The government in exile of Poland was formed in the aftermath of the September 1939 invasion and subsequent occupation of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic, which brought to an end the Second Polish Republic.
Despite the occupation of Poland by hostile powers, the government-in-exile exerted considerable influence in Poland during World War II through the structures of the Polish Underground State and its military arm, the Armia Krajowa (Home Army) resistance. Abroad, under the authority of the government-in-exile, Polish military units that had escaped the occupation fought under their own commanders as part of Allied forces in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
After the war, as the Polish territory came under the control of the communist Polish People's Republic, the government-in-exile remained in existence, albeit without effective power. It lost recognition of the majority of states upon formation of the Provisional Government of National Unity on 5 July 1945, although it continued to be hosted and informally supported by the United Kingdom. The last country to withdraw its diplomatic recognition was the Holy See (Vatican City) on 19 October 1972. However, only after the end of communist rule in Poland did the government-in-exile formally pass its responsibilities and insignia onto the government of the Third Polish Republic at a special ceremony held on 22 December 1990 at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, while the liquidation of its apparatus was declared accomplished on 31 December 1991.
The government-in-exile was based in France during 1939 and 1940, first in Paris and then in Angers. From 1940, following the Fall of France, the government moved to London, and remained in the United Kingdom until its dissolution in 1990.
History Establishment On 17 September 1939, the President of the Polish Republic, Ignacy Mościcki, who was then in the small town of Kuty (now Ukraine)John Coutouvidis, Jamie Reynolds. Poland 1939–1947 Page 20 near the southern Polish border, issued a proclamation about his plan to transfer power and appointing Władysław Raczkiewicz, the Marshal of the Senate, as his successor.Count Edward Raczynski. In Allied London. Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1962 Page 39Jozef Pilsudski, Waclaw Jedrzejewicz (Editor). Poland in the British Parliament 1939–1945. Volume I, 1946. Pages 317–318 This was done in accordance with Article 24 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, adopted in April 1935.Jozef Garlinski. Poland in the Second World War, Pages 48–49Wojciech Rojek, Peter D. Stachura (Editor). The Poles in Britain 1940–2000 Chapter 4, Page 33 Article 24 provided as follows:
It was not until 29 or 30Coutouvidis and Reynolds, Page 26 September 1939 that Mościcki resigned. Raczkiewicz, who was already in Paris, immediately took his constitutional oath at the Polish Embassy and became President of the Republic of Poland. Raczkiewicz then appointed General Władysław Sikorski to be prime minister.Keith Sword (Editor). Sikorski: Soldier and Statesman After Edward Rydz-Śmigły stepped down, Raczkiewicz also made Sikorski Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces.Garlinski, Page 49
Most of the Polish Navy escaped to Britain,Garlinski, Pages 17–18 and tens of thousands of Polish soldiers and airmen escaped through Hungary and Romania or across the Baltic Sea to continue the fight in France.Garlinski, Pages 55–56 Many Poles subsequently took part in Allied operations: in Norway (NarvikBogusław Brodecki; Zbigniew Wawer; Tadeusz Kondracki; Janusz Błaszczyk. Polacy na frontach II wojny światowej (The Poles on the Battlefronts of the Second World War) Warsaw: Bellona. 2005. Page 29), in France in 1940 and in 1944, in the Battle of Britain, in the Battle of the Atlantic, in North Africa (notably TobrukBrodecki et al, Page 37), Italy (notably at Monte Cassino and Ancona), at Arnhem, Wilhelmshaven, and elsewhere.
Under the Sikorski–Mayski agreement of July 1941 Polish soldiers taken prisoner by the Soviet Union in 1939, were released to form Anders' Army, intended to fight Nazi Germany in the USSR, but instead transferred via Iran to fight with US and British forces. Berling's Army, formed in the USSR in 1944, remained there and fought under Soviet command.
Wartime history
The Polish government in exile, based first in Paris, then in Angers, France,Jozef Garlinski Poland in the Second World War, Page 81 where Władysław Raczkiewicz lived at the Château de Pignerolle near Angers from 2 December 1939 until June 1940. Escaping from France, the government relocated to London, where it was recognized by all the Allied governments. Politically, it was a coalition of the Polish Peasant Party, the Polish Socialist Party, the Labour Party and the National Party, although these parties maintained only a vestigial existence in the circumstances of war.
When Germany launched a war against the Soviets in 1941, the Polish government in exile established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union against Hitlerism, but also in order to help Poles persecuted by the NKVD.Stanislaw Mikolajczyk The Pattern of Soviet Domination Sampson Low, Marston & Co 1948 Page 17Wojciech Roszkowski The Shadow of Yalta Page 27 On 12 August 1941 the Kremlin signed a one-time amnesty, extending to thousands of Polish soldiers who had been taken prisoner in 1939 by the Red Army in eastern Poland, including many Polish civilian prisoners and deportees entrapped in Siberia. The amnesty allowed the Poles to create eight military divisions known as the Anders Army. They were evacuated to Iran and the Middle East, where they were desperately needed by the British, hard pressed by Rommel's Afrika Korps. These Polish units formed the basis for the Polish II Corps, led by General Władysław Anders, which together with other, earlier-created Polish units fought alongside the Allies.
During the war, especially from 1942 on, the Polish government in exile provided the Allies with some of the earliest and most accurate accounts of the ongoing Holocaust of European JewsEngel (2014)Note of the Foreign Minister Edward Raczynski "The mass extermination of Jews in German occupied Poland, Note addressed to the Governments of the United Nations on December 10th 1942", also published (30 December 1942) by the Polish Foreign Ministry as a public document with the aim to reach the public opinions of the Free World. See: http://www.projectinposterum.org/docs/mass_extermination.htm Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, 1981 (Pimlico edition, p.101) "On december 10, the Polish Ambassador in London, Edward Raczynski sent Eden an extremely detailed twenty-one point summary of all the most recent information regarding the killing of Jews in Poland; confirmation, he wrote, "that the German authorities aim with systematic deliberation at the total extermination of the Jewish population of Poland" as well as of the "many thousands of Jews" whom the Germans had deported to Poland from western and Central Europe, and from the German Reich itself." and, through its representatives, like the Foreign Minister Count Edward Raczyński and the courier of the Polish Underground movement, Jan Karski, called for action, without success, to stop it. The note the Foreign Minister, Count Edward Raczynski, sent on 10 December 1942 to the Governments of the United Nations was the first official denunciation by any Government of the mass extermination and of the Nazi aim of total extermination of the Jewish population. It was also the first official document singling out the sufferings of European Jews as Jews and not only as citizens of their respective countries of origin.Krzysztof Kania, Edward Raczynski, 1891–1993, Dyplomata i Polityk (Edward Raczynski, 1891–1993, Diplomat and Politician), Wydawnictwo Neriton, Warszawa, 2014, p. 232 The note of 10 December 1942 and the Polish Government efforts triggered the Declaration of the Allied Nations of 17 December 1942.
In April 1943, the Germans announced that they had discovered at Katyn Wood, near Smolensk, Russia, mass graves of 10,000 Polish officersJ.K.Zawodny Death in the Forest Page 15Louis Fitzgibbon Katyn Massacre Page 126 (the German investigation later found 4,443 bodiesJ.K.Zawodny Death in the Forest Page 24) who had been taken prisoner in 1939 and murdered by the Soviets. The Soviet government said that the Germans had fabricated the discovery. The other Allied governments, for diplomatic reasons, formally accepted this; the Polish government in exile refused to do so.
Stalin then severed relations with the Polish government in exile. Since it was clear that it would be the Soviet Union, not the western Allies, who would liberate Poland from the Germans, this breach had fateful consequences for Poland. In an unfortunate coincidence, Sikorski, widely regarded as the most capable of the Polish exile leaders, was killed in an air crash at Gibraltar in July 1943.John Coutouvidis & Jamie Reynolds Poland 1939–1947 Page 88 He was succeeded as head of the Polish government in exile by Stanisław Mikołajczyk.
During 1943 and 1944, the Allied leaders, particularly Winston Churchill, tried to bring about a resumption of talks between Stalin and the Polish government in exile. But these efforts broke down over several matters. One was the Katyń massacre (and others at Kalinin and Kharkiv). Another was Poland's postwar borders. Stalin insisted that the territories annexed by the Soviets in 1939, which had millions of Poles in addition to mostly Ukrainian and Belarusian populations, Also in: Wrocławskie Studia Wschodnie, Wrocław, 1997. should remain in Soviet hands, and that Poland should be compensated with lands to be annexed from Germany. Mikołajczyk, however, refused to compromise on the question of Poland's sovereignty over her prewar eastern territories. A third matter was Mikołajczyk's insistence that Stalin would not set up a Communist government in postwar Poland. Mikołajczyk and his colleagues in the Polish government-in-exile insisted on making a stand in the defense of Poland's pre-1939 eastern border (retaining its Kresy region) as a basis for the future Polish-Soviet border.John Coutouvidis & Jamie Reynolds Poland 1939–1947 Pages 103–104 However, this was a position that could not be defended in practiceStalin was in occupation of the territory in question. The government-in-exile's refusal to accept the proposed new Polish borders infuriated the Allies, particularly Churchill, making them less inclined to oppose Stalin on issues of how Poland's postwar government would be structured. In the end, the exiles lost on both issues: Stalin re-annexed the eastern territories, as well as proceeded to impose the communist Polish Committee of National Liberation established on 22 July 1944 by renaming it into the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland on 31 December 1944. However, Poland preserved its status as an independent state, despite the arguments of some influential Communists, such as Wanda Wasilewska, in favor of Poland becoming a republic of the Soviet Union. In November 1944, despite his mistrust of the Soviets, Mikołajczyk resignedJohn Coutouvidis & Jamie Reynolds Poland 1939–1947 Page 107 to return to Poland.
Provisional Government of National Unity