[15] The strength of the second largest resistance organization, Bataliony Chłopskie (Peasants' Battalions), can be estimated for summer 1944 (at which time they were mostly merged with AK[4]) at about 160,000 men.

[17] Pilecki became its organizational commander as TAP expanded to cover not only Warsaw but Siedlce, Radom, Lublin and other major cities of central Poland.

Later, the organization was incorporated into the Union for Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej), later renamed and better known as the Home Army (Armia Krajowa).

[19] In March 1940, a partisan unit of the first guerrilla commanders in the Second World War in Europe under Major Henryk Dobrzański "Hubal" destroyed a battalion of German infantry in a skirmish near the village of Huciska.

To counter this threat the German authorities formed a special 1,000 men strong counter-insurgency unit of combined SS–Wehrmacht forces, including a Panzer group.

[22] The Home Army approved this plan, provided him a false identity card, and on 19 September 1940, he deliberately went out during a street roundup (łapanka) in Warsaw and was caught by the Germans along with other civilians and sent to Auschwitz.

[23] From October 1940, ZOW sent its first report about the camp and the genocide in November 1940 to Home Army Headquarters in Warsaw through the resistance network organized in Auschwitz.

At first they painted the whole text, then to save time they shortened it to two letters, P and W. Later they invented Kotwica – "Anchor" – which became the symbol of all Polish resistance in occupied Poland.

[29] On 7 March 1941, two Polish agents of the Home Army killed Nazi collaborator actor Igo Sym in his apartment in Warsaw.

In July 1941 Mieczysław Słowikowski (using the codename "Rygor" – Polish for "Rigor") set up "Agency Africa", one of World War II's most successful intelligence organizations.

The information gathered by the Agency was used by the Americans and British in planning the amphibious November 1942 Operation Torch[31] landings in North Africa.

Four Poles, Eugeniusz Bendera,[32] Kazimierz Piechowski, Stanisław Gustaw Jaster and Józef Lempart made a daring escape.

Three of the escapees remained free until the end of the war; Jaster, who joined the Polish Underground, was recaptured in 1943 and died shortly afterwards in German custody.

[34] In September 1942 "The Żegota Council for the Aid of the Jews" was founded by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz ("Alinka") and made up of Polish Democrats as well as other Catholic activists.

Similar operations aimed at disrupting and harrying German transport and communication in occupied Poland occurred in the coming months and years.

He also met with many other government and civic leaders in the United States, including Felix Frankfurter, Cordell Hull, William Joseph Donovan, and Stephen Wise.

Karski also presented his report to media, bishops of various denominations (including Cardinal Samuel Stritch), members of the Hollywood film industry and artists, but without success.

One Polish AK unit, the National Security Corps (Państwowy Korpus Bezpieczeństwa), under the command of Henryk Iwański ("Bystry"), fought inside the ghetto along with ŻZW.

[47] In one attack, three cell units of AK under the command of Kapitan Józef Pszenny ("Chwacki") tried to breach the ghetto walls with explosives, but the Germans defeated this action.

[48] When we invaded the Ghetto for the first time, the Jews and the Polish bandits succeeded in repelling the participating units, including tanks and armored cars, by a well-prepared concentration of fire.

Bürkl was a high-ranking Gestapo agent responsible for the murder and brutal interrogation of thousands of Polish Jews and resistance fighters and supporters.

In effect some 50 kg of the most important parts of the captured V-2, as well as the final report, analyses, sketches and photos, were transported to Brindisi by a Royal Air Force Douglas Dakota aircraft.

[55] On 14 June 1944 the Battle of Porytowe Wzgórze took place between Polish and Russian partisans, numbering around 3,000, and the Nazi German units consisted of between 25,000 and 30,000 soldiers, with artillery, tanks and armored cars and air support.

After Bór-Komorowski's surrender, the AK fighters were treated as prisoners-of-war by the Germans, much to the outrage of Stalin, but the civilian population were ruthlessly punished.

The Warsaw Uprising allowed the Germans to destroy the AK as a fighting force, but the main beneficiary was Stalin, who was able to impose a communist government on postwar Poland with little fear of armed resistance.

The last cursed soldier – member of the militant anti-communist resistance in Poland was Józef Franczak who was killed with pistol in his hand by ZOMO in 1963.

[82] On 21 May 1945, a unit of the Armia Krajowa, led by Colonel Edward Wasilewski, attacked a NKVD camp in Rembertów on the eastern outskirts of Warsaw.

It was a large-scale operation undertaken by Soviet forces of the Red Army, the NKVD and SMERSH, with the assistance of Polish UB and LWP units against former Armia Krajowa soldiers in the Suwałki and Augustów region in Poland.

Norman Davies writes that the "Armia Krajowa (Home Army), the AK,... could fairly claim to be the largest of European resistance [organizations].

"[88] Gregor Dallas writes that the "Home Army (Armia Krajowa or AK) in late 1943 numbered around 400,000, making it the largest resistance organization in Europe.