346 GOLGOTA
three weeks. In that time, seven thousand Jews were killed; some six thousand
were deliberately burned to death in their hideouts; fifty-six thousand Jewish
prisoners were transported to the death-camp at Treblinka. This was the largest
single act of Resistance until the outbreak of the Warsaw Rising in the next
summer.^35
Political co-ordination among the various resistance groups never achieved
the desired results. (See Diagram E.) The AK and the BCh with their 400,000
men held an overwhelming superiority over their communist-led rivals, who in
the GL and its successor, the Armia Ludowa (People's Army, AL) never con-
trolled more than 10,000 supporters. Yet the mere 'mathematical majority'
could not easily be translated into political terms. Co-operation between the
two camps was limited to practical matters, and did not include an agreement
on a common political programme once the war was over. On the one side, the
AK was directly linked to the Government-in-Exile in London, whose
Delegatura (Home Delegation) headed the administrative structures of an entire
underground state, functioning both in the General-Gouvernement and in the
Polish parts of the Reich. Policy decisions were taken in a Consultative Political
Committee (PKP) supported by the four democratic parties connected with the
Government-in-Exile, and from 1942 were put into effect by the seven executive
ministries. In 1944-5, they were referred to a political Council of National Unity
(RJN) and an executive Council of Ministers. The office of chief Delegate was
held successively by A. Bninski (1884-1942) in Poznan, Cyril Ratajski
(1875-1942) in Warsaw, and, after Bninski's arrest in 1941, Professor Jan
Piekalkewicz (1892-1943), and J. S. Jankowski (1882-1953). On the other side,
the GL and AL were directly subordinated to the communist Polish Workers'
Party (PPR), which in turn had somewhat ambiguous connections with
Moscow. The communist organizations, which had no measurable popular
support at this time, avoided all thoughts of merger or patronage. On 1 January
1944, they unilaterally formed their own National Home Council (KRN), which
can be seen as the first seed of the future People's Republic. Meanwhile, they
awaited the victorious Soviet Army, whose arrival in Poland was bound to
transform political conditions beyond all recognition. (See Map 17.)
Any description of the Soviet Liberation of Poland must depend to some
extent on one's definition of Poland (and of liberation). At its greatest extent,
the Liberation can be said to have lasted from 4 January 1944, when the Soviet
Army first crossed the pre-war frontier in Volhynia, to September 1945, when
the Soviet authorities finally handed over the Western Territories to Polish man-
agement. In the first phase, in the lands to the east of the River Bug, which in
international law were still Poland's eastern provinces, the Soviet Army was
smashing its way through the Wehrmacht's Army Group Centre. In the eyes of
the German command, 'Operation Bagration', conducted by the half-Polish
Soviet Marshal Konstanty Rokossovsky (1896-1970), was 'still more cata-
stophic than Stalingrad'. As the Front advanced, the Soviet authorities re-
imposed a Soviet administration, acting on the assumption that the frontier