The role of the Polish Army in the military settlement action in the years 1945–1948

Abstract

The article discusses the issue of military settlement on the so-called Recovered Territories in the years 1945–1948. The text examines the role of the army and military institutions in this process, the status of military settlers and the system of mutual links between military and civilian institutions dealing with military settlement. The article presents the overall organizational effort related to military settlement, difficulties accompanying settlers, problems of cooperation between military institutions and civil administration and the scale of military settlement against the background of the nationwide settlement action. The action of military settlement took place in extremely difficult conditions (e.g. migration and resettlement of the Polish and German population, or war damage). Despite this, between 1945 and 1948, about 534,000 people with the status of military settlers (including demobilized soldiers, as well as members of their families and families of fallen soldiers) settled in the so-called Recovered Territories. Of these, fewer than 180,000 people settled in the districts designated in June 1945 only for military settlements, while the vast majority (354,000) lived outside these districts. Nevertheless, the settlement of 180,000 people in border powiats can be considered a great success in the process of their development, conducive to better protection of the new Polish-German border. Military settlers played an important role in the process of settling the so-called Recovered Territories, because they constituted almost 12% of all settlers. Due to the extensiveness of the issue concerning the broadly understood Polish settlement in these lands in the first post-war years, the subject matter discussed in the article was limited to selected issues of military settlement, which were discussed on the basis of archival materials and Polish historiography related to the topic of this type of settlement.