The Role of National Minorities in the Polish Armed Forces During the September 1939 Campaign

Abstract

The article covers the issues of participation in the September 1939 campaign of representatives of national minorities who served at that time in the Polish Army. Also made an attempt to unbiased consideration of the problem. The authors paid attention to the issue of the number of members of national minorities in the Polish Army on the eve of the Second World War, as well as analyzed the attitude of this category of soldiers to fulfilling their military duty, in particular, based on the memoirs of participants in the events of that time. Also raised is the issue of cases of desertion from Polish armed forces members of national minorities during the September campaign. Unfortunately, the exact number of national minority soldiers who participated in the September 1939 campaign is very difficult to determine, since many documents from the period of the September campaign were destroyed, while during the war a part of the them went to the German and Soviet archives, where most of them were lost. On the basis of preserved materials, one can only say that the attitude of representatives of national minorities – Ukrainians, Belarusians, Germans or Jews, dressed in Polish forms in September 1939 – is somewhat different. Often, they selflessly fought, but there were cases of desertion, however, for the sake of justice, it should be noted that the practice of desertion in the early days of the war was also inherent in representatives of Polish nationality. On the basis of the material under study, have made sufficiently substantiated generalizations and conclusions regarding key aspects related to the participation of representatives of national minorities who served in the Polish Army in the September 1939 campaign. It is irrefutable that from the very first days of the war ordinary soldiers who came from national minorities, as well as Ukrainian contract officers began to defend the Polish state, and until the end continued to bravely and courageously fight the enemy, often at the cost of their own lives.