The article discusses the place held in Polish historiography by the first scholarly historical synthesis of the German occupation of Poland during World War II, published in 1970, written by Czesław Madajczyk. The author examines the background of the book's publication, which was prepared during the peak of the anti-Semitic campaign in Polish People’s Republic, after so-called “March events” of 1968. The article also explores the reasons behind the startling and long-standing popularity of Madajczyk’s work. Additionally, the author points out the current need for a new synthesis of Poland’s history during World War II, explaining why such an undertaking is important today.

The article concerns German occupation legislation: it does not, however, discuss the subject of the administrative and judicial structures of the Polish Underground State and its activities in this field. The discussed issues are divided into three areas: the political system and law, judiciary and administration. Due to the differences in the legal system, the article discusses those three areas separately in respect to the General Governorate and the lands incorporated into the Third Reich. Within each of the areas, the state of research and research postulates were presented separately. The lack of research, the little-advanced state of knowledge and limited scope of the article caused the description relating to the Polish lands occupied by the USSR in September 1939 and in 1941 incorporated to the Reich Commissariats East and Ukraine to be omitted in this study. The authors presented research postulates, proposing to undertake research based not only on the analysis of legal acts (normative – theoretical sphere), but primarily on the study of practice recorded in court files. The authors also formulated a general postulate, based on the presentation of detailed research, elaboration and development of a critical overview generalizing the problems of law and administration (also in the context of the other occupied countries), which would indicate the role of law and courts in the implementation of Nazi policy goals.

During the German occupation in Poland 1939–1945 the most important element of the Germanization policy was economic plunder. Its purpose was to carry out the process of pauperization of the Polish population, which was also the case in the countryside. After September 1, 1939, the countryside saw forfeiture of Polish property and mass displacement of the population. The effect of these actions would be a new system of land property. The new mass-production households were to be dominating ones, producing food not only for the needs of the farmers, but also for the fighting German war effort. A “colonization” action was also carried out in the countryside under German occupation. The designers and authorities responsible for its implementation were aiming at the change of the national structure of the countryside and establishment of the absolute domination of the Germans there. The main goal of this article is to present the current state of research in these areas. The selected previous publications and some author’s proposals for future research were indicated. The article is divided into two main parts. The first deals with the state of research on agriculture in the lands illegally annexed by the Third Reich. The key principle of the advancement of the state of research was adopted, describing agriculture under occupation during the war in the Warthegau (Greater Poland), regions of Suwałki, Upper Silesia and Ciechanów and, at the end, the Reich District of Gdańsk-West Prussia (Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen, i.e. Pomerania and Kuyavia). The second part of the text deals with the rural economy in the General Governorate.

The article analyses the achievements of eighty years of research on German crimes committed in Gdansk Pomerania and Cuyavia by the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz in the first months of the occupation of these provinces by the Third Reich. The paper presents the exceptional scale of this act of German genocide against the background of the entire occupied Poland. In this context, the definition and arguments that guided the creation of a new historical term – the 1939 Pomeranian Massacre are presented. On the one hand, this subject is one of the best researched occurrences of the German occupation in Poland, but on the other hand, it still lacks critical review, analytical and problem-solving works and comparative studies on other mass German crimes of 1939–1945 (for example Intelligenzaktion), committed against the civilians during the World War II.

Events that were very important for the Polish-Ukrainian relations took place between 1943 and 1945, when the Bandera faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed wing – the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – committed genocide on Poles living in the south-eastern regions of the Second Polish Republic. In the extermination campaign, especially in Volhynia, the perpetrators used the concept of a simulated “people’s war”, involving Ukrainian peasants in the annihilation of Poles. The identification of the direct perpetrators and the circumstances of the so-called Volhynia Massacre have not yet been completed. The identities of only some of the victims of the ethnic cleansing are known here and historians still use estimates to determine the number of those murdered. The article provides a brief review of the progress made in research since the 1980s, a survey of the literature in the field (mainly from the last 15 years), and an indication of the areas of research and the directions in which historians should proceed.

The history of the NSDAP’s Working Sector in the General Governorate (Arbeitsbereich der NSDAP im Generalgouvernement Polen), which was established at the beginning of May 1940, is relatively less known in the historiography concerning the German occupation of Poland during World War II. Meanwhile, the structures of the Nazi party played an important role in the propaganda and the strengthening of Hans Frank’s criminal occupation regime and in the designed process of Germanisation of the General Governorate, especially in the context of the “ideological care” over the ethnic Germans living there. Nevertheless, the full development of the party organisation in these lands was blocked by Frank’s own political ambitions, as reflected in competence disputes with some central Third Reich power institutions. Ultimately, the NSDAP’s Working Sector only partially fulfilled its political function, remaining an unfinished enterprise and one of the many faces of the polycratic face of the Nazi regime.

The aim of the article is to present the issue of preservation by museums in regard to life under the German occupation in the General Governorate. The following issues are discussed: the condition of museums and cultural heritage in 1939 (statistical data, legal basis, preparations in the event of war), supervision of occupation authorities over museums (legal regulations, organizational structures, and confiscations), the activities of Polish underground structures and government (registration of losses, preparation for the post-war restitution of cultural objects). The article contains case studies – detailing the functioning of selected museums. Additionally, an important element is the presenting of research output in the above-mentioned thematic scope, leading to an indication of research postulates.

The article outlines the process of the displacement of the German minority (so-called Baltic Germans) from Latvia and Estonia, and the settlement of them in the Wartheland in 1939–1940. The organisation of the resettlement and the course and specifics of Baltic-German settlement are described as well as its objectives, which was the Germanisation of areas incorporated by the Third Reich in 1939. The study discusses decision-making processes and the functioning of the German occupation administrative apparatus responsible for resettlement policy in respect to the introduction of racial selection instruments on a massive scale. The numerical extent of the entire presented resettlement is also summarised.

This article presents the state of research on several armed actions carried out by the Home Army in April and May 1943 during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Action “Ghetto”). These events were episodic but they remained the only case in Europe under the German occupation of armed action taken by those from the major social group (Christians) in order to aid the Jews. Therefore they constitute an important point of reference for research into Polish-Jewish relations during World War II. Due to political conditions and censorship in Communist Poland, up to the 1960s pseudo-research efforts were directed first at eliminating the Home Army from the research horizon and then at discrediting this largest underground armed formation in occupied Poland with the use of various means of manipulation and questionable or outright false documents. A lively historical debate on this subject began only in the 1970s and 1980s. As a result it has been possible to draw a general picture of the armed actions at the ghetto walls, i.e. to show how many of those actions were executed, what their character and scope was and what their real military and symbolic meaning was, setting these issues in the context of both the conditions of the occupation and the strategy of the Home Army’s resistance against the German occupant. Moreover, no attention has been paid so far to numerous factual inaccuracies and contradictions in regard mainly to the participants of fighting at the ghetto walls. This issue needs to be clarified and confronted as far as possible with the documentary records of the period.

Up to the end of the 1980s the problem of repressions exerted by the Soviet authorities against Poles and Polish citizens in the interwar period, during World War II and after its end for political reasons remained beyond the interest of Polish historians in the country. The contribution in this context of Polish researchers from the diaspora were also quite modest. This resulted not only from the institutional weakness of Polish scholarship in exile, but also from difficult access to archival collections, including the comprehensive materials collected in the years 1941–1945 and stored in the collections of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives at Stanford University. The breakthrough came in the 1980s and 1990s after the democratic changes in Poland and other countries of the Eastern Bloc. The lifting of censorship restrictions and the possibility of using a significant part of the previously classified and inaccessible documentation of the Soviet security apparatus, the wide use of autobiographical sources – memoirs and accounts, allowed for research on a number of issues not explored before and the emergence of new research topics. The most valuable studies emerged thanks to the efforts of Polish researchers and Russian historians belonging to the “Memorial” Association. The issue of Soviet repressions has aroused and continues to arouse considerable interest among scholars from Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus. The breadth of other historiographies are less significant or at most secondary. Despite the extent of significant research and the large number of source publications, one can clearly see not only less explored themes, but also research questions that still remain beyond the attention of historians. New research perspectives result from both the – for now – potential possibilities of introducing many unknown sources into scholarly circulation, but also from the use of new analytical tools, an interdisciplinary approach and a macro- and micro-historical perspective. However, the sine qua non condition in most cases is to make available archives from Russia and Belarus that are still beyond the reach of scholars.

The article concerns the issue of the borders of Poland during World War II in Anthony J. Drexel Biddle’s engagements with the Stanisław Mikołajczyk cabinet in 1943 until Biddle left the position of US ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile. The aim of the study is to present the assessment of the Polish frontier problem by the United States during the key period of World War II, as well as the expectations of the Polish government-in-exile towards the USA regarding territorial issues in the context of deteriorating relations between Poland and Soviet Union.

In the first part of the text, the authors critically assess Kazimierz Leski’s (nom-de-guerre “Bradl”) claims regarding his alleged travels in Europe in the disguise of a German general, and attempt to describe the history and significance of Home Army Headquarters Second Division (intelligence) unit “666” commanded by him. In the second part of the text, the authors reconstruct the setting at that time of a new system of the Home Army foreign communications networks, connecting occupied Poland with London via France well as the actual role played in this activity by Leski and other people involved, such as Bohdan Werner, Tadeusz Jabłoński or Charlotte Trolley de Prévaux (née Lotka Leitner). The authors point out that Leski’s stories about his travels in Europe in a German general’s uniform can be regarded as a false historical narrative. Thus, his memoirs should, in the opinion of authors, be treated in part as a literary work only revolving around actual events. Leski undoubtedly participated in the creation of the communications network between the military underground in occupied Poland and London headquarters. However, his role in setting up this system was, at best, ancillary. At the same time, he has mythologised the role of the small unit “666”. Moreover, the hypothesis that Leski’s (or that unit’s) foreign tasks were primarily Home Army intelligence and counter-intelligence operations seems plausible. These original findings are presented here for the first time in this text.

Poles deported in March 1945 from Cracow to the USSR in the course of Soviet repressions, who survived their confinement in NKVD internment camps no. 516 in Krasnovodsk and no. 520 in Grozny, were transferred in December 1945 to the Nuzal sub-camp of NKVD-MVD Camp no. 228 in Dzaudzhikau (now Vladikavkaz). Originally subordinted to the Camp no. 515, Nuzal subcamp had since April 1945 held a group of Polish citizens deported from Sanok. The Soviet authorities classified them as “Class B Internees/Arrestees”. Most were suspected of various forms of collaboration with the German occupiers, but the group also included soldiers of the Home Army (AK) and the National Armed Forces (NSZ). Camps no. 228 and 520 already at that time offered relatively decent living, sanitation and working conditions, as well as food supplies, although the people imprisoned in Nuzal performed hard labour in a zinc and lead mine. They were also subject to counterintelligence investigations and propaganda indoctrination. Small groups of the 252 Polish prisoners of Nuzal were released as early as 1946. The largest and last group of 165 people was sent back to Poland at the end of October 1947.

In the history of law in Poland, Jerzy Sawicki was one of the most colourful personalities after World War II. His biography appears to be a patchwork of incongruent periods. In his youth, he penned articles for the conservative journal Bunt Młodych, and for Wiadomości Literackie; during the war, as a person of Jewish origin, he was forced into hiding and, according to some sources, allegedly collaborated with the Gestapo. Then, as a prosecutor at the post-war Supreme National Tribunal (Najwyższy Trybunał Narodowy, NTN), he was one of the co-creators of the concept of the “criminal system”, which became the foundation of numerous indictments in the German war crimes trials before the Tribunal. From the 1950s onward, the state security police kept Sawicki under surveillance regarding his conduct during the alleged collaboration with Germans during the occupation and suspected espionage. At the same time, Sawicki pursued a career as a civil servant, scholar and columnist. He travelled abroad without restrictions and maintained contacts with foreign academics and diplomats. Do the ambiguous and unresolved aspects of his life allow for a definitive evaluation? Does his support for the new authorities and endorsement of the Stalinization of the Polish judiciary rule out his achievements as a lawyer and scholar?

The issue of pastoral care for Poles working in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was an integral part of the broader relationship between the Catholic Church and the communist state, which continuously sought to suppress religion’s influence on society. In the mid-1960s, as large numbers of People’s Polish Republic citizens were employed across the western border, the Polish clergy made efforts to ensure their access to religious practices. This involved extensive cooperation with the Catholic Church in East Germany. The effectiveness of these efforts was evident by the mid-1970s when, despite government opposition, most Poles residing in the GDR had access to pastoral care. They were able to attend mass and participate in other initiatives (not only religious) organized by Polish and German priests. This support helped workers from the Polish People’s Republic cope with their prolonged stay abroad and maintain ties with the Church, although it did not entirely prevent various negative effects associated with long-term migration. At the same time, the collaboration between clergy on both sides of the border contributed to tighten relations not only between the two Churches, but also between Polish and German Catholics.

The introduction of Martial Law on December 13, 1981 surprised several thousand Poles who had recently arrived in France. They did not know what could await tchem after returning home, which is why some decided to stay in France permanently or until they learned what Poland held in store. These people required support because they were without accommodation or permanent work and most of them did not speak French. On December 15, 1981, the Committee for Aid to Poles in France was established. Maurice Schumann became its honorary president and Georges Mond its first chairman. This association was apolitical. It was the only one to deal exclusively with Poles in France, conducting humanitarian actions aimed at providing informational, material, financial, moral and informational assistance (including contacts with the French administration). This activity continued uninterruptedl until 1991, assisting several thousand people. The history of the Committee and the role it played could be traced through the records kept in the Archives of the Polish Catholic Mission in Paris.

The Home Army (AK) Warsaw Circuit was one of its strongest organizational and field structures. At the end of February 1944, when the Home Army reached its largest organizational state, the Warsaw Circuit structures included over 25% of AK officers and cadets, over 11% of non-commissioned officers and about 10% of the rank and file of its entire forces. Moreover, due to the lack of basic records, the details of the AK Warsaw Circuit activities at that time were not known, as well as, apart from the general data quoted above, the status of its individual organizational units. The introduction briefly outlines the state of historiography and available sources. The document published later, consists of the outline part, written probably by Col. Antoni Chruściel and the tabular one prepared under the direction of Maj. Wacław Kuliszewski. It shows the organizational work carried out and the state of the Home Army Warsaw Circuit at the peak of the Home Army’s development. This study outlines the Circuit’s structure, the strength of its districts, as well as that of Kedyw (Directorate of Diversion) and Wojskowa Służba Ochrony Powstania (WSOP, Military Uprising Security, military police) and the weapons they possess, as well as the strength of Wojskowa Służba Kobiet (WSK, Women’s Military Service) teams and the achievements of the Szkoła Podchorążych Rezerwy Piechoty (Infantry Reserve Cadet School) and Szkoła Młodszych Dowódców (Junior Commander School).