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FIGURE 3. The Royal Castle in Warsaw prior to 1939. The structure was badly damaged during the initial Nazi bombardment of Warsaw in September 1939, and was razed by the Nazis after the Warsaw uprising of 1944. (U/OU) (picture)
airmen, and Polish contingents played a central role in the crucial battles of Tobruk in North Africa, and of Monte Cassino in Italy.) This willingness to be fair and objective with regard to the total wartime Polish struggle is particularly true of the Gierek regime, which has gradually given recognition to the wartime non-Communist underground by far more numerous and effective than its Communist counterpart. Moreover, Poland was the only country in Eastern Europe where the advent of postwar Communist rule was significantly marked by force of arms.
Most Poles take pride in this military resistance, but the uneven struggle against Germany's "blitzkrieg" in 1939, the crushing of the Warsaw uprising in 1944, the ill-fated postwar armed struggle against communism, the failure of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, and the Soviet willingness to use overwhelming force to maintain hegemony in Eastern Europe illustrated by the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, have all had a cumulative impact on the national attitude toward armed conflict. Nevertheless, strong nationalism and patriotism remain powerful factors, especially when the nation is faced with a clear external threat. Although Polish youth remains largely apathetic to domestic politics and is unwilling to risk life or make other sacrifices for the sake of ideology, their willingness to come the defense of human life, family, and the "Fatherland" is undoubted. Given
FIGURE 4. Monument to Nazi war victims of Majdanek, site of Nazi concentration extermination camp near Lublin (U/OU) (picture)
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
