The Second World War by Beevor Antony

Author:Beevor, Antony [Beevor, Antony]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316084079
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2012-06-05T06:00:00+00:00

Almost from the start, Churchill had great hopes of turning European discontent under Nazi occupation into outright revolt. In May 1940, he had appointed Dr Hugh Dalton, a well-off socialist, to be minister for economic warfare and supervise the creation of the Special Operations Executive. Dalton was not popular in the Labour Party, but as an anti-appeaser he had done much in the late 1930s to move it away from its pacifist position. He had long been a great admirer of Churchill, although the prime minister did not reciprocate his feelings. He could not ‘stand his booming voice and shifty eyes’ and said of Sir Robert Vansittart, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office in the 1930s, ‘Extraordinary fellow, Van! He actually likes Dr Dalton.’

Dalton, a fervent admirer of the Poles, recruited Colonel Colin Gubbins, who had been a liaison officer with the Polish army during its battles in 1939. Gubbins later came to command SOE. Polish resistance was an inspiration for SOE. Even after the country’s surrender at the end of September 1939, Polish soldiers fought on in the Kielce district under Major Henryk Dobrzaski until May 1940, while others resisted in the area of Sandomierz on the upper Vistula. A Polish section had been set up in SOE, but its role was simply to work with the Polish army’s Sixth Bureau in London and provide support. No military mission was sent to occupied Poland, and as a result the Poles themselves ran everything. After the great contribution of Polish pilots in the Battle of Britain, SOE managed to persuade the RAF to convert a Whitley bomber with additional fuel tanks so that they could make the long round-trip from a base in Scotland. The first drop of Polish couriers took place on 15 February 1941. Parachute containers were also designed to drop arms and explosives to what became the Armia Krajowa, or Home Army.

Polish patriotism was perhaps romantic in some ways, but it remained astonishingly resolute through the darkest days of both Nazi and Soviet oppression. In addition to the mass and individual killings which followed the German invasion, over 30,000 Poles were sent to camps, many to the new camp of Auschwitz. Although Poland’s army was crushed in September 1939, a new underground resistance movement was created very soon afterwards. At its height, the Home Army reached nearly 400,000 members. The extraordinarily resourceful Polish intelligence services, which had provided the first Enigma machine, continued to help the Allies. Later in the war, the Poles even managed to spirit away a trial V-2 rocket which had landed in their marshes, and disassemble it. A specially adapted transport C-47 Dakota was flown to Poland and brought it back for examination by Allied scientists.

Both the Home Army and the intelligence networks reported to the Polish government-in-exile in London, which Stalin recognized reluctantly in August 1941 after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The Home Army was always desperately short of weapons. At first it concentrated on releasing prisoners and sabotaging rail communications, which provided great but unacknowledged assistance to the Red Army.

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