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Concept
Military history of Poland during World War II
Summary
In World War Two, the Polish armed forces were the fourth largest Allied forces in Europe, after those of the Soviet Union, United States, and Britain. Poles made substantial contributions to the Allied effort throughout the war, fighting on land, sea, and in the air.
Polish forces in the east, fighting alongside the Red army and under Soviet high command, took part in the Soviet offensives across Belarus and Ukraine into Poland and across the Vistula and Oder Rivers to the Battle of Berlin.
In the west, Polish ground troops were present in the North Africa Campaign (siege of Tobruk); the Italian campaign (including the capture of the monastery hill at the Battle of Monte Cassino); and in battles following the invasion of France (the battle of the Falaise pocket; an airborne-brigade parachute drop during Operation Market Garden; and an armored division in the Western Allied invasion of Germany).
Particularly well-documented was the service of 145 Polish pilots flying British planes under British Command during the Battle of Britain, 79 in mixed squadrons under the RAF after July 1940, 32 in wholly Polish Squadron 303 after 31 August 1940 and 34 in entirely Polish Squadron 302. Other instances of service flying French planes in the Polish Air Force took place during the Battle of Britain at the same time, and from 1944 the Polish Air Force (also with British planes) was established in Britain.
Some Polish contributions were less visible, notably the prewar and wartime decrypting of German Enigma-machine ciphers by cryptologists Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski, and Jerzy Różycki. An extensive Polish intelligence network also proved of great value to Allied intelligence.
The European Theatre of World War II opened with the German invasion of Poland on Friday September 1, 1939, followed by the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939. On 6 October, following the Polish defeat at the Battle of Kock, German and Soviet forces gained full control over Poland.
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