National Committee of Americans of Polish Extraction

The National Committee of Americans of Polish Extraction (NCAPE) was created on June 20–21, 1942 on the initiative of several Piłsudskiites, followers of the late Marshal Józef Piłsudski.

The NCAPE aimed to defend Polish interests, especially the independence and territorial integrity of the prewar Republic, as well as to lobby for the implementing of the Atlantic Charter and the conditions of the Polish-British Alliance of August 28, 1939.

The activists of the Committee thought that Poland's right to an independent existence were threatened not only directly by the occupants, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but also indirectly by the irresponsible and cynical diplomatic games of Great Britain and the United States.

The activity of the NCAPE found little understanding in the circles of the Roosevelt administration, but its biggest enemies were the communists living in the United States who proclaimed themselves to be representatives of the entire American Polonia.

Soviet agents had since the 1930s seized control of a large section of intellectual, cultural and scientific life in America so that on the eve of the Second World War they were able to influence the federal government and the directions of American foreign policy.

The Committee was joined in its efforts to create a political organization by the editors and publishers of newspapers: Maksymilian Węgrzynek in New York and Franciszek Januszewski in Detroit.

Their leaders found a common language with the NCAPE and established the Polish American Congress during the great Polonian conference in Buffalo in June 1944, attended by two thousand and five hundred delegates from different parts of the United States.

Only in October 1944, amid the upcoming presidential election during which Roosevelt was running for the unprecedented fourth term, was the Polish American Congress invited to visit the White House.