Polish People's Army
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| guide | |||
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| Commander in Chief : | Head of State of Poland (since 1956) | ||
| Military strength | |||
| Active soldiers: | Max. 440,000 (1945) | ||
| Conscription: | Yes | ||
| Eligibility for military service: | 18th | ||
| history | |||
| Founding: | 1944 | ||
| Resolution: | 1990 | ||
| Replacement: | Polish armed forces | ||
The Polish People's Army ( Polish Ludowe Wojsko Polskie ) were the armed forces of the People's Republic of Poland . They were on 21 July 1944, the Lublin Committee with the formation of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland ( Polish Rząd tymczasowy Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej (RTRP) ) under Boleslaw Bierut founded. The Polish People's Army emerged from the merger of the Polish Armed Forces established in 1943 in the Soviet Union ( Polish: Polskie Siły Zbrojne w ZSRR ) with the communist underground army Armia Ludowa . It was later renamed Siły Zbrojne Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej (Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland) and from 1952 in Siły Zbrojne Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej (Armed Forces of the People's Republic of Poland) . The Polish People's Army had been part of the Warsaw Pact since 1955 and existed until the political change in Poland in 1989 .
history
Founding phase during the Second World War
By decree had formally composed on January 1, 1944 Polish National Council, the State National Council of the Supreme Command of the Polish Army (KRN) on 21 July 1944, the founding of the Polish People's Army and the means ( Polish Naczelne Dowództwo Wojska Polskiego decided). Due to the Katyn massacre in 1940, in which an estimated 22,000 to 25,000 citizens of Poland, u. a. Professional and reserve officers of the Polish Army (Wojsko Polskie) were killed by the Soviet Union, half of the troops had to be occupied by Soviet Red Army officers in 1944 . During the Second World War, two armies of the Polish People's Army ( 1 Armia Wojska Polskiego (1 AWP) under Major General Zygmunt Berling , 2 AWP under General Karol Świerczewski ) and further reinforcement units of the headquarters were initially planned as 3 AWP, including the 1st Brigade from parts of the 10th Infantry Division, the 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th Infantry Divisions, artillery regiments, two engineer brigades, army aviators and armored units under construction. The formation initially planned as the “Polish Front” could no longer be formed due to a lack of sufficient officers. Instead, the 1st and 2nd Polish Armies of the 2nd Belarusian Front of the Red Army under the leadership of Marshal of the Soviet Union Konstantin Konstantinowitsch Rokossowski were subordinated. 180,000 Polish soldiers of the 1st and 2nd Armies took part in the Battle of Berlin , in which 8,892 soldiers were killed. The last offensive of World War II was carried out by the Polish soldiers in the Prague operation in May 1945.
At the end of the Second World War, the Polish People's Army consisted of around 370,000 soldiers, which rose to 440,000 soldiers by September 1945 and around 1,000 officers of the Soviet Army were still serving in the Polish People's Army, including 16 of 53 generals. In 1949 around 700 Soviet officers occupied almost half of all key positions.
As commander in chief of the Polish Army was from 1944 to 1947 of Marshal of Poland Michał Rola-Żymierski , also a member of the Presidium of the National Council, and from 1945 to 1949 Minister of National Defense of the Republic of Poland . His two deputies were Zygmunt Berling and Aleksander Zawadzki . Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces was General Władysław Korczyc from 1945 to January 18, 1954 , who was also Deputy Minister of Defense from 1949 to 1954.
Mine clearings 1944 to 1956
One of the most important tasks of the Polish Army after World War II was mine clearance. During nationwide mine clearance operations from 1944 to 1956, around 14.75 million mines and 59 million pieces of ammunition (bombs, cartridges, etc.) were found and destroyed. 19,000 soldiers were used, 646 of whom were killed in the removal.
Military districts
On April 1, 1945, Poland was divided into six military districts (Okręgi Wojskowe, OW) , which were under Soviet control:
- Warszawski okręg Wojskowy based in the capital Warsaw and was responsible for the provinces of Warsaw and Bialystok ,
- Lubelski Okręg Wojskowy , based in Lublin, with jurisdiction in the Lublin and Rzeszów Voivodeships
- Krakowski Okręg Wojskowy with its seat in Krakow and jurisdiction over the Kraków Voivodeship ,
- Łódzki Okręg Wojskowy , based in Łódź and responsible for the Łódź Voivodeships and Kielce Voivodeships ,
- Poznański Okręg Wojskowy with its seat in Poznan and jurisdiction in Poznan
- Pomorski Okręg Wojskowy (Pomerania) with its seat in Toruń and jurisdiction in the Bydgoszcz and Gdansk Voivodeships .
From September 1945 the Śląsko-Dąbrowski Okręg Wojskowy (Silesia and the Dombrowaer Brazier ) was added, based in Katowice (from March 1946 in Wroclaw ) and responsible for the Katowice and Wroclaw Voivodeships .
Ministry of National Defense and the Northern Group of Troops of the Soviet Army
Parallel to the developments in Poland stood the Northern Group of Troops of the Soviet Army (NGT) ( Polish: Północna Grupa Wojsk (PGW) , Russian: Се́верная гру́ппа во́йск (СГВ) ), which was formed mainly from the 2nd Belarusian Front , which had been established since June 1945 was stationed in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg until summer 1945. In 1945 the NGT comprised more than 300,000 soldiers and its commander was the Marshal of the Soviet Union Konstantin Rokossowski , who also had Polish roots. Rokossowski was a member of the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) from December 1948 and was appointed by the Sejm (Polish Parliament) on November 7, 1949 to succeed Michał Rola-Żymierski as Minister of National Defense and Deputy Prime Minister. The northern group of troops also secured control of Poland through the provisional communist government in the early years, and from 1949, Rokossowski, a Soviet general, led the Polish People's Army. Soviet Colonel General Kuzma Trubnikov became commander of the NGT for Rokossovsky . Rokossowski's deputy as defense minister in Poland was Chief of Staff Władysław Korczyc from 1949 to 1954 .
In the early 1950s, Soviet officers controlled key positions in the Polish Ministry of Defense and the General Staff and also provided commanders of the army and air force, commanders of the infantry divisions, commanders in the military districts, most of the military schools and the chief military prosecutor's office.
Ministry of Public Security
The Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego (Ministry of Public Security, MBP) of the Provisional Government of Poland under the leadership of General Stanisław Radkiewicz was the intelligence and counter-espionage body of the Polish secret police from 1945 to 1954 and took control of the military intelligence service on July 1947, the second Department of the General Staff of the Polish People's Army, which was merged with the civil intelligence service to form Department VII of the Ministry of Public Security. In June 1950, the Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej (Ministry of National Defense, MON) took control again. As of the 1950s, the ministry had 32,000 employees and was subordinate to 41,000 soldiers and officers in the Internal Security Corps ( Korpus Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego , KBW) , 57,000 officers in the citizens' militia ( Milicja Obywatelska , MO), 32,000 officers and soldiers from the border guard ( Wojranska Ozay , WOP) , 10,000 prison guards ( Straż Więzienna , SW) and 125,000 members of the voluntary reserve of the citizens' militia ( Ochotnicza Rezerwa Milicji Obywatelskiej , ORMO).
Akcja Wisla
The Akcja Wisła (German: Operation Vistula ) was a military operation of the Polish Army and other security forces in 1947 against the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the forced resettlement of ethnic Ukrainians from southeastern Poland in Poland, were installed in the well, the police and the border guards. Four infantry divisions (6th, 7th, 8th and 9th) of the Polish Army, as well as a division of the Internal Security Corps (Korpus Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego, KBW) and other units of the Ministry of Public Security, including the Citizens' Militia, took part in the operations (Milicja Obywatelska, MO) , the border guards (Wojska Ochrony Pogranicza, WOP) and the voluntary reserve of the citizens' militia (Ochotnicza Rezerwa Milicji Obywatelskiej, ORMO) .
Armament
In 1950, Poland and the Soviet Union signed a contract for the delivery of military equipment and the granting of license replicas for the equivalent of US $ 300 million. As counter-financing, the Polish state had to pay corresponding loans through deliveries of industrial goods, which put an enormous strain on the economy. With the establishment of NATO and in the course of the Korean War , Poland continued to be of great strategic importance to the Soviet Union. The development of the armaments industry and the further armament and modernization of the Polish People's Army, especially in the transport sector, primarily served the objective of a quick relocation of Soviet military units between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as well as to Czechoslovakia (CSSR) and the preparation of one possible use of the Polish People's Army as a “coastal front” in Central Europe. The defense budget rose from 236 million zloty in 1950 to 2251 million zloty in 1953 and was equivalent to almost a fifth of the state budget. As of January 1, 1952, the People's Army had 356,481 soldiers, and of the 62 active generals, 48 belonged to the Soviet Army.
Warsaw Pact membership
From May 11th to 14th, 1955, the second "Conference of European Countries to Ensure Peace and Security in Europe" was held in the Polish State Council building in Warsaw, attended by delegations from Albania, Bulgaria, the GDR, the VR Poland, Romania, Hungary, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia participated, as well as the People's Republic of China as observers. At the conclusion of the conference was the Cold War to rival the Western military alliance , the NATO led by the United States of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (short Warsaw Treaty ) signed by the Prime Minister and consisted of a preamble and 11 articles. By establishing the Warsaw Pact military alliance, the Soviet Union secured its claim to hegemony in Eastern Europe . The Warsaw Treaty entered into force on June 4, 1955.
With the founding, the creation of a United Command of the Armed Forces of the participating States was taken and the Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Stepanovich Konev was appointed as the first Supreme Commander of the United Armed Forces . The commander in chief was always a Soviet general, who at the same time exercised the function of the first deputy of the Soviet defense minister and was therefore directly subordinate to him. The staff of the United Armed Forces was headed by a deputy, also a Soviet general. Brigadier General Tadeusz Pióro was the first representative of Poland on the staff of the United Armed Forces. The Polish leadership was not involved in planning to what extent units of the Polish People's Army should be assigned to the United Armed Forces in the event of war and form a “coastal front” and was the sole responsibility of the General Staff of the Soviet Army.
Poznan Uprising in 1956 and the "nationalization" of the People's Army
In June 1956 there was a workers' uprising in Poznan in which up to 100,000 people took part. The military, led by the Chief of Staff Jerzy Bordziłowski , bloodily suppressed the protests with around 10,000 soldiers and 400 tanks and armored vehicles. 57 people were killed and around 600 injured in the fighting. In the course of de-Stalinization and the loosening of the political climate in the People's Republic of Poland , which reached its peak in October 1956, also known as Polish October , the situation calmed down under Władysław Gomułka towards the end of the year. On October 24, 1956, the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party ( PZPR ) spoke out in favor of dismissing the previous Defense Minister and Marshal of the Soviet Union, Konstantin Konstantinowitsch Rokossowski, who left for the Soviet Union on November 15, 1956. At the same time, numerous Soviet generals and advisers to the state administration returned to the Soviet Union, so that in 1957 only 23 and the following year only 9 Soviet officers were active. The vacancies were filled exclusively by Polish officers, including some who experienced special repression during the Stalin era, such as Marshal of Poland Marian Spychalski, who was imprisoned for a long time and was appointed to succeed Rokossowski as Minister of National Defense in 1957.
Missile troops and storage of nuclear warheads
Around 1960, missile troops were also set up in the Polish People's Army. Until 1968, these four brigades comprised rocket artillery with operational-tactical rockets with a range of up to 300 kilometers and 14 battalions with rockets with a range of up to 65 kilometers, which were assigned to the individual armored and motorized divisions as divisional artillery. The first military maneuver took place on February 26, 1965 under the leadership of the Chief of Staff of the United Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact, Army General Pawel Batow , in which the relocation of nuclear warheads from the Soviet Union to western Poland was carried out. The exercise was seen as a failure, as the missiles would have been an easy target for the enemy if the missiles were transported until they were ready for use and it took a long time to get the warheads to Poland. After that, "Operation Wisła" (Vistula) , the secret planning for the storage of nuclear warheads on Polish territory, began. On February 25, 1967, the Soviet Defense Minister Andrei Antonowitsch Grechko and his Polish counterpart Marian Spychalski agreed in a secret contract in Moscow to build three ammunition dumps for Soviet nuclear warheads at Białogard , Wałcz and Wędrzyn . Poland took over the construction of the objects and their financing and in January 1970, in addition to the garrisons of the Northern Group of the Troops of the Soviet Army (NGT), the three bunker complexes were handed over, which were then under the protection and control of Soviet special forces: Object 3001 near Templewo , Object 3002 near Brzeźnica-Kolonia and object 3003 near Podborsko . Around 178 nuclear warheads were stored in the mid-1980s (including 14 with an explosive force of 500 kt, 35 with an explosive force of 200 kt and 83 warheads with an explosive force of 10 kt and 36 aerial bombs).
Intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968
When the troops of the Warsaw Pact countries invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (ČSSR) in August 1968, around 24,300 Polish soldiers with 750 tanks and 650 armored vehicles took part in addition to soldiers from the Soviet Union, Hungary and Bulgaria remained stationed in the neighboring country for several months.
December 1970 uprising in Poland
Sudden drastic increases in the price of food and everyday items led to strikes in the shipyards in Gdansk. There were also demonstrations all over Poland. The country was temporarily on the brink of civil war. The authorities responded with a massive deployment of police and military, in the course of which 45 people officially lost their lives. Gomułka resigned as party leader on December 19, 1970. He was succeeded on December 20, 1970 by Edward Gierek .
Martial law in Poland 1981–1983
On the night of December 12-13, 1981, the Polish People's Army and security organs under General Wojciech Jaruzelski took power in Poland and imposed martial law. Jaruzelski justified these steps until his death with an alleged imminent danger of the Soviet army marching in , but there is hardly any evidence for this, in fact at the time there was much against such an option by the Kremlin . After the end of martial law in 1983, the interned opposition members were released.
Political change in 1989
General Wojciech Jaruzelski was Chairman of the Council of State in the following years and was at the same time the First Secretary of the PVAP and the Commander in Chief of the Army with the rank of " General of the Army ". With the political change in 1989 , Solidarność was allowed again. The first partially free elections in the Eastern Bloc on June 4, 1989 with the clear victory of the Solidarność movement, the formation of a government by Tadeusz Mazowiecki on August 24, 1989, the reintroduction of the former state name Rzeczpospolita Polska up to the first free parliamentary elections in 1991 are the beginning of the Third Republic . The Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved on July 1, 1991, and the Soviet troops stationed in Poland withdrew. The Polish People's Army was transferred to the Polish Armed Forces ( officially in Polish Siły Zbrojne Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej , unofficially Wojsko Polskie ), which have been a member of NATO since 1999 .
Organization and tasks
The Polish People's Army was divided into the following armed forces :
- Army ( Wojska Lądowe )
- Marine ( Marynarka Wojenna ) and
- Air Force ( Wojska Lotnicze ) and Air Defense Forces ( Wojska Obrony Powietrznej Kraju ).
From 1953 to 1992, Poland was organizationally divided into 3 military districts:
- Pomeranian Military District ( Pomorski Okręg Wojskowy ) with the Polish 1st Army (1 AWP)
- Silesian Military District ( Śląski Okręg Wojskowy ) with the Polish 2nd Army (2nd AWP)
- Warsaw Military District ( Warszawski Okręg Wojskowy ) with the Polish 4th Army (4th AWP)
The Kraków Military District ( Krakowski Okręg Wojskowy ) had already been dissolved in 1953.
army
At the end of World War II, the Polish People's Army consisted of around 370,000 soldiers, the number of which rose to 440,000 by September 1945. In 1952 there were 356,481 soldiers in the People's Army, mostly army soldiers. The army provided three armies (1 AWP, 2 AWP and 4 AWP) which, in the event of war, were to form the “Polish Front” together with units of the Red Army. The Polish army had strong armored units (at the end of the 1980s, among other things, around 800 T-72 M1 main battle tanks , some of which were modernized as PT-91 "Twardy").
marine
At the beginning of the Second World War, the Polish Navy was able to partially secure itself (including Operation Beijing ); these ships then formed the navy of the Polish government in exile . After the war, the remaining ships returned to Poland, where they then secured the Baltic Sea for the Warsaw Pact as part of the Navy of the People's Republic of Poland . In the event of war with NATO, it was planned that the Polish armed forces should occupy Denmark , which meant that the Polish Navy owned a large number of landing craft . In 1989 the navy had 4 submarines , a destroyer of the Kashin Mod class , a frigate , 4 corvettes , 12 guided missile boats, 62 patrol boats (partly also under the command of the coast guard), 23 landing ships of the Północny class, 19 landing craft, 24 Anti-mine vessels and 21 auxiliary vessels.
air force
It was only under the Polish Defense Minister Konstantin Konstantinowitsch Rokossowski , who had been in office since 1949 , a Soviet Marshal, that the Polish Air Force became a separate armed force again. Poland largely took over the standard aircraft from Soviet production, in-house designs such as the PZL TS-11 Iskra remained the exception.
In 1954 the air force was merged with the air defense forces ( Wojska Lotnicze i Obrony Przeciwlotniczej Obszaru Kraju - WLiOPL OK ). In 1962 the WLiOPL OK was again divided into the air force ( Wojska Lotnicze ) and air defense forces ( Wojska Obrony Powietrznej Kraju ). The MiG-21 (MiG-21F-13, MiG-21PF and MF as well as MiG-21bis) became the standard aircraft of the Air Force from 1963 . From 1979 the Polish Air Force had 37 MiG-23s and since 1989 also 12 MiG-29s .
Operational-strategic plans in the event of war
The operational-strategic plan of a “Polish Front”, also known as the “Coastal Front”, was signed in Moscow in January 1955 through a protocol for the deployment of the Polish People's Army in the event of war between the People's Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union. According to the plans, the front under the leadership of the High Command of the Soviet Army should comprise around 1,150,000 soldiers, the combat group was then assigned to the three Polish armies (1 AWP, 2 AWP and 3 AWP) and an additional 19 infantry divisions, 5 mechanized divisions, 4 tank divisions, 10 artillery divisions, an air army with 8 aviation divisions as well as the navy and units of coastal defense with a size of around two divisions. In the event of war, the NATO member states Federal Republic of Germany and Denmark were intended as areas of operation. The armed forces were supposed to take the Kiel Canal and Jutland and thus control the straits between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea on the Kattegat and Skagerrak from the land side .
In the revised offensive plans for the “Coastal Front” of February 28, 1965, the operational areas of operation for the 1st Polish Army were southern Jutland and for the 2nd Polish Army the goal was to reach the Amsterdam-The Hague-Antwerp line and would therefore be an enemy of the NATO Army Group North ( NORTHAG ). The 6th Pomeranian Airborne Division and 7th Lusatian Landing Division were supposed to support the offensive and capture Zealand with the Danish capital Copenhagen.
Web links
literature
- Torsten Diedrich, Winfried Heinemann, Christian F. Ostermann (eds.): The Warsaw Pact. From founding to collapse in 1955 to 1991 . Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag, 2009. ISBN 978-3-86153-504-1 .
- Rüdiger Wenzke (Ed.): The armed forces of the GDR and Poland in the operational planning of the Warsaw Pact. Potsdam: Military History Research Office, 2010. ISBN 978-3-941571-09-9 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.rzeczpospolita.pl/dodatki/specjal_040428/specjal_a_14.html
- ↑ Edward Nalepa January: Oficerowie Armii Radzieckiej w Wojsku polskim 1943-1968. Wydawnictwo Bellona, Warszawa 1995, pages 256-262, ISBN 83-11-08353-3
- ^ Norman Davies : Powstanie '44. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2004, pages 738–739, ISBN 8324004599
- ↑ Stanisław Dronicz: Wojsko i politycy. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo CB, 2002, pp. 44-45 and 90-91, ISBN 8386245840
- ↑ Edward Nalepa January: Oficerowie Armii Radzieckiej w Wojsku polskim 1943-1968. Wydawnictwo Bellona, Warszawa 1995, page 91, ISBN 83-11-08353-3
- ↑ http://wiadomosci.dziennik.pl/polityka/artykuly/198972,polska-miala-arsenal-broni-nuklearnej.html
- ↑ Minutes of the Politburo meeting on December 10, 1981 (Russian; PDF; 539 kB)
- ↑ A Landing Operation in Denmark: The Polish Military's Losses in the First Phase of a Warsaw Pact Offensive Were to Reach 50 Percent. December 2006, author Paweł Piotrowski on the Warsaw Pact military plan that the Polish armed forces should invade Denmark in the event of a military confrontation between East and West. The article first appeared in the Polish weekly magazine Wprost .