DESCRIPTION

Polish Regiment Representative Officer

Plastic Model Kit

ICM16010

1:16 Scale

Manufacturer: ICM

Material: Plastic

Condition: New in original packaging

Historical reference

The List of Polish wars chronicles Polish military involvements since the year 972. The present armed forces trace their roots to the early 20th century, yet the history of Polish armed forces in their broadest sense stretches back much further. After the partitions of Poland, during the period from 1795 until 1918, Polish military was recreated several times during national insurrections that included the November Uprising of 1830, and the January Uprising in 1863, and the Napoleonic Wars that saw the formation of the Polish Legions in Italy. The Congress Poland, being part of the Russian Empire with a certain degree of autonomy, had a separate Polish army in the years 1815–1830, which was disbanded after the unsuccessful November Uprising. Large numbers of Poles also served in the armies of the partitioning powers, Russian Empire, Austria-Hungary (before 1867 Austria) and Germany (before 1871 Prussia).

During World War I, the Polish Legions were set up in Galicia, the southern part of Poland under Austrian occupation. They were both disbanded after the Central Powers failed to provide guarantees of Polish independence after the war. General Józef Haller, the commander of the Second Brigade of the Polish Legion, switched sides in late 1917, and via Murmansk took part of his troops to France, where he created the Blue Army. It was joined by several thousand Polish volunteers from the United States. It fought on the French front in 1917 and 1918.

The Polish Army was recreated in 1918 from elements of the three separate Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and German armies, and armed with equipment left following World War I. The force expanded during the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1922 to nearly 800,000 men, but then were reduced after peace was reestablished.

President of Poland inspecting troops during the Armed Forces Day parade in Warsaw, 2007

At the onset of World War II, on 1 September 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Polish forces were overwhelmed by the German attack in September 1939, which was followed on 17 September 1939 by an invasion by the Soviet Union. Some Polish forces escaped from the occupied country and joined Allied forces fighting in other theaters while those that remained in Poland splintered into guerilla units of the Armia Krajowa ("Home Army") and other partisan groups which fought in clandestine ways against the foreign occupiers. Thus, there were three threads to Polish armed forces from 1939; the Polish Armed Forces in the West, the Armia Krajowa and other resistance organizations fighting the Germans in Poland, and the Polish Armed Forces in the East, which later became the post-war communist Polish People's Army (LWP).

Until the fall of communism, the army's prestige under communist rule continued to fall, as it was used by the government to resettle ethnic minorities immediately after the war (Operation Vistula), and to violently suppress opposition several times, during the 1956 Poznań protests, the 1970 Polish protests, and during martial law in Poland in 1981–1982. The LWP also took part in the suppressing of the 1968 democratization process of Czechoslovakia, commonly known as the Prague Spring. That same year Marshal of Poland Marian Spychalski was asked to replace Edward Ochab as chairman of the Council of State, and General Wojciech Jaruzelski, at that time the Chief of the General Staff, was named to replace him.Jaruzelski, a known Soviet loyalist, was put in place by the Soviets in order to ensure that a trusted group of officers was in control of one of the least trusted armies in the Warsaw Pact.

With love from Ukraine