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1943
At a time of much cooperation between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union after the nazi invasion of 1941 the influence of the Polish goverment was diminished by the death of Prime Minister Wladyslaw Sikorski, its most capable leader, in a plane crash on July 4, 1943. At that time, Polish-communist civil and military organizations opposed to the government led by Wanda Wasilewska and supported by Stalin were formed in the Soviet Union. -
1944 July
In July 1944, the Soviet Red Army and the Soviet-controlled Polish people's Army entered the territory of the future post-war Poland. In prolonged fighting in 1944 and 1945 the Soviets and their Polish allies defeated and expelled the German army from Poland -
1944 continuation
The soviets had never agreed to an intervention and stopped their advance on the Vistula River. The Germans took the opportunity to carry out a brutal suppression of the pro-Western Polish underground forces. The hard-fought uprising lasted two months and resulted in the death or expulsion from the city of thousands of civilians. -
August 1, 1944
The important political event was the Warsaw Uprising wich began on August 1, 1944. The uprising in wich the majority of the population participed was instigated by the national army and approved by the Polish government in exile in a atempt to establish a non-communist Polish administration before the arrival of the Red Army. It was planned as a short-lived armed demostration with the expectation that Soviet forces approaching Warsaw would assist in any battle to take the city -
October 2, 1944
After the Poles surrendered on October 2, the Germans carried out a planned destruction of warsaw on Hitler's orders that destroyed the city's remaining infrastructure. -
January 17, 1945
The first Polish army fighting alongside the Soviet Red Army entered a devastated Warsaw on January 17, 1945