No greater ally: the untold story of Poland's forces in World War II

305 Pages·2009·13.74 MB·English

by  Kenneth K. Koskodan

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THE AUTHOR UO
n
Kenneth Koskodan graduated from t NO GREATER ALLY
o
Michigan State University with a degree in l
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Communications, specialising in Journalism, G The Untold Story of Poland’s
S
Advertising and Public Relations. Of Polish t Forces in World War II
o
descent, he has researched Poland’s
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participation in World War II for many y At the end of World War II, Poland was

o betrayed by the Allies and handed over to the
years, and in the course of his research fE
Soviet Union. In the final victory over Germany,
has interviewed many surviving veterans. P
the millions of men and women who had fought
This is his first book. oA
l for their freedom for six long years were
a
n abandoned to Soviet domination. In a cruel
dT twist of history their monumental struggle and
’
s Poland’s final betrayal has been largely ignored

FE by the world and the true story of Poland’s role
‘No Greater Ally is an absolutely crucial contribution to the history o in the war intentionally obscured for decades,
r
of World War II. Anybody who seeks to understand the cR and it remains largely untold.
e NO
s
dynamics of betrayal and resistance as they apply to this period,

i The fourth largest Allied military force
n
in Poland, in Europe, must read this book.’ A deployed during the war, Poland is the only

W
nation to have been involved at Leningrad,
Alan Furst, author of The Polish Officer
o Arnhem, Tobruk and Normandy. Following
rL
‘This fascinating book fills a yawning gap in our knowledge l GREATER their valiant but doomed defence of Poland in
d
1939, members of the Polish armed forces fought
of World War II. By bringing in the personal WL
wherever they could alongside other Allied
reminiscences of people of all stations, the author gives pace aY forces. At home the Poles set about creating the
r
most active and effective resistance force of the
and immediacy to this extraordinary story.’ I
I war, with a complete underground government,
ALLY
Adam Zamoyski, author of The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in World War II military and even education system. When
K K Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Polish
. E soldiers held in Soviet gulags even put together

K N an army to help beat back the Germans.
US$24.95/ UK£17.99 O N
CAN$27.95
S E Packed with unpublished first-hand accounts
ISBN 978-1-84603-365-0 K T The Untold Story of Poland’s Forces and including rare photographs, this is the true
5 2 4 9 5 O H
story of Poland’s armed forces, their courageous
D in World War II resistance and the great betrayal which saw them
A conquered despite their victory over Germany.
O
SPREY
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9 781846 033650
PUBLISHING KENNETH K. KOSKODAN
www.ospreypublishing.com
OSPREY
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NO
GREATER
ALLY
The Untold Story of Poland’s Forces
in World War II
O
SPREY
PUBLISHING
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com
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NO
GREATER
ALLY
The Untold Story of Poland’s Forces
in World War II
KENNETH K. KOSKODAN
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FirstpublishedinGreatBritainin2009byOspreyPublishing,
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Email:[email protected]
©2009KennethK.Koskodan
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criticismorreview,aspermittedundertheCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct,1988,nopart
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Frontcover:PolishtankcrewsbeingwelcomedbyFrenchmaninarecentlyliberatedFrench
town,1944.(CorbisHU011121)
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements 6
Introduction 7
1
The Dawn of Darkness: Prelude to World War II 12
2
French Misfortunes: The Phony War and 42
the Defense of France
3
Everything Was in Secret: The Underground War 59
4
On Wings of Eagles: The Polish Air Force 79
5
Warriors from a Wasteland: The Birth of 101
the Polish 2nd Corps
6
A Bloody Job Well Done: 1st Armored Division 136
7
A Bridge Not Far Enough: The 1st Polish 152
Independent Parachute Brigade
8
Poles Under Soviet Command: Berling’s Army 177
9
Glory and Heartbreak: The Warsaw Uprising, 1944 186
10
For your Freedom: A Costly Victory for Poland 228
Notes 251
Further Reading 265
Index 268
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is dedicated to the men and women of Poland who fought for
freedom and paid for it with their own.
I would like to thank those veterans who helped with this project, especially
Helena Konwiak, Professor Anna Dadlez, Jerzy Zagrodzki, Bohdan Grodzki,
Czeslaw Korzycki, Ed Kuczynski, Wieslaw Chodorowski, Edward Alt and
Leonard Mieckiewicz, Kazimierz Olejarczyk and Juliusz Przesmycki and those
who sadly did not live to see this project fulfilled, including Zygmunt “Ziggy”
Kornas, Ed Bucko, and Antoni Szmenkowicz. I can only hope my modest words
have done justice and honor to their incredible lives.
I would also like to thank Miraslawa Zawadzka for her invaluable help
establishing contact with many veterans, Ken Kornas and Virginia Bucko for
adding their stories and allowing the use of their prized family photographs.
Thanks to Monsignor Roman Nir (retired) and Marcin Chumiecki for allowing
access to the valuable resources available at the Polish Mission as well as the
archives and Polish 2nd Corps, Polish 1st Armored, Polish Air Force and Polish
Home Army museum rooms at Orchard Lake Schools, Orchard Lake, Michigan.
Thank you to Amy Massey for rescuing this project from a serious computer
issue. Thank you to my mom and dad for instilling pride in my Polish heritage,
for teaching me to work hard and for always telling me I could accomplish
anything I set my mind to. Finally, thank you to my daughter Leigha. You are
my inspiration.
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INTRODUCTION
Tobruk, the Battle of Britain, Monte Cassino, the Falaise Pocket, Arnhem,
Berlin; the names are instantly recognizable as some of the most brutal and
desperate battles in history. Each was a decisive turning point in an epic struggle
that would permanently scar nearly every corner of the globe, and each helps to
define common perceptions about World War II. The battles and the stories of
the gallant men who fought them are now legendary. Yet a little-known thread
is woven deeply through the fabric of these and nearly every other major battle
and campaign that made up the Allied war effort in Europe; the story of the
men who fought in these desperate struggles, yet whose fundamental role in the
battles remains still strangely anonymous, even forgotten.
Today’s popular historical mythology informs us that Britain dueled alone
with the mighty Luftwaffe over the English Channel, that the French
underground was the Allies’ only tie to occupied Europe, that the Soviet Union
fought a noble war against the Germans alone in the East,1and that it was just
the Americans who marched up the boot of Italy in 1943 and then, with the
British, opened up the second front in Europe with the Normandy invasion in
1944. Yet, during the course of World War II, only one nation’s soldiers ever
stood entirely alone in opposition to Hitler’s evil designs on Europe. It fielded
armies at home and abroad and fought from the moment the first shots were
fired until the final victory. It helped defend and liberate nearly every European
nation that found itself under the heel of Nazi Germany. This single nation
produced the largest, most organized and most effective underground
resistance of the war.2And then, at the war’s end, this nation, which had been
hailed for its unmatched heroism, was casually discarded for the sake of
political expediency. This lone nation is Poland.
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NO GREATER ALLY
Poland stood alone in 1939, and then fought shoulder to shoulder with the
Allies through the darkest days of the war, only to be cruelly forsaken when
Stalin’s sinister aims became clear in the wake of the Red Army’s bloody march
across Europe. It may surprise even the most scholarly student of history, and
shock the casual observer, to know that during Britain’s “finest hour” Poles came
to the aid of the RAF (Royal Air Force); that when the United States had been
fought to a stalemate in Italy and France it was Poles who helped lead the
breakouts; and that Poles fought alongside the Red Army on the Eastern Front.
The British government’s vital codebreaking establishment, Bletchley Park, owed
arguably the single most crucial piece of intelligence of the war – the initial steps
toward deciphering the Enigma code in 1934 – to the Poles. Virtually everywhere
the Allies fought, Polish forces played a pivotal role.
When the guns of the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein fired the first
volley of the war into the port city of Gdansk on September 1, 1939, Poland on
its own took the first blows from the mighty German war machine. The nation
fought valiantly while awaiting Britain’s and France’s promised intervention,
which never came. Putting up a heroic defense in the face of overwhelming
technological, tactical and numerical superiority, the armies of Poland capitulated
only after the Soviets, who had days earlier signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
with Germany including a secret clause allowing for the joint division of Poland,
attacked the rear of the Polish forces from the east. Unable to fight a two-front
war with an army not yet regrouped from the retreat eastward, and seeing no
sign of the help promised by the French and the English, much of the Polish
Army surrendered to the Germans and Soviets. However, the Polish government
never formally surrendered.
The numbers of human casualties and material losses during the Polish
campaign on both German and Polish sides are staggering. Given these numbers,
it is astounding how the battle for Poland is routinely dismissed as inconsequential,
merely the precursor to the real war in Europe. As recently as 1989, the Atlas of the
Second World War’s opening sentence regarding the Polish campaign reads: “The
Polish campaign was the shortest and most decisive German aggression of World
War II.”3This is true only if one considers the German victories over all other
western European mainland nations combined as a single campaign, and if one
discounts the fact the Germans occupied just over half of Poland in 1939, while the
Soviets occupied eastern Poland. Taken individually, every other nation in western
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INTRODUCTION
mainland Europe including France fell faster than Poland.4 Also, in order to
conclude that the defeat of Poland was the most decisive action of the war, one
must discount the fact that during the battle for France the Wehrmacht defeated
the entire French Army as well as the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), some
300,000 men strong. The French Army in 1940 numbered 94 divisions and
outnumbered German tanks 3,000 to 2,500, and some 1.9 million French soldiers
were taken prisoner, nearly twice the total Polish fighting force of 1939.5 In yet
another example of a German action that was faster and more decisive than the fall
of Poland, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed Barbarossawhich
began on June 22, 1941, had reached Minsk by July 22. In the period of one month
the Germans overran Soviet territory that dwarfed that of Poland in terms of area.
Despite its defeat, Poland fought on. Those not killed or captured, though cut
off from the rest of the world, began almost immediately to form an army under
the noses of their German and Soviet occupiers called the Home Army (Armia
Krajowa or AK), by far the largest underground resistance force in the war. This
secret army was unknown to most of the rest of the world, but it continued the
fight in Poland. Much of the Polish Army, Air Force and Navy escaped and
re-formed abroad to fight again, in France, North Africa, in the skies over Britain,
the Netherlands and some who did not escape, but found themselves as Soviet
prisoners, would ultimately fight all the way into the heart of the German
Fatherland. The most victorious fighter squadron of the Battle of Britain, 303
Kosciuszko Polish Fighter Squadron (303 dywizjon mysliwski Warsawski im
Tadeusz Kosciuszko), was Polish, and Poles comprised nearly 20 percent of the
RAF. The Polish 2nd Corps took the most strategic objective in the Italian
campaign, and a Polish armored division put the cork in the Falaise bottleneck
during the Allied breakout of Normandy. When Hitler invaded the Soviet
Union, the imprisoned Polish Army and thousands of deported Polish civilians
(at least those who survived their imprisonment) formed an army on Russian
soil. Tens of thousands departed for the Middle East and engaged the Germans
in Italy. Others formed Polish divisions that fought alongside the Soviets all the
way to Berlin, and took part in the vicious hand-to-hand fighting there.
World War II in Europe took a terrible toll on the world. Men and women
from many nations fought and died for the freedom of others, but the
contribution and sacrifice Poland made for the free world is forgotten.
Throughout the war, despite their desperate struggle at home and their valor on
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NO GREATER ALLY
foreign soil, the Polish military and the Polish nation were let down by the Allies
time and time again. In the end, it would not be the enemies, but the friends of
Poland who sealed the country’s fate. Poland was offered up as a sacrifice by the
Allied powers, particularly by a sick American president and a British Prime
Minister, each representing their own war-weary nations and neither willing to
stand up to the menacing Soviet empire emerging from the rubble of war-torn
Europe.6Poland was left to a hungry regime more powerful than the vanquished
Third Reich.
Today, while the West enjoys a well-deserved rekindling of romance and
reverence for the generation that saved the world, the contribution of a heroic
people struggling against impossible odds falls deeper and deeper into the abyss
of history. While many of a new generation learn to appreciate the struggles and
sacrifices of their grandparents and great-grandparents, which are championed
by books and movies about D-Day, Pearl Harbor and the like, the feats of
grandparents and great-grandparents of another group has become a footnote at
best. In histories of World War II, Poland’s role is not often discussed in depth.
If anything is taught at all, it is merely that Hitler’s armies rolled over an
unsuspecting Poland in a matter of weeks. Most believe that is where the history
of Poland in World War II ends. In truth, it was only the beginning of the iron-
willed defiance by a people and an army that fought in every way and every place
possible from the very first salvo of the war until the final days and beyond. For
most of Europe, 1945 marked the end of five years of a horrific struggle the likes
of which the world had never seen. For the United States, 1945 ended three and
a half years of fighting far from home. For Poland, however, after nearly six years
of constant war, brutality and starvation, 1945 merely marked the transition from
one brutal and hostile occupation that had left almost the entire nation in ruins
to another hostile occupation that would last 40 years.
This is the forgotten story of a nation that faced unspeakable atrocities at the
hands of her enemies and unthinkable betrayals by her allies; a nation that
contributed immeasurably to the Allied effort and in return was forsaken; a
nation that survived two assaults on the very soul of her identity only to be denied
a place of honor in the collective memory of the world she helped to save. Now,
as tales of heroism and sacrifice unknown to today’s generations are retold,
history should no longer ignore the monumental contributions Poland and her
people made to the world’s freedom. This book is not a detailed analysis of the
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