From the desk of Roland Rocchiccioli – 20 September

On September 1, 1939, Nazi German troops invaded Poland. As a consequence, on September 3rd, Britain and France declared War on Germany.

IT is anyone’s guess what Hitler might have done had Britain and France not reacted to the Polish invasion. Perhaps a World War might have been avoided, and millions of lives saved? Historians argue, with cause, that Hitler was pursuing a world domination. He ranted his Third Reich would last for a thousand years.

The historical fact is, and considered from whichever view point, the Polish invasion initiated World War Two. It was the spark which ignited the tinderbox.

The WW2 Polish resistance movement was the largest in all occupied Europe. With the Polish Home Army at its forefront it was part of the Polish Underground State. Its agents worked in the German and Soviet zones. They continually disrupted German supply lines to the Eastern Front; they provided the British with vital military intelligence, and saved more Jewish lives in the Holocaust than any other Western Allied organisation, or government.

Escapee Polish pilots found their way to England and flew with the Polish Air Forces and the RAF. In the Battle of Britain, 145 Polish pilots fought in the skies over England. They were as fearless and they were disobedient, and comprised the largest non-British contribution. By the end of the war, 19,000-plus Poles were serving in the Polish Air Force and the RAF.

The Nazi occupation of Poland was cataclysmic. Three-million Jews died in death camps. The Slavic majority was persecuted. Poles were executed and deported in an attempt to destroy the intelligentsia and their culture.

At the end of WW2 Josef Stalin manipulated negotiations to impose communist rule, spanning 1945-89. These years, while fostering improvements in general industrialisation, urbanisation, and the standard of living, were blighted by rigid Stalinist repression, social unrest, political strife, and severe economic difficulties. Poland, whose history dates to the Iron Age, was isolated from the rest of the world.

By some miracle, in October 1978, Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, Archbishop of Kraków, (a diocese dating back to 1000), ascended the throne of Saint Peter as Pope John Paul II.

When he visited, 1979, millions turned-out. Rather than rebellion, John Paul encouraged the creation of an ‘alternative Poland’ of social institutions, independent of the government so that when the next crisis came, the nation would present a united front. He ignited a revolution of conscience. It was the genesis of Poland’s journey to a democratic republic.

From 1981-83 the Socialist Government of the Polish People’s Republic imposed martial law designed to throttle political opposition, in particular, the solidarity movement. The world rejoiced at the fall of Communism and, in 1990, the democratic election of Lech Wałęsa, the Gdansk shipyard electrician, as the first President of Poland.

In 2020, European Human Rights Watch reported: Polish government attacks on the judiciary continued in 2019. Judges and prosecutors were subject to arbitrary disciplinary proceedings for standing up for the rule of law, and speaking up against problematic judicial reforms, and an interference with judicial independence. Judges and prosecutors were regularly discredited and smeared during the year by Polish government officials and government aligned media.

The Disciplinary Office, established in September 2018, brought disciplinary proceedings against judges and prosecutors. At least 30 cities and provinces in Poland were declared to be ‘LGBT-free-zones’. The Polish President, Andrzej Duda, labelled LGBT more dangerous than communism, which resonated with all those Poles who survived under the tyrannical Russian yoke of occupation. Polish government agencies have dragged employees supporting women’s rights protests, or collaborating with women’s rights groups, before disciplinary hearings and threatened their jobs.

The ruling Law and Justice party is raiding women’s rights activism offices, denying them funding, engaging in public smear campaigns, and overseeing disciplinary action.

Equally, the Polish Amnesty International report (2019), makes for unsettling reading. An estimated 85-million people died in WW2. Given the current Polish status quo, one wonders: Why did the world bother?

Roland can be heard on RADIO 3BA, every Monday morning, 10.45 or contacted via [email protected].