The Polish Underground State (Polskie Państwo Podziemne) was one of the most remarkable phenomena of the Second World War: a complete clandestine government operating in a country under full military occupation by two totalitarian powers. Between 1939 and 1945, the Polish resistance maintained functioning judicial, legislative, educational, welfare, and military institutions entirely underground, serving the Polish population and remaining in formal continuity with the Polish government in exile in London. Nothing comparable existed anywhere else in occupied Europe.
Structure and organisation
The Polish Underground State was not a loose resistance movement but a structured organisation with a clear chain of command. At its head was the Government Delegate (Delegat Rządu), the underground representative of the Polish government in exile, who exercised governmental authority within occupied Poland. Below him were underground ministries replicating the functions of a peacetime government: an underground treasury, underground courts and a legal system, underground education, underground welfare services, and an underground press. The Home Army (Armia Krajowa), the military arm of the underground, was the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe by 1944, with approximately 400,000 members.
Underground education
One of the most significant achievements of the Polish Underground State was the maintenance of the entire Polish educational system underground. When the German occupation authorities closed all Polish schools above the primary level in 1939, the underground immediately established clandestine replacements. Secondary schools operated in private apartments and basements, with teachers and students moving between locations to avoid detection. Universities operated clandestinely: the underground Warsaw University and Jagiellonian University in Krakow continued to teach and to award degrees throughout the occupation. An estimated 100,000 students attended underground secondary schools and thousands more attended underground university courses.
Justice and culture
The underground maintained a functioning judicial system with courts that tried Poles who collaborated with the occupation , informers, blackmailers, and those who actively assisted German repression against their fellow citizens. The sentences of underground courts were enforced by the Home Army’s special units. The underground also maintained a rich cultural life: underground theatres, poetry readings, and publishing houses continued to produce Polish literature and art throughout the occupation, an explicit act of resistance against the German policy of cultural annihilation.
Legacy
The Polish Underground State was liquidated after the liberation , not by the Germans but by the Soviet-backed communist authorities who took power in Poland after 1945. Home Army soldiers were arrested, tried, and in many cases executed or sent to Soviet labour camps. The achievement of the underground was systematically suppressed in communist Poland and was not fully acknowledged in Polish public life until after 1989.
See also
- Polish Victims
- The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 1943
- Witold Pilecki
- Jan Karski
- The Destruction of Warsaw 1944
Sources
- Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 2 vols, HarperCollins, 1997 and 2007
- Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, University of Nebraska Press and Yad Vashem, 2004
- Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford University Press, 2010
- Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936 to 1945: Nemesis, Allen Lane, 2000
- Trial transcripts and judgment, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949 onwards