World War Two: Polish Contribution

[Mark Pritchard in the Chair]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Polish contribution to UK war effort in World War Two.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of the summer of 1939 was designed to annihilate and destroy Poland and the Polish nation. [Interruption.]

Order. I am sorry, Mr Kawczynski, but I remind those in the Public Gallery not to take photographs, as it is not permitted in Westminster Hall.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of the summer of 1939 was designed to destroy and annihilate the Poles. On 1 September 1939, a few weeks after that treaty between the Germans and Russians was signed, the brutal invasion of Poland by German forces took place. Despite so much subjugation—so many cities were destroyed and so many Poles were imprisoned, and tyranny was imposed on Poland in 1939 and thereafter—Poles themselves refused to be subjugated.

Poles share our values of freedom and are determined to be free people. They came from Poland in unprecedented numbers to join up with British forces and fight with their British counterparts in 1939 and 1940. The Polish Government-in-exile came to be based in London. Thanks to the hospitality and generosity of the British Government, the Polish Government-in-exile operated in London until 1989 and the fall of communism in Poland, when a democratic and legitimate Government was finally restored to Poland. The most important battle in which they participated was the Battle of Britain.

Today, I again had the great honour of speaking with Lord Tebbit about his views on the Battle of Britain. One of the most enjoyable things that I have done in my 14 years as a Member of Parliament was to join Lord Tebbit at the RAF club for an Anglo-Polish dinner, where he was the guest speaker. He said something that really resonated with me, that I will always remember, and that I wanted to share with the House. According to Lord Tebbit, the Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe were so evenly matched in the summer of 1940 that the British side was beginning to lose that battle. Those were the words of Lord Tebbit, not my own.

Lord Tebbit said that replacing the planes was relatively easy—continuing production in armaments factories and creating the planes was fine—but that replacing the pilots was extremely difficult. We all know how long it takes to train a pilot, and it was very difficult to replace all the losses. According to him, the Poles coming in such unprecedented numbers to join to British forces in the summer of 1940 was what tipped the balance to the British side.

We have a Polish community in Coventry. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will talk about Polish heroism at Monte Cassino, because that was quite a battle, and casualties were very high among Polish troops.

I will come on to Monte Cassino shortly.

The battle of El Alamein was the turning point in the whole north African campaign. Anybody who has studied maps of the battlefront and topography of El Alamein will realise the extraordinary importance of landmines in that operation. A Pole, Józef Kosacki, invented the mine detector, which was successfully used for the first time in 1941, in El Alamein. As I said, that battle was the turning point in the north African campaign. The allied forces and the axis powers were very finely balanced at that juncture in 1941. Imagine if we had lost and Rommel’s forces had managed to push forward beyond Egypt and take the oil fields of the middle east. The events that unfolded in the second world war may have been very different. We therefore celebrate the great contribution of Józef Kosacki, a great Pole who died in 1990 and who invented the mine detector.

The hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) mentioned Monte Cassino. Once the Polish and British forces had gone through El Alamein and Tobruk, retaken Benghazi and Tripoli, and gone through Tunisia, they came up through Sicily and the spine of Italy, finally reaching the Gustav line, which was part of the most strongly fortified, highly elevated defences across the spine of Italy, which were perceived to be impregnable. The most difficult part of the Gustav line was Monte Cassino itself. On 18 May 1944, at 9.45 am, a patrol of the 12th Podolski Lancers Regiment reached the ruins of Monte Cassino. They put a Polish flag there, followed shortly by a British flag.

It is easy to talk about some of those sacrifices and statistics, but today in my House of Commons office I watched the YouTube video of the battle at Monte Cassino—hand-to-hand combat, throwing grenades at each other, and being fired upon all the time. It was perceived to be one of the bloodiest and most difficult battles on the whole of the western front during the second world war. At Monte Cassino alone, the Poles lost 923 men who died, 2,931 injured and 345 reported missing. It is in the lexicon of the whole of the Polish narrative—all Poles carry Monte Cassino close to their heart.

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way and for his wonderful speech. Has he had the opportunity to visit the National Memorial Arboretum in my county of Staffordshire, which has a statue of a Polish soldier at Monte Cassino, as well as three other statues of Polish servicemen? The statue was unveiled about 10 years ago in a fitting memorial to the huge contribution made by Polish forces during the second world war.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and near neighbour for mentioning that. These Westminster Hall debates throw up all this interesting information, including about the arboretum in his constituency. I very much encourage members of the public watching the debate on television throughout our country to take advantage of a visit to Lichfield, near his constituency, to look at the wonderful arboretum and at that memorial.

General Anders, who led the Polish forces at Monte Cassino, said:

“Twenty two days under constant fire, in terrible conditions, seven days of fierce struggle to break German defences…It was not just the Battle of Cassino, it was a battle for Poland.”

That was from his book, “Without the Last Chapter”.

Recently, we saw the commemoration of the D-day landings on television. Our Prime Minister joined Mr Morawiecki, the Polish Prime Minister, on the 75th anniversary of those important landings. D-day, 1944, was the start of the liberation of the whole of the continent of Europe. Again, the Poles were there at D-day, even though only the month before they were fighting at Monte Cassino. Polish airmen took part in protecting the convoys of soldiers moving towards Normandy. Polish ships took part in Operation Neptune, the naval part of the D-day landings. And, later in the campaign, the Polish 1st Armoured Division, attached to the British and Canadian forces, landed to take part in the fighting around the Falaise pocket.

Will my hon. Friend add to that list of Polish contributions to the second world war three mathematicians whose work helped to make the breaking of Enigma possible, which ended the war earlier by at least two years?

I have a little section on that later in my speech.

In Operation Market Garden, when the allies tried to shorten the war by landing in the Netherlands, Polish paratroopers took part in unprecedented numbers with their British counterparts. Again, I have had the opportunity to visit the Polish and British cemeteries in the Netherlands, and to see the same recurring theme: the sheer youth of those young men who together gave up their lives so that we might have freedom.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) mentioned Bletchley Park. He is absolutely right, because Polish mathematicians and code breakers came over from Poland. Sir Dermot Turing, a relative of Alan Turing, in his book, “The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken”, highlighted the unique, outstanding and overwhelming contribution of Polish mathematicians and cryptographers to breaking the Enigma codes. I cannot begin to explain how important that was. It gave us the opportunity to understand where German positions and movements would be forthcoming, allowing us to shorten the war by, some suggest, at least two years—my hon. Friend alluded to this—and potentially saving hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives. I will put three gentlemen on the record: Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski. For someone born in Poland, even I have difficulty pronouncing those surnames —I dread to think what the people in Hansard will do with them, so I hope that I pronounced them correctly.

Recently, a book was donated to the House of Commons Library, and only two weeks ago we had an exhibition here in the House of Commons, about a lady called Krystyna Skarbek—or Granville. According to legend, she was Winston Churchill’s favourite spy. She was a young Polish lady who was dropped behind enemy lines on many occasions. She was instrumental in reconnaissance and in helping to ensure that sabotage against German forces was co-ordinated effectively.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on his tremendous speech. In Suffolk, we are aware of the contribution made from Norfolk and Suffolk by the Polish air force in support of the war effort. On that point—a good one about the failure of the Attlee Government to recognise the contribution of the Polish community, army and air force in the war—next year, 75 years on from VE-day, we could help to put right that wrong by better recognising the Polish contribution to the war effort?

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. I want to take this opportunity to say that, as a fluent Polish speaker—or attempting to be fluent; it is a very difficult language—when I go to Poland and speak to people in English, what they say is quite different from what they say when I talk to them in Polish. They are very friendly to the British—they love them and want to work with them—but that is still a source of real pain for the Poles. He touches on a very important issue: how do we repair what happened in 1946? How do we engage and work with the Polish diaspora here in the United Kingdom to create a new monument, or do something to ensure that their unique contribution is highlighted? We have a Polish war memorial in Northolt, but in the run-up to many anniversaries can we do something in addition, yet again to celebrate the contribution of Poles and educate the younger generations about their unique contribution?

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will, to a fellow Pole—half-Pole—from the Labour party.

Dziękuję. As the hon. Gentleman knows, my paternal grandfather was Polish; he served in the Polish merchant navy, which is what brought him to the UK. I would love to work with the hon. Gentleman on creating a lasting memorial to all the Poles who contributed so much. My grandfather, Mięczyslaw Bagniçki, was very proud to be Polish to his fingertips. Equally, he thought the UK had given him a wonderful life; he brought up his children here, had a career and was incredibly grateful for everything that Britain and the Queen had done for him. A lasting memorial would be very appropriate.

We Poles have to stick together. I would be delighted to work with the hon. Lady and anybody else who is cognisant of the unique contribution of Poles to our country, and who wants to demonstrate to the 1 million Poles living in the United Kingdom that we value them, cherish their contribution to our country and are determined to work together to remember these things, even in the modern age. We may be leaving the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe. It is very important to remember that Poland will continue to be an important ally for us in NATO.

The hon. Gentleman has done an excellent job detailing the contribution made across the services in every year of the war. That often is not appreciated, although it certainly is in my constituency, which houses the Polish social and cultural organisation POSK, to which all Members are welcome. I thought he was a little sectarian by talking about the Attlee Government; I am sure he would pay tribute to that Government for passing the Polish Resettlement Act 1947, which was the first mass migration Act that enabled citizenship for about 200,000 Poles who fought in the war.

I very much acknowledge that, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that I was not trying to make a party political point. I deliberately said “Attlee Government,” rather than “Labour Government,” but I acknowledge his point about their subsequent achievements to protect the rights of Polish people to remain and settle here.

The first thing I gave to Jonathan Knott, the British ambassador to Warsaw, when he came to visit us was a copy of a book outlining Operation Unthinkable, which was Churchill’s plan basically to do the unthinkable: to carry on beyond Berlin and liberate Warsaw. Of course, we had declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 because of our treaty obligations to Poland. The Poles were sad and concerned that a second front against Germany was not possible in 1939 and early 1940 by the French and the British. At that juncture, the Poles were left to defend themselves, fighting the Germans on one side and the Russians on the other. Towards the end of the war, Churchill wanted to promote those plans to liberate Warsaw, but unfortunately he was thwarted by Roosevelt, Stalin and others. Poland was then subjugated to 50 years of brutal tyrannical communist regime.

I believe I am the only Conservative MP who was born in a communist country. I know what communism is, what it looks like and how it feels. I used to go back every year to see my beloved grandfather, Roman Kawczynski, under communism. What our fellow Europeans went through, being subjugated to a politically Orwellian and economically illiterate system, is beyond comprehension. One reason why the Polish have needed help in the post-communist era to rebuild their country, their industries and their infrastructure is the appalling impact that communism had on their country.