The Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa, pronounced [ˈarmja kraˈjɔva]; abbreviated AK) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II.

The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) established in the aftermath of the German and Soviet invasions in September 1939.

Thousands of ex-Home Army personnel were deported to gulags and Soviet prisons, while other ex-members, including a number of senior commanders, were executed.

[1] Seven weeks later, on 17 November 1939, on orders from General Władysław Sikorski, the Service for Poland's Victory was superseded by the Armed Resistance (Związek Walki Zbrojnej), which in turn, a little over two years later, on 14 February 1942, became the Home Army.

[8]: 235–236  Its growth was largely based on integrating scores of smaller resistance organisations into its ranks; most of the other Polish underground armed organizations were incorporated into the Home Army, though they retained varying degrees of autonomy.

[15] In turn, individual Home Army units varied substantially in their political outlooks, notably in their attitudes toward ethnic minorities and toward the Soviets.

[5] The Home Army supplied valuable intelligence to the Allies; 48 per cent of all reports received by the British secret services from continental Europe between 1939 and 1945 came from Polish sources.

[34][35][32] According to Marek Ney-Krwawicz [pl], for the Western Allies, the intelligence provided by the Home Army was considered to be the best source of information on the Eastern Front.

With the Poles receiving no aid from the approaching Red Army, the Germans eventually defeated the insurrectionists and burned the city, quelling the Uprising on 2 October 1944.

While the Home Army managed to liberate a number of places from German control—for example, the Lublin area, where regional structures were able to set up a functioning government—they ultimately failed to secure sufficient territory to enable the government-in-exile to return to Poland due to Soviet hostility.

[46] Richard J. Crampton estimated that an eighth of all German transports to the Eastern Front were destroyed or substantially delayed due to Home Army operations.

[51] In this way the Home Army was able to procure submachine guns (copies of British Stens, indigenous Błyskawicas and KIS), pistols (Vis), flamethrowers, explosive devices, road mines, and Filipinka and Sidolówka hand grenades.

[51] The final source of supply was Allied air drops, which was the only way to obtain more exotic, highly useful equipment such as plastic explosives and antitank weapons such as the British PIAT.

[60] The Home Army answered to the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile, where some Jews served in leadership positions (e.g. Ignacy Schwarzbart and Szmul Zygielbojm),[61] though there were no Jewish representatives in the Government Delegation for Poland.

In an analysis by Joshua D. Zimmerman, postwar testimonies of Holocaust survivors reveal that their experiences with the Home Army were mixed even if predominantly negative.

[74] However, Polish historian Ewa Kołomańska noted that many individuals associated with the Home Army, involved in rescuing the Jews, did not receive the Righteous title.

[80][65]: 275 In February 1942, the Home Army Operational Command's Office of Information and Propaganda set up a Section for Jewish Affairs, directed by Henryk Woliński.

[82][83] From 1940 onward, the Home Army courier Jan Karski delivered the first eyewitness account of the Holocaust to the Western powers, after having personally visited the Warsaw Ghetto and a Nazi concentration camp.

AK commander General Stefan Rowecki estimated that 640,000 people had been murdered in Auschwitz between 1940 and March 1943, including 66,000 ethnic Poles and 540,000 Jews from various countries (this figure was revised later to 500,000).

"[88]: 68  Rowecki's attitudes shifted in the following months as the brutal reality of the Holocaust became more apparent, and the Polish public support for the Jewish resistance increased.

[105]: 88–90 Most of the underground press was sympathetic towards Jews,[86] and the Home Army's Bureau of Information and Propaganda was led by operatives who were pro-Jewish and represented the liberal wing of Home Army;[86] however, the bureau's anti-communist sub-division, created as a response to communist propaganda, was led by operatives who held strong anti-communist and anti-Jewish views, including the Żydokomuna stereotype.

In April 1944, the Home Army in the Vilnius Region attempted to open negotiations with Povilas Plechavičius, commander of the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, and proposed a non-aggression pact and cooperation against Nazi Germany.

"[130] On 10 July 1943, Zygmunt Rumel was sent to talk with local Ukrainians with the goal of ending the massacres; the mission was unsuccessful, and the Banderites killed the Polish delegation.

Between January and March 1944, the division fought 16 major battles with the UPA, expanding its operational base and securing Polish forces against the main attack.

[132] One of the largest battles between the Home Army and the UPA took place in Hanaczów [pl], where local self-defence forces managed to fend off two attacks.

[121] There is no evidence that the Polish government-in-exile contemplated a general policy of revenge against the Ukrainians, but local Poles, including Home Army commanders, engaged in retaliatory actions.

[138][139] From February to April 1945, mainly in Rzeszowszczyzna (the Rzeszów area), Polish units (including affiliates of the Home Army) carried out retaliatory attacks in which about 3,000 Ukrainians were killed; one of the most infamous ones is known as the Pawłokoma massacre.

Future Secretary General of the Polish United Workers' Party, Władysław Gomułka, is quoted as saying: "Soldiers of the AK are a hostile element which must be removed without mercy."

WiN was far from efficient: it was viewed as an enemy of the state, starved of resources, and a vocal faction advocated armed resistance against the Soviets and their Polish proxies.

It was only four years later, in 1967, that Adam Boryczka—a soldier of AK and a member of the elite, Britain-trained Cichociemny ("Silent Unseen") intelligence and support group—was released from prison.