General Władysław Anders: difficult choices

In 1970 the Polish War Cemetery at Monte Cassino became the site of the burial of General Władysław Anders, the commander of the Polish 2nd Corps which conquered the monastery hill in one of the bloodiest battles of the WWII in May 1944. Few realise that this was an extraordinary interment. The cemetery, established on the General’s orders, had been intended solely for those who had fallen in the fourth battle for Monte Cassino and Piedimonte. Only a few exceptions to that rule had ever been granted. They included Archbishop Józef Gawlina, who had visited the Polish troops in the Soviet Union and then accompanied them on their way out of that country, and General Bronisław Duch of the II Corps.

General Anders’s ‘difficult’ behaviour, however, often brought about good results. Perhaps he followed the rule which he once quoted in an interview given to the Paris ‘Kultura’: ‘From the tsarist cavalry officer cadet school to the French military academy, I’ve always been taught that any action with no hope of victory should be cancelled.’

The year 1939 saw Anders as commander of the Nowogród Cavalry Brigade in Baranowicze. The brigade was incorporated into the Modlin army, which was to defend Warsaw from the north. During retreat after a lost battle General Anders received a shrapnel wound in the back. Nonetheless, on 13 September he led an attack on Mińsk Mazowiecki. He was then ordered to withdraw to the Lublin region. On 22 September in the battle of Tomaszów Lubelski his troops broke out of the German encirclement. Faced with the double threat – German and Russian – Anders disbanded his units and ordered the soldiers to make for Hungary in small groups. On 29 September he was wounded in a skirmish with a Ukrainian People’s Militsiya unit, and later handed over to the NKVD. He was one of the few commanders who had fought both against the Germans and the Soviets in September 1939.

On 11 August 1941, when he assumed command over the Polish army to be formed in the Soviet Union, Anders was a physically enfeebled ex-prisoner. Even so, he proved capable of undertaking not only that huge organisational task, but also the difficult negotiations with Soviet authorities.

‘We lived on clay-like bread, oat gruel and fish. [...] Nothing much happened, apart from disease, death and backbreaking work. Towards the end of the summer the news broke: >We’re free!< [...] we can go [...] where we wish, within Russia of course; and [...] there’s going to be a Polish army. Generals Sikorski and Anders have signed a peace treaty with Stalin, we’re no longer prisoners. My father took us to a nearby village, where we moved in with an old couple, very kind people; this was in order to make life easier for our mother, my brother and myself, as my father and seventeen-year-old sister prepared to leave and join the army. [...] Our goodbyes were painful and quiet; Mother didn’t cry in front of us. We walked to the road with them, then our father hugged us, kissed us and said, >Farewell, my little ones<.’ This is how Alfreda Ferschke parted from her father when he set off to join the Anders army.

Despite the demands of the Soviet leadership under Stalin, Anders was reluctant to send his soldiers to the front. He invoked the exact wording of an early agreement, according to which the Polish army could only be used as a whole. Urged on by NKVD Major Zhukov, he resisted. ‘I said that the whole army must go into action together and that, first of all, the men must be properly fed, armed and trained. I pointed out that if separate divisions were sent to the front, they would be almost lost among the vast numbers engaged there, and the fact that Polish troops were fighting would hardly be realised, even in Poland. Our troops were physically exhausted and their rations so small that normal training was impossible. I could not point out to general Zhukov, though as a matter of fact the Russians were well aware of it, that we were also feeding many Polish women and children who had arrived near the military camps. It was the only way of keeping them alive.’

‘The situation of the army here is close to catastrophic. Supplies of some foodstuffs, such as lard, oil and vegetables, have all but ceased; other products we receive in negligible amounts. The soldiers are hungry, more than ten per cent suffer from night-blindness. There is no hope of the conditions improving; on the contrary, they are becoming steadily worse,’ wrote General Anders in his dispatch no 701 to Commander-in-Chief Władysław Sikorski on 7 June 1942. ‘As a result, the army’s morale is sustained solely by the hope of leaving the USSR and through tremendous patriotic discipline. Transport, as far as bringing in supplies from Persia is concerned, is extremely and increasingly difficult. Conditions for training – non‑existent. No petrol, tyres, means of transport or spare parts. External interference with our internal affairs is forever on the increase.’

General Anders insisted on the evacuation of civilians from the Soviet Union against direct orders from the Polish government-in-exile. In his memoirs he quotes a dispatch from London, signed by chief of staff General Klimecki: ‘British authorities are alarmed by the news that families are included in the military transports, that not being within the framework of the evacuation. In view of the great food difficulties in Iran it is necessary to stop absolutely transport of families until agreement is reached with British authorities as it may hamper or restrict military evacuation.’ This dispatch was ignored. General Anders feared that another opportunity for evacuation might not arise. His disobedience saved the lives of tens of thousands of civilians. Using today’s language, one could say that Anders turned a military operation into a humanitarian one.

Several thousand children and teenagers reached the camps where soldiers were being recruited for the Anders army: Totskoye, Vrevskaya, Guzar, Jalal-Abad, Kermine and others. The orders were clear: take them in regardless of age in order to help them leave the Soviet Union. The children and the army parted ways in the Middle East. The younger boys and the girls were sent to the settlements in Valivade and Balachadi, the story of which is told in our exhibition ‘The Way to India’. Older boys were admitted to the Cadet School, which offered both military training and general education. The school educated a total of 1276 cadets and finally closed in 1948, after the last student had passed the school-leaving exams. In total, the Anders army provided secondary and university education to about four thousand young people during its existence.

More than 116 thousand people left the Soviet Union during the evacuation of the Anders Army. About 40 thousand of them were civilians, including at least 20 thousand children under the age of 18. The civilians, mainly women and children, were moved in 1942 and 1943 to numerous settlements established in Asia, Africa, Mexico and New Zealand. Polish consulates and branches of the Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Education were set up in all those places to look after Polish civilians.

The Polish 2nd Corps, under British command, was formed on 21 July 1943 in the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. It included the experienced soldiers of the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division, already renowned for defending Tobruk, as well as the not fully trained troops evacuated from the USSR. Those differences were reflected in the jocular appellations used by the soldiers for one another. Those who had come from the USSR were called ‘Orthodox’, those who had been to Britain went under the name ‘Lords’, while the Carpathians with combat experience gained in Libya were ‘Ramseses.’ With time, however, these differences disappeared. After they were transferred to Italy in 1943/44, the 2nd Corps already functioned as a cohesive unit.

The number and quality of periodicals published by the Anders Army was extraordinary. ‘Mała Kronika’ (‘The Little Chronicle’) for children, the religious fortnightly ‘W Imię Boże’ (‘In the Name of God’) as well as ‘Orzeł Biały’ (‘The White Eagle’), edited i.a. by  Józef Czapski, Jerzy Giedroyć and Gustaw Herling-Grudziński – all  those magazines gave the soldiers as well as the civilians following the army access to information in their native language. After the end of the war General Anders partially funded the Literary Institute, founded by Jerzy Giedroyć, which published among other titles the monthly ‘Kultura’ (‘Culture’) and was moved to Paris in 1948.

What was General Anders’s attitude to that dilemma? About the deserters he said, ‘They want to fight for their own free country,’ and he ordered the military police not to pursue them. That order was kept secret, because it might affect the morale of the army and even antagonise the British allies who might see it as interference with their mandate in Palestine. About two thirds of Jewish soldiers took the opportunity. They constituted a significant reinforcement of the Jewish presence in the region. Some joined paramilitary organisations such as Hagana or Irgun. Others went to work in kibbutzim or enlisted in the ‘Jewish Legion’ of the British Army.  About 1300 soldiers of Jewish origin remained in the Anders army. In the war cemeteries at Monte Cassino, Ancona and Bologna there are a number of tombs with headstones that carry the Star of David.

The 2nd Corps was different form other Allied units in that it didn’t have a rear base from which it could draw reinforcements. General Anders shocked his superiors by saying that ‘reinforcements would come from beyond the front line.’ The Italian campaign confirmed his predictions. Poles forcibly conscripted into the Wehrmacht escaped to join the 2nd Corps; later they were followed by Poles, Belarussians and Ukrainians who had been detained in German POW camps.

Anders’s superior, the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, disapproved of the decision to use the 2nd Corps in the assault on Monte Cassino. He saw it as an expression of Anders’s quest for personal glory, and he commented by exclaiming, ‘You want to play the hero with a white crest on his helmet!’ He also disliked Anders taking the decision without consulting him. Sosnkowski himself recounts in his memoirs: ‘I regard his self-willed action as a breach of military discipline, highly dangerous and all the more harmful in exile; I told him that shedding the blood of Polish soldiers in the hard struggle for our nation’s rights and its future is a prerogative of only the highest authority of the Republic.’  Sosnkowski even considered depriving Anders of his post of corps commander, but decided against it, fearing both the effect on the soldiers’ morale and the difficulty of gaining the consent of the British command.

The bloody fighting in which the 2nd Corps participated took place in the hills around the abbey; the aim was to isolate Monastery Hill and force the enemy to retreat.  Anders was, however, aware of the potential propaganda effect of taking the monastery itself, which was presented in German newsreels  as a symbol of indomitable resistance. The capture of dozens of German bunkers, Phantom Ridge, Colle Sant’ Angelo or Massa Albaneta would not make a story that would be repeated all around the world; and that was the real purpose of hoisting the Polish flag over the monastery. There are two ideas about how Anders led his soldiers to victory. According to one, he identified the critical moment in the battle when both sides were exhausted and ordered the Poles to slow down until the resistance weakens. In the other interpretation, information from the radio watch proved decisive.

Because of the extreme conditions, the battle of Monte Cassino is sometimes compared to First World War battles such as Verdun. Polish losses amounted to about 10 per cent of the Corps. In his memoirs, Anders stressed the chaos of modern combat:  ‘I had often seen pictures of famous battles, with the general in command, field glasses to his eyes, watching the progress of his troops and giving orders. How different was this from present-day reality, when battles, for the most part, are fought out of sight of the commanding officers . [... The battle] is a collection of small epics, many of which can never be told, for their heroes took to their graves the secret of their exploits.’  The propaganda effect of the victory was huge, but soon, following the allies’ Normandy landings, the Italian front became less important.

The expected conflict between East and West did not happen. General Anders tried to keep the Polish troops ready as long as possible, but in February 1946 the British government decided to disband the Polish Armed Forces. In September the British approved the formation of a Polish Resettlement Corps. Its aim was to make the demobilisation process easier for the soldiers by preparing them for return to civilian life. 

Those who hoped for a change of political system in Poland were dismissed by the communists with the ironic comment ‘they’re waiting for General Anders on a white horse.’ To the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland he remained a symbolic enemy. At the same time, his legend was reinforced by the monumental three-volume work of reportage by  Melchior Wańkowicz ‘Bitwa o Monte Cassino’ (‘The Battle of Monte Cassino’) and its shorter  version, ‘Szkice spod Monte Cassino’ (‘Sketches from Monte Cassino’). The legend was also influenced by the memories of the soldiers and civilians brought by the General out of the Soviet Union. The thousands of lives saved testify to General Anders having made good decisions.