1940: Polish Exiles
Publisher’s Preview
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
January 2024

In age when just giving up and giving in seems a standard attitude in Western culture, I have a special respect for the Polish experience in World War II. Six million citizens of pre-war Poland (half of them Jewish) would be murdered by the Nazis, who attempted to eradicate Polish culture while they were at it. They failed.

Thousands of Polish soldiers escaped the Nazis following the September 1939 German invasion of their homeland, fleeing over the borders of Hungary, Romania, and Lithuania. Many of them made their way to France, joining Poles resident overseas (mostly emigrant miners and factory workers residing in France) to form the Polish Army in France, a force eventually growing to number 72,000 men. When the Germans invaded Norway in the spring of 1940, they found themselves fighting Polish troops. The same thing happened when they struck at France a month later.

The Polish Army in France formed four infantry divisions, one armored brigade and one mountain brigade; the latter went to Norway to fight the Nazi invaders. Two of the infantry divisions had not completed formation when France collapsed. But the remaining units saw plenty of front-line combat, and that’s the theme of 1940: Polish Exiles, a Panzer Grenadier Campaign Study for 1940: The Fall of France.

1940: Polish Exiles draws on The Deluge, our book of the 1939 campaign in Poland, for its Polish pieces, and 1940: The Fall of France for maps and pieces. You’ll also need 1940: Swallows of Death for a few pieces, too (the Moroccans make a couple of cameos, and you get to use the awesome W15 tank destroyer again). There are fifteen new scenarios featuring Polish valor, organized in four chapters, each with a battle game to tie them together.

Poland’s exiled military leadership quickly began to study the reasons for their defeat, and within weeks of the exile army’s establishment, they issued Most Important Conclusions and Experiences from the September Campaign, a thorough analysis of their defeat and lessons to be learned from it. The French Army had no interest, but the Poles took it to heart.

Polish recruits report to the Coëtquidan training camp. Winter 1939.

Along the key important conclusions, the Poles had not had enough anti-tank guns in their formations. The Polish anti-tank gunners had been skilled and determined, often to a suicidal extent, but they often had been overrun by German numbers. The newly-raised Polish formations would therefore include additional anti-tank companies beyond those called for in French tables of organization. The French high command noticed these extra companies, and detached them to support their own formations. Those independent companies get their due in Polish Exiles, highlighted in one of the chapters.

But the highlight is the 1st Polish Armored Brigade, always referred to as the 10th Armored Cavalry Brigade by the Poles, carrying on the tradition of their most successful armored formation from the September Campaign (Poland still fields a 10th Armored Cavalry Brigade). About 30,000 of the 72,000 men enrolled in the exile army were Polish soldiers who escaped their country’s collapse, but brigade commander Stanislaw Maczek had brought his unit across the Hungarian border intact, and enrolled many of these men in the new French-sponsored version.

That gave his brigade extraordinary morale and cohesion, even if it only entered combat once the French logistical infrastructure had begun to collapse. The Poles are well-led and have high morale, and are armed with front-line weaponry – for example, Polish soldiers in 1940 carried the MAS36 battle rifle, the new bolt-action weapon issued to the French Army’s best units. And, surprisingly for the era, the French command determined this based on expected performance, even giving preference to colonial troops like the Moroccans and foreigners like the Poles. The Polish brigade’s motorized infantry rode in new GMC-built Model 1939 ACKWX 4x4 trucks, the predecessor of the famed “Deuce and a Half” that won World War II for the Allies.

Maczek’s “Black Brigade” gets the longest chapter, with five scenarios, and given the situation – they’re tasked with opening retreat routes for French divisions caught in the great withdrawal of mid-June 1940 – the Poles get to use their tanks to attack the oncoming Germans. It’s usually the 13th Motorized Infantry Division that’s unlucky enough to face them.

The Podhale Rifles on parade. Spring 1940.

Next it’s the turn of those anti-tank companies, who get three scenarios, plus one more for the Last Stand of the Podhale Rifles. The remaining two chapters are devoted to the Polish infantry. The Poles fielded two divisions in 1940, and had two more in the process of formation when the French Army collapsed around them. These would have been the core of the Polish field army in France, intended to form two corps. Instead, the two divisions fought on widely-separated fronts under French command. They had a much greater proportion of new recruits than did the Black Brigade, and the very best officers and men had been skimmed off to form the Podhale Rifles Brigade which was shipped off to Norway in April 1940 to fight the Germans at Narvik. The Polish infantry was still very good, by the standards of the French Army of 1940, but did not meet the performance of Maczek’s elite tankers.

The French campaign ended poorly for the Poles. The Podhale Rifles returned from Norway, just in time to be overrun defending St. Malo while the Second BEF embarked for England (abandoning its positions in the process). The 1st Grenadier Division was surrounded along with the rest of its corps; the men broke out individually. The 2nd Fusilier Division was pushed across the Swiss border and interned there, with the Swiss striking an agreement to re-arm the Poles in case the Germans invaded Switzerland. The 3rd and 4th Divisions with their semi-trained troops mostly escaped to England; in all about 27,000 men of the 72,000 mustered made it to the United Kingdom to continue the fight.

1940: Polish Exiles is a double-sized Campaign Study, as there’s just too much story here for our usual format. It’s the tale of a doomed army far from home, fighting a doomed campaign that still mattered. And sometimes, the doom is the entire point.

Fighting Nazis is never futile, whatever the time and place.

You can order 1940: Polish Exiles right here.

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
      The Deluge
      Lithuania's Iron Wolves
      Legend of the Iron Wolf
      1940: Polish Exiles
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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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