It was July 4th, 1944 in London and the tip of the struggle in Europe was lastly in sight. The earlier month, the Allies had liberated Rome and landed in France. Within the east, the Soviet Military was quickly advancing, crushing the German Military Group Heart in Belarus and pushing in the direction of Polish territory. Nazi Germany was removed from completed and London was all through the summer time of 1944 being pounded by German V1 flying bombs, however the writing was clearly on the wall.
As these occasions unfolded, the commander-in-chief of the Polish armed forces, Gen. Kazimierz Sosnkowski, dispatched a quick report back to his superior within the Polish government-in-exile, Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk. In September 1939, Nazi Germany in collaboration with the Soviet Union had invaded Poland and divided the nation in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The next years the Poles would undergo grievously and most Polish Jews can be killed within the Holocaust. Regardless of this, the Poles had resisted the enemy occupation from the start and a Polish government-in-exile had been fashioned in 1939, which rallied the help of most Poles overseas and in Poland. As commander-in-chief, Sosnkowski was answerable for the Polish armed forces underneath allied command (195,000 personnel) in addition to the primary Polish resistance motion — first known as the Union of Armed Wrestle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej) in 1940 and two years later renamed the Residence Military (Armia Krajowa). Sosnkowski’s report was about fight operations carried out by the Residence Military in Could 1944. The report detailed, amongst different issues, sabotaging railways and communication traces and the focused killing of 169 Gestapo officers. It then talked about the next: “Toxic brokers have been utilized in 766 circumstances, 87 poisoned parcels have been despatched, and 745 letters contaminated with micro organism have been despatched.”
The Polish use of chemical and organic warfare was nothing new. It started within the spring of 1940 and had solely escalated all through the struggle. The Western allies knew about this and through a state go to to the Soviet Union in December 1941, then-Polish Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski tried to impress Soviet chief Joseph Stalin by highlighting the Polish struggle effort towards the Germans, together with the usage of organic weapons. Between April 1943 and July 1944, the Residence Military carried out 6,410 assaults with chemical and organic weapons. Nonetheless, the usage of chemical and organic warfare towards Nazi Germany was a tightly saved secret and it stays largely unknown in the present day. So does the truth that Sosnkowski nearly 20 years earlier – in Geneva in Could-June 1925 – had performed a key function in negotiating the Geneva Protocol, which banned the usage of chemical and organic weapons in warfare.
This 12 months marks the centenary for the signing of the Geneva Protocol, which stays in drive in the present day. Along with the Chemical Weapons Conference of 1993 and the Organic and Toxin Weapons Conference of 1972, the protocol includes the lex specialis prohibiting the analysis, improvement, manufacturing, stockpiling, and use of such weapons. Sosnkowski participated within the negotiations and insisted on together with organic warfare within the Protocol. So what occurred between the convention in Geneva in Could-June 1925 and July 1944, when Sosnkowski wrote his brief report back to the Polish Prime Minister in bomb-damaged London?
Unraveling this paradox shouldn’t be a straightforward process. To make sense of it, this evaluation proceeds in 5 sections. First, it returns to the origin of the Geneva Protocol by analyzing the function that Sosnkowski performed in its creation. It then explores the advanced — and at instances seemingly contradictory — Polish stance on organic warfare. On the one hand, this stance led to the Polish contribution to the Geneva Protocol. On the opposite, it laid the groundwork for Poland’s personal organic weapons program, which was significantly geared towards unconventional warfare. The third part discusses the results of those developments throughout World Struggle II, when chemical and organic warfare turned part of the Polish underground’s battle for nationwide liberation. Afterwards, it traces Sosnkowski’s involvement within the occasions. The conclusion presents a crucial dialogue of the legality of Poland’s use of chemical and organic weapons — and whether or not such a authorized framework is sensible when confronted with invasion, occupation, and genocide.
The Delivery of the Geneva Protocol
Strictly talking, the protocol was a byproduct. In Could and June 1925, leaders convened in Geneva for the Convention for the Supervision of the Worldwide Commerce in Arms and Ammunition and in Implements of Struggle underneath the auspices of the League of Nations. That ill-fated worldwide group was then solely 5 years outdated. The aim of the convention was to finalize a conference on the regulation of the arms commerce, which many believed had performed a task within the outbreak of World Struggle I. Despite the fact that america had not joined the League, Washington despatched a delegation to the convention headed by Rep. Theodore E. Burton. In his opening deal with, Burton proposed to change a draft of the conference to incorporate the prohibition of commerce in “asphyxiating, toxic or different gases, and all analogous liquids” used for chemical warfare. Though having fun with widespread help, Burton’s proposal confronted obstacles, like distinguish between chemical substances for peaceable functions and chemical substances for warfare. As an alternative, it was proposed to make a common prohibition on chemical warfare. A month later, a draft proposal for a protocol prohibiting chemical warfare was introduced.
It was at this second that Sosnkowski, the chief of the Polish delegation, took the ground. He was an imposing man because the Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski later described him: “Sosnkowski was a tall, robust, army kind of man (…) He had unusually piercing blue eyes.” Sosnkowski had since his youth struggled for restoring his nation’s independence alongside his pal and Poland’s future head of state, Marshal Józef Piłsudski. Throughout World Struggle I, Sosnkowski led Polish forces towards the Russians underneath Austro-Hungarian command. Following the resurrection of Poland in 1918, he was hailed for his talents as a army innovator and for acquiring French army help to modernize the Polish military. He was additionally one of many negotiators behind the Treaty of Riga, which ended the Soviet-Polish struggle of 1919–1921. By 1925, he was an achieved officer and an skilled diplomat with a robust charisma.
From the start of the convention, Sosnkowski had proposed that any ban on chemical warfare also needs to embrace “bacteriological” (i.e., organic) warfare. In his speech, he remarked that the draft protocol didn’t talk about a prohibition on organic warfare and advised to rectify this error. He highlighted that organic warfare might be carried out by secret brokers “with far larger facility” than chemical warfare. An agent might trigger havoc by unleashing a pathogen carried in a “small take a look at tube or receptacle.” As he remarked, “The progress of contemporary science doesn’t supply us any satisfactory technique of combatting such a scourge, and the outcome will likely be that whether it is employed we will witness the wholesale extermination of nice plenty of the human race.” The speech achieved the specified outcome and organic warfare was included in a new draft protocol. On June 17, the draft was authorized by the convention.
The choice to ban chemical warfare made sense in view of the widespread use of poison fuel in World Struggle I and the rising considerations that future wars would see much more widespread use of chemical weapons, particularly when utilized in mixture with heavy bombers to assault weak cities. In contrast, the prospect of organic warfare was largely considered as a future risk by a panel of worldwide specialists requested by the League of Nations in 1923 to guage the potential of chemical and organic warfare. Because the Danish professor Thorvald Madsen wrote, “microbic warfare” couldn’t — in the intervening time — be considered of actual significance, though future scientific discoveries might change this evaluation. He and the opposite authors of the League report have been, in fact, flawed. Organic warfare had been employed already. German saboteurs had used organic warfare sabotage towards farm and transport animals in World Struggle I and one of many League of Nations’ specialists even talked about the invention of German organic sabotage materials on the German embassy in Bucharest in 1916 following Romania’s entry into the struggle. There may be additionally proof that France used organic sabotage in 1916.
Poland and Organic Warfare within the Nineteen Twenties
From a Polish perspective, the hazard of organic warfare was right here and now, though the Polish army was additionally keenly conscious of the ills of chemical warfare. Poland didn’t exist as an unbiased nation from 1795 till the tip of World Struggle I. Throughout its six wars for independence, Poland additionally needed to ponder the danger of chemical warfare — particularly throughout the Soviet-Polish Struggle, which introduced Bolshevik forces to the gates of Warsaw in the summertime of 1920. German forces used chemical weapons towards the Russian military in 1915 on Polish soil and throughout the Wielkopolska Rebellion, German forces employed chemical weapons towards Polish insurgents.
The Polish curiosity in organic warfare was doubtless as a consequence of a number of components. Throughout and after World Struggle I, jap and central Europe skilled waves of epidemics. The Polish authorities registered 673,000 circumstances of epidemic typhus with 141,500 deaths in 1918. Poland was additionally hit arduous by the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic and by a typhus and cholera epidemic in 1920. Sosnkowski himself fell ailing with the flu and his 10-year-old daughter died throughout the pandemic.
The brand new Polish state was weak and divided. It was additionally undermined by the presence of hostile minorities, who felt no allegiance to Poland and have been used as pawns by exterior powers. Certainly one of them was Lithuania, which after a bloody struggle with Poland hoped to make use of the supporters of the so-called Belarusian Democratic Republic to destabilize its neighbor. A number of small-scale assaults have been carried out and Polish army intelligence (the Second Division of the Common Employees) discovered proof that Belarusian insurgents deliberate to assassinate high-ranking officers, poison water wells and meals provides, and use micro organism (Burkholderia mallei) towards Polish military horses. No precise assaults with poison and micro organism appear to have occurred.
One other risk got here from the Ukrainian Navy Group and later the Group of Ukrainian Nationalists. Each actions needed to attain an unbiased Ukraine, which might additionally embrace giant quantities of Polish territory. It’s in all probability telling that the Ukrainian insurgents have been supported at completely different phases by German, Lithuanian, Russian, and Czech collaborators. The Second Division discovered proof that the Ukrainians have been ready to make use of micro organism (B. mallei) and cyanide. The poison was meant for use towards policemen and civil servants, whereas the micro organism was meant for army horses. The Polish historian Lucyna Kulińska mentions at the very least one incident by which 5 Polish military horses have been efficiently contaminated with B. mallei in Lwów (in the present day Lviv) in October 1922.
Poland’s relationship with the Soviet Union remained tense within the mid-Nineteen Twenties and Soviet irregular forces often carried out cross-border raids into Poland. Renewed struggle with the Soviet Union appeared like a definite risk. Though a Soviet organic weapons program was not initiated till 1928, rumors about Soviet curiosity in organic warfare started to flow into earlier. In 1924 and 1925, the Polish press reported on early Soviet organic warfare analysis. For instance, in January 1925, the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported how a “Soviet Professor Mastokovich” (presumably Petr Petrovich Maslakovets) had designed a brand new bacterial bomb, which promised to be decisive within the arms of the Bolsheviks.
What did Sosnkowski find out about any of this? Sosnkowski was the deputy minister of army affairs in 1919 and would a number of instances function minister of army affairs between 1920 and 1924. Afterwards, he would turn into a member of the highly effective Struggle Council, an advisory physique on army issues. It’s doable, even doubtless, that he was saved knowledgeable about these threats and that this influenced his actions in Geneva. It’s a cheap speculation, however it must be backed up by additional analysis.
Sosnkowski was by no means naïve about what the League of Nations might accomplish. He had, in any case, been instrumental in negotiating the army provisions of the Polish-French Alliance of 1921, which remained in drive in September 1939. The French choice to reply to the German invasion of Poland with a declaration of struggle along with the UK was primarily based on that unique alliance. Sosnkowski subsequently understood the necessity for army energy and alliances. However, he and others anticipated that the League would play a key function in upholding worldwide safety. If an settlement just like the Geneva Protocol was violated, the League was speculated to step in and punish the perpetrator.
The Street to Chemical and Organic Warfare in World Struggle II
The Polish perspective in the direction of organic warfare was by no means strictly defensive. Quite the opposite, the Second Division began a small organic weapons program within the Nineteen Twenties, which turned considerably bigger within the final years of peace. Oddly sufficient, researching this matter is far more troublesome than analyzing the precise use of chemical and organic weapons throughout the struggle. The data of the Second Division have been both destroyed throughout the Nazi-Soviet invasion or captured by German army intelligence, solely to be captured once more by the Soviets in 1945. Among the information are presumably nonetheless in Russia. Though there are some main sources out there (for instance a memorandum mentioning analysis to make use of artillery shells to disseminate micro organism on a battlefield), a number of the greatest documentation in regards to the Polish organic weapons program within the interwar years comes from a present trial that the Stalinist regime in Poland deliberate to stage within the Nineteen Fifties. Scientists and technicians concerned in this system have been to face trial for his or her alleged crimes. The present trial was abruptly cancelled by order of the Soviet authorities in 1953 and the folks concerned within the outdated organic weapons program as an alternative obtained gentle jail sentences. Not less than one of many main scientists, Jan Golba, had a really profitable profession in communist Poland till his dying in 1976.
The background to the Polish curiosity in organic weapons got here from a report from the army attaché in France relating to army analysis and a questionnaire from the League of Nations in 1923 relating to the prospect of each chemical and organic warfare. The League’s curiosity in organic warfare, in addition to intelligence relating to organic weapons analysis in overseas nations, motivated the Second Division to start out their very own analysis and improvement program underneath the auspices of the Technical Division of the Second Division. In accordance with a report from the top of the Third Division of the Second Division in April 1924, the Technical Division considered the supply of each chemical and organic sabotage materials as an pressing process. The fabric might be used for particular person assassinations and for mass casualty assaults. In April 1924, Plan N was devised, which would come with utilizing sabotage with explosives and organic weapons as a part of a defensive struggle towards Germany. Major targets have been industrial crops and communication nodes in Germany. In Could 1924, the Polish Common Employees formulated Plan R for struggle with the Soviet Union and Germany on the identical time. The plan envisioned utilizing sabotage (in Polish, dywersja or diversions) deep inside enemy territory, together with with chemical and organic weapons. In contrast to different nations, the Polish armed forces appreciated the potential of unconventional warfare waged by particular forces or — in case of an enemy occupation — by saboteurs in a stay-behind community.
Polish curiosity in organic warfare grew within the Nineteen Thirties because it turned clear that the League of Nations was unable to stop the expansionist drive of Germany and the Soviet Union. The Polish organic weapons program grew, as famous by Polish historian Jan Widacki, notably by means of the constructing of the particular “experimental station” within the fortress of Brześć. As well as, the Second Division pursued exterior companions. In the course of the interwar interval, Poland and Japan had a detailed intelligence collaboration, the place they exchanged details about their frequent enemy, the Soviet Union. In 1936, a convention was held in Warsaw, the place Polish and Japanese officers and scientists swapped details about organic weapons analysis.
Maybe the linkage to the notorious Japanese Unit 731 can clarify the darkest allegation in regards to the Polish organic weapons program: the usage of communist prisoners, sentenced to dying, in human experiments with organic weapons. Following their demise their our bodies can be chemically dissolved in an acid-resistant bathtub. The accusation of human experiments was speculated to play a key function within the deliberate present trial within the Nineteen Fifties. The Japanese connection additionally explains the puzzle that one of many sources in regards to the Polish organic weapons program in Nineteen Thirties was U.S. army intelligence. In June 1945, U.S. army intelligence was very eager to be taught extra about Unit 731 and so they interrogated the Polish Maj. Ludwik Kerstyn Krzewinski. He had been a part of the Polish organic weapons program and knew in regards to the collaboration with Japan within the interwar interval.
Sosnkowski’s Involvement
Sosnkowski didn’t play a task within the Polish organic weapons program within the Nineteen Thirties. In 1926, his pal and mentor Piłsudski launched a army coup towards the democratic authorities, which turned Poland right into a dictatorship. Sosnkowski was not part of the plot and he reacted to the information by trying suicide. After he had recovered, he resumed his army service and in 1936, he was instrumental in strengthening Polish-French army ties and securing a French mortgage for Polish rearmament, though his solutions about preventive actions towards a rising risk from Nazi Germany have been ignored by the French authorities. The overall’s affect within the Polish authorities diminished after the dying of Piłsudski in 1935 and his proposal for a revised defensive plan in the summertime of 1939 was ignored by the Polish commander-in-chief, Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz.
After briefly main Polish forces throughout the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, Sosnkowski fled the nation and joined the newly created government-in-exile, the place he would function the commanding officer for the Union of Armed Wrestle till July 1941. The de facto chief of the Union of Armed Wrestle and later the Residence Military was Col. (later Gen.) Stefan Rowecki, who stayed in Poland throughout the occupation. Because of the lengthy and troublesome traces of communication by means of radio and couriers, most selections can be taken by Rowecki and (following his arrest in 1943 and subsequent execution by the Germans) his successors in occupied Poland. However, Sosnkowski was additionally part of the decision-making course of relating to the underground battle in Poland.
Rowecki would usually report from Poland about his intention to make use of organic and chemical weapons and what progress his subordinates had made in that regard. For instance, in a March 1941 report to Sosnkowski, Rowecki wrote about the usage of chemical and organic weapons thus far. Assaults had resulted in 1,784 registered illness circumstances and 149 deaths among the many occupiers. As well as, 680 horses had been contaminated with the bacterial agent B. mallei in 9 completely different places. In Could 1941, Sosnkowski knowledgeable Brig. Gen. Colin Gubbins, the deputy director of the Particular Operations Govt, a couple of new laboratory for agricultural and forest sabotage the place micro organism was produced and bugs have been bred to be used within the German countryside. On at the very least one event, Sosnkowski would challenge an order to Rowecki to extend the usage of organic weapons as a consequence of a rising threat of a German invasion of the UK.
The Union of Armed Wrestle and later the Residence Military weren’t alone in utilizing chemical and organic weapons in Europe. Actually, the they weren’t even the primary to take action. The Czech resistance group Obrana národa carried out experimental assaults with organic weapons earlier than it was found and destroyed by the Germans in 1939–1940. Soviet partisans used poison and organic warfare towards the Nazi occupation of Soviet territory. Soviet brokers tried to assassinate Nazi officers like Wilhelm Kube and Curt von Gottberg or the Soviet renegade basic Andrey Vlasov with poison. The function of the Particular Operations Govt stays murky, however there may be enough proof to point that at the very least chemical weapons have been transferred to Poland. On March 24, 1943, Maj. Harold Perkins of the Polish Part of the Particular Operations Govt requested a report relating to the usage of British-made poison (codenamed SACCHARINE) and was knowledgeable that, as of February 1943, the poison had been used towards the enemy 189 instances. In 1945 — following the Soviet conquest of Poland — the Particular Operations Govt needed to evaluate its correspondence with the Polish government-in-exile relating to these actions. Chemical brokers not delivered to the Residence Military (1,158 ounces) needed to be destroyed.
The Killing Fields of Poland
None of this adjustments the truth that the Union of Armed Wrestle and the Residence Military violated the Geneva Protocol. For the government-in-exile, they have been part of the Polish armed forces and no completely different than Polish troopers combating underneath allied command. They clearly acted with approval from the government-in-exile. The protocol has typically been described as a “no-first-use” settlement, because it didn’t ban the analysis, improvement, manufacturing, and stockpiling of such weapons. A number of nations reserved the fitting to make use of chemical and organic weapons in retaliation, which remained completely authorized till the signing of the 1972 Organic and Toxin Weapons Conference and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Conference. Even on this gentle, the Polish use of chemical and organic weapons was a violation of worldwide regulation since Poland had not been attacked with such weapons.
It additionally doesn’t change the truth that Sosnkowski performed a task within the occasions, despite the fact that he was out of the loop for a while. In June 1941, Nazi Germany launched a shock assault on the Soviet Union, thereby destroying the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and on the identical time opening a door for rapprochement between the Soviets and the Western powers. Sosnkowski left the government-in-exile in July 1941 following the signing of a Polish-Soviet treaty, as a result of the settlement didn’t specify the longer term borders of Poland within the east. In July 1943, following the dying of Prime Minister Sikorski in a airplane crash, Sosnkowski returned and was appointed as commander-in-chief of the Polish armed forces. On this capability, he reported a number of instances to the brand new Polish prime minister in regards to the armed battle in Poland, together with the continued use of chemical and organic weapons. The final one appears to be the report from July 1944, which was talked about above. On Aug. 1, 1944, the Residence Military launched the Warsaw Rebellion in an try to liberate the Polish capital earlier than the arrival of the Soviet Military. The time of underground battle was over. As an alternative of serving to the rebellion, the Soviets halted their advance outdoors Warsaw, supplied solely token help and allowed the Germans to complete off the Residence Military. Poland was then ripe for a communist takeover.
What classes could be drawn from this chapter of Polish historical past? Maybe one ought to start with what lesson shouldn’t be drawn. I’ve researched this matter for 10 years and as soon as — after a lecture about this challenge — an individual thanked me for my presentation after which defined that he would have most well-liked the Poles had chosen to be exterminated moderately than use such dreadful weapons. Though considerably excessive, from a sure standpoint this is sensible. Organic and chemical weapons are, in keeping with the Geneva Protocol, “justly condemned by the final opinion of the civilized world.” There ought to subsequently not be any room to make use of such heinous weapons, irrespective of the circumstances.
Clearly, such a view rapidly falls aside when colliding with actuality. Historical past is filled with societies which have been violently erased from their existence and Poland at instances appeared destined to share this destiny. For instance, throughout the Soviet-Polish Struggle in 1919–1921, the German Reichswehr and the Purple Military secretly concluded an settlement stipulating {that a} Bolshevik conquest of Warsaw would set off German paramilitary troops to occupy western Poland. Within the meantime, the Reichswehr would promote the Bolsheviks surplus weaponry for use towards the Poles. Twenty years later this situation turned actuality when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union underneath the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact attacked Poland and divided the nation. Throughout World Struggle II, Poland misplaced six million of its inhabitants (22 % of the inhabitants) and full villages or cities — together with Warsaw — have been razed to the bottom. Moreover, Poland turned a killing discipline underneath the Nazi coverage of exterminating European Jews in locations like Treblinka, Sobibor, or Auschwitz. In 1944–1945, Poland turned a communist dictatorship and survivors of the Residence Military have been hunted down by the communist authorities as late as 1963. So as to add insult to harm, Poland misplaced one-third of its territory within the east, which turned part of the Soviet Union. The Western powers — the UK and america — accepted this consequence to take care of the alliance with the Soviet Union.
Briefly, there have been definitely mitigating circumstances relating to the Polish use of chemical and organic weapons. It also needs to be famous that whereas the Residence Military had greater than 380,000 members in 1944, it all the time lacked ammunition and weapons. A Polish partisan combating in Warsaw with a pistol or a number of hand grenades towards tanks and artillery can be considered well-armed by the Residence Military. As somebody whose household in Poland misplaced 20 kinfolk throughout the struggle (one was shot by the Soviets in Katyń, two others have been killed by the Nazis in Auschwitz, a fourth, my great-uncle, “disappeared” when the Soviet Military arrived in 1944 — for years my grandmother and my mom would secretly hearken to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty within the hope of listening to information about his destiny), I make no pretenses that there have been clear ethical solutions to the scenario confronted by the Poles.
There may be additionally a component of tragedy on this story. Sosnkowski was much less motivated by idealism and moderately by a robust dose of realpolitik when he negotiated the Geneva Protocol. But, it doesn’t change the truth that the Polish authorities hoped to make use of the protocol and the League of Nations extra usually to make sure Poland’s safety. This coverage resulted in failure, because the league was by no means capable of play the function it was meant for. As an alternative, the Poles throughout World Struggle II have been compelled to depend on their allies and on their very own army power, together with their secret organic and chemical weapons program. It was not sufficient. The Residence Military, even with the usage of chemical and organic weapons as a drive multiplier, might by no means be robust sufficient to defeat the Germans and Poland’s Western allies turned their again on the Poles in 1944–1945. That is what in chess can be known as “zugzwang” — each transfer one makes will finish in defeat. Actually, when Sosnkowski brazenly criticized the passivity of the Allies throughout the Warsaw Rebellion, the British authorities put stress on the Polish government-in-exile and compelled him to resign in September 1944. In 1945, the Western allies withdrew their recognition of the government-in-exile in favor of the Soviet-controlled authorities in Poland. For a number of years, Sosnkowski was neither allowed to return to the UK nor to go to america. As skilled by so many different Polish troopers and officers combating for the Allies, he was denied a army pension after World Struggle II. Sosnkowski moved to Canada, the place he died in 1969.
American historian John Toland as soon as remarked that historical past doesn’t repeat itself, however human nature does. Because the post-World Struggle II worldwide order continues to crumble within the twenty first century and the variety of interstate wars will increase, a number of nations will as soon as once more should navigate tough waters between discovering safety in worldwide regulation, in alliances with stronger companions, in their very own army energy, or in a mixture of all three. The Polish case reveals that none of those approaches will essentially succeed. Additionally it is a stark warning about what occurs if a folks with nothing left to lose has to combat with all the things it has at its disposal. In the long run it’s going to come right down to the need to outlive, as expressed within the phrases (translated to English) of the Polish nationwide anthem from 1797:
Poland has not but perished,
As long as we nonetheless reside.
What the overseas drive has taken from us,
We will with sabre retrieve.
Robert Petersen, Ph.D., is a particular advisor on the Centre for Biosecurity and Biopreparedness in Denmark.
Picture: Centralne Archiwum Wojskowe through Wikimedia Commons
