Polish Home Army

Clandestine Polish resistance force in World War II, which began forming as soon as the invasion of Poland ended in September 1939.

Properly organized into districts and commands, at its maximum it numbered about 600,000 men and women armed with weapons hidden at the time of the Polish collapse in 1939, dropped by British aircraft, or stolen from the Germans. They assisted the Soviets as they began to advance into Poland in 1943, but soon found that once the Poles had served their purpose they were either abandoned, arrested, or shot out of hand. The Warsaw Rising of 1944 revealed the Soviets' true intentions, which was to permit the Home Army and the Germans to wipe each other out and then move in Soviet puppets once the hard work had been done.