Home Army

On 14 February 1942 General Władysław Sikorski renamed the Union of Armed Struggle the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK). It was part of the Polish Armed Forces under the Commander-in-Chief and, in political matters, answered to the Government Delegate for Poland. It was led in turn by General Stefan Rowecki 'Grot', General Tadeusz Komorowski 'Bór' and General Leopold Okulicki 'Niedźwiadek'. It absorbed most other underground organisations and was the largest underground army in occupied Europe: estimates for summer 1944 range from about 250,000 to nearly 400,000 sworn soldiers, though weapons were always scarce.

The AK ran intelligence, sabotage, diversion and partisan warfare; its intelligence service, among other things, gathered information on the German V-2 rocket. Its largest operations were Operation Tempest and the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. After the Red Army arrived, the NKVD disarmed its units, and tens of thousands of its soldiers were arrested and deported deep into the USSR.