Poland Lecture

Question 1

Second Polish Republic (1918-39)

Answer 1

Parliamentary democracy (women vote from 1918).
Military coup in 1926 and rigged elections followed.

Question 2

What was the Pacification campaign?

Answer 2

Eastern Galicia 1930.
Search and destroy homes where Ukrainian militants thought to operate.
Polish and Ukrainians disagree of casualties.

Question 3

What is the Soviet view?

Answer 3

France and Britain against Germany is good for USSR.
Poland is a proto-fascist state that oppressed minorities.
Britain and France likely to negotiate with Germany.

Question 4

Invasion of Poland?

Answer 4

Hitler renounced a non-aggression pact with Poland in 1939 due to belief they were persecuting Germanic Volk and that they were seeking to erase Germany with the Allies.

Question 5

Which places did Germany annex?

Answer 5

Polish Corridor.
Western Poland.
Western Teschen Silesia.

Question 6

What were the German policies in Poland?

Answer 6

Compulsory labour service.
No Polish homeland.
No education beyond elementary or vocational.
Rations set.
Slave labour.
Ethnic cleansing.

Question 7

What was Operation Tannenberg?

Answer 7

Execution of Polish hostages by SS in Kornik on 20th October 1939.

Question 8

How did ethnic cleansing occur?

Answer 8

Poles to be replaced.
Germanisation of towns.
Lowest administration levels.

Question 9

How many Poles were deported in central Poland?

Answer 9

1m

Question 10

How many people abducted for compulsory work by Nazis?

Answer 10

12 million

Question 11

Where was the German terror harsher?

Answer 11

Warsaw

Question 12

What did Heydrich instruct?

Answer 12

The liquidation of the Polish leadership

Question 13

How did the Poles resist?

Answer 13

Underground State

Question 14

Where was the Polish govt-in-exile located?

Answer 14

London

Question 15

What was the Underground State?

Answer 15

Representatives of socialists, peasant party, national democrats, and christian democrats

Question 16

What was the General Uprising Plan 1940-41?

Answer 16

Ruled out any partisan activity and armed resistance until the Allies were closer

Question 17

What was the AK?

Answer 17

Home Army
400,000 soldiers
largest resistance group after Tito’s partisans

Question 18

What did AK and SOE do in 1942?

Answer 18

Inform the Allies about the Holocaust

Question 19

Who was Krystyna Skarbek?

Answer 19

Secret Intelligence Service Member.
Helped establish cell of Polish spies.
Missions in Poland, Egypt, Hungary, France.

Question 20

What happened in Katyn?

Answer 20

1940
Soviet murder of 20,000 police officers
Soviets blamed Nazis for the crimes

Question 21

What was the Warsaw Uprising?

Answer 21

1st August 1944
200,000 Poles died.
Hitler ordered the remaining buildings be destroyed.
1/4 buildings razed.
10,000 vs 10,000.
Polish survivors were evacuated and soldiers taken to POW camps.

Question 22

What did the RAF do in the Warsaw Uprising?

Answer 22

Sent Special Duties Flight to assist Poland

Question 23

How many Polish Jews died in the war?

Answer 23

3m out of 3.3m

Question 24

Which cities were levelled to the ground?

Answer 24

Warsaw. Gdansk. Wroclaw

Question 25

What is Poland’s legacy?

Answer 25

‘The Christ of Nations’
Warsaw Uprising as a foundational narrative

Question 26

What is the Polish memory of WWII?

Answer 26

Victims of Germans and communists.
Heroic Polish resistance