Resistance Against The Communists

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Steve
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Resistance Against The Communists

#1

Post by Steve » 28 Apr 2020, 08:32

The following in very abridged form is taken from Civil War in Poland, 1942-1945 by Anita J.Prazmowska. We hear very little about the anti communist resistance so with nothing much to do in these interesting times I thought the subject would be of interest to some. The book deals mainly with the political side rather than the military side.

In May 1945 the NKVD arrested AK leaders from the Krakow area and found messages from London and instructions sent to district commanders. More leaders were arrested and radio operators and radio equipment captured. They now had information on AK plans to build a new underground organisation. Also that AK members were being told to join the Polish army and security service so as to demoralize them from within.

An NKVD report at this time said that the districts of Bialystok, Lublin, Rzeszow, Warsaw and Krakow were deemed “paralysed”. The fight against the bandits was being continued by five regiments of the NKVD and a battalion of motorised infantry a request for three more regiments was made. The evidence from Krakow confirmed what they had suspected which was that the NSZ (far right group) and AK had infiltrated the new communist administration and its security services. This combined with desertions from the police and army made it impossible for the Poles to establish control by themselves. Two regiments of the Polish army in Germany were now withdrawn and formed into Internal Security Groups whose officers were ex Red Army or NKVD.

In August a large AK group in Bialystok was broken up and its district archive captured also the AK leadership in Warsaw was captured. The NKVD now monitored communications between London and Poland over a long period. In a report summing up the summer months the NKVD reported only nine bands numbering 309 men had come out of hiding presumably because of an amnesty. Though 631 members of armed groups had either been arrested or killed there was no let up in the number of attacks. Between August 1 and 10 alone there had been 89 attacks. The arrest of leaders at a national level was not having an impact on AK activities. It seems that the AK leadership only set the broad strategy and it was up to districts as to how they implemented the strategy.

In October security services penetrated the NSZ at the national level and found out that they intended to scale back attacks and concentrate on a long term strategy. They were trying to infiltrate political parties that were still allowed and also the security services and army. The intention was to take commanding positions in the army and industry and wait for the anticipated conflict between the west and the USSR. The NSZ leader was trying to escape to the west and make contact with General Anders hoping to secure funds. In November the WiN organisation had its leadership arrested. The organisation seems to have been set up by the Home Army in order to combat the communists by means other than armed struggle though it did have armed units. WiN units had gone on the offensive in November together with NSZ bands and they had possibly cooperated with Ukrainian groups. In December the NSZ was routed.

Radkiewicz the communist minister of public safety confided in the Italian ambassador who was also a communist in January 1946. He said that common banditism plagued all countries that had recently experienced war and he estimated that at least 10,000 men continued being active. Also, that there were still 15,000 “political bandits” of whom NSZ members were considered the most dangerous. In February Radkiewicz called a press conference to denounce foreign involvement in the anti communist underground. He said that 1427 members of the security services had either been killed or died in action against the bandits and 2000 members of other parties had also been victims of attacks by various bands.

According to Soviet calculations made in May 1946 there had been 1909 attacks by various bands in the previous four months. During these attacks 1410 people connected to the regime had been killed and 186 members of the security services also 499 people were killed in robberies. Though the resistance was still very active in early 1946 the writing was on the wall with regard to its future.

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Re: Resistance Against The Communists

#2

Post by gebhk » 30 Apr 2020, 12:56

Undoubtedly a heroic attempt to disentangle a very complex stew. In terms of analysis - not unlike trying to extract the diced onions out of an Irish stew, cooked on and off for a prolonged period of time and then placed in an outside privy for 50 years while everyone pretended not to notice the smell. It is and was impossible to determine what of the recorded activity was 'resistance to the communists' and what was plain banditry (or a bit of both) in a society which lacked everything except weapons and whose population had been utterly deadened to everything except survival - which guaranteed banditry on a grand scale would have been occurring even without the added layer of violence by and against the government.

Since you can only really know something about something if you can measure it, I believe (given the unreliability of statistical evidence and the time passed resulting in the loss of witness evidence) any analysis can now, sadly, be very superficial at best - while any attempt to make a judgement or assign blame can only be regarded as folly. Alas it is a folly still much perpetrated because the anti-communist resistance, or rather its legends, continue to be symbolic hot potatoes in Polish politics today.

In some ways, despite all their inherent biases, the diaries and documented personal recollections of witnesses (especially those that managed to avoid official scrutiny and censorship) are perhaps the most valuable historical material now - alas.


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Steve
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Re: Resistance Against The Communists

#3

Post by Steve » 30 Apr 2020, 18:04

Prazmowska’s book is as far as I know the only work in English that to give a couple of examples will explain the bataliony chlopskie or peasant battalions and the in fighting among the London Poles. She is from a Polish background so reads Polish something that historians from outside Poland seem to invariably lack. After an unfortunate incident many years ago I am reluctant to trust any non Polish reading historian for the period between 1918 and 1945 which I find so interesting. She uses an enormous number of very largely Polish sources ranging from the memoirs of Bor-Komorowski to the memoirs of Berling. Churchill said something along the lines of (I am paraphrasing) that when he encountered Polish politics he thought he had entered a mad house. I would agree, I found the book a difficult read and will have to read it more than once to really grasp it. For example, the list of abbreviations gives 48 political parties, groups, and armed units. Some of them changed their name during the course of the war which makes it really difficult to follow what is happening. I picked a page at random from the book and in it are mentioned the PPR, AK, BCH, NSZ, GL, and ND most people reading this will spend a lot of time checking abbreviations.

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wm
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Re: Resistance Against The Communists

#4

Post by wm » 10 May 2020, 01:14

It was a mad house because they weren't keen on supporting his anti-Polish politics.

Common banditism plagued not only occupied Poland but the pre-war too.

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Re: Resistance Against The Communists

#5

Post by AllenM » 11 May 2020, 23:26

At the end of the war, Polish General Anders allowed his men to decide if they wanted to return to Poland. Some did, many did not. Russian aggression in the 20th Century needs to be looked at as a whole. There are Eastern European medals against Communism that were handed out during the war. Why did Hitler intervene in the Spanish Civil War? Who did Russia attack in November 1939? How many Polish soldiers were massacred at Katyn and a few other places? No, the Russians got what they wanted and since Stalin had no qualms about killing fellow Russians, he would make sure the Poles and other Eastern Europeans would be quickly placed under full control. There were bandits, opportunists and in some places, resistence groups fighting the Russians into the 1950s.

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