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.
Operation Ostra Brama was the Polish Home Army's attempted takeover of Vilnius in wake of the German Wehrmacht's evacuation, ahead of the approaching Soviet Red Army's Vilnius offensive. A part of a Polish national uprising, Operation Tempest, the action happened on 7–13 July 1944. The operation's main goal was propagandistic – to claim Vilnius for Poland by retaking it before Soviet arrival. Despite the operation's failure, the Polish government-in-exile continued its political line that led to the catastrophic Warsaw Uprising on 1 August 1944.
Operation Tempest was a series of uprisings conducted during World War II against occupying German forces by the Polish Home Army, the dominant force in the Polish resistance.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to the gas chambers of the Majdanek and Treblinka extermination camps.
Peasant Battalions was a Polish resistance movement, guerrilla and partisan organisation, during World War II. The organisation was created in mid-1940 by the agrarian political party People's Party and by 1944 was partially integrated with the Armia Krajowa. At its height, in summer 1944 the organisation had 160,000 members.
Zygmunt Szendzielarz was the commander of the Polish 5th Wilno Brigade of the Home Army and after the Second World War fought against the Red Army.
The Belarusian resistance during World War II opposed Nazi Germany from 1941 until 1944. Belarus was one of the Soviet republics occupied during Operation Barbarossa. The term Belarusian partisans may refer to Soviet-formed irregular military groups fighting Germany, but has also been used to refer to the disparate independent groups who also fought as guerrillas at the time, including Jewish groups, Polish groups, and nationalist Belarusian forces opposed to Germany.
In Poland, the resistance movement during World War II was led by the Home Army. The Polish resistance is notable among others for disrupting German supply lines to the Eastern Front, and providing intelligence reports to the British intelligence agencies. It was a part of the Polish Underground State.
Bolesław Bogdan Piasecki, alias Leon Całka, Wojciech z Królewca, Sablewski was a Polish writer, politician and political theorist. During the war, he was active in the anti-German and anti-Soviet armed underground. Initially of national radical views, he became associated after the war with the ruling Polish communists and led a group of lay Catholics who collaborated with the communist regime.
The issue of Polish and Lithuanian relations during the World War II is a controversial one, and some modern Lithuanian and Polish historians still differ in their interpretations of the related events, many of which are related to the Lithuanian collaboration with Nazi Germany and the operations of Polish resistance organization of Armia Krajowa on territories inhabited by Lithuanians and Poles. Several common academic conferences started bridging the gap between Lithuanian and Polish interpretations, but significant differences remain.
The Dubingiai massacre was a mass murder of 20–27 Lithuanian civilians in the town of Dubingiai on 23 June 1944. The massacre was carried out by the Polish Home Army's 5th Wilno Brigade, part of the Polish resistance, in reprisal for the Glinciszki (Glitiškės) massacre of Polish civilians committed on 20 June 1944 by the Nazi-subordinated 258th Lithuanian Police Battalion.
The Battle of Murowana Oszmianka of 13–14 May 1944 was the largest clash between the Polish resistance movement organization Home Army and the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force (LTDF); a Lithuanian volunteer security force subordinated to Nazi Germany occupational administration. The battle took place in and near the village of Murowana Oszmianka in Generalbezirk Litauen, part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland. The outcome of the battle was that the 301st LTDF battalion was routed and the entire force was disbanded by the Germans soon afterwards due to its members refusing to take an oath to Hitler and be subordinate to German commanders.
104 Company of Syndicalists was a military unit created by the Union of Polish Syndicalists, which participated in the Warsaw Uprising.
In mid-August 1943, a Polish unit of the Striking Cadre Battalions (UBK), which was controlled by the resistance organization Confederation of the Nation, launched an armed attack on East Prussian villages in the area of Johannisburg. The attack, ordered by Colonel Stanislaw Karolkiewicz, was launched in revenge for atrocities which the Germans committed against the Polish population of the Bialystok District. The targets of the attack included devout Nazis, NSDAP members and ethnic German inhabitants of the district who were engaging in brutality against the Polish population of the district. According to Polish sources, some 70 Germans were killed and 40 German farms were razed to the ground, while an eyewitness reported that 13 people were killed, including a woman and two children, and two people were wounded. The revenge attack shocked Prussian Germans and it also caused them to rethink the genocidal tactics which they used against the Polish population.
Adolf Pilch was a Polish resistance fighter during World War II. He became part of the Polish special forces (cichociemni) trained in the United Kingdom, and was parachuted into occupied Poland on 17 February 1943. There, as a member of the Armia Krajowa Polish resistance, he organized a cavalry partisan unit in the Nowogródek area, and broke through to the Kampinos forest near Warsaw, taking control of this area. At its height of operations his unit consisted of up to 1000 men. Between 3 June 1943 and 17 January 1945 his partisans fought in 235 battles.
Operation Heads was the code name for a series of assassinations of Nazi officials by the World War II Polish Resistance. Those targeted for assassination had been sentenced to death by Polish Underground Special Courts for crimes against Polish citizens during the World War II German occupation of Poland. The operation's code name, literally "Operation Little Heads", was a sardonic reference to the Totenkopf insignia on Nazi German SS uniforms and headgear.
Antoni Burzyński nom de guerre Kmicic was an officer of the Second Polish Republic's Polish Army, the Home Army and commander of the first Polish partisan unit in the Vilnius Region.
The battle of Graużyszki took place on the 6th of May 1944 near the Villages of Graużyszki, Adamowszczyzna and Sieńkowszyzna. Polish forces from the 8th and 13th Oszmiana Brigade of the Home Army under the command of Adam Walczak engaged units of the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force under the command of Antanas Andriunas. The battle ended with a Polish victory.
Ryś Battalion The Consipration Battalion of the Peasant Battalions, which operated in the Hrubieszów District from 1942 to 1945, numbered several hundred men at its peak, and was one of the largest groups that fought against the Ukrainian Nationalist troops and the Wermacht. The Battalion played an important role in the history of some people, preventing the pacification and massacre of villages and becoming one of the most famous battalions in the district
Stanisław Basaj, pseudonym "Ryś" or "Kraśka", was a Polish soldier and later a partisan of the Peasant Battalions. According to Polish nationalists and patriots Stanisław Basaj is considered a National hero, while according to Ukrainian nationalists he is considered a war criminal. In 1944 during the Hrubieszów revolution he organized massacres against the Ukrainian population in Łasków and Szychowice.
