People's Guard and People's Army

The People's Guard was created in spring 1942 by the Polish Workers' Party, founded that January by communists sent in from the USSR. The GL did not recognise the government in exile and stayed outside the Home Army. It carried out railway sabotage, attacks on German venues, such as the Cyganeria café in Kraków in December 1942, and partisan warfare; it also supplied weapons to the Warsaw ghetto fighters and helped survivors.

On 1 January 1944 the National Home Council, set up by the PPR, renamed the GL the People's Army, commanded by General Michał Rola-Żymierski. The AL cooperated with Soviet partisans and fought in the Warsaw Uprising. Its strength is disputed: estimates range from a few thousand to several tens of thousands, and communist-era propaganda inflated them considerably. On 21 July 1944 the AL was merged with Berling's army into a Polish Army subordinate to the new, Moscow-backed authorities.