Armia Krajowa

(literally Home Army), the Polish national military organization active during 1942–45 in Poland during the occupation by the German fascists; it was under the authority of the Polish government-in-exile in London.

Armia Krajowa was formed on the basis of the underground organization of the Union for Armed Struggle (formed in January 1940). The army was composed of part of the People’s Military Organization; Peasant Battalions (the military organization created in late 1940-early 1941 and whose main cadres were members of the peasant youth organization Wici); military detachments of the right wing of the Polish Socialist Party; and other illegal military organizations of the political center supporting the government-in-exile. The major aim of the leaders of the Home Army was the restoration of the Polish bourgeois state with the support of Great Britain and the USA.

The contradictions between the patriotic aspirations of the rank-and-file members of the Home Army and the objectives of its leaders became sharply pronounced in the course of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 instigated by the command of the army. In January 1945 the government-in-exile dissolved Armia Krajowa, creating from its most reactionary segments the underground terrorist organization Freedom and Resistance, which struggled against popular power. In 1947, the organization was destroyed by the organs of state security of the People’s Republic of Poland.