Destruction of Poland is the first priority. Our most important objective is the total destruction of the living resources of Poland and not to reach a particular line drawn on a map. I shall give the ministry of propaganda some justification, true or not, for our attack on Poland. Nobody in the future will ask the victor if he was truthful or not. If one decides to start and conduct the war, legality does not matter, what matters is victory. Pity and compassion have to be eliminated from your thinking. You have to be brutal because the stronger is always right. Therefore, I have prepared and ordered my SD units [Sicherheit Dienst - skull and crossbones] to kill without mercy men, women and children of Polish origin.

The western and central parts of Poland annexed by the Germans (eastern Poland was occupied by the Soviets) were subdivided into two parts. The western and northern parts were incorporated into the German Reich, and the south-central part was named General Government (GG) and was administered by German Governor Hans Frank who resided in Wawel, the Royal Palace in Cracow.

The Poles did not have the right to live in the territories incorporated into the German Reich. Polish people were thrown out of their houses and apartments, allowed fifteen minutes to gather up to one hundred pounds of personal belongings, and were forced to leave behind businesses, estates and homes without any compensation. They all had to move to General Government. There was even a detailed German plan to destroy Polish culture and to annihilate Polish writers, scientists, and educated people. In the annexed territories and in the GG, all Polish schools of higher learning, high and middle schools, theaters, and museums were closed down. The playing of Fryderyk Chopin's music was forbidden (although Poles organized underground concerts). The Royal Palace in Warsaw was burnt to the ground in November 1939, when Warsaw was already occupied by the Germans. According to Heinrich Himmler's plan, Poles had to know only how to count to five hundred, how to sign their names, and to know enough German to understand German orders.

On November 6, 1939, 183 professors of the six centuries - old Jagiellonian University in Cracow were arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Similar roundups occurred in other Polish cities and in institutions of higher learning. Poles were not allowed to have radios or automobiles. Those Poles who still lived in the annexed territories were forbidden to speak Polish on the streets and in public places. They were not allowed to travel without a German permit. In the cities of GG, the Germans organized roundups of Polish passersby by closing several city blocks, then catching and loading people onto trucks and sending them to concentration or labor camps.

There were frequent mass executions of Poles in forests, in public, and on city streets, particularly in Warsaw where a number of prisoners brought from the notorious Pawiak prison were shot in full view of rounded up passersby. After the executions, sidewalks where the shootings took place were covered with flowers brought by the people of Warsaw. Even today, throughout Warsaw, commemorative plaques on houses mark the spots where executions took place.

In this environment of unmitigated terror, in the area of the General Government, an unprecedented secret Underground State was organized. At the head of the organization was a civilian, the Government in Exile's delegate. Twelve underground departments were set up, similar to the ministries and departments within the United States or any other democratic country. For example, the underground Department of Education and Culture coordinated underground high school courses. In 1944, two thousand high school courses operated in occupied Poland. In the same year ten thousand students attended underground universities throughout the GG area. Lectures, tutorials and exams were conducted in private apartments and with small groups of students. Teachers and professors moved from one group to another for two or three-hour sessions. These travels were connected with danger because of the aforementioned German roundups. The lack of laboratories and other accessories of higher education was amply compensated by the students' exceptional zeal and hunger for knowledge.

The Culture section of the department was engaged in preserving, securing, and hiding Polish art treasures from German plunder or destruction. One notable outcome of that program was the preservation and concealment of the famous 15 by 33-foot "Battle of Grunwald" painting. After the war had started, the painting was evacuated to Lublin where the rolled up canvas was hidden in a very long counter top in the local museum. Upon news that the Germans were going to requisition and move into the museum building, the rolled up canvas, weighing one and one-half tons, was smuggled out of the museum building during the night. The painting was hermetically packed, buried in a trench, and covered by a concrete slab in a municipal transportation shed near Lublin. The Germans were so anxious to confiscate the painting that they advertised a ten million marks reward for help in its capture. It is significant that despite a great number of people who were involved in the whole operation, or who knew about it, not one person betrayed the secret to the Germans. Although "black sheep" surfaced here and there, as in any other society, this episode reveals the moral principles and patriotism of the Polish people under German occupation. After the war, the painting was retrieved and underwent a thorough restoration process. It now hangs in the National Museum in Warsaw.

Returning to the Underground State, there was also an underground parliament consisting of seventeen representatives from eight political parties. The underground army was called Home Army (AK) to distinguish it from the Polish armed forces operating abroad. The Home Army, numbering four hundred thousand, was the largest underground army in German-occupied Europe. Its commander, General Grot, reported to the Government's delegate, thus preserving civilian control over the armed forces.

The role of the Home Army was to carry out the struggle against the German occupant. This involved training new soldiers and amassing equipment for the general uprising against the Germans when an opportune moment arrived. It also involved attacking and destroying the most vital and vulnerable infrastructure of the enemy's war effort and terror machine. Thus, in the countryside, partisan units blew up trains, liquidated Gestapo agents, launched attacks on prisons to free Polish political prisoners, and defended the local population against German excesses. For example, the Zamość region (southeastern Poland) was earmarked by the Germans for colonization by members of the SS (Schutzstaffel, Hitler's Nazi protection echelon) and their families. Polish farmers were ordered to leave their farms, and if their children had a blond, "Aryan" look, they were taken away from their parents and loaded on a train to Germany. But, that train stopped in Warsaw for the night, and Polish railway men spread the news of the children aboard to the Warsowians. By the next morning all of the children had been taken into the homes of Polish families in Warsaw. Eventually, the German colonization of the Zamość region ceased after several Polish attacks on the German-colonized villages.

An important action carried out by Home Army intelligence agents was the identification and location of German plants and experimental installations which were building and testing V-l and V-2 rockets at Peenemunde on the island of Usedom on the Baltic Sea. Exact locations of the plants were transmitted to Warsaw and then to London by the Home Army. On August 18, 1943, using the transmitted information, British bombers destroyed the plants at Peenemunde so thoroughly that there was nothing left to repair or rebuild. The Germans were forced to start anew, this time in southeastern Poland. But, the Home Army discovered the new site and put it under observation. On May 20, 1944, they spotted a V-2 rocket which, without exploding, had landed on a marshy terrain. Local villagers who were in close contact with the Polish Home Army immediately hid the 45 by 5-foot rocket with reeds and bushes in order to confound German search parties. The rocket was then disassembled by Home Army engineers and flown to England on July 25, 1944, aboard a Dakota aircraft specially sent by the British. All this took place right under the noses of the Germans, who were stationed less than a mile away.

In the cities, particularly in Warsaw, the underground Home Army fought the Germans by selectively killing those SS and Gestapo officers known for their cruelty and brutality towards Polish prisoners; by virtue of their rank, these officers were responsible for the terror reigning in occupied Poland. One of the better known actions was the assassination, on February 1, 1944, of General Franz Kutschera, who was the chief of German police for the Warsaw district. Twelve Home Army participants, nine young officers and three young female intelligence agents took part in the attack. As in every action of this kind, the team consisted of the attack group, the cover group, the reconnaissance group (intelligence) and the automobile drivers. Three automobiles were employed in that particular action, one of which was to transport wounded participants. Medical teams were also waiting in predetermined parts of the city, and Home Army doctors stood by to take care of the wounded. Kutschera was stopped in his chauffeur-driven car by one of the Home Army automobiles just before reaching the SS headquarters building; he was killed together with his chauffeur at point-blank range.

Two members of the attack group, already under fire from the SS headquarters building, jumped into the general's car to search for his identification papers. {Obtaining identification papers was a standing order for operations of that kind.) By the time they found them, they were both wounded - despite covering fire from the cover team - and were taken in one of the cars to an underground clinic. They immediately underwent surgery, but died from their wounds two days later. Two other members of the team escaped in one of the cars but found themselves trapped on one of the Vistula bridges, blocked on both sides by the SS. The two attackers, after exhausting their ammunition, jumped into the river and were killed by Germans firing from the bridge. The rest of the group avoided capture. The whole action at the SS headquarters lasted for one minute and forty seconds. As a reprisal, the Germans shot one hundred prisoners from the Pawiak prison at the spot where Kutschera was assassinated; another two hundred were shot in the ghetto ruins near the prison itself. Before his death, Kutschera had planned to marry Himmler's sister. It is said that since the Germans refused to "recognize" the Polish assassination, the ceremony, in a macabre way, took place anyway: Himmler's sister marrying the cadaver.

Similarly executed actions on important German purveyors of terror resulted in high Polish casualties; for, in reprisals, the Germans killed great numbers of prisoner hostages. The German terror and Polish counter-terror meted out to the German perpetrators soon developed into a deadly contest of endurance and wills. In 1943 nine successful actions against the cruelest high-ranking Gestapo officers were carried out. In 1944 six similar assassination operations were successfully executed. During the course of these and other open battles, 361 Gestapo or SS functionaries in 1943, and 584 in 1944, were liquidated by the underground Polish Home Army in Warsaw alone. The Poles won the deadly contest, because after the assassination of Kutschera, the German terror markedly slackened.

The struggle was not confined to the use of firearms or explosives. There was a highly developed underground press, which was printed in underground printing shops. Some papers had a circulation as high as ten thousand. Apart from publications in Polish, underground printing shops also printed booklets and leaflets in impeccable German, purporting to come from secret anti-Hitler German organizations located in Germany. These booklets and leaflets exposed the hopelessness of continued struggle against the Allies (Action "N" carried out by the underground Information Department). Underground printing shops made posters in German with false information, including one such order in February 1944 calling for all Germans to evacuate GG, and another order to register all household cats.