1.
Battle of Warsaw (1920)
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The Battle of Warsaw refers to the decisive Polish victory in 1920 during the Polish–Soviet War. Poland, on the verge of defeat, repulsed and defeated the invading Red Army. It was, and still is, celebrated as a victory for the Polish people over Soviets. As Soviet forces invaded Poland in summer 1920, the Polish army retreated westward in disarray, the Polish forces seemed on the verge of disintegration and observers predicted a decisive Soviet victory. The battle of Warsaw was fought from August 12–25,1920 as Red Army forces commanded by Mikhail Tukhachevsky approached the Polish capital of Warsaw and the nearby Modlin Fortress. Estimated Russian losses were 10,000 killed,500 missing,30,000 wounded, and 66,000 taken prisoner, compared with Polish losses of some 4,500 killed,10,000 missing, and 22,000 wounded. The defeat crippled the Red Army, Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader, at the same time in 1919, the Bolsheviks had gained the upper hand in the Russian Civil War, having dealt crippling blows to the Russian White Movement. Vladimir Lenin viewed Poland as a bridge to bring communism to Central and Western Europe, the Bolsheviks speeches asserted that the revolution was to be carried to western Europe on the bayonets of Russian soldats and that the shortest route to Berlin and Paris lay through Warsaw. The two sides were embroiled in the Polish–Ukrainian War, amidst competing territorial claims, after early setbacks against Poland in 1919, the Red Army was overwhelmingly successful in a counter-offensive in early 1920 that nullified the Polish Kiev Operation, forcing a Polish retreat. By mid-1920, Polands very survival was at stake and foreign observers expected it to collapse at any moment, the Russian strategy called for a mass push toward the Polish capital, Warsaw. The Russian 1st Cavalry Army under Semyon Budyonny broke through Polish lines in early June 1920, the effects of that were dramatic, Budyonnys success resulted in a collapse of all Polish fronts. On July 4,1920, Mikhail Tukhachevskys Western Front began an assault in Belarus from the Berezina River. On July 19 the Red Army seized Grodno and on July 28, on July 22, the Brześć Fortress was captured. 3 Fronts,7 Armies, a total of 32 divisions,46,000 infantry,2,000 cavalry,730 machine guns,192 artillery batteries, and several units of tanks. At first, Józef Piłsudski wanted to stop the Soviets at the Bug River and the city of Brest-Litovsk, on the night of August 5–6, Piłsudski, staying at the Belweder Palace in Warsaw, conceived a revised plan. In the first phase, it called for Polish forces to withdraw across the Vistula River and defend the bridgeheads at Warsaw and at the Wieprz River, a quarter of the available divisions would be concentrated to the south for a strategic counteroffensive. Additionally, five divisions of the 5th Army were to protect Warsaw from the north, General Franciszek Latiniks 1st Army would defend Warsaw itself, while General Bolesław Rojas 2nd Army was to hold the Vistula River line from Góra Kalwaria to Dęblin. The crucial role, however, was assigned to the approximately 20, 000-strong, newly formed Task Force and this unit, composed of the most elite Polish units from the southern front, was to be reinforced by General Leonard Skierskis 4th Army and General Zygmunt Zielińskis 3rd Army
2.
Invasion of Poland
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The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty. German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident, as the Wehrmacht advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Polish–German border to more established lines of defence to the east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the Battle of the Bzura, Polish forces then withdrew to the southeast where they prepared for a long defence of the Romanian Bridgehead and awaited expected support and relief from France and the United Kingdom. While those two countries had pacts with Poland and had declared war on Germany on 3 September, in the end their aid to Poland was very limited. The Soviet Red Armys invasion of Eastern Poland on 17 September, in accordance with a protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Facing a second front, the Polish government concluded the defence of the Romanian Bridgehead was no longer feasible, on 6 October, following the Polish defeat at the Battle of Kock, German and Soviet forces gained full control over Poland. The success of the invasion marked the end of the Second Polish Republic, the Soviet Union incorporated its newly acquired areas into its constituent Belarusian and Ukrainian republics, and immediately started a campaign of sovietization. In the aftermath of the invasion, a collective of underground resistance formed the Polish Underground State within the territory of the former Polish state. Many of the exiles that managed to escape Poland subsequently joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West. On 30 January 1933, the Nazi Party, under its leader Adolf Hitler, as part of this long-term policy, Hitler at first pursued a policy of rapprochement with Poland, trying to improve opinion in Germany, culminating in the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934. Earlier, Hitlers foreign policy worked to weaken ties between Poland and France, and attempted to manoeuvre Poland into the Anti-Comintern Pact, forming a front against the Soviet Union. The Poles feared that their independence would eventually be threatened altogether, the so-called Polish Corridor constituted land long disputed by Poland and Germany, and inhabited by a Polish majority. The Corridor had become a part of Poland after the Treaty of Versailles, many Germans also wanted the city of Danzig and its environs to be reincorporated into Germany. Danzig was a city with a German majority. It had been separated from Germany after Versailles and made into the nominally independent Free City of Danzig, the series of border violations, which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles no longer are willing to respect the German frontier. Poland participated with Germany in the partition of Czechoslovakia that followed the Munich Agreement and it coerced Czechoslovakia to surrender the region of Český Těšín by issuing an ultimatum to that effect on 30 September 1938, which was accepted by Czechoslovakia on 1 October. This region had a Polish majority and had been disputed between Czechoslovakia and Poland in the aftermath of World War I, the Polish annexation of Slovak territory later served as the justification for the Slovak state to join the German invasion. Poland rejected this proposal, fearing that after accepting these demands, it would become subject to the will of Germany
3.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
4.
Polish Legions in World War I
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General Haller escaped to France to form the Polish army in the West against the anti-Polish German-Bolshevik treaty. The Legions took part in battles against the forces of the Imperial Russia. They suffered horrendous casualties outnumbered three to one in the Battle of Łowczówek and they captured Kielce, and in 1915 took part in the offensive on Warsaw. In June 1916 the unit had approximately 25,000 soldiers, both the number of troops and the composition of units changed rapidly. The Polish Legions became the Polish Auxiliary Corps, after the Act of 5th November of 1916 which pronounced the creation of the puppet Kingdom of Poland of 1916–18, the Polish Legions were transferred under German command. However, most of the refused to swear allegiance to the German Kaiser and were interned in Beniaminów. Approximately 3,000 of them were drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army and they were sent to the Italian Front. The formation of the Legions was declared by Józef Piłsudski in his order of August 22,1914, the Austrian government, having jurisdiction over the area, officially agreed to the formation August 27,1914. The unit became an independent formation of the Austro-Hungarian Army thanks to the efforts of the KSSN, initially the Polish Legions were composed of two legions, the Eastern and the Western Legion, both formed on August 27. After a Russian victory in the Battle of Galicia the Eastern Polish legion refused to fight on behalf of the Austro-Hungarian side against Russia and was disbanded on September 21, karol Trzaska-Durski, Gen. Stanisław Puchalski, Col. Stanisław Szeptycki, and Col. Zygmunt Zieliński. After the war ended the officers of the Polish Legions became the backbone of the Polish Army, below is a list of prominent Polish battles against the Imperial Russian Army in 1914–16, leading to victories in most cases, with notable exceptions especially during the Brusilov Offensive of 1916
5.
Wehrmacht
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The Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1946. It consisted of the Heer, the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler’s most overt and audacious moves was to establish the Wehrmacht, a modern armed forces fully capable of offensive use. In December 1941, Hitler designated himself as commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, the Wehrmacht formed the heart of Germany’s politico-military power. In the early part of World War II, Hitlers generals employed the Wehrmacht through innovative combined arms tactics to devastating effect in what was called a Blitzkrieg, the Wehrmachts new military structure, unique combat techniques, newly developed weapons, and unprecedented speed and brutality crushed their opponents. Closely cooperating with the SS, the German armed forces committed war crimes and atrocities. By the time the war ended in Europe in May 1945, only a few of the Wehrmacht’s upper leadership were tried for war crimes, despite evidence suggesting that more were involved in illegal actions. The German term Wehrmacht generically describes any nations armed forces, for example, the Frankfurt Constitution of 1848 designated all German military forces as the German Wehrmacht, consisting of the Seemacht and the Landmacht. In 1919, the term Wehrmacht also appears in Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution, establishing that, from 1919, Germanys national defense force was known as the Reichswehr, a name that was dropped in favor of Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935. In January 1919, after World War I ended with the signing of the armistice of 11 November 1918, in March 1919, the national assembly passed a law founding a 420, 000-strong preliminary army, the Vorläufige Reichswehr. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced in May, the army was limited to one hundred thousand men with an additional fifteen thousand in the navy. The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships, six cruisers, submarines, tanks and heavy artillery were forbidden and the air-force was dissolved. A new post-war military, the Reichswehr, was established on 23 March 1921, General conscription was abolished under another mandate of the Versailles treaty. The Reichswehr was limited to 115,000 men, and thus the armed forces, under the leadership of Hans von Seeckt, though Seeckt retired in 1926, the army that went to war in 1939 was largely his creation. Germany was forbidden to have an air-force by the Versailles treaty, nonetheless and these officers saw the role of an air-force as winning air-superiority, tactical and strategic bombing and providing ground support. That the Luftwaffe did not develop a strategic bombing force in the 1930s was not due to a lack of interest, but because of economic limitations. The leadership of the Navy led by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, officers who believed in submarine warfare led by Admiral Karl Dönitz were in a minority before 1939. By 1922, Germany had begun covertly circumventing the conditions of the Versailles Treaty, a secret collaboration with the Soviet Union began after the treaty of Rapallo. Major-General Otto Hasse traveled to Moscow in 1923 to further negotiate the terms, Germany helped the Soviet Union with industrialization and Soviet officers were to be trained in Germany
6.
Daugavpils
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Daugavpils is a city in southeastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city gets its name. It is the second largest city in the country after the capital Riga, Daugavpils is located relatively close to Belarus and Lithuania, and some 120 km from the Latvian border with Russia. Daugavpils is a railway junction and industrial centre and lies approximately midway between Riga and Minsk. The city is surrounded by lakes and nature parks. It is also known for its overwhelmingly Russian-speaking population, historically, several names in various languages have identified Daugavpils. Some are still in use today, as of 1 January 2012, the city had a population of 101,057. In Daugavpils 85% of the supported the proposal to make Russian the second state language in the 2012 referendum. The towns history began in 1275 when the Livonian Order built Dünaburg castle 20 km up the Daugava river from where Daugavpils is now situated, in 1561 it became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and, subsequently, of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. In 1621 Daugavpils became the capital of the newly formed Inflanty Voivodeship, in 1577 the Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible captured and destroyed Dünaburg castle. That same year, a new castle was built 20 km downriver, in 1582 Daugavpils was granted Magdeburg town rights. Russia returned the area to Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth following the Treaty of Andrusovo and it became part of the Russian Empire after First Partition of Poland in 1772. From 1784 onwards the city had a large and active Jewish population among them a number of prominent figures, according to the Russian census of 1897, out of a total population of 69,700, Jews numbered 32,400. As part of the Russian Empire the city was called Dvinsk from 1893 to 1920, the newly independent Latvian state renamed it Daugavpils in 1920. Latvians, Poles and Soviet troops fought the Battle of Daugavpils in the area from 1919 to 1920, Daugavpils and the whole of Latvia was under the Soviet Union rule between 1940–41 and 1944–1991, while Germany occupied it between 1941 and 1944. The Nazis established the Daugavpils Ghetto where the towns Jews were forced to live, during the Cold War the Lociki air-base operated 12 km northeast of Daugavpils itself. On 16 April 2010 an assassin shot vice-mayor Grigorijs Ņemcovs in the center of the city and he died almost immediately and the crime remains unsolved. Daugavpils is an important cultural centre in eastern Latvia, there are 22 primary and secondary schools, four vocational schools, and the Saules College of Art. More than 1,000 teachers and engineers graduate from Daugavpils University, there is also one Polish school, the only in the city, on Varšavas iela
7.
Latvia
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Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe, one of the three Baltic states. It is bordered by Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south, Russia to the east, Latvia has 1,957,200 inhabitants and a territory of 64,589 km2. The country has a seasonal climate. Latvia is a parliamentary republic established in 1918. The capital city is Riga, the European Capital of Culture 2014, Latvia is a unitary state, divided into 119 administrative divisions, of which 110 are municipalities and 9 are cities. Latvians and Livs are the people of Latvia. Latvian and Lithuanian are the two surviving Baltic languages. Despite foreign rule from the 13th to 20th centuries, the Latvian nation maintained its identity throughout the generations via the language, Latvia and Estonia share a long common history. Until World War II, Latvia also had significant minorities of ethnic Germans, Latvia is historically predominantly Protestant Lutheran, except for the Latgale region in the southeast, which has historically been predominantly Roman Catholic. The Russian population has brought a significant portion of Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Republic of Latvia was founded on 18 November 1918, however, its de facto independence was interrupted at the outset of World War II. The peaceful Singing Revolution, starting in 1987, called for Baltic emancipation of Soviet rule and it ended with the Declaration on the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia on 4 May 1990, and restoring de facto independence on 21 August 1991. Latvia is a democratic and developed country and member of the European Union, NATO, the Council of Europe, the United Nations, CBSS, the IMF, NB8, NIB, OECD, OSCE, and WTO. For 2014, Latvia was listed 46th on the Human Development Index and it used the Latvian lats as its currency until it was replaced by the euro on 1 January 2014. The name Latvija is derived from the name of the ancient Latgalians, one of four Indo-European Baltic tribes, henry of Latvia coined the Latinisations of the countrys name, Lettigallia and Lethia, both derived from the Latgalians. The terms inspired the variations on the name in Romance languages from Letonia. Around 3000 BC, the ancestors of the Latvian people settled on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. The Balts established trade routes to Rome and Byzantium, trading local amber for precious metals, by 900 AD, four distinct Baltic tribes inhabited Latvia, Curonians, Latgalians, Selonians, Semigallians, as well as the Livonians speaking a Finnic language
