Narodowe Zjednoczenie Wojskowe (National Military Union, NZW) was a Polish
anti-Communist organization, founded in November 1944, after collapse of the
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occ ...
. It was among the largest and strongest
resistance organisations established in the
PRL in mid- and late 1940s. The NZW consisted mostly of members of the destroyed
Narodowe Siły Zbrojne
National Armed Forces (NSZ; '' Polish:'' Narodowe Siły Zbrojne) was a Polish right-wing underground military organization of the National Democracy operating from 1942. During World War II, NSZ troops fought against Nazi Germany and communist p ...
.
NZW's first commander was Colonel
Tadeusz Danilewicz, then Colonel
Bogusław Banasik. The organisation was organised into sixteen "areas" and was most active in the districts of
Białystok
Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area.
Białystok is located in the Białystok Up ...
,
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...
and
Rzeszów
Rzeszów ( , ; la, Resovia; yi, ריישא ''Raisha'')) is the largest city in southeastern Poland. It is located on both sides of the Wisłok River in the heartland of the Sandomierz Basin. Rzeszów has been the capital of the Subcarpathian Vo ...
. It had several armed units, called
Pogotowie Walki Zbrojnej, which fought many skirmishes with both the
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
and the Soviet
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
. Its headquarters were destroyed in early spring of 1946, when Stalinist secret police arrested hundreds of its members. However, several units remained active until the mid-1950s.
See also
*
Cursed soldiers
The "cursed soldiers" (also known as "doomed soldiers", "accursed soldiers" or "damned soldiers"; pl, żołnierze wyklęci) or "indomitable soldiers" ( pl, żołnierze niezłomni) is a term applied to a variety of anti-Soviet and anti-communist ...
Sources
* http://portalwiedzy.onet.pl/39559,,,,narodowe_zjednoczenie_wojskowe,haslo.html
* http://powstanie-warszawskie-1944.ac.pl/zw_nzw.htm
* http://www.zebrane-doswiadczenia.salon24.pl/30841,index.html
Poland in World War II
Polish dissident organisations
National liberation movements
Anti-communism in Poland
Paramilitary organisations based in Poland
National Democracy
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