The history of Poland spans over a thousand years, from medieval tribes, Christianization and monarchy; through Poland's Golden Age, expansionism and becoming one of the largest European powers; to its collapse and partitions, two world wars, communism, and the restoration of democracy.
The Home Army was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej established in the aftermath of the German and Soviet invasions in September 1939. Over the next two years, the Home Army absorbed most of the other Polish partisans and underground forces. Its allegiance was to the Polish government-in-exile in London, and it constituted the armed wing of what came to be known as the Polish Underground State. Estimates of the Home Army's 1944 strength range between 200,000 and 600,000. The latter number made the Home Army not only Poland's largest underground resistance movement but, along with Soviet and Yugoslav partisans, one of Europe's largest World War II underground movements.
Stanisław II August, known also by his regnal Latin name Stanislaus II Augustus, and as Stanisław August Poniatowski, was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1764 to 1795, and the last monarch of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
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.
Sanation was a Polish political movement that was created in the interwar period, prior to Józef Piłsudski's May 1926 Coup d'État, and came to power in the wake of that coup. In 1928 its political activists would go on to form the Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (BBWR).
Roman Stanisław Dmowski was a Polish politician, statesman, and co-founder and chief ideologue of the National Democracy political movement. He saw the Germanization of Polish territories controlled by the German Empire as the major threat to Polish culture and therefore advocated a degree of accommodation with another power that had partitioned Poland, the Russian Empire. He favoured the re-establishment of Polish independence by nonviolent means and supported policies favourable to the Polish middle class. While in Paris during World War I, he was a prominent spokesman for Polish aspirations to the Allies through his Polish National Committee. He was an instrumental figure in the postwar restoration of Poland's independent existence. Throughout most of his life, he was the chief ideological opponent of the Polish military and political leader Józef Piłsudski and of the latter's vision of Poland as a multinational federation against German and Russian imperialism.
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy which ended after the Partitions of Poland in the 18th century. During World War II there was a nearly complete genocidal destruction of the Polish Jewish community by Nazi Germany and its collaborators of various nationalities, during the German occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945, called the Holocaust. Since the fall of communism in Poland, there has been a renewed interest in Jewish culture, featuring an annual Jewish Culture Festival, new study programs at Polish secondary schools and universities, and the opening of Warsaw's Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
The Polish Underground State was a single political and military entity formed by the union of resistance organizations in occupied Poland that were loyal to the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile in London. The first elements of the Underground State were established in the final days of the German and Soviet invasion of Poland, in late September 1939. The Underground State was perceived by supporters as a legal continuation of the pre-war Republic of Poland that waged an armed struggle against the country's occupying powers: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Underground State encompassed not only military resistance, one of the largest in the world, but also civilian structures, such as justice, education, culture and social services.
The Great Emigration was the emigration of thousands of Poles and Lithuanians, particularly from the political and cultural élites, from 1831 to 1870, after the failure of the November Uprising of 1830–1831 and of other uprisings such as the Kraków uprising of 1846 and the January Uprising of 1863–1864. The emigration affected almost the entirety of political elite in Congress Poland. The exiles included artists, soldiers and officers of the uprising, members of the Sejm of Congress Poland of 1830–1831 and several prisoners-of-war who escaped from captivity.
The Francs-tireurs et partisans – main-d'œuvre immigrée (FTP-MOI) were a sub-group of the Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP) organization, a component of the French Resistance. A wing composed mostly of foreigners, the MOI maintained an armed force to oppose the German occupation of France during World War II. The Main-d'œuvre immigrée was the "Immigrant Movement" of the FTP.
Polish–French relations are relations between the nations of France and Poland, which date back several centuries.
Reichsgraf Otto Magnus von Stackelberg (1736–1800) was a diplomat of the Russian Empire. He served as an envoy in Madrid from 1767 to 1771, ambassador in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1772 to 1790 and in Sweden from 1791 to 1793.
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.
After the fall of France, many Poles who were not involved in the regular Polish Army in France during World War II, or who were unable to reach the United Kingdom where the Polish Army in the United Kingdom had been formed, became the pillars of the Polish resistance in France.
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland was a Jewish socialist party in Poland which promoted the political, cultural and social autonomy of Jewish workers, sought to combat antisemitism and was generally opposed to Zionism.
Edward Pomorski was the last Minister Plenipotentiary of the Polish Government-in-Exile, in Belgium from 11 December 1970 to 31 December 1988. He was Commander of the Polish Resistance P.O.W.N. in Belgium and the Netherlands (1940–1945).
Boris Holban was a Russian-born Franco-Romanian communist known for his role in the French Resistance as the leader of FTP-MOI group in Paris and for l’Affaire Manouchian controversy of the 1980s.
Adam Rayski was a Franco-Polish intellectual best remembered for his involvement with the French resistance.
Des terroristes à la retraite is a 1985 French documentary about the FTP-MOI written and directed by Mosco Boucault.
The Cimetière des Champeaux de Montmorency, at Montmorency, Val-d'Oise in Île-de-France, is a cemetery first established in the 17th century. It has the particularity of being the largest Polish burial place in France, hence its appellation as the "Pantheon of the Polish Emigration". It is located 15 km north of Paris and adjacent to the spa resort of Enghien-les-Bains. That it fell to Montmorency to become the main necropolis of the Polish diaspora in the country is due to two Polish political exiles, who happened to be staying at the nearby spa at the time of their death and were buried in the local cemetery. They were the statesman and poet, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, one time Polish envoy to the United Kingdom and Karol Kniaziewicz, politician and brigadier general in Napoleon's Grande Armée. Since their interments in the early part of the 19th century, a succession of noted exiled Poles found their final resting place in the cemetery. There are over 276 Polish burials, among them the poets Adam Mickiewicz, the national bard, and Cyprian Kamil Norwid, statesman Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, and the diplomat and head of the Polish resistance in France during WWII, Aleksander Kawalkowski. The cemetery has become one of the national symbols of Polish resistance to all forms of oppression, and each Spring, it is the rallying place for Poles living in the Paris area, who go there to commemorate their historical leaders and artists.
