The Polish underground press and the issue of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, 1939–1944

Abstract

The terror, exploitation and demographic restructuring (which included ethnic cleansing, deportation, colonisation and genocide) that the Nazis implemented in Poland had no parallel in Europe. Unlike in Belarus and in Ukraine, where the Nazis sought (and found) collaborators, no Poles were given positions of authority. This policy ruled out any kind of legal collaboration at the political and economic level. The Poles reacted in different ways to the prospect of being subjugated and exterminated: complying with the occupiers or passively and actively resisting them. The Polish elites created a vast network of informal social institutions, including an extensive clandestine press, schools and universities. However, the ease with which the Poles created a split reality, where the occupiers were circumvented and ignored, was not due to specific anthropological qualities of the Poles, but to their experience of foreign occupation in the nineteenth century. It was the combination of these two factors (the hatred and ignorance of the Polish reality and the ability to defy Nazi rule) that led to the failure of the Generalplan Ost in Poland. Hence only one component of the plan was carried out, namely, the mass murder of the Jews.

Keywords:

• Nazi regime
• Poland
• resistance
• underground
• World War II
• press
• collaboration

Notes

 1. Biuletyn Informacyiny, May 1940.

 2. Szarota, Życie codzienne w stolicach okupowanej Europy, 125–52.

 3. The Armia Krajowa (Home Army) or AK was the armed wing of what is known as the Polish ‘underground state’. The AK originated from the Służba Zwycięstwa Polski (In the Service of Poland's Victory) set up in September 1939 in Warsaw. In November General Władysław Sikorski, head of the Polish Government in exile in London, replaced this organisation with the the Polski Zwiazęk Walki Zbrojnej (Union for Armed Struggle), which became the AK in February 1942. With the exception of the Armia Ludowa (People's Army), the armed wing of the Communist Party, the majority of the resistance movements, from the right-wing Konferderacja Narodu (Confederation of the Nation) to the Bataliony Chłopskie (Peasant Battalions) and the Socjalistyczna Organizacja Bojowa (Socialist Fighting Organization), joined the AK. Until his death, in 1943, General Sikorski was the Commander-in-chief of the Polish Armed Forces, while Stefan Rowecki, Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski and Leopold Okulicki served as subsequent First Commander in Poland. After Sikorski's death the post of Premier was separated from that of Commander-in-chief, the latter going to General Kazimerz Sosnkowski. In the summer of 1943 the AK reached its highest membership numbers, estimated at about 380,000, of which 50,000 were stationed in Warsaw. The Home Army's regional structure, which consisted of 16 branches, subdivided into 89 inspectorates, which further comprised 278 districts, was coordinated by the seven sections in charge of Organisation, Information and Espionage, Operations and Training, Logistic, Communications, Information and Propaganda. In 1942, when the German army was engaged in heavy fighting inside Russia, the AK Commander-in-chief issued an order to switch from sabotage to armed diversion and, at the end of 1943, to stage a universal anti-German uprising in the event of Poland being liberated by the Soviet armies.

 4. The text in Szarota, Okupowanej, 568–70.

 5. The text in Szarota, Okupowanej, 566.

 6. Szarota, Okupowanej, 567.

 7. Wróblewski, Służba budowlana (Buadienst) w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie, 1940–1945, 155–60.

 8. Kroll, Rada Główna Opiekuńcza, 1939–1945.

 9. Hempel, Pogrobowcy klęski, 210–23.

10. Łuczak, Polska i Polacy w drugiej wojnie światowej; Paczkowski, Pół wieku dziejów Polski, 1939–1989, 96.

11. Gross, Sęsiedzi.

12. For the debate on Gross's book see Polonsky and Michlic, The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland.

13. Machcewicz and Persak, Wokół Jedwabnego.

14. Rybicka, Instytut Niemieckiej Pracy Wschodniej. Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit, Kraków 1940–1945.

15. See the debate on the Catholic newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny, 2003 and the book by Bałuk-Ulewiczowa, Wyzwolić się z błędnego koła. Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit w świetle dokumentów Armii Krajowej i materiałów zachowanych w kraju. For a balanced account of the IDO see Burleigh, Germany turns Eastwards, 253–99. Burleigh lists 195 employers, of whom 125 were non-Germans; most of them worked as clerical staff and their nationality was Polish, German, Russian, Ukrainian.

16. Dobroszycki, Die legale polnische Presse in Generalgouvernment, 1939–1945. In his essay on ‘Memory and experience of Nazism and Communism in Poland’, Andrzej Paczkowski complains about the lack of academic research on collaboration with the Nazis during the war. Paczkowski, “Nazismo e comunismo nell'esperienza e nella memoria polacche”, 273–94.

17. Jan Gross's book on Jedwabne is a notable exception. The author, a Polish émigré, presently professor of politics at New York University, insisted that his book be published first in Poland and then in America.

18. Gross, Polish Society under German Occupation, 177–44. The Generalgouvernment was the central part of Poland administered by Hans Frank.

19. Friedrich has presented the summa of his arguments on Polish collaboration in a long essay published in the 2005 winter issue of Slavic Review. See Friedrich, “K-P Collaboration in a ‘Land without a Quisling.’ Patterns of collaboration with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II” also for a bibliography of his works on this issue.

20. See Connell's reply to Friedrich's article in the above-cited issue of Slavic Review: Connelly, “Why the Poles collaborated so little – And Why That is No reason for Nationalist Hubris”.

21. Szapiro, Wojna żydowsko-niemiecka. Polska prasa konspiracyjna, 1943–1944; Gutman and Krakowski, Unequal Victims.

22. Dobroszycki, “Studies of the Underground Press in Poland.” Acta Poloniae Historica 7 (1962): 96–102.

23. Polska Zyje, 10 October (1939).

24. Biuletyn Informacyjny no. 12 (1940), no. 16 (1941); Walka, no. 20 (1940); Szaniec, no. 19 (1941).

25. Biuletyn Informacyiny, no. 9 (1940), no. 19 (1941).

26. Znak, nos 6–7 (1940); Zemsta, no. 7 (1940).

27. Walka, no. 10 (1940); no. 34 (1940).

28. See the Communist newspaper Trybuna Wolnośći (1943).

29. Szaniec, 1940.

30. Polska Żyje, January 1940.

31. Polska Żyje, June 1940.

32. Biuletyn Informacyiny, 19 July 1940.

33. Biuletyn Informacyiny, March 29 (1940).

34. Polska Żyje, nos 41–42 (1940).

35. Walka, August 9, 1940.

36. Machcewicz and Persak, Wokół Jedwabnego, Vol. 2: 130–47.

37. Prawda, May 1942.

38. Prawda, May 1942

39. Biuletyn Informacyiny, May 1941.

40. In April 1940, parallel to the invasion of Denmark and Norway, Hitler forbade his military commanders from making any further plans to co-opt Poles into places of responsibility.

41. On the longstanding feelings of superiority and contempt of the Germans towards to Poles, see Burleigh, Germany turns Eastwards.