Glossary
(89)Terms, abbreviations and names that often appear in the chronicle, from the General Government to Żegota.
A
- Aktion T4Nazi programme for murdering mentally ill and disabled people, called 'euthanasia'; mass gassing ran in 1940–1941. The name came from its Berlin headquarters at Tiergartenstrasse 4.
- Anders' ArmyThe Polish Armed Forces in the USSR, formed from August 1941 under General Władysław Anders from Poles released from prisons and labour camps. In 1942 they were evacuated to Iran together with civilians.
- AnschlussAnschluss ("joining"): the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany on 11–13 March 1938. The Wehrmacht marched in unopposed and Austria ceased to exist as a state.
- AppeasementAppeasement: the policy of Britain and France in the 1930s, above all of Chamberlain's government, of avoiding war through concessions to Hitler and Mussolini. Its high point was the Munich Agreement of 1938.
- Atlantic CharterThe joint declaration by Roosevelt and Churchill of 14 August 1941, after their meeting off Newfoundland: eight principles for the post-war order, including no territorial gains and the right to choose one's government.
- Axis powersThe alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan, sealed by the Tripartite Pact of 27 September 1940, together with their allies Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Croatia. The name comes from the 1936 Rome–Berlin Axis.
B
- Big ThreeThe leaders of the three main Allied powers, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, or the powers themselves. They met at Tehran (1943) and Yalta (1945); at Potsdam their successors represented the US and Britain.
- Blitzkrieg‘Lightning war’: a label for the swift German campaigns of 1939–1941, in which tanks, motorised infantry and aircraft broke through the front and encircled the enemy. It was never official doctrine.
- Blue PolicePolish Police of the General GovernmentCommon name for the Polish Police of the General Government, a force formed by the Germans in 1939 from pre-war policemen and subordinated to the German police. Named after its navy-blue uniforms.
C
- CominternCommunist International (Third International)The Communist International: the organisation of the world's communist parties founded in Moscow in March 1919. It subordinated them to Soviet policy; Stalin dissolved it in 1943.
- Concentration campKL – KonzentrationslagerNazi camp (KL) in which the SS held political opponents and other persecuted people without trial, forcing them into slave labour. Huge numbers of prisoners died there of hunger, disease and violence.
- Curzon LineA demarcation line between Poland and Soviet Russia proposed in Lord Curzon's British note of 11 July 1920. Running roughly along the Bug, in 1945 it became the basis of Poland's eastern border.
E
- Einsatzgruppentask forces of the Security Police and SDMobile units of the Security Police and SD that followed the Wehrmacht into conquered territory. In Poland in 1939 they murdered the elites; from 1941 in the East they carried out mass shootings of Jews.
- EnigmaA German electromechanical rotor cipher machine used by the armed forces of the Third Reich. Polish mathematicians broke its cipher at the end of 1932 and passed their knowledge to the British and French in 1939.
- Extermination campGerman camp built for the mass murder of people, above all Jews, usually in gas chambers immediately on arrival. The main extermination camps lay in German-occupied Poland.
F
- Final SolutionFinal Solution of the Jewish Question (Endlösung der Judenfrage)Nazi euphemism, in full the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question'. From 1941 it meant the plan to murder all the Jews of Europe.
- Free City of DanzigA small state created under the Treaty of Versailles in 1920 and placed under League of Nations protection: mostly German Danzig and its hinterland, with wide Polish rights. Annexed by Germany on 1 September 1939.
- Free FrenchGeneral de Gaulle's movement and armed forces which, after France's surrender in 1940, fought on alongside the Allies from London, backed by part of the French colonies. Known as Fighting France from 1942.
- Front (Soviet)The largest operational formation of the Red Army during the war, the equivalent of a German army group. It usually comprised several armies, including tank and air armies, and answered directly to the Stavka.
- Führer‘Leader’: Adolf Hitler’s title as head of the Nazi Party and, from 2 August 1934, after President Hindenburg’s death, also as head of state, the ‘Führer and Reich Chancellor’.
G
- General GovernmentGerman occupation territory created on 26 October 1939 from central Poland and not annexed to the Reich. It was ruled from Kraków by Governor-General Hans Frank.
- GenocideActs committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The term was coined by the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin and defined by a UN convention in 1948.
- GermanisationImposing German language, culture and identity on conquered peoples and lands. In the Second World War it combined expulsions and terror with 'Germanising' people judged racially valuable.
- GestapoGeheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)Geheime Staatspolizei, the Secret State Police of the Third Reich, created in Prussia in April 1933. It hunted the regime’s opponents in Germany and occupied Europe and organised the deportation of Jews.
- GhettoPart of a town where the Germans and their allies confined Jews during the Second World War, cutting them off from the rest of the population. Ghettos were a stage on the road to the Holocaust.
- Government Delegation for PolandGovernment Delegation of the Republic of Poland for the HomelandThe clandestine representation of the Polish government in exile in occupied Poland, running the civilian side of the Underground State. It operated from December 1940 to July 1945.
- GulagGulag: Glavnoye upravleniye lagerey, Main Camp AdministrationA Soviet forced labour camp; the Gulag was the agency that ran them and, by extension, the whole camp system, run from 1930 by the OGPU and then the NKVD. Millions passed through it, Poles among them.
H
- HolocaustThe planned murder of some six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Also known by the Hebrew word Shoah.
- Home ArmyThe main underground army of the Polish Underground State, answerable to the Polish government in London. Formed from the Union of Armed Struggle in February 1942, it was disbanded on 19 January 1945.
I
J
- Jewish Combat OrganisationThe Jewish underground fighting organisation founded in the Warsaw ghetto on 28 July 1942. Led by Mordechai Anielewicz, it resisted in January 1943 and was the main force in the Ghetto Uprising.
- JudenratJewish CouncilJewish council imposed by the Germans on Jewish communities in occupied Europe. It had to carry out German orders while trying to provide food and care for people in the ghettos.
K
- Kamikaze‘Divine wind’: Japanese suicide pilots who from October 1944 deliberately crashed bomb-laden aircraft into Allied ships. Most attacks came during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.
- KapoPrisoner functionary in a Nazi camp, appointed by the SS to supervise a labour squad. In return for privileges he enforced work and discipline among fellow prisoners, often brutally.
- KedywDirectorate of DiversionThe Home Army's branch for sabotage, diversion, assassinations and reprisals, formally set up in January 1943. Its first chief was Colonel August Emil Fieldorf 'Nil'.
- KresyThe Kresy (Eastern Borderlands): the eastern lands of interwar Poland, from the Wilno region to Volhynia and Eastern Galicia with Lwów. Multi-ethnic, seized by the USSR in 1939 and left outside Poland after 1945.
- KriegsmarineThe navy of the Third Reich from 1935 to 1945, successor to the Reichsmarine. It was led by Erich Raeder and, from 1943, Karl Dönitz. Its most dangerous weapon proved to be its submarines, the U-boats.
- KuomintangChinese Nationalist PartyThe Chinese Nationalist Party, founded by Sun Yat-sen in 1912. Under Chiang Kai-shek it governed China from 1928, fought Japan and the communists, and withdrew to Taiwan in 1949.
Ł
L
- League of NationsThe international organisation based in Geneva, set up after the First World War to keep the peace. Active from 1920, it failed to stop the aggressions of the 1930s and gave way to the United Nations in 1946.
- Lebensraum‘Living space’: the Nazi idea of winning land in eastern Europe for the Germans at the expense of Poland and the Soviet Union, through conquest, the expulsion or destruction of its people, and German settlement.
- Lend-LeaseThe American programme of aid to countries fighting the Axis, based on a law Roosevelt signed on 11 March 1941. By 1945 the US had supplied arms and materials worth about 50 billion dollars.
- LuftwaffeThe air force of the Third Reich, built in secret in breach of the Treaty of Versailles and unveiled in 1935. It was commanded by Hermann Göring and bombed Poland from 1 September 1939, then Britain.
M
- ManchukuoA puppet state set up by Japan in occupied Manchuria in 1932, headed by Puyi, the last emperor of China. Real power lay with the Japanese Kwantung Army. It collapsed in August 1945.
- Molotov–Ribbentrop PactThe German–Soviet non-aggression pact of 23 August 1939. Its secret protocol divided Poland and Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, opening the way for the German and Soviet invasions of Poland.
- Munich AgreementThe agreement between Germany, Italy, Britain and France of 29–30 September 1938 which, without Czechoslovakia taking part, handed the Sudetenland to Germany. A symbol of the appeasement of Hitler.
N
- Nazi Party (NSDAP)National Socialist German Workers’ PartyThe National Socialist German Workers’ Party, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party. It grew out of the German Workers’ Party in 1920 and from July 1933 was the only legal party in Germany.
- NKVDPeople's Commissariat for Internal AffairsThe Soviet interior ministry of 1934–1946, combining the political police, regular police, internal and border troops and the Gulag camps. It carried out the Great Terror, the Katyn massacre and mass deportations.
- Nuremberg trialsThe trial of the major German war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (November 1945 to October 1946), judged by the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and France.
O
- Oflag and StalagOffizierslager (officers’ camp), Stammlager (main camp)German prisoner-of-war camps of the Second World War, run by the Wehrmacht: the Oflag (Offizierslager) for officers and the Stalag (Stammlager) for other ranks and NCOs.
- Operation BarbarossaThe codename for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, launched on 22 June 1941 without a declaration of war. The largest land operation in history, it broke down before Moscow in December 1941.
- Operation OverlordThe codename for the Allied invasion of German-occupied western Europe, which began with the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944. It covered the fighting in Normandy until the crossing of the Seine at the end of August.
- Operation ReinhardCode name of the German operation to murder the Jews of the General Government in 1942–1943, chiefly in the extermination camps of Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka. It was run by Odilo Globocnik.
- Operation TempestThe Home Army's 1944 plan: AK units were to strike the retreating Germans and greet the Red Army as the rightful hosts. It lasted from January to October 1944.
P
- Peasant BattalionsThe armed organisation of the underground peasant movement (the 'Roch' People's Party), active from 1940. In 1944 it numbered some 160,000–170,000; part of it joined the Home Army.
- People's Guard and People's ArmyThe armed organisations of the communist Polish Workers' Party: the People's Guard (from 1942), renamed the People's Army on 1 January 1944. In July 1944 the AL was merged into the Moscow-backed army.
- Phoney WarThe period from Britain and France’s declaration of war on Germany on 3 September 1939 to the German offensive of 10 May 1940, when there was almost no fighting in the West, even while Poland was being defeated.
- PKWN (Polish Committee of National Liberation)Polish Committee of National LiberationThe Polish Committee of National Liberation: a Stalin-controlled authority formed in Moscow on 21 July 1944 and based in Lublin. On 31 December 1944 it became the Provisional Government.
- Polish Armed Forces in the WestThe Polish Army re-formed after the defeat of 1939 in France, then in Britain and the Middle East, under the Polish government-in-exile. It fought alongside the Allies from Narvik to Monte Cassino.
- Polish CorridorThe strip of Polish Pomerania giving Poland access to the Baltic, awarded by the Treaty of Versailles and separating East Prussia from the rest of Germany. The name 'corridor' came from German propaganda.
- Polish government-in-exileThe legal authorities of the Polish Republic, operating abroad after the September 1939 defeat: from 30 September 1939 in Paris, then Angers, and from June 1940 in London. They existed until 1990.
- Polish People's ArmyThe Polish army formed in the USSR from 1943 under communist control, with many Soviet officers, which fought alongside the Red Army. Its official name was simply the Polish Army.
- Polish Underground StateThe secret structures of the Polish state under occupation, answerable to the exiled government: an army (SZP–ZWZ–AK) and a civil administration (the Government Delegation), active from September 1939 to July 1945.
- Political commissarA Communist Party representative in a Red Army unit, watching over the loyalty of commanders and troops; at company level known as a politruk. The post was abolished in October 1942.
- Potsdam ConferenceThe last Big Three conference, at Potsdam from 17 July to 2 August 1945. It set the rules for occupying Germany and for reparations, and put the lands east of the Oder and Lusatian Neisse under Polish administration.
- Protectorate of Bohemia and MoraviaTerritory created by Hitler on 16 March 1939 from occupied Bohemia and Moravia and incorporated into the Reich. A Czech president and government remained, but real power lay with the Reich Protector.
Q
S
- SASturmabteilung (Storm Detachment)Sturmabteilung, the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing, founded in 1921 and known from its uniforms as the Brownshirts. It terrorised the Nazis’ opponents; after the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 the SS eclipsed it.
- SanationThe political camp of Józef Piłsudski's supporters that ruled Poland from the May Coup of 1926 until the defeat of September 1939. The name comes from the Latin sanatio, the healing of public life.
- September CampaignPoland’s defensive war of 1939 against Germany, aided by Slovakia, and from 17 September also against the Soviet Union. It lasted from 1 September to 6 October, when the last large unit surrendered at Kock.
- Service for Poland's VictoryThe first organisation of the Polish underground, founded on the night of 26–27 September 1939 in besieged Warsaw by General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski. Replaced by the ZWZ in November 1939.
- SMERSHSmert shpionam ('Death to spies')Soviet military counter-intelligence in 1943–1946, headed by Viktor Abakumov. It followed the front, hunting spies and 'enemies'; in Poland it arrested Home Army soldiers.
- SonderkommandoIn the extermination camps, a squad of prisoners, mostly Jews, forced to work at the gas chambers and crematoria. The name was also used for special SS and police units, for example within the Einsatzgruppen.
- SSSchutzstaffel (Protection Squadron)Schutzstaffel, ‘Protection Squadron’: a Nazi Party formation founded in 1925 as Hitler’s bodyguard. Under Himmler it took over the police and the concentration camps and became the main perpetrator of the Holocaust.
T
- Tehran ConferenceThe first meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, held in Tehran from 28 November to 1 December 1943. It decided on the invasion of France in May 1944 and, provisionally, on shifting Poland's borders west.
- The BlitzThe German bombing campaign against British cities from 7 September 1940 to May 1941. More than 40,000 civilians were killed, nearly half of them in London.
- Third ReichThe common name for the German state under Hitler and the Nazi Party, from 30 January 1933 to May 1945. Its official name was the German Reich and, from 1943, the Greater German Reich.
- Treaty of VersaillesThe peace treaty with Germany signed at Versailles on 28 June 1919. It took territory and colonies from Germany, limited its army to 100,000 men, imposed reparations and confirmed Polish independence.
U
- U-boatUnterseeboot (undersea boat)A German submarine (from Unterseeboot). In the Second World War it was the Kriegsmarine’s main weapon in the Battle of the Atlantic: attacking in ‘wolf packs’, U-boats sank thousands of Allied ships.
- Unconditional surrenderThe principle Roosevelt announced on 24 January 1943 at the Casablanca Conference: the Allies would not negotiate peace with Germany, Italy and Japan but would require them to surrender without any conditions.
- Union of Armed StruggleThe underground military organisation set up on 13 November 1939 on the orders of General Sikorski's government to replace the Service for Poland's Victory. Renamed the Home Army in February 1942.
- UPA and OUNUkrainian Insurgent Army; Organisation of Ukrainian NationalistsOUN: an underground Ukrainian nationalist organisation founded in 1929; UPA: its armed wing, formed from 1942 by Bandera's faction (OUN-B). In 1943–1945 they carried out the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Galicia.
V
- Vichy FranceFrench State (État français)Marshal Pétain's regime which, after France's defeat in 1940, ruled the unoccupied part of the country and the colonies from Vichy. It collaborated with Germany, including in deporting Jews. It fell in 1944.
- VolksdeutscheNazi term for people of German descent living outside the Reich without German citizenship. In occupied Poland it also meant someone entered on the German national list (Volksliste).
W
- Waffen-SSThe armed formations of the SS, fighting alongside the Wehrmacht in 1939–1945; the name was adopted in 1940. They grew to more than 30 divisions, including foreign ones, and committed many war crimes.
- WarthelandReich district (Reichsgau Wartheland, or Warthegau) formed in 1939 from annexed Greater Poland and the Łódź region. Ruled from Poznań by Arthur Greiser, it saw mass expulsions and Germanisation.
- WehrmachtThe armed forces of the Third Reich from 1935 to 1945: the army (Heer), the navy (Kriegsmarine) and the air force (Luftwaffe). The name replaced the Reichswehr when conscription was restored in 1935.