The AK’s political situation became more complicated when in January 1944 the Red Army crossed the border of the Second Republic of Poland in pursuit of the retreating German troops. The Polish government in exile had not maintained official diplomatic relations with the USSR since the spring of 1943, when it learned the truth about the Katyn massacre. Consequently, the Home Army had acted against the Germans without consulting the Red Army. Within the framework of Operation Tempest the Home Army had organized local uprisings in the rear of the German army since January 1944. Their objective was for the AK to act as host toward the Red Army on the liberated terrains. The Soviets used the AK’s support, but when the fighting was over they disarmed the Polish detachments and arrested their commanders, while the AK soldiers were either deported to camps in the USSR or incorporated into the Polish People’s Army (Ludowe Wojsko Polskie), established by Stalin.

Initially, the capital of Poland was not included in the plans for Operation Tempest, but when the Red Army was nearing Warsaw the Home Army command decided to stage an uprising there. The Warsaw Uprising broke out on 1 August 1944 and ended 63 days later in a fiasco.

Until December 1944 Polish territory east off the River Vistula was occupied by the Red Army. On 31 December Stalin formed the puppet Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland. Faced with the new Soviet occupation the Polish government in London deemed it necessary to reorganize the underground structures, as actions against the Soviet occupier and the communist authorities, which he established, required a different strategy and different methods. The Home Army was officially dissolved on 19 January 1945. One of the reasons for that was to prohibit the Soviets from accusing the AK of hostile activity and persecuting its soldiers as members of a military organization deemed illegal by the Soviets and the communist authorities subordinate to them. Most AK soldiers were gradually demobilized. As the same time began the formation of the cadre underground structures, which were then transformed into an organization called Freedom and Independence (Wolność i Niezawisłość).

Under these circumstances, the primary aim of the Polish government-in-exile was to restore Poland as a sovereign state. They rebuilt the army, trained soldiers, and obtained equipment. At the same time, underground civilian and military structures were organised in Poland. This was far from easy – the German- and Soviet-occupied Polish territories were practically cut off from the free world, while those caught in any illegal activity under German occupation faced the death penalty or deportation to concentration camps like Auschwitz or Mauthausen-Gusen.

German policy toward the people of conquered Poland was particularly brutal and ruthless. From the very beginning of the occupation, the Germans set out to destroy the Polish intelligentsia. University lecturers, teachers, pre-war officials and political leaders were murdered or sent to concentration camps. The Soviets pursued a similar policy.

The Germans destined the Polish Jews for an even more terrible fate. They began to concentrate Jews in designated residential districts which they gradually surrounded with walls and barbed wire to create ghettos. Jews were stripped of property and their food rations were gradually reduced; many died of starvation and disease. German policy became even more brutal after the outbreak of the German-Soviet conflict in June 1941. German units murdered Jews en masse as they pushed east, occupying successive territories.

At the same time the Germans also began to make preparations for the mass extermination of the Jews of Europe. Towards the end of December 1941, the Kulmhof extermination camp began operating at Chełmno nad Nerem. In January 1942, the leaders of the Reich decided on the ‘final solution of the Jewish question’. This meant that all Jews would be murdered. In July 1942, mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to the death camp at Treblinka started. Successive extermination camps began operating, including Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Sobibór. The Jews became even more isolated when the death penalty was introduced for providing shelter or any assistance to them.

A network of secret emissaries ensured communications between the Polish Underground State and the Polish government-in-exile. The emissaries carried documents and transmitted information and oral instructions from political and military leaders.

One such secret emissary was Jan Kozielewski, alias Jan Karski. Karski went on three dangerous missions to and from occupied Poland. His final mission, starting in the autumn of 1942, proved crucial. Before leaving Warsaw, Karski met with the leaders of Polish political parties and with Jewish leaders. At the request of the latter, he twice entered the Warsaw ghetto and travelled to the transit camp in Izbica, ascertaining the unimaginable suffering of the Jews with his own eyes.

Reports from the Polish Underground State, including Karski’s testimony, were the basis of a note which the Polish minister of foreign affairs, Edward Raczyński, addressed to the signatory states of the Declaration by the United Nations on 10 December 1942. The note is probably the first international document describing the Holocaust and calling upon members of the anti-German coalition to take joint action and bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice. Raczyński’s note was published in the form of a brochure entitled ‘The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland’ which was disseminated by Polish diplomatic missions.

On 22 July 1942, the great liquidation action of the Warsaw ghetto, the biggest Jewish ghetto established in the Polish territories occupied by the Germans, started. It was a stage of the Operation Reinhard which was a large-scale plan to murder all Jews in the General Government and Białystok District.

The pamphlet was supposed to make Polish Catholics more sensitive to the fate of the Jews and encourage them to protest against the criminal actions carried out by the Third Reich. In the circumstances of terror and occupation, it was extremely difficult to present such an attitude all the more so because of the complicated pre-war Polish and Jewish relations. Constituting 10% of the Polish society, the Jews represented one of the most significant ethnic and religious minorities in the Second Polish Republic. Many organisations of national and Christian democratic character used anti-Semitic slogans, demanding, for example, the forced emigration of Jews to Palestine. Polish groups that derived from the National Democracy (Narodowa Demokracja, ND) postulated the limitation of Jewish rights. However, they never insisted on their physical extermination. Co-founded by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, the Front for the Rebirth of Poland, which was a continuation of the pre-war Catholic Action (Akcja Katolicka), did not fight against prejudices against the Jews, yet it was frightened by the German version of anti-Semitism that included genocide. In the face of the Holocaust, which was an unprecedented event, the Front for the Rebirth of Poland as well as many other right-wing organisations, whose members continued to have prejudices against the Jews, organised actions to help them. On 27 September 1942, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka co-founded the Provisional Committee to Aid Jews “Żegota” (Tymczasowy Komitet Pomocy Żydom “Żegota”), a joint undertaking of left-wing and right-wing organisations under the auspices of the Polish Underground State. In 1982, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka was posthumously awarded the medal and title of the Righteous Among the Nations.

In the face of the internment, which prevented him from serving his role, the president decided – in accordance with the Polish Constitution of 1935 – to appoint his successor during wartime. He chose General Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski, Polish Ambassador in Rome. The French and British authorities, however, voted against the decision, which posed a threat of a serious political crisis. Mościcki therefore changed his decision and appointed Władysław Raczkiewicz, who in turn entrusted Władysław Sikorski, a representative of pre-war opposition, with the mission of leading the government. The new Prime Minister was not associated with the defeat but was still a well-known figure both in Poland and abroad and a person trusted by the Allies.

Sikorski formed a government of national unity, which included representatives of both the Sanation movement and the opposition: socialists, Christian Democrats, peasant movement activists and nationalists. The appeal from 6 October 1939 was a very important and symbolic sign of the continuity of the Polish government being maintained despite the defeat. The new government was consistent in their readiness to keep fighting the Germans at the side of Great Britain and France, and at the same time called for all Poles to continue the fight. Polish people would respond to this call by volunteering to join Polish Army units established in the allied states and organising resistance in the country.