page_title: Poles in the United Kingdom
section_title: Military contribution and betrayal
hierarchical_section_title: Poles in the United Kingdom / History / Military contribution and betrayal
caption_attribution_description: English: Winston Churchill reviewing Polish troops in England
context_page_description: British Poles, alternatively known as Polish-British people or Polish Britons, are Poles who are citizens of the United Kingdom. This includes people born in the UK who are of Polish descent, and Polish-born people who reside in the UK. There are approximately 800,000 people of Polish nationality in the UK, making them one of the largest ethnic minorities in the country alongside Indians, Pakistanis, Germans and the Irish. The Polish language is the second-most spoken language in England, and the third-most spoken in the UK after English and Welsh. About 1% of the UK population speaks Polish.
  Exchanges between the two countries date back to medieval times, when Britain, Europe's chief power, and Poland, then one of Europe's largest countries, were linked by trade and diplomacy. A notable 16th-century Polish resident in England was the Protestant convert, John Laski, who influenced the course of the English Reformation and helped in establishing the Church of England.
context_section_description: The Polish formed the fourth-largest Allied armed force after the Soviets, the Americans, and the combined troops of the British Empire. They were the largest group of non-British personnel in the RAF during the Battle of Britain, and the 303 Polish Squadron was the most successful RAF unit in the Battle of Britain. Special Operations Executive had a large section of covert, elite Polish troops who cooperated closely with the Polish underground army. 
  By July 1945 there were 228,000 troops of the Polish Armed Forces in the West serving under the British. Many of these men and women came from the Kresy region (eastern Poland), including from the major cities of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) and Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania). They had been deported by the Soviets from the Kresy to the Gulags when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union occupied Poland in 1939 under the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Two years later, when Churchill and Joseph Stalin formed an alliance against Adolf Hitler, the mostly "Kresy Poles" were released from the Gulags in Siberia to form "Anders' Army" and were made to walk via Khazakstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, where thousands perished on the way, to Iran. There the Polish II Corps came into being under British command. They fought in the battles of Monte Cassino, the Falaise Gap, Arnhem, Tobruk, and in the liberation of many European cities, including Bologna and Breda.
  The Polish troops who contributed to the Allied defeat of the Germans in North Africa and Italy, had expected to be able to return at war's end to a Polish Kresy. However at Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill acquiesced in the Soviet Union's annexation of the Kresy lands (roughly half of pre-war Poland's landmass). This entailed massive postwar Polish population deportations to western so-called "Recovered Territories" assigned from Germany to Poland.  The great majority of Polish soldiers, sailors, and airmen in the West would never return to their homeland. In apparent reaction to British acquiescence in Poland's postwar future, thirty officers and men of the Polish II Corps committed suicide.
  Churchill explained the government's actions in a three-day Parliamentary debate, begun on 27 February 1945, which ended in a vote of confidence. Many MPs openly criticised Churchill over Yalta and voiced strong loyalty to the UK's Polish allies. Churchill may not have been confident that Poland would be the independent and democratic country to which Polish troops could return; he said: "His Majesty's Government will never forget the debt they owe to the Polish troops... I earnestly hope it will be possible for them to have citizenship and freedom of the British Empire, if they so desire."
  During the debate, 25 MPs and Peers risked their future political careers to draft an amendment protesting against the UK's acceptance of a geographically reconfigured Poland's integration into the Soviet sphere of influence, thereby shifting it westwards into the heart of Europe. These members included Arthur Greenwood, Sir Archibald Southby, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, and Victor Raikes. After the amendment was defeated, Henry Strauss, MP for Norwich, resigned his seat in protest at the British government's treatment of Poland.
  The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London are the repository for archival material relating to this period.
caption: General Sikorski (left) and Winston Churchill review Polish troops in England, 1943.
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