Bulgaria

The history of Bulgaria during World War II encompasses an initial period of neutrality until 1 March 1941, a period of alliance with the Axis Powers until 8 September 1944, and a period of alignment with the Allies in the final year of the war. 

Bulgarian military forces occupied with German consent parts of the kingdoms of Greece and Yugoslavia which Bulgarian irredentism claimed on the basis of the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano. 

Bulgaria resisted Axis pressure to join the war against the Soviet Union, which began on 22 June 1941, but did declare war on Britain and the United States on 13 December 1941. 

The Red Army entered Bulgaria on 8 September 1944; Bulgaria declared war on Germany the next day.

As an ally of Nazi Germany, Bulgaria participated in the Holocaust, causing the deaths of 11,343 Jews, and though 48,000 Jews survived the war, they were subjected to forcible internal deportation, dispossession, and discrimination. 

Bulgaria functioned as an authoritarian state during most of World War II. 

Tsar Boris III (reigned 1918–1943) ruled through a parliament and a prime minister. Bulgaria’s wartime government was pro-German under Georgi Kyoseivanov, Bogdan Filov, Dobri Bozhilov, and Ivan Bagryanov. It joined the Allies under Konstantin Muraviev in early September 1944, then underwent a coup d’état a week later, and under Kimon Georgiev was pro-Soviet thereafter.

Austria

German troops entered the country on March 12, 1938. 

They received the enthusiastic support of most of the population. 

Austria was incorporated into Germany the next day. 

In April, this German annexation was retroactively approved in a plebiscite that was manipulated to indicate that about 99 percent of the Austrian people wanted the union (known as the Anschluss) with Germany. 

Neither Jews nor Roma (Gypsies) were allowed to vote in the plebiscite.

Germany

Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich until 1943 and Greater German Reich in 1943–45, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country which they transformed into a dictatorship. 

Under Hitler’s rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. 

The Third Reich, meaning “Third Realm” or “Third Empire”, alluded to the Nazis’ conceit that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). 

The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the Thousand Year Reich, ended in May 1945 after just 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany, ending World War II in Europe.

On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, the head of government, by the President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, the head of State. 

The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all political opposition and consolidate its power. 

Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934 and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the offices and powers of the Chancellery and Presidency. 

A national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer (Leader) of Germany. 

All power was centralised in Hitler’s person and his word became the highest law. The government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitler’s favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy. 

Using deficit spending, the regime undertook a massive secret rearmament program and the construction of extensive public works projects, including the construction of Autobahnen (motorways). 

The return to economic stability boosted the regime’s popularity.

Racism, Nazi eugenics, and especially antisemitism, were central ideological features of the regime. 

The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the master race, the purest branch of the Aryan race. Discrimination and the persecution of Jews and Romani people began in earnest after the seizure of power. The first concentration camps were established in March 1933. 

Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, and liberals, socialists, and communists were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. 

Christian churches and citizens that opposed Hitler’s rule were oppressed and many leaders imprisoned. 

Education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed. 

Recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased Germany on the international stage. 

Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, and Hitler’s hypnotic oratory to influence public opinion. 

The government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others.

The Nazi regime dominated neighbours through military threats in the years leading up to war. Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands, threatening war if these were not met. 

It seized Austria and almost all of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, launching World War II in Europe. 

By early 1941, Germany controlled much of Europe. Reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas and a German administration was established in the remainder of Poland. 

Germany exploited the raw materials and labour of both its occupied territories and its allies.

Genocide and mass murder became hallmarks of the regime. Starting in 1939, hundreds of thousands of German citizens with mental or physical disabilities were murdered in hospitals and asylums. 

Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads accompanied the German armed forces inside the occupied territories and conducted the mass killings of millions of Jews and other Holocaust victims. 

After 1941, millions of others were imprisoned, worked to death, or murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps. 

This genocide is known as the Holocaust.

While the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was initially successful, the Soviet resurgence and entry of the United States into the war meant that the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) lost the initiative on the Eastern Front in 1943 and by late 1944 had been pushed back to the pre-1939 border. 

Large-scale aerial bombing of Germany escalated in 1944 and the Axis powers were driven back in Eastern and Southern Europe. 

After the Allied invasion of France, Germany was conquered by the Soviet Union from the east and the other Allies from the west, and capitulated in May 1945. 

Hitler’s refusal to admit defeat led to massive destruction of German infrastructure and additional war-related deaths in the closing months of the war. 

The victorious Allies initiated a policy of denazification and put many of the surviving Nazi leadership on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.

 

New Zealand

The military history of New Zealand during World War II began when New Zealand entered the Second World War by declaring war on Nazi Germany with Great Britain. 

The state of war with Germany was officially held to have existed since 9:30 pm on 3 September 1939 (local time), simultaneous with that of Britain, but in fact New Zealand’s declaration of war was not made until confirmation had been received from Britain that their ultimatum to Germany had expired. 

When Neville Chamberlain broadcast Britain’s declaration of war, a group of New Zealand politicians (led by Peter Fraser as Prime Minister Michael Savage was terminally ill) listened to the shortwave radio in Carl Berendsen‘s room in the Parliament Buildings. 

Because of static on the radio they were initially not certain what Chamberlain had said until a coded telegraph message was received from London. 

This message did not arrive until just before midnight as the messenger boy with the telegram in London took shelter because of a (false) air-raid warning. 

The Cabinet acted after hearing the Admiralty’s notification to the fleet that war had broken out. 

The next day Cabinet approved nearly 30 war regulations as laid down in the War Book, and after completing the formalities with the Executive Council the Governor-General, Lord Galway, issued the Proclamation of War, backdated to 9.30 pm on 3 September.

Diplomatically, New Zealand had expressed vocal opposition to fascism in Europe and also to the appeasement of Fascist dictatorships, and national sentiment for a strong show of force met with general support. 

Economic and defensive considerations also motivated the New Zealand involvement—reliance on Britain meant that threats to Britain became threats to New Zealand too in terms of economic and defensive ties.

There was also a strong sentimental link between the former British colony and the United Kingdom, with many seeing Britain as the “mother country” or “Home”. 

The New Zealand Prime Minister of the time Michael Joseph Savage summed this up at the outbreak of war with a broadcast on 5 September (largely written by the Solicitor-General Henry Cornish) that became a popular cry in New Zealand during the war:

It is with gratitude in the past, and with confidence in the future, that we range ourselves without fear beside Britain, where she goes, we go! Where she stands, we stand!

New Zealand provided personnel for service in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and in the Royal Navy and was prepared to have New Zealanders serving under British command. 

Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) pilots, many trained in the Empire Air Training Scheme, were sent to Europe but, unlike the other Dominions, New Zealand did not insist on its aircrews serving with RNZAF squadrons, so speeding up the rate at which they entered service. 

The Long Range Desert Group was formed in North Africa in 1940 with New Zealand and Rhodesian as well as British volunteers, but included no Australians for the same reason.

The New Zealand government placed the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy at the Admiralty‘s disposal and made available to the RAF 30 new Wellington medium bombers waiting in the United Kingdom for shipping to New Zealand. The New Zealand Army contributed the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force (2NZEF).

Australia

Australia entered World War II on 3 September 1939, following the government’s acceptance of the United Kingdom‘s declaration of war on Nazi Germany. 

Australia later entered into a state of war with other members of the Axis powers, including the Kingdom of Italy on 11 June 1940, and the Empire of Japan on 9 December 1941. 

By the end of the war, almost a million Australians had served in the armed forces, whose military units fought primarily in the European theatre, North African campaign, and the South West Pacific theatre. 

In addition, Australia came under direct attack for the first time in its post-colonial history. Its casualties from enemy action during the war were 27,073 killed and 23,477 wounded.

Australian Army units were gradually withdrawn from the Mediterranean and Europe following the outbreak of war with Japan. 

However, Royal Australian Air Force and Royal Australian Navy units and personnel continued to take part in the war against Germany and Italy. 

From 1942 until early 1944, Australian forces played a key role in the Pacific War, making up the majority of Allied strength throughout much of the fighting in the South West Pacific theatre. 

While the military was largely relegated to subsidiary fronts from mid-1944, it continued offensive operations against the Japanese until the war ended.

World War II contributed to major changes in the nation’s economy, military and foreign policy. 

The war accelerated the process of industrialisation, led to the development of a larger peacetime military and began the process with which Australia shifted the focus of its foreign policy from Britain to the United States. 

The final effects of the war also contributed to the development of a more diverse and cosmopolitan Australian society.

Canada

When the United Kingdom declared war on Germany in August 1914, Canada was a Dominion of the British Empire with full control over only domestic affairs, thus automatically joining the First World War. 

After the war, the Canadian government wanted to avoid a repeat of the Conscription Crisis of 1917, which had divided the country and French and English Canadians. Stating that “Parliament will decide,” in 1922 Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King avoided participating in the Chanak Crisis as the Parliament of Canada was not in session.

The 1931 Statute of Westminster gave Canada autonomy in foreign policy. 

When Britain entered World War II in September 1939, some experts suggested that Canada was still bound by Britain’s declaration of war because it had been made in the name of their common monarch, but Prime Minister King again said that “Parliament will decide.”[10][11]:2

In 1936 King had told Parliament, “Our country is being drawn into international situations to a degree that I myself think is alarming.”[11]:2 Both the government and the public remained reluctant to participate in a European war, in part because of the Conscription Crisis of 1917. Both King and Opposition Leader Robert James Manion stated their opposition to conscripting troops for overseas service in March 1939. Nonetheless, King had not changed his view of 1923 that Canada would participate in a war by the Empire whether or not the United States did. By August 1939 his cabinet, including French Canadians, was united for war in a way that it probably would not have been during the Munich Crisis, although both cabinet members and the country based their support in part on expecting that Canada’s participation would be “limited.”[11]:5–8

It had been clear that Canada would elect to participate in the war before the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. Four days after the United Kingdom declared war on 3 September 1939, Parliament was called in special session and both King and Manion stated their support for Canada following Britain, but did not declare war immediately, partly to show that Canada was joining out of her own initiative and was not obligated to go to war. 

Unlike 1914 when war came as a surprise, the government had prepared various measures for price controls, rationing, and censorship, and the War Measures Act of 1914 was re-invoked. 

After two days of debate, the House of Commons approved an Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne on 9 September 1939 giving authority to declare war to King’s government. A small group of Quebec legislators attempted to amend the bill, and CCF party leader J. S. Woodsworth stated that some of his party opposed it. Woodsworth was the only Member of Parliament to vote against the bill and it thus passed by near-acclamation.

The Senate also passed the bill that day. 

The Cabinet drafted a proclamation of war that night, which Governor-General Lord Tweedsmuir signed on 10 September.

King George VI approved Canada’s declaration of war with Germany on Sept. 10. 

Canada later also declared war on Italy (11 June 1940), Japan (7 December 1941), and other Axis powers, enshrining the principle that the Statute of Westminster conferred these sovereign powers to Canada.


China

The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. 

In China, the war is known as the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (simplified Chinese: 中国抗日战爭; traditional Chinese: 中國抗日戰爭; pinyin: Zhōngguó Kàngrì Zhànzhēng), or as the oriental theatre of the World Anti-Fascist War, the latter term originating from Mao Zedong’s wartime alliance with Stalin. 

The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Theater of the Second World War. 

The beginning of the war is conventionally dated to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident 7 July 1937, when a dispute between Japanese and Chinese troops in Peking escalated into a full-scale invasion. This full-scale war between the Chinese and the Empire of Japan is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia.

 In 2017 the Ministry of Education in the People’s Republic of China decreed that the term “eight-year war” in all textbooks should be replaced by “fourteen-year war”, with a revised starting date of 18 September 1931 provided by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. 

According to historian Rana Mitter, historians in China are unhappy with the blanket revision, and (despite sustained tensions) the Republic of China did not consider itself to be continuously at war with Japan over these six years.

China fought Japan with aid from the Soviet Union and the United States. After the Japanese attacks on Malaya and Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged with other conflicts which are generally categorized under those conflicts of World War II as a major sector known as the China Burma India Theater. Some scholars consider the European War and the Pacific War to be entirely separate, albeit concurrent, wars. Other scholars consider the start of the full-scale Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to have been the beginning of World War II.

The Second Sino-Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the 20th century.[35] It accounted for the majority of civilian and military casualties in the Pacific War, with between 10 and 25 million Chinese civilians and over 4 million Chinese and Japanese military personnel missing or dying from war-related violence, famine, and other causes. The war has been called “the Asian holocaust.”

The war was the result of a decades-long Japanese imperialist policy to expand its influence politically and militarily in order to secure access to raw material reserves, food, and labor. 

The period after World War I brought about increasing stress on the Japanese polity. Leftists sought universal suffrage and greater rights for workers. 

Increasing textile production from Chinese mills was adversely affecting Japanese production and the Great Depression brought about a large slowdown in exports. 

All of this contributed to militant nationalism, culminating in the rise to power of a militarist faction. This faction was led at its height by the Hideki Tojo cabinet of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association under edict from Emperor Hirohito. 

In 1931, the Mukden Incident helped spark the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. The Chinese were defeated and Japan created a new puppet state, Manchukuo; many historians cite 1931 as the beginning of the war. 

This view has been adopted by the PRC government. From 1931 to 1937, China and Japan continued to skirmish in small, localized engagements, so-called “incidents”.

Following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Japanese scored major victories, capturing Beijing, Shanghai and the Chinese capital of Nanjing in 1937, which resulted in the Rape of Nanjing. 

After failing to stop the Japanese in the Battle of Wuhan, the Chinese central government was relocated to Chongqing (Chungking) in the Chinese interior. 

With the strong material support through the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1937, the Nationalist Army of China and the Chinese Air Force were able to continue putting up strong resistance against the Japanese offensive. 

By 1939, after Chinese victories in Changsha and Guangxi, and with Japan’s lines of communications stretched deep into the Chinese interior, the war reached a stalemate. While the Japanese were also unable to defeat the Chinese communist forces in Shaanxi, who waged a campaign of sabotage and guerrilla warfare against the invaders, they ultimately succeeded in the year-long Battle of South Guangxi to occupy Nanning, which cut off the last sea access to the wartime capital of Chongqing. 

While Japan ruled the large cities, they lacked sufficient manpower to control China’s vast countryside. 

In November 1939, Chinese nationalist forces launched a large scale winter offensive, while in August 1940, Chinese communist forces launched a counteroffensive in central China. 

The United States supported China through a series of increasing boycotts against Japan, culminating with cutting off steel and petrol exports into Japan by June 1941.

Additionally, American mercenaries such as the Flying Tigers provided extra support to China directly.

In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and declared war on the United States. 

The United States declared war in turn and increased its flow of aid to China – with the Lend-Lease act, the United States gave China a total of $1.6 billion ($18.4 billion adjusted for inflation). 

With Burma cut off it airlifted material over the Himalayas. 

In 1944, Japan launched Operation Ichi-Go, the invasion of Henan and Changsha. 

However, this failed to bring about the surrender of Chinese forces. In 1945, the Chinese Expeditionary Force resumed its advance in Burma and completed the Ledo Road linking India to China. 

At the same time, China launched large counteroffensives in South China and retook West Hunan and Guangxi. Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945. 

China regained all territories lost to Japan.

United States of America

The military history of the United States in World War II covers the war against the Axis Powers, starting with the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

During the first two years of World War II, the United States had maintained formal neutrality as a made official in the Quarantine Speech delivered by US President Franklin D.

Roosevelt in 1937, while supplying Britain, the Soviet Union, and China with war material through the Lend-Lease Act which was signed into law on 11 March 1941, as well as deploying the US military to replace the British forces stationed in Iceland.

Following the “Greer incident” Roosevelt publicly confirmed the “shoot on sight” order on 11 September 1941, effectively declaring naval war on Germany and Italy in the Battle of the Atlantic.

In the Pacific Theater, there was unofficial early US combat activity such as the Flying Tigers.

During the war, some 16,112,566 Americans served in the United States Armed Forces, with 405,399 killed and 671,278 wounded

There were also 130,201 American prisoners of war, of whom 116,129 returned home after the war. 

Key civilian advisors to President Roosevelt included Secretary of War Henry L.

Stimson, who mobilized the nation’s industries and induction centers to supply the Army, commanded by General George Marshall and the Army Air Forces under General Hap Arnold.

The Navy, led by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and Admiral Ernest King, proved more autonomous. Overall priorities were set by Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chaired by William Leahy. 

The highest priority was the defeat of Germany in Europe, but first, the war against Japan in the Pacific was more urgent after the sinking of the main battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Admiral King put Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, based in Hawaii, in charge of the Pacific War against Japan. The Imperial Japanese Navy had the advantage, taking the Philippines as well as British and Dutch possessions, and threatening Australia but in June 1942, its main carriers were sunk during the Battle of Midway, and the Americans seized the initiative.

The Pacific War became one of island hopping, so as to move air bases closer and closer to Japan. The Army, based in Australia under General Douglas MacArthur, steadily advanced across New Guinea to the Philippines, with plans to invade the Japanese home islands in late 1945.

With its merchant fleet sunk by American submarines, Japan ran short of aviation gasoline and fuel oil, as the US Navy in June 1944 captured islands within bombing range of the Japanese home islands. Strategic bombing directed by General Curtis Lemay destroyed all the major Japanese cities, as the US captured Okinawa after heavy losses in spring 1945.

With the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, and an invasion of the home islands imminent, Japan surrendered.

The war in Europe involved aid to Britain, her allies, and the Soviet Union, with the US supplying munitions until it could ready an invasion force. US forces were first tested to a limited degree in the North African Campaign and then employed more significantly with British Forces in Italy in 1943–45, where US forces, representing about a third of the Allied forces deployed, bogged down after Italy surrendered and the Germans took over.

Finally, the main invasion of France took place in June 1944, under General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Meanwhile, the US Army Air Forces and the British Royal Air Force engaged in the area bombardment of German cities and systematically targeted German transportation links and synthetic oil plants, as it knocked out what was left of the Luftwaffe post Battle of Britain in 1944.

Being invaded from all sides, it became clear that Germany would lose the war. Berlin fell to the Soviets in May 1945, and with Adolf Hitler dead, the Germans surrendered.

The military effort was strongly supported by civilians on the home front, who provided the military personnel, the munitions, the money, and the morale to fight the war to victory. World War II cost the United States an estimated $341 billion in 1945 dollars – equivalent to 74% of America’s GDP and expenditures during the war. In 2015 dollars, the war cost over $4.5 trillion.


kingdom of romania

Following the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the Kingdom of Romania under King Carol II officially adopted a position of neutrality. 

However, the rapidly changing situation in Europe during 1940, as well as domestic political upheaval, undermined this stance. 

Fascist political forces such as the Iron Guard rose in popularity and power, urging an alliance with Nazi Germany and its allies. 

As the military fortunes of Romania’s two main guarantors of territorial integrity—France and Britain—crumbled in the Fall of France, the government of Romania turned to Germany in hopes of a similar guarantee, unaware that the then dominant European power had already granted its consent to Soviet territorial claims in a secret protocol of 1939’s Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

In summer 1940 a series of territorial disputes were diplomatically resolved unfavorably to Romania, resulting in the loss of most of the territory gained in the wake of World War I. This caused the popularity of Romania’s government to plummet, further reinforcing the fascist and military factions, who eventually staged a coup that turned the country into a dictatorship under Mareșal Ion Antonescu. 

The new regime firmly set the country on a course towards the Axis camp, officially joining the Axis powers on 23 November 1940. 

As a member of the Axis, Romania joined the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, providing equipment and oil to Nazi Germany as well as committing more troops to the Eastern Front than all the other allies of Germany combined. Romanian forces played a large role during fighting in Ukraine, Bessarabia, Stalingrad and elsewhere. Romanian troops were responsible for the persecution and massacre of up to 260,000 Jews in Romanian-controlled territories, though most Jews living within Romania survived the harsh conditions. 

According to historian and author Mark Axworthy, the second Axis army in Europe, arguably, belonged to Romania, though, this is disputed since many would agree that this position goes to the Italian army.

After the tide of war turned against the Axis, Romania was bombed by the Allies from 1943 onwards and invaded by advancing Soviet armies in 1944. 

With popular support for Romania’s participation in the war faltering and German-Romanian fronts collapsing under the Soviet onslaught, King Michael of Romania led a coup d’état that deposed the Antonescu regime and put Romania on the side of the Allies for the remainder of the war; Antonescu was executed in June 1946. 

Despite this late association with the winning side, Greater Romania was largely dismantled, losing territory to Bulgaria and the Soviet Union, but regaining Northern Transylvania from Hungary.


Poland

The history of Poland from 1939 to 1945 encompasses primarily the period from the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the end of World War II.

Following the German–Soviet non-aggression pact, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939 and by the Soviet Union on 17 September. The campaigns ended in early October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland. After the Axis attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941,

the entirety of Poland was occupied by Germany, which proceeded to advance its racial and genocidal policies across Poland.

Under the two occupations, Polish citizens suffered enormous human and material losses.

According to the Institute of National Remembrance estimates, about 5.6 million Polish citizens died as a result of the German occupation and about 150,000 died as a result of the Soviet occupation. 

The Jews were singled out by the Germans for a quick and total annihilation and about 90 percent of Polish Jews (close to three million people) were murdered as part of the Holocaust.

Jews, Poles, Romani people and prisoners of many other ethnicities were killed masse at Nazi extermination camps, such as Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibór.

Ethnic Poles were subjected to both Nazi German and Soviet persecution. The Germans killed an estimated two million ethnic Poles.

They had future plans to turn the remaining majority of Poles into slave labor and annihilate those perceived as “undesirable” as part of the wider Generalplan Ost. 

Ethnic cleansing and massacres of Poles and to a lesser extent Ukrainians were perpetrated in western Ukraine (prewar Polish Kresy) from 1943. The Poles were murdered by Ukrainian nationalists.

In September 1939, the Polish government officials sought refuge in Romania, but their subsequent internment there prevented the intended continuation abroad as the government of Poland.

General Władysław Sikorski, a former prime minister, arrived in France, where a replacement Polish Government-in-Exile was soon formed.

After the fall of France, the government was evacuated to Britain. The Polish armed forces had been reconstituted and fought alongside the Western Allies in France, Britain and elsewhere. 

Resistance movement began organizing in Poland in 1939, soon after the invasions.

Its largest military component was a part of the Polish Underground State network of organizations and activities and became known as the Home Army.

The whole clandestine structure was formally directed by the Government-in-Exile through its delegation resident in Poland.

There were also peasant, right-wing, leftist, Jewish and Soviet partisan organizations.

Among the failed anti-German uprisings were the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warsaw Uprising.

The aim of the Warsaw Uprising was to prevent domination of Poland by the Soviet Union.

In order to cooperate with the Soviet Union, after Operation Barbarossa an important war ally of the West, Sikorski negotiated

in Moscow with Joseph Stalin and they agreed to form a Polish army in the Soviet Union, intended to fight on the Eastern Front alongside the Soviets.

The “Anders’ Army” was instead taken to the Middle East and then to Italy.

Further efforts to continue the Polish-Soviet cooperation had failed because of disagreements over the borders, the discovery of the Katyn massacre of Polish POWs perpetrated by the Soviets, and the death of General Sikorski.

Afterwards, in a process seen by many Poles as a Western betrayal, the Polish Government-in-Exile gradually ceased being a recognized partner in the Allied coalition.

Stalin pursued a strategy of facilitating the formation of a Polish government independent of (and in opposition to) the exile government in London by empowering the Polish communists.

Among Polish communist organizations established during the war were the Polish Workers’ Party in occupied Poland and the Union of Polish Patriots in Moscow.

A new Polish army was formed in the Soviet Union to fight together with the Soviets.

At the same time Stalin worked on co-opting the Western Allies (the United States led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the United Kingdom led by Prime Minister Winston Churchill), who, in terms of practical implementations, conformed to Stalin’s views on Poland’s borders and future government.

The fate of Poland had been determined in a series of negotiations that included the conferences in Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam.

In 1944, the Polish Government-in-Exile approved and the underground in Poland undertook unilateral political and military actions aimed at establishing an independent Polish authority, but the efforts were thwarted by the Soviets.

The Polish communists founded the State National Council in 1943/44 in occupied Warsaw and the Polish Committee of National Liberation in July 1944 in Lublin, after the arrival of the Soviet army. The Soviet Union kept the eastern half of prewar Poland,

granting Poland instead the greater southern portion of the eliminated German East Prussia and shifting the country west to the Oder–Neisse line, at the expense of Germany.