Wars and conflicts from 1945 until 1989 form a vast, multifaceted group, technically impossible to fit within one conceptual framework. It includes on one hand the titanic effort in China which decided the fate of the Middle Kingdom for decades (and perhaps, in a certain timeframe, even the fate of the whole civilisation) and, on the other hand, the desert-covered Atlantic coast and the battles fought there by the Spanish foreign legions and Moroccan insurgents. This text strives to present the incredible variety of forms, methods and spaces of the so-called “local wars”. Under no circumstances should they be treated in one dimension as a simple corollary of the rivalry between the East and the West. Each of the battles, even if it fitted within the axis of the global rivalry of a superpower, had its own determinants, mechanics and dynamics. Due to editorial limitations, the above essay is only a sketch that is superficial in certain aspects. Nevertheless, the author hopes that it will bring together dispersed knowledge and, most importantly, that it will provide inspiration for subsequent researchers to raise the issue of “forgotten wars”.

The major purpose of the essay is to analyse trends in the Cold War and post-Cold War armed conflicts. It is important to bear in mind the necessity of definitions of armed conflicts and wars, etc., since it might be understood in different ways. The author emphasised the typology of armed conflicts in the Cold and post-Cold War era as well as statistical data so as to illustrate the frequency of armed conflicts in both periods. The article presents a comparative study of both periods so as to draw a conclusion regarding the problem in the period of 1945–1989 and post-1989 periods. However, the new types of conflicts as well as the new approach towards them as a new phenomenonhas only been touched.

Fought in August-December of 1937, the battle of Shanghai and Nanking, in which perhaps even a million victims perished on both sides (including civilians), was one of the bloodiest operations of the Sino-Japanese war, which began on 7 July 1937. It was also the biggest operation of this kind since the First World War. Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Kuomintang (KMT, Chinese Nationalist Party) that ruled China, decided to fight it based in Shanghai, although the city (a population of 3.5m in 1937), was the main economic and financial provider of his Government and it was clear that it would be lost in the event of defeat. Moreover, the military involvement of the few divisions modernised with the help of German advisers (General Alexander von Falkenhausen played the main role) meant almost inevitably that these troops would be wiped out. In the end, the decision was made on political grounds; gaining the political and economic support of the Soviet Union and the English-speaking powers required fighting a long-term war, and Chiang had to demonstrate a strong will from the very beginning. In the first phase of the battle (13–23 August), the Chinese offensive almost pushed the few Japanese forces present in Shanghai to the sea. The landing, on 23 August, of the so-called Expeditionary Army under the command of General Matsui Iwane began a lengthy phase of combat, during which both sides suffered huge losses. The resolution came with the attack (5 November in the Hangzhou Bay) of the 10th Japanese Army. However, the victorious Japanese were unable to utilise the general laxity of the withdrawing Chinese troops. Nevertheless, they engaged in the massacre of Nanking, the capital of China, conquered on 13 December. The Shanghai operation, in which both sides suffered losses up to one third of their resources, was the beginning of a long-term war of extermination.

The author presents available archival and published Italian sources devoted to the last weeks of peace between March/April and September 1939. The materials provide clear evidence that in late spring and summer 1939, an arrangement or agreement betweenPoland and Germany was impossible. The main reason was Hitler’s determined political and economic will to attack and destroy Poland.

On the eve of the Second World War, the “Podole” Brigade of the Border Protection Corps guarded approximately 203.5 km of the Polish border with the USSR and 112.9 km of the Polish border with Romania. During the mobilisation of the Polish Army in August 1939, the brigade’s strength was reduced and as a result it was reorganised into the “Czortkow” Regiment, which consisted of three border battalions. On 17 September, the battalions were attacked by Soviet troops of much larger numbers. Despite the enormous numerical superiority, the Polish border guards continued an armed resistance. Having found themselves in a desperate situation, all the regiment’s border guard posts opened fire on invaders, resulting in causalties. However, under the pressure of the enemy’s superiority, the Polish soldiers were forced to retreat. Some posts resisted fiercely for several hours, thus immobilising considerable enemy forces. Only in those areas where regular Soviet troops did not cross the border, the Polish guards remained in their positions for a longer period of time. Thus, after the first day of tense battles with the Soviet troops, the “Czortkow” Regiment actually ceased to exist as an organised military unit, since the overwhelming majority of the personnel was destroyed or captured. Only two companies, cut off from the main forces in the interfluve of the Zbruch and Dniester rivers, were able to retreat to Romania.

The Italian state in the Fascist era was a country which abandoned its free-market economy in favour of corporatism. It was supposed to ensure the state’s development and modernisation, symbolised the first Italian motorways. However, the economy grew slowly until 1940, continuously drained by subsequent colonial conflicts or the civil war in Spain. As a result, it proved to be completely unprepared for a world war. During the Second World War, the Italian economy was inefficient and unable to provide its own armed forces with suitably modern military equipment. At the same time, the basic needs of the Italian society could not be met. The military defeat of Italy, followed by political collapse, first occurred in the economy that was completely ruined between 1940-1943.

The Italian Social Republic (also known as Republic of Salo) was a fascist puppet state under the protection of the Third Reich that was created in the last years of World War II. With Benito Mussolini as the formal leader, it existed from the beginning of German occupation of Italy in September 1943 until the surrender of Wehrmacht in northern Italy by the end of April 1945. The aim of the article is to analyse the politics, propaganda, state and party institutions, as well as various military and paramilitary formations of the RSI, which fought along German troops against the allied forces on the Italian front. Furthermore, another mentioned subject will be that of the so-called Italian Civil War in that period, a brutal fratricidal conflict, in which the Italian Resistance (mostly communist partisans) and the Italian Co-Belligerent Army joined the allies in order to eventually defeat Axis forces and to liberate the country. The Italian Social Republic existed for slightly more than nineteen months, until on 28 April 1945 the partisans shot Mussolini and several other fascists while they were attempting to save their lives and escape from Italy.

The article presents the historical evolution of the Japanese pan-Asian doctrine in the form of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. After breaking the state isolation, overthrowing the Tokugawa shogunate and thorough reforms, the Empire of Japan has become a major player in the international arena. Entering the era of the industrial revolution, the Japanese started the rivalry with the colonial powers for domination in East Asia, thus finally leading to open hostilities in 1937–1945. Due to complicated ideological, legal, economic, social and cultural foundations of the concept of creating an independent bloc of liberated Asian countries under the leadership of the Empire of Japan, it was a unique idea in the modern history of Far East that had a huge impact on further decolonialisation.

The article synthetically presents the actions of the military, the Internal Security Corps and the security apparatus against the underground after the end of Operation Vistula. It aims to show the attempts to destroy the remainder of the UPA and OUN forces and the ensuing results. The displacements of the remaining Ukrainian population from the province of Lublin are also discussed. Even before the end of Operation Vistula, two operational groups were formed, numbering about 10,000 soldiers in total. Their task was facilitated by the demobilisation of partisans carried out in the autumn of 1947 by the command of the Ukrainian underground in Poland. The majority returned to Ukraine to continue fighting, while some tried to get through to the American zone of occupation in Germany. The actions of the military and the Internal Security Corps did not yield significant results. The biggest success was tracking down and surrounding the bunker in which the national OUN commander Jarosław Staruch “Stiah” was hiding, who later committed suicide. In November 1947, when the demobilisation of Ukrainian partisans was discovered, the operational groups were disbanded; combating the last Ukrainian partisans was entrusted to the local units of militia and the Internal Security Corps.

The culturally diversified central and southern east coast of the Adriatic sea is called Dalmazia (Dalmatia). These cultural differences had not been a problem until the region became dependent on Venetia in 1797. In the middle of the 19th century, the slave part of the population started a fierce campaign against the Italian population, with the suport of the Austrian authorities. The Italians of the region started to emigrate or to hide their cultural identity. After the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in WWI, the Kingdom of Italy attempted to join the eastern coast of the Adriatic due to the Italian ethnicity of the inhabitants, but had to face a heavy opposition from the just-created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes (later Yugoslavia) who had the support of the US President Wilson and the French authorities. After some years of international negotiations, the weak Italian government accepted that the entire Dalmazia should belong to Yugoslavia, apart from Zara (Zadar), the capital town of the region. Thousands of Italians fled from the region to preserve their identity. Thousands more decided to stay to avoid losing their properties or jobs. During WWII, Italy occupied a part of Yugoslavia, but Italian forces had to fight against the communist partisans of Tito, who often violently attacked the Italians, both the army and civilians. When they took over power in the region, in late October 1944, a regime of oppression and fear spread there. Hundreds of Italians were arrested and killed without any consideration or lawsuit. The remaining Italians, frightened for their own or their relatives’ lives, decided to run away to Italy. A similar situation happened in the northern part of the east Adriatic – Fiume (Rijeka), Pola (Pula), Rovigo (Rovinj), and the Istrian Region. In Italy, the refugees from Dalmazia and Istria set up some organisations to provide both material and moral help and support. The Dodecanese was occupied by Italians in 1911 during the war with Ottomans over Libya. In the following years, thousands of Italians immigrated there to develop the islands. When Italy tried to withdraw from WWII in 1943, Germans occupied the island, keeping Italian soldier in captivity and sending the Jewish population to Nazi death camps. Italian civilians were in a great difficulty until the arrival of the British occupation in 1945. Since the island now belonged to Greece, Italians were forced to move to their homeland by the Greek government.

In the recent years, repression against Rohingya – an unrecognized Muslim minority in Burma/Myanmar expelled recently from Myanmar to Bangladesh – became the most recognised Burma-related (or perhaps even Southeast Asia-related) event worldwide. Rohingya’s exodus, accompanied by crimes against humanity, overshadowed Myanmar’s political transformation and annihilated the positive image of this country. The background that led to this ethnic cleansing, however, is deeper and connected to the painful decolonisation of Burma. As such, it represents the model case study of problematic decolonisation in Southeast Asia.

Portugal, a relatively poor, backward and demographically weak country, made an enormous effort in 1961–1965 to retain its overseas empire. It was an anachronistic idea, conflicting with the then commonly accepted idea of political decolonisation. An argument can be made that, by protecting its overseas territories, Portugal, while formally remaining part of the West (symbolised by its NATO membership), psychologically transcended its scope. Together with the colonial wars, its patriarchal, non-democratic form of government contributed to such a situation, and the phenomena were closely correlated. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar’s New State could not have existed without dependent territories, called the Overseas, because ruling them was one of the foundations of the ideology legitimising the power of the prime minister-dictator. The article discusses the relations among the Salazar state and its overseas territories in the political-ideological-emotional dimension, viewing them as one of the essential elements which led to the outbreak of the African wars and their long duration. The course of military campaigns in all African theatres is also presented, suggesting that the compulsory conscription and 4-year military service (including 2 years in the colonies) provided an emancipating experience which transformed Portuguese society to the extent that they were able to topple the dictatorship. The discussion is summed up by a summary of Portuguese losses and the timeline of gaining independence by the dependent territories.

The war in Rhodesia in 1965–1980 is little known in Europe. The Rhodesian government’s struggle with the partisan movement inspired and financed by communist states are known mostly from the historical literature of English-speaking countries. On the threshold of the conflict, the security forces of Rhodesia were organised conventionally, according to the standards used in British colonial armies. The duration of the war caused an evolution of all the troops forming Rhodesia’s security forces and the development of very effective methods of action against partisans and terrorists, carried out by highly-specialised military, police and special forces troops. The descendants of Poles who emigrated there after the Second World War also fought in that conflict among Rhodesian police officers and soldiers.

The Second Indochina War, commonly known as the Vietnam War, was one of the biggest and longest military conflicts of the Cold War period. Nevertheless, it is dominated in Polish historiography by other wars of that period. That does not mean those topics were not investigated, as evidenced by works by Piotr Ostaszewski, Przemysław Benken, Łukasz M. Nadolski, Krzysztof Kubiak and Artur Dmochowski. However, the issue was never in the mainstream of research on armed conflicts after 1945. The article is an attempt to acknowledge and present this war through the lens of the studies of the II Directorate of the General Staff of the Polish Army, i.e. the Military Intelligence of the Polish People’s Republic. The subject of analysis is the military situation of the American and allied troops in South Vietnam in 1967 – a year which tends to be marginalised in depicting the course of that war, and not only in Polish historiography. In order to understand the significance of 1967 as the breaking point for the battles fought in the Indochinese Peninsula, particular emphasis is put on the largest and bloodiest battle thus far fought in November 1967 over Dak To in the Central Highlands in the province of Kon Tum. The battle, before the Tet Offensive, was a clear signal that not only would victory not bring a quick operational success, but also that it did not mean that the Americans were going to win that war at all. The article is an attempt at a substantive evaluation of the content of the reports of the II Directorate and the staff preparing them.

In this article, the author discusses the impact of the fourth Arab-Israeli war, which took place in October 1973, on American military doctrine. At that time, the US Army was in the transformation period after the defeat in Vietnam as well as in the proces of establishing an all-volunteer army. The Yom Kippur War was analysed from every possible angle by numerous American research teams, including top-tier generals, during their visits in Israel. The Arab-Israel conflict happened in the right time for the US Army, enabling it to proceed with radical doctrinal reform as well as a procurement programme. Due to the time consuming process of creating new military equipment, only second iteration of the US Army doctrine, i.e. AirLand Battle, fully implemented the conclusions stemming from the Yom Kippur War.

Research on the operational issues of the Polish People’s Army is still far from complete. Many key issues remain obscure and the known elements of war planning are very difficult to match with the relevant context and interpretation. This often leads to accusations being levelled against the researchers working on these topics that they misunderstand the significance of the investigated documents. Former Polish People’s Army officers excel in this regard; they take part in the whole process, often very well-versed in the resources held in the network of military archives. Until the Military Historical Office was created in 2016, access to those files had been restricted and difficult to access. The text represents an attempt to describe the significance of the corpus of sources which are components of the operational studies on the Western Theatre of War Operations conducted since 1958. The causes and the course of that process have not been satisfactorily explained in literature on the subject; presenting the beginnings and objectives of that task is necessary in order to set the preserved documents in the relevant context of war planning in the Armed Forces of the Polish People’s Republic.

The creation of clientelist networks and nepotism in the power elite of the Polish People’s Republic have not been subjects of separate studies. They are usually hard to spot in documentation. Examples of the functioning of clientelism and nepotism include the group of proteges of number 2 in the hierarchy of the authorities of the Stalinist era, Jakub Berman (his friends, relatives and those of kin). The preserved Polish and Soviet documents, as well as stories of the members of the communist elite, point to Berman’s main role in the staff policy of the Polish United Workers’ Party and to the functioning of a group of his friends and family members positioned in various structures of power in Poland. In the Soviet documents, Berman was accused of preferring “people of non-Polish nationality”, a euphemism for people of Jewish origin. Specific examples were provided of people from the central party apparatus (heads of departments of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the propaganda front (the Polish Radio and central press bodies). The example, presented in the article, of the network of personal connections created by Jakub Berman and his friends and relatives was certainly not an isolated case. This requires detailed studies, using stories and information dispersed throughout various sources.

The article by researchers from the Centre for Ukrainian-Polish Relations Study of the Ivan Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Lviv) examines the preconditions and consequences of the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918–1919. In the times of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the communist government worked towards the obliteration of the Ukrainian liberation struggle; in the 1970s, military graves of the Galician Army and the Lviv Eaglets Cemetery were destroyed. Turning into the sphere of historical politics, the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918–1919 became the object of the activities of state institutions of Ukraine and Poland, as well as politically and ideologically different communities of memory. The symbol of the opposition of the memory policies was the debate on the reconstruction and opening of the Polish Military Memorial (Cmentarz Orląt) at the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv. The possibility of Ukrainian-Polish reconciliation is shown on the example of a discussion on the opening of the Polish and Ukrainian Military Memorials. The Polish-Ukrainian consensus for an honourable commemoration of the fallen in the fratricidal war of 1918–1919 was an example of the possibility of cooperating despite the complex historical divisions.

This article marks an attempt to reconstruct the circumstances in which the Polish bishops prepared a pastoral letter to the German bishops on 18 November 1965. The article presents the process of formulating the content, identifies its subsequent versions, specifies the timeline of events from the decision about the preparation of the pastoral letter until its submission to the German bishops. The author made an attempt to identify all the major figures who were involved in the formulation of the document. The sources referred to in literature were critically assessed, while some the opinions held to date in literature were corrected thanks to newly discovered sources, including the manuscript discovered in May 2019. The article ultimately proves that Archbishop Bolesław Kominek was the main author of over 90% of the text. The author showed that Primate Stefan Wyszyński had a certain impact on the pastoral letter. The point in time and the scope of integration of the German bishops in the text were established. Furthermore, the circumstances in which the manuscript was prepared and the final version of the text was signed were described.

In the early 1950s, Korea became another “hot spot” of the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, while pushing the world to the verge of a new international military conflict. The outbreak of the war in the Korean Peninsula (1950–1953) was a matter of time. Both leaders of the communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) – Kim Il Sung and Rhee Syngman – president of the democratic Republic of Korea (South Korea) endeavoured to unite the country by force, sometimes even against the interests of their powerful political “carers”. The war, which lasted over three years, killed or injured over 6 million people, of which citizens of North Korea accounted for 1 million, while the territory of the entire Peninsula fell into complete ruin. Juliusz Burgin, the former ambassador in the People’s Republic of China, was nominated as the first Polish ambassador in North Korea in September 1950. During his tenure, Burgin made only two business trips to North Korea, while residing permanently in Beijing. The business trips gave rise to two comprehensive reports to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs of January and of May 1951, which contain a good deal of information on both the war situation on the Korean Peninsula, behind-the scenes of the talks on the inclusion of Poland in the international aid programme for North Korea and a detailed description of the working conditions of the Polish diplomatic mission.

The presented selection of sources provides a picture of the history of the activities of the Third Unit of the Special Operation Service of the Command of District XV (Białystok) of the National Military Union. The unit of Sergeant Tadeusz Bogatko “Plon”, who is the main figure, was founded in mid-1947 and operated militarily until February 1949. Its end was marked by the death of the commander who was killed during a battle against a communist operational group. The source materials selected for printing include above all reports found by officers of the communist repression apparatus by the body of the shot “Plon”. The reports are an important source allowing to discover a fragment of the history of the Branch Office of the National Military Union in Białystok after the communist amnesty during spring of 1947.