Republic of Poland (Government-in-Exile)

A government that never surrendered, kept fighting for six years, and was abandoned by its allies at the moment of victory. When Poland was partitioned by Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939 its government withdrew rather than capitulate, and a constitutional successor was formed in France and then in London after 1940. It was not symbolic. It commanded the fourth largest Allied force in Europe: Polish pilots flew in the Battle of Britain, where 303 Squadron claimed the highest score of any squadron in the battle, Polish troops took Monte Cassino, and Polish mathematicians had broken Enigma before the war and handed their work to Britain and France. At home it ran an underground state with a secret parliament, courts, schools and a Home Army of several hundred thousand. Relations with Moscow broke in 1943 when the graves at Katyn were discovered and the government asked the Red Cross to investigate the killing of over 20 thousand Polish officers by the Soviet secret police - a fact the Soviet Union denied until 1990. The Warsaw Rising of 1944 was crushed while the Red Army waited across the river. Britain and the United States withdrew recognition in July 1945. The government continued in London for another 45 years. It handed its insignia to Poland's elected president in 1990. The government operated from 1939 to 1990, in Paris and Angers until 1940 and in London afterwards. Polish forces under its command numbered around 200 thousand by 1945. Its underground state was the largest resistance organisation in occupied Europe. Poland lost around a sixth of its population in the war.

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