Polish Underground State

The Underground State is dated from the founding of the Service for Poland's Victory on 27 September 1939. Its military branch was formed in turn by the SZP, the Union of Armed Struggle and the Home Army; its civilian branch by the Government Delegation for Poland with its departments, and a representation of the political parties, from 1944 the Council of National Unity. The Underground State had its own courts, whose sentences were carried out, secret schooling from classes to universities, an underground press of hundreds of titles, and courier links with London, which carried news of the Holocaust, among other things, to the West.

Its structures survived the fall of the Warsaw Uprising but not the arrival of the Red Army: in March 1945 the NKVD arrested its leaders, who were tried in Moscow in the Trial of the Sixteen. On 1 July 1945, after the Allies withdrew recognition from the government in London, the Council of National Unity and the Delegation dissolved themselves.