PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC - 1944

    The tide of war was turning against Hitler. In the east, the Soviet armies approached the old frontiers of prewar Poland, liberating cities and towns as they advanced. On July 22, 1944, the Polish National Liberation Committee was created in liberated Lublin. One of the Committee's first acts was to call for the establishment of the People's Republic of Poland.

    However, in spite of all the victories, the war against the Germans was far from over. In August 1944, the people of Warsaw rose up against their oppressors, launching the tragic Warsaw Uprising. An earlier rebellion in 1943 by Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto had been brutally crushed, and the 1944 uprising suffered the same tragic fate. The Germans killed 200,000 Warsaw citizens and, as they had in 1943, deported survivors to concentration camps. Then, in reprisal, they leveled the entire city, systematically blowing up buildings and monuments in an attempt to eradicate Polish culture.

    As the war neared its end, Allied leaders met in a series of conferences to determine the fate of postwar Europe. At the Conferences of Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, it was decided to return Poland to its medieval boundaries. The result was a major upheaval; the frontiers were shifted 120 miles westward, giving Poland land it had lost 600 years before and forcing the Poles to expel the Germans living in those regions. Other lands that had been under Polish influence for over 600 years were taken away with the indigenous Polish population uprooted and transferred into areas vacated by the departing Germans. It was also at these conferences that the fate of post-war Central Europe was determined as the British and American leaders decided to leave the region under Soviet influence.

    The Second World War brought to Poland devastation of an incalculable and unprecedented scale. Nearly six million Poles died, killed by the Nazis, the Soviets and Ukrainian nationalist extremists. The material losses inflicted by the Nazi occupation were calculated at fifty billion US dollars. Polish soldiers fought in the final battles in Nazi Germany, including the Battle of Berlin. But Poland was not to share in the sweetest fruit of victory. As the world entered the postwar era, Poland's political future remained clouded.

SOLIDARITY - 1980
ROUND TABLE AGREEMENTS - 1989

    The years following World War II were extremely difficult for Poland. The period from 1949 until 1956 was especially hard, yet this was also an era when the entire nation pulled together to rebuild the devastated country.

    Following Stalin's death in 1953, in 1956 Wladyslaw Gomulka, a moderate "national Communist" came to power, initiating the period known as "The Thaw." Gomulka was able to obtain a significant degree of cultural and economic autonomy. With increasing economic prosperity, the Polish people demanded more political freedom. University protests in 1968 and demonstrations on the Baltic Coast in 1970 spelled the end of Gomulka's rule. He was succeeded by Edward Gierek, who came to power in 1970.

    Under Gierek's rule, economic conditions continued to improve thanks to enormous amounts of credit coming in from the West. Many people today look back upon the so called "golden era of Gierek." But the glow soon faded as Gierek's economic miracle proved disappointing. The disillusioned Polish people demanded full political and cultural freedom. Polish workers understood how their economic relations with the Soviet Union had been rigged to the detriment of the Polish economy and in 1980 the Solidarity Movement exploded with a series of strikes on the Baltic Coast and in the industrial region of Upper Silesia. The situation was volatile but the new labor union was joined by a social movement, coalescing into an effective social force that managed to effect change with a minimum of violence. In August 1980, the Polish government recognized Solidarity and made significant concessions to the workers' demands.

    The success of Solidarity spurred other changes as Poland entered a period of cultural bloom. Once forbidden topics were now fervently discussed in public and the 1978 election of John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla), the first Roman Catholic Pope of Polish descent, strengthened the spirit of Polish resistance.

On December 13, 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law and interned 10,000 Solidarity activists. His action was aimed at shoring up the crumbling regime and, allegedly, forestalling a deadly Soviet intervention. The delegalized Solidarity moved underground but wisely avoided armed resistance. Finally, as the spirit of "glasnost" engulfed the entire Soviet Bloc, the government recognized Solidarity again and, in the "Roundtable Agreements" of 1989, agreed to the sharing of power. The Solidarity candidates swept the first democratic parliamentary elections since the end of Warld War II, called in June of 1989. In August of that year, General Jaruzelski stepped down and the executive power was transferred to the Prime Minister chosen by the Parliament. A year later Solidarity leader, Lech Walesa, became the first post-war President of the Republic of Poland.

Source www.snookems.com/poland/phistory.htm