Recent German Claims Against Poland

Recent German Claims Against Poland
Krzysztof Rak and Mariusz Muszyński

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Poland is probably the only country in which large fractions of the national elites permit
unreasonable demands from abroad to be made against the nation, and question the necessity of structuring one’s responses to the world in terms of national interest. Members of such elites thus undermine the most self-evident principle of foreign policy: the defense of the interests of one’s country. The reasons for assuming such attitudes are numerous and include naivete, intellectual besserwissenschaft, party fractionalism, and the habit of servility born during centuries of forfeited sovereignty. The most recent example is the situation that resulted from the demand by some German groups for financial reparations from Poland to partially compensate for Germans’ territorial losses after the Second World War.

In 2006, the Prussian Trust, an organization representing German postwar expellees from Central and Eastern Europe, submitted a claim against Poland to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, alleging that Poland committed crimes during the forced evacuation of Germans to Germany in 1945. [1] While Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga pointed out that “the resettlement of the German population was decided by the governments of the United States, Great Britain, and the USSR” and “the World War II . . . began with the German attack on Poland and caused irreparable losses and sufferings to the Polish state and nation,”[2] the German government said nothing. Given the fact that in 1945 the entire territory of Poland was occupied by the Soviets, the only sensible policy regarding such demands is for the German government to step in and make them an internal German problem. The Polish government proposed such a solution, but even in Poland some opposition leaders protested. One of the leaders of the Civic Platform Party [one of the opposition parties] proposed a similar solution somewhat earlier. However, other members of the political elites disagreed-even though their financial or ideological interests trumped national interest in this case.

Several arguments have been used by such political circles to justify their stance. The first is that such demands have been raised by marginal German groups and therefore should not be taken seriously. However, the so-called Vertriebene and their descendants constitute a well-disciplined electorate consisting of several million people. Before each election the political forces in Germany compete for this electorate. It was the fear of losing it that in 1990 made Chancellor Helmut Kohl resist the signing of the treaty with Poland that confirmed the present borders. It is because of this electorate that the chancellors and presidents of Germany grace with their presence the congresses of the “expellees,” not to speak of the fact that in the coalition agreement between CDU and SPD the government promised not to forget them. [3] J. K. Fromme, head of the expellees’ caucus in the CDU/CSU fraction of the Bundestag, has stated that the burden of guilt for the outcome of the Second World War is shared by Adolf Hitler and Poland, and that the Potsdam agreements [confirming the present borders of Poland] were merely “the minutes of certain negotiations” rather than an international agreement on which the present order of Europe rests.[4] Ms. Erika Steinbach, head of the Prussian Trust and a Bundestag member, has compared the deportations of Germans to the Holocaust, and ridiculed the Warsaw Uprising.[5] Do these people represent the margins of German society? We doubt it. Has any Parliament member in Poland compared the massacre of Poles in Volhynia during the Second World War to the genocide of Jews engineered by the Germans? Has any member of the Polish Parliament ever made claims against the Ukrainians because Poles lost their properties in Ukraine? Has anyone in Poland ever compared the Ukrainian misdeeds against Poles to the crimes of Hitler or Stalin? Of course not. Why don’t we ask our western neighbor to react to the trashing of standards of political decency by some of their compatriots?


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Given the fact that in 1945 the entire territory of Poland was occupied by the Soviets, the only sensible policy regarding restitution demands is for the German government to step in and make them an internal German problem.


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The second argument in favor of doing nothing about such German demands is that any Polish attempt to close the issue of Polish-German war damages once and for all would legitimize German demands that have no legal value at present. To this we say that such claims should not be directed at the Polish state, period. If the claims are indeed of no consequence, the German government would not have argued that it cannot dismiss them because in such a case the expellees would have made claims against the German government itself. It is incomprehensible why certain parts of the Polish political elite accept this argument of the German government. Do those who accept it prefer that the claims be directed at Poland rather than Germany? Apparently the Poles are considered incredibly naive by the German government if it continues to maintain that the Prussian Trust’s claims have no legal value while at the same time accepting international norms concerning the property of private persons, norms that will be tested in the Strasbourg court as a result of the Prussian Trust’s actions. One can, of course, take the position that such claims are not justified. However, once legal procedures are initiated against Poland, the decision will not be in the hands of the respective governments but in the hands of an international court. Furthermore, it should be remembered that with regard to “expulsions and expropriations,” the German legal doctrine accepts no statute of limitations.[6] In practice, this means that the German side could wait for generations for a favorable evolution of the political situation, or for an international law that would open the door to the possibility of pursuing such claims against a weaker neighbor.

It could be argued that such an evolution has already begun. The doctrine of the rights of individuals has trumped national sovereignty on a number of occasions. The argument about restitution of German property is another step in this process. The evolution of the legal system in Europe has bestowed genuine rights on the individual. It is now possible to sue a sovereign country before an international tribunal. The Prussian Trust knows well that by ratifying the European Convention of Human Rights, Poland accepted that standard and the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg Tribunal.

It should also be remembered that, in this case, the argument that laws cannot be introduced retroactively may not work. The Strasbourg Tribunal operates according to the rule of “continuous consequences” (naruszenie ciągłe): if an act deemed illegal took place before the country ratified the Convention on Human Rights and the consequences of that act are still in operation today, the tribunal may intervene. This happened in 1996 when the state of Turkey lost the case against a Cypriot Greek even though the property dispute took place before Turkey ratified the convention. It is significant that the Prussian Trust refers to that particular case (Loizidou vs. Turkey) in its actions against Poland. A German proverb says: “In the court of law and at sea only God decides.” In contrast, in Poland such demands have been perceived through the lens of the law of absolute primacy of the state over the citizen, which prevailed in Soviet-occupied Poland for two generations.

Few people in Poland or elsewhere know that in Germany there exists a vast literature justifying German property claims in territories that had been granted to Poland through international agreements after the Second World War (the same agreements deprived Poland of eastern territories from which hundreds of thousands of Poles were expelled without any restitution of property whatsoever). In present-day Germany there is hardly a single international law specialist that does not have in his curriculum vitae at least one article dedicated to the postwar fate of the expellees. The conclusions of such articles are generally anti-Polish. The vocabulary used in German public life-the key concepts of “expulsion” (Vertreibung) and “dispossession” (Enteignung)-contain legally detrimental connotations. Poles and others have also forgotten that one of the most respected authorities in international law, Professor Alfred Verdross, introduced (in collaboration with Professor Bruno Simma, now a judge in the International Tribunal in the Hague) into international law the institution of territorial supervision. This annulled the finality of Polish rights regarding post-German territories given to Poland after the Second World War[7] while at the same time cutting off eastern territories from the Polish state, thus initiating the painful and costly (to Poles) relocation of the Polish population from present-day Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine to western territories, from which Germans were relocated to Germany.

The third argument minimizing the claims of the Prussian Trust has to do with the allegedly radically changed nature of German patriotism. The argument claims that the German national consciousness has been radically changed, and therefore a danger of Germans engaging in any form of aggression against their eastern neighbor is thus simply moot. It is true that Germany went though a period of soul-searching after the Second World War, especially regarding the Jews and the Holocaust. However, such a soul-searching has never taken place regarding the Catholic Poles. It also appears that not only ordinary Germans but also German historians harbor an idealized picture of their actions in Poland in 1939-45, and the catastrophic destruction of Polish lives and property in the second world war. What is more, for a quarter-century now the historical debate in Germany (Historikerstret) has involved a number of serious historians who have posited that the crimes Germans committed in the Second World War were not exceptional, given that the twentieth century was a century of genocides such as that of the Armenians, the Ukrainians, and so on. If so, then the German nation is no more responsible for the history of that century than any other nation. In this context it can hardly be surprising that some segment of the expellees group accuses the victims of being the executioners, and is close to accusing Poles of genocide of the Germans before an international tribunal.[8] If such people as Rudi Pawelka [the founder of the Prussian Trust], Steinbach, and Fromme are representative of German public opinion at least in part, then the concerns expressed in this article are far from being groundless. Finally, some Polish specialists in German affairs reach for geopolitical arguments and maintain that arguing with the Germans about the Prussian Trust destroys the chances of a successful Polish presence in European politics. They maintain that these arguments are moot, and that they have to do with historical interpretations rather than with contemporary politics. However, the postulate of “choosing the future” while abstracting from the past is impossible to put to practice. A collective brainwashing that would lead to historical amnesia, even if it occurred with full consent of the Poles, cannot be accomplished. All previous attempts to amputate memory have failed, not only in Poland but everywhere else. The most recent attempt, that of the Soviets, ended in a spectacular failure. We therefore maintain that an attempt to excise the memory of past events would have negative results for European identity.

The process of European integration is not an abstract construct, but is related to the future vitality and viability of the continent. Its roots go back to the problem Europe faced between 1871 and 1945: how to arrange the continent in such a way as to accommodate Germany in Europe. Germany is stronger than other European countries, but it is too weak to become an international superpower. President Francois Mitterrand’s policy regarding German reunification exemplified the dilemma facing Germany’s neighbors. Germany’s strength naturally pushes it toward attempts at domination, but these attempts ended with German defeat in the two world wars. Thus European integration was conceived as a means to enable Germany to peacefully coexist with other European nations and to rein in its dominating tendencies. A fundamental condition of such a solution was the Germans’ assumption of historical guilt, owing to which Germany assumed such a nobly responsible role concerning the rest of Europe in the second part of the twentieth century. It was this double burden the Germans carried-an admission of guilt and the weight of leadership-that is a major reason for the successes of European integration so far. Today we observe a reversal of this historical policy, and attempts to relativize German guilt on the one hand, and a general European disinterest in long-term consequences of political passivity on the other. It is not an accident that the Germany of Gerhard Schröder, Erika Steinbach, and Rudi Pawelka backed off from the process of deepening European integration.

The arguments raised by some Poles and others concerning the issue of German demands thus amount to saying that it is imprudent of Poles to display politically aggressive behavior toward the Germans. Such a stance shows full disregard for facts: it is not Poles but Germans who are asking for reparations, while common sense tells us that the situation ought to be reversed. In 1945 Poland was nominally one of the victorious members of the anti-Nazi coalition, but in practice it lost the war because it was occupied by the USSR. Poles got no restitution from the Germans for the unspeakable losses of life and property. The argument that the so-called “western” (post-German) territories allotted to Poland by the Great Powers constituted such restitution is flawed. Before the Poles assumed jurisdiction over these territories, the Red Army plundered everything that was worth plundering, dispatching entire factories to the USSR by train and truck and destroying such cities as Danzig/Gdańsk. The Polish victims of Nazi terror received no financial reparations. The minuscule payments of 1991-2006 cannot be treated as reparations: even the German side admitted that they were given de gratia, as a kind of charity donation to the destitute. The government of Soviet-occupied Poland extracted 100 million DM from the pockets of the “western revanchists”; these monies then disappeared, allegedly into the state treasury, some of it into the pockets of the apparatchiks; they have never been properly accounted for. In the 1990s the post-Round Table Polish governments took the line of least resistance and did not raise the issue of reparations. It is thus justifiable to say that Poles and the descendants of Polish victims of the Nazis never received any reparations whatsoever.

The history of Polish-German relations during the last half-century is the history of one-sided Polish relinquishments of the right to demand reparations. In 1953 Bolesław Bierut, president of Soviet-occupied Poland, renounced any war reparation claims against DDR [East Germany]. Even though the documentation is missing, it has been assumed that in 1970 the government of Soviet-controlled Poland confirmed this renunciation in a treaty that normalized Polish-German relations. In 1991 Prime Minister Krzysztof Bielecki’s government renounced support for any individual claims by non-Jewish Polish victims of the Nazis. In 1994 Prime Minister Marek Belka confirmed this stance. Thus the Polish side had long ago renounced all claims to the restitution of property and compensation for life and hardship incurred during the Second World War. Yet today, some members of the Polish political elites accept German claims to property restitution from Poland! Moreover, these politicians accuse of radicalism all those who try to point out these facts.Professor Alfons Klafkowski, who specializes in Polish-German relations between 1945-89, has estimated that Polish claims against Germans concerning Polish property lost or destroyed amounted to half a trillion dollars (in 1980 dollars).[9] He suggested raising this issue with the government of Germany. What happened instead was a decision by the German authorities to extend pitifully small alms to a few thousand survivors who experienced health-destroying slave labor in Germany during the war, or otherwise were mistreated, imprisoned, or tortured by the German Nazis.

In view of the above, the accusations of radicalism that are sometimes extended toward Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński by those who oppose progress in Poland are absurd. On many occasions, the Polish prime minister has proposed the signing of a Polish-German treaty that irrevocably and finally denounces all claims by either side concerning losses in the Second World War (see his interview in this issue of Sarmatian Review, or the October 2006 article in the German Bild). In Germany such a proposal should be considered minimalist, and should be welcome. Kaczyński took a bold step renouncing mutual claims once and for all. Will the German side respond?

Over the last fifteen years, the consecutive governments of Poland acted as if the former communists could become model Europeans in the nick of time, and the Polish foreign policy was often conducted in defiance of the Polish national interest. Claims of the importance of national interest were ridiculed as backward and reactionary. The government of Prime Minister Kaczyński is trying to reverse this trend. There are serious issues in Polish-German relations that need discussing: the issue of the Prussian Trust, the issue of the version of history actively promoted in Germany today, the issue of the Szczecin Bay rights, the issue of the status of the Polish language in Germany and of the Polish minority in Germany. We will be able to solve these issues if the Germans begin to treat Poland as a partner, and not as a country that can be disingenuously excluded from the process of mutual recognition.

Translated by the Sarmatian Review staff.



NOTES
1. Piotr Jędroszczyk, “Wysiedleni žądają zwrotu mienia w Polsce,” Rzeczpospolita, 19 December 2006.
2. Website of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, , as of 30 January 2007.
3. Deputy Hans-Joachim Otto’s query (FDP) published in Bundestag Drucksache 16/2584, questions 21 and 22: “What specific step has the federal government taken to redress the injustices of the expulsion, as promised in the coalition agreement between CDU, CSU, and SPD signed 11 November 2005, p. 114?” Polish Foreign Ministry site, , as of 30 January 2007.
4. An interview with CDU MP J. K. Fromme, Rzeczpospolita, 12 December 2006.
5. Erika Steinbach, “Das Gewissen is gegen Vertreibungen sensibiliziert,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 26 August 1999; Deutsche Radio, ; .
6. D. Blumenwitz, Das Offenhalten der Vermoegensfragen in deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen (Bonn, 1992); “Konwencja o nie stosowaniu przedawnienia wobec zbrodni wojennych i zbrodni przeciwko ludzkosci,” Dziennik Ustaw, 26 November 1968 (Dz. U. 70.26.208).
7. A. Verdross, B. Simma, R. Geiger, Territoriale Souveränität und Gebietshoheit. Zur völkerrechtlichen Lage der Oder-Neisse Gebiete (Bonn, 1980).
8. In Die Geschichte der Oder-Neisse-Linie (München: Olzog, 2006), author Michael A. Hartenstein claims that the reason for changing the Polish-German borders in 1945 was Polish nationalism.
9. Alfons Klafkowski, The Problems of War Compensation Connected With World War II (Poznań, 1991); n.a., “Sprawozdanie Biura Odszkodowań Wojennych - Straty wojenne Polski,” January

Monte Cassino

PRZECHODNIU, POWIEDZ POLSCE, ZESMY POLEGLI WIERNI
W JEJ SLUZBIE, ZA WOLNOSC NASZA I WASZA, MY ZOLNIERZE
POLSCY ODDALISMY-BOGU DUCHA, ZIEMI WLOSKIEJ CIALO, A SERCA, POLSCE
Passerby, tell Poland that we fell faithfully in her service,
for our freedom and yours, we Polish soldiers gave our souls to
God, our bodies to the soil of Italy, and our hearts to Poland।

On September 1st, 1939, 1.8 million German troops invaded Poland on three fronts; East Prussia in the north, Germany in the west and Slovakia in the south. They had 2600 tanks against the Polish 180, and over 2000 aircraft against the Polish 420. Their "Blitzkrieg" tactics, coupled with their bombing of defenseless towns and refugees, had never been seen before and, at first, caught the Poles off-guard. By September 14th. Warsaw was surrounded. At this stage the poles reacted, holding off the Germans at Kutno and regrouping behind the Wisla (Vistula) and Bzura rivers. Although Britain and France declared war on September 3rd. the Poles received no help - yet it had been agreed that the Poles should fight a defensive campaign for only 2 weeks during which time the Allies could get their forces together and attack from the west.
On September 17th. Soviet forces invaded from the east. Warsaw surrendered 2 weeks later, the garrison on the Hel peninsula surrendered on October 2nd., and the Polesie Defense group, after fighting on two fronts against both German and Soviet forces, surrendered on October 5th. The Poles had held on for twice as long as had been expected and had done more damage to the Germans than the combined British and French forces were to do in 1940. The Germans lost 50,000 men, 697 planes and 993 tanks and armored cars.
In the Soviet zone 1.5 million Poles (including women and children) were transported to labor camps in Siberia and other areas. Many thousands of captured Polish officers were shot at several secret forest sites; the first to be discovered being Katyn, near Smolensk.
The Germans declared their intention of eliminating the Polish race (a task to be completed by 1975) alongside the Jews. This process of elimination, the "Holocaust", was carried out systematically. All members of the "intelligentsia" were hunted down in order to destroy Polish culture and leadership (many were originally exterminated at Oswiencim - better known by its German name, Auschwitz.
The Polish Jews were herded into Ghettos where they were slowly starved and cruelly offered hopes of survival but, in fact, ended up being shot or gassed. In the end they were transported, alongside non-Jewish Poles, Gypsies and Soviet POWs, to extermination camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka; at Auschwitz over 4 million were exterminated. 2000 concentration camps were built in Poland, which became the major site of the extermination program, since this was where most of the intended victims lived.
Many non-Jewish Poles were either transported to Germany and used as slave labor or simply executed. In the cities the Germans would round-up and kill indiscriminately as a punishment for any underground or anti-German or pro-Jewish activity. In the countryside they kept prominent citizens as hostages who would be executed if necessary. Sometimes they liquidated whole villages; at least 300 villages were destroyed. Hans Frank said, "If I wanted to put up a poster for every seven Poles shot, the forests of Poland would not suffice to produce the paper for such posters."
Despite such horror the Poles refused to give in or cooperate (there were no Polish collaborators as in other occupied countries). The Polish Underground or AK (Armia Krajowa or Home Army) was the largest in Europe with 400,000 men. The Jewish resistance movement was set up separately because of the problem of being imprisoned within the ghettos. Both these organizations caused great damage to the Nazi military machine. Many non-Jewish Poles saved the lives of thousands of Jews despite the fact that the penalty, if caught, was death (in fact, Poland was the only occupied nation where aiding Jews was punishable by death).
In early part of 1940 over 1 million poles were send by Soviets to Siberia with help very often by Stalin’s Jewish collaborators.
Poland had the largest underground army in occupied Europe. About 450 000 poles were active in underground army against Nazi. Polish Army was in all fronts World WarII from Tobruk, Monte Casino, Africa, Middle East, Battle of England, and Eastern Front.
The Polish pilots stood out during the campaign of 1939 and highlighted during the campaign in France. But the most distinguished role they played in 1940 when the decisive for the fate of the England and the coalition Battle of Britain took place (August 8 – October 31, 1940). During the Battle of Britain the Poles shot down 203 Luftwaffe aircraft which stood for 12% of total German losses in this battle.
From 1940 to 1945 the Polish squadrons and the Polish pilots serving in British units achieved 621 confirmed kills, and together with campaigns of 1939 and France– 900 confirmed and 189 probable. In the end of the world betrayed by alia
What about the braking of the Enigma Code and giving several days before the war Enigma Code, information how it works and polish build decryption machine to French
Poland Intelligence.
Polish people did not received from Germany over 100 billion dollars and billions from Switzerland like Jewish community did.
Fighting on all Fronts:
The Polish Army, Navy and Air Force reorganized abroad and continued to fight the Germans. In fact they have the distinction of being the only nation to fight on every front in the War. In 1940 they fought in France, in the Norwegian campaign they earned a reputation for bravery at Narvik, and in Africa the Carpathian Brigade fought at Tobruk.
Polish Squadrons played an important role in the Battle of Britain, accounting for 12% of all German aircraft destroyed at the cost of 33 lives. By the end of the war they had flown a total of 86,527 sorties, lost 1669 men and shot down 500 German planes and 190 V1 rockets.

The Polish Navy, which had escaped intact, consisted of 60 vessels, including 2 cruisers, 9 destroyers and 5 submarines (one of which was the famous "Orzel") which were involved in 665 actions at sea. The first German ship sunk in the war was sunk by Polish ships. The Navy also took part in the D-Day landings.
When the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany, in June 1941, Polish POWs were released from prison camps and set up an army headed by General Anders. Many civilians were taken under the protection of this army which was allowed to make its way to Persia (modern-day Iran) and then on to Egypt. This army, the Polish Second Corps, fought with distinction in Italy, their most notable victory being that at Monte Cassino, in May 1944, and which opened up the road to Rome for the Allies as a whole. One of the "heroes" of the Polish Second Corps was Wojtek, a brown bear adopted in Iran as their mascot; at Monte Cassino Wojtek actually helped in the fighting by carrying ammunition for the guns. He died, famous and well-loved, in Edinburgh Zoo in 1964, aged 22.
All the Polish forces took part in the Allied invasion of Europe and liberation of France, playing a particularly crucial role in the significant Battle of the Falaise Gap. The Polish Parachute Brigade took part in the disastrous Battle of Arnhem in Holland. In 1945, the Poles captured the German port of Wilhelmshaven.
In 1943 a division of Polish soldiers was formed in Russia under Soviet control and fought on the Eastern Front. They fought loyally alongside the Soviet troops, despite the suffering they had experienced in Soviet hands, and they distinguished themselves in breaking through the last German lines of defense, the "Pomeranian Rampart", in the fighting in Saxony and in the capture of Berlin.

The "Home Army", under the command of General Stefan Roweki (code-named "Grot"), and after his capture in 1943 (he was later murdered), by General Tadeusz Komorowski (code-named "Bor"), fought a very varied war; at times in open combat in brigade or division strength, at times involved in sabotage, often acting as execution squads eliminating German officials, and often fighting a psychological campaign against German military and civilians. It was a costly war since the Germans always took reprisals.
The Intelligence Service of the Home Army captured and sent parts of the V1 to London for examination, providing information on German military movements (giving advanced warning of the German plan to invade Russia), and gave the RAF full information about Peenemunde, where the Germans were producing V2 rockets.
Betrayal:
The crime of Katyn was discovered in 1943 and created a rift in Polish-Soviet relations. From now on the Home Army was attacked by Soviet propaganda as collaborating with the Germans and being called on to rise against the Germans once the Red Army reached the outskirts of Warsaw.
Secretly, at Teheran, the British and Americans agreed to letting the Russians profit from their invasion of Poland in 1939 and allowing them to keep the lands that had been absorbed. The "accidental" death of General Sikorski at this time helped keep protests at a minimum.

When the Russians crossed into Poland the Home Army cooperated in the fight against the Germans and contributed greatly to the victories at Lwow, Wilno and Lublin only to find themselves surrounded and disarmed by their "comrades-in-arms" and deported to labor camps in Siberia.
On August 1, 1944, with the Russian forces on the right bank of the Vistula, the Home Army rose in Warsaw; the Warsaw Rising. Heroic street-fighting involving the whole population, using the sewers as lines of communication and escape, under heavy bombardment, lasted for 63 days. The city was completely destroyed. Not only did the Russians cease to advance but they also refused to allow Allied planes to land on Russian airfields after dropping supplies. After surrendering many civilians and soldiers were executed or sent to concentration camps to be exterminated and Warsaw was razed to the ground.
The defeat in Warsaw destroyed the political and military institutions of the Polish underground and left the way open for a Soviet take-over.
With the liberation of Lublin in July 1944 a Russian-sponsored Polish Committee for National Liberation (a Communist Government in all but name) had been set up and the British had put great pressure, mostly unsuccessful, on the Government-in-exile to accept this status quo. At Yalta, in February 1945, the Allies put Poland within the Russian zone of influence in a post-war Europe. To most Poles the meaning of these two events was perfectly clear; Poland had been betrayed. At one stage the Polish Army, still fighting in Italy and Germany, was prepared to withdraw from the front lines in protest; after all, they were supposed to be fighting for Polish liberation. It is a reflection on Polish honor that no such withdrawal took place since it could leave large gaps in the front lines and so was considered too dangerous for their Allied comrades-in-arms.
The war ended on May 8th, 1945.
The Cost:
The Poles are the people who really lost the war.
Over half a million fighting men and women, and 6 million civilians (or 22% of the total population) died. About 50% of these were Polish Christians and 50% were Polish Jews. Approximately 5,384,000 or 89.9% of Polish war losses (Jews and Gentiles) were the victims of prisons, death camps, raids, and executions, annihilation of ghettos, epidemics, starvation, excessive work and ill treatment. So many Poles were sent to concentration camps that virtually every family had someone close to them who had been tortured or murdered there.
There were one million war orphans and over half a million invalids.
The country lost 38% of its national assets (Britain lost 0.8%, France lost 1.5%). Half the country was swallowed up by the Soviet Union including the two great cultural centers of Lwow and Wilno.
Many Poles could not return to the country for which they has fought because they belonged to the "wrong" political group or came from eastern Poland and had thus become Soviet citizens. Others were arrested, tortured and imprisoned by the Soviet authorities for belonging to the Home Army.
Although "victors" they were not allowed to partake in victory celebrations.

Through fighting "For Our Freedom and Yours" they had exchanged one master for another and were, for many years to come, treated as "the enemy" by the very Allies who had betrayed them at Teheran and Yalta।
ITALIAN CAMPAIGN AND THE BATTLE OF MONTE CASSINO

At the beginning of 1944, after moving from Iraq to Palestine, the 2ND Polish Corps moved to Egypt and then on to southern Italy. After a few smaller engagements in southern Italy, the Corps was moved to the vicinity of the Monte Cassino monastery. Because of its commanding location, the massif overlooked and controlled the Naples-Rome road and railway line. The Germans, realizing its strategic value, had fortified and connected it to their Gustav Line fortifications stretching across the Italian "boot" and manned it with the crack 1ST Parachute Division. Three attempts to take the monastery had already been made by the Allies, but without success. The first attempt was made by the units of the American Fifth Army, an Algerian formation of the French Corps and units of the British Eighth Army. The following two attempts by the New Zealand Corps were also unsuccessful. On March 24, 1944, General Leese, commander of the British Eighth Army, asked General Anders if the 2ND Polish Corps would undertake a capturing of the monastery. He received an affirmative reply.

The attack, at 1:00 A.M. on May 12, 1944, was preceded by a two-hour, 800-gun artillery barrage along the entire front. Two Polish divisions advanced, ascending rocky 30 to 45-degree inclines and enduring the constant fire of well-positioned, fortified German artillery and machine guns. The fighting continued throughout the night and until the following afternoon. There was no chance of bringing reinforcements, as all paths and roads were covered by German fire. Yet, despite the enormous fire power, the Allied artillery did not succeed in silencing the German artillery; and, in the evening of May 12, General Anders gave the order to withdraw to the original departure points. The withdrawal ended on May 13. At 7:00 A.M. on May 17, fresh battalions of the two Polish divisions began the attack. This time, despite the terrain, Polish tanks were sent up the mountain. Those which broke down or were damaged by mines were pushed into the precipice to make room for those behind. Also, weighing two and a half tons each, anti-tank canons were disassembled below, dragged up the mountain piece by piece under the cover of darkness, reassembled and, at the time of the attack, opened up on the Germans at point-blank range.
In the late afternoon of May 17, the critical point was reached; it was impossible to gain any more ground. Exhausted soldiers laid hidden behind the rocks. The Germans were equally as exhausted.

Victory depended on the strength of will of each side. The 2ND Polish Corps did not have any reserves, but General Anders decided to throw everything he had into the final attack: bloodied battalions from the first engagement, commandos, drivers, and mechanics. On the morning of May 18, renewed attack was launched; but, during the night, the crack German paratroopers had had enough and withdrew, leaving only a token defense behind. Thus, at 10:20 A.M. on May 18, 1944, a patrol of the 12TH Cavalry Regiment hoisted the Polish flag upon the ruins of the monastery. The road to Rome was open. On June 4, 1944, the American Fifth Army entered the Eternal City.
Not long afterwards, the 2ND Polish Corps fought a victorious eight-day battle for Loreto; moving north along the Adriatic, they captured Ancona, broke through the Gothic Line, and took Faenza. On April 21, 1945, the Italian Campaign ended with the 2ND Polish Corps' liberation of Bologna.
Battle of Monte Cassino
- the fifth greatest battle of World War II

The pact signed in Moscow at the end of August between Hitler and Stalin gave a green light for war against Poland.

September 1,1939 Wehrmacht launched its Blitzkrieg, and a couple weeks later, the Red Army stabbed the overwhelmed Polish Army in the back, splitting Poland in half along a prearranged line.

Less then two years later, Hitler’s surprise attack on Russia forced Stalin to turn to the West for help. This gave the Polish government-in-exile in London a chance to negotiate the release of Polish prisoners held in the Gulag. Out of almost two million held there, only less then 75,000 prisoners were released from prisons and labor camps. They joined the recruiting centers and waited - sick and hungry — for the arms that Stalin has promised their prime minister in London, but few only were delivered. General Wladyslaw Anders, just released from the notorious Lubyanka prison, knowing the Russians well, was very apprehensive and suspicious about Stalin's designs on Poland. Being aware of his plans to control newly organized army militarily as well as politically, Anders worked out a plan of evacuation to Iran Under pressure of Wehrmacht advance to the gates of Moscow in late 1941, Stalin panicked and dropped his guard, allowing several divisions of Polish volunteers to join the British 10th Army in the Middle East.

Welcome there, they were fed, dressed, armed and trained. By mid 1943 the 2nd Polish Corps was ready for action .just in time to help with a stalled advance at the Gustav Line barring advance to Rome during five month of heavy Allied fighting. The Gustav Line crossing Apennine peninsula was anchored on towering Monte Cassino, with its thousand year old Benedictine monastery on top.

As in ancient times, the mountain was vital to the German's defenses. It was providing a perfect observation point to which the Germans added an elaborate system of bunkers and tunnels. From this fortified vantage point, the Germans commanded the valley of the river Liri, and the road to Rome. Built by Romans, now Highway 6, ancient Via Casillina was originally constructed to facilitate the movement of Roman troops in their march North to expand the Roman Empire. Now, twenty-five centuries later, troops of the allied forces, including the Polish Free Army, used the same road on their way to victory.

Before the 2nd Corps took positions, the Allies in preparation for storming the Monte Cassino attempted to eliminate town of Cassino, located at its foot. Now being in ruins, and almost totally destroyed on surface, it was still representing a formidable obstruction with its underground bunkers.

Town of Cassino, originally known as Cassimum, was regarded as a sacred place and was revered by the Romans. Two centuries before the birth of Christ, emperor Markus Aurelius Antonius — had his villa there.

Town of Cassino, in the three month prior to May 1944, has been devastated in the offensives led by the American 5th and British 8th armies.

After the New Zealanders under gen. Friberg suffered huge losses, frustrated general called for destruction of monastery from the air. In one of the most tragic miscalculations of the war, 500 American bombers pulverized the ancient abbey with its priceless medieval treasures — some saved, were evacuated to Rome by Abbot Diamare.

"The Lord willed it, and it was good thing for the salvation ion of Rome , - the old abbot told his Benedictine monks after bombardment.

The New Zealanders, supported by Indian troops, attacked once more, and again were driven off by Germans, who had taker advantage of the rubble to create new defense positions.

Meanwhile, the Allied invasion at Anzio launched in February to circumvent the Gustav Line , was still cornered or the beach by Germans.

The debacle at Anzio and the ruins of monastery, still defended, were symbolic of Allied failure to achieve victory in Italy.

Beginning of April , the Polish 2nd Corps was deployed to the front at Monte Cassino. The offensive started one hour before midnight on May 11, 1944. In his Order of the Day, gen. Anders addressed his apprehensive troops: "Soldiers, the time to defeat our ancient enemy has come. With faith in God's justice, tonight at 11 o'clock, we are going into battle beginning our last march to victory and on to our country, Poland."

The campaign in Italy , was difficult one. The mountainous terrain with some peaks reaching 6,000 feet, many fast flowing rivers and deep valleys were limiting use o armor in its classic concept of a quick action, so the major burden was on infantry, sustaining the heaviest losses.

Against all odds, during the battle which lasted a week, with infantry battalions decimated, the Poles beat the Germans into submission, and in the morning of May 18th. Polish flag was finally hoisted over the ruins of the monastery -

One of the greatest confrontation with the enemy during WW II was ended, the road to Rome opened and Americans and Anzio bridgehead relieved- With this dainge breakthrough victory in Italy was assured

The Poles paid their share of victory at Monte Cassino: over on thousand killed, and three thousand wounded.

Gen. Anders, commander of the 2nd Corps, before he died in London in 1972, expressed his wish to be laid to rest with his fallen soldiers near the monastery. After the war a cemetery was built at the foot of the Abbey by surviving soldiers of the 2nd Corps.

At its entrance, the engraved epitaph depicts their bravery and dedication to Poland.