in July 1943. It is an archive, museum and research center devoted to the study of modern Polish history and named after the Polish interwar statesman Józef Piłsudski.
The Embassy of the Republic of Poland in London is the diplomatic mission of Poland in the United Kingdom. It is located on Portland Place next to the High Commission of Kenya building. It forms part of a group of Grade II* listed buildings in Portland Place.
