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The European Theatre of World War II opened with the German invasion of Poland on Friday September 1, 1939, followed by the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939. The Polish Army was defeated after approximately a month of fighting and on September 27 a cease fire agreement was signed and all fighting ended. A Polish Underground State with a government-in-exile that would eventually set up headquarters in London resumed the struggle against the occupying powers. The Polish forces in the West, as well as in the East and an intelligence service were established outside of Poland, and contributed to the Allied effort throughout the war.
Józef Klemens Piłsudski was a Polish statesman who served as the Chief of State (1918–1922) and First Marshal of Poland. He was considered the de facto leader (1926–35) of the Second Polish Republic as the Minister of Military Affairs. After World War I, he held great power in Polish politics and was a distinguished figure on the international scene. He is viewed as a father of the Second Polish Republic re-established in 1918, 123 years after the final Partition of Poland by Austria, Prussia and Russia in 1795.
World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the 1940 world population. Deaths directly caused by the war are estimated at 50–56 million, with an additional estimated 19–28 million deaths from war-related disease and famine. Civilian deaths totaled 50–55 million. Military deaths from all causes totaled 21–25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war. More than half of the total number of casualties are accounted for by the dead of the Republic of China and of the Soviet Union. The tables below give a detailed country-by-country count of human losses. Statistics on the number of military wounded are included whenever available.
The invasion of Poland, also known as September campaign, 1939 defensive war and Poland campaign, was an attack on the Second Polish Republic 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 by the Second Polish Republic and Soviet Russia over a region comparable to today's westernmost Ukraine and parts of modern Belarus. Following the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, Poland's Chief of State, Józef Piłsudski, felt the time was right to expand Polish borders as far east as feasible, to be followed by a Polish-led Intermarium federation of Central and Eastern European states, as a bulwark against the re-emergence of German and Russian expansionism. Vladimir Lenin saw Poland as the bridge the Red Army had to cross to assist other Communist movements and bring about more European revolutions. By 1919, Polish forces had taken control of much of Western Ukraine, emerging victorious from the Polish–Ukrainian War. The West Ukrainian People's Republic, led by Yevhen Petrushevych, had tried to create a Ukrainian state on territories to which both Poles and Ukrainians laid claim. In the Russian part of Ukraine Symon Petliura tried to defend and strengthen the Ukrainian People's Republic but as the Bolsheviks began to win the Russian Civil War, they started to advance westward towards the disputed Ukrainian territories, causing Petliura's forces to retreat to Podolia. By the end of 1919, a clear front had formed as Petliura decided to ally with Piłsudski. Border skirmishes escalated following Piłsudski's Kiev Offensive in April 1920.
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.
JW GROM is one of Poland's premier special missions unit.
The Romanian Bridgehead was an area in southeastern Poland, now located in Ukraine. During the invasion of Poland of 1939, on 14 September the Polish commander-in-chief Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-Śmigły ordered all Polish troops fighting east of the Vistula to withdraw towards Lwów, and then to the hills along the borders with Romania and the USSR.
Michael Alfred Peszke was a Polish-American psychiatrist and historian of the Polish Armed Forces in World War II.
Rear Admiral Xawery Stanisław Czernicki (1882–1940) was a Polish engineer, military commander and one of the highest-ranking officers of the Polish Navy. Considered one of the founders of Polish Navy's logistical services, he was murdered by the Soviet NKVD during the Katyn massacre.
The Peking Plan was an operation in which three destroyers of the Polish Navy, the Burza ("Storm"), Błyskawica ("Lightning"), and Grom ("Thunder"), were evacuated to the United Kingdom in late August and early September 1939. They were ordered to travel to British ports and assist the British Royal Navy in the event of a war with Nazi Germany. The plan was successful and allowed the ships to avoid certain destruction or capture in the German invasion.
The London Victory Celebrations of 1946 were British Commonwealth, Empire and Allied victory celebrations held after the defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan in World War II. On 1 Nov 1945 the Prime Minister appointed a committee under the chairmanship of the Home Secretary, James Chuter Ede to formulate plans for official Victory Celebrations. The celebrations took place in London on 8 June 1946, and consisted mainly of a military parade through the city and a night time fireworks display. Most British allies took part in the parade, including Belgium, Brazil, China, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Luxembourg the Netherlands and the United States. The parade arrangements caused a controversy surrounding the lack of representation of Polish forces.
The Treaty of Stuhmsdorf, or Sztumska Wieś, was a treaty signed on 12 September 1635 between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Swedish Empire in the village of Stuhmsdorf, Poland, just south of Stuhm (Sztum).
ORP Ślązak was a World War II Hunt-class destroyer. Initially laid down in 1940 for the Royal Navy as HMS Bedale, in 1942 she was commissioned by the Polish Navy.
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.
The Polish Merchant Navy was created in the interwar period when the Second Polish Republic regained independence.
The Polish Navy is a military branch of the Polish Armed Forces responsible for naval operations. The Polish Navy consists of 48 ships and about 12,000 commissioned and enlisted personnel. The traditional ship prefix in the Polish Navy is ORP.
The Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland are the national armed forces of the Republic of Poland. The name has been used since the early 19th century, but can also be applied to earlier periods.
References
- ↑ Peszke, Michael Alfred (February 1999). Poland's Navy, 1918-1945. Hippocrene Books. p. 37. ISBN 0-7818-0672-0.
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