Chapter 699: The Royal Polish Army during the Eastern Crusade
The Royal Polish Army was led by Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły, also called Edward Śmigły-Rydz the Commander-in-chief of the 1,300,000 Polish soldiers, the 840 tanks and 1,000 airplanes of the Polish Kingdom who fought in the Eastern Crusade against the Soviet Union. They bypassed the eastern Pripet Marshes towards Minsk and Schytomyr were they encircled Red Army border forces of the Soviet Union. From there on they pushed eastwards accompanied by Imperial German, United Baltic Duchy, White Ruthenian, Royal Ukrainian, Imperial Austrian-Hungarian and Royal Romanian ones. Until the year of 1942 the Polish forces had increased to over 2,400,000 overall. Many of them came from the around 1,650,000 polish who were forced out of the former Polish Corridor, or the now independent lands of White Ruthenia and Ukrainia. They were encouraged by polish propaganda like patriotic newspapers, movies and radio speeches. This and their long hatred against Bolshevism, Communism, the Red Army and the Soviet Union lead to many volunteers joining the ranks, trained by German veteran officers of the Scandinavian Campaign and the Western Campaign against France. Despite not leaving the liberated White Ruthenian and Ukrainian territories, were the Polish Army then helped fighting partisans and other insurgent forces.
Until 1941 the Royal Polish Forces had lost around 85,400 soldiers that had been killed during the fighting and battles alongside 143,000 wounded polish soldiers and 240,000 who had been captured by the Soviet Union. Under command of Władysław Albert Anders of the Nowogródzka Cavalry Brigade, around 8,000 poles fled a Soviet Gulak near Buzsulks and managed to reach Axis Central Power forces in the Caucasian Region. From there they were brought back to the Polish Kingdom were many of them rejoined the Royal Polish Army to continue fighting the Soviet Union. As a result of their Great Escape Stalin ordered all other Polish and other Axis Central Powers prisoners to be deported deeper into Central Siberia and all their Officers shot. When first rumors about this spread from captured Soviet forces and defecting Red Army soldiers, about what hat happened spread, including the mass shootings of Polish Forces who had capitulated to the Red Army. In nearly no time, the Axis Central Powers spread said rumors as truth and used it for their anti-Soviet and anti-Red Army propaganda all over Europe, legitimizing their own Eastern Crusade this way. This and the first remnants of former Sovied Gulag Slave Camps spread like wildfire across Axis Central Power Europe and the National Monarchists/ Fascist Royalist used this chance to legitimize their Eastern War, the new Russian Empire and it's Tzardom.
Unknown to many, the Royal Polish Army looted and scorched parts of the Soviet Union Lands as revenge for the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920 to a extent that allied Axis Central Powers needed to stop them. After all the Axis Central Powers came as liberators of these lands and hoped to get the population on there side. Therefore the Polish Kingdom was forced to return most of the stolen goods, but the poles were promised by contract with the German Empire and the Russian Empire that they would be compensated by the captured Soviet Union gold and other riches in the amount of the damage done to Poland back during the Polish-Soviet War, multiplied by the growth the Polish Nation State had been undergone since then. This decision proved to satisfy not only the majority of the Polish Government and Military, but it's citizens too. It was seen as a fair decision by the Germans, but for the Imperial German High Command it also put the Polish in dependence of the Germans to ensure this promise and the Russians in need of further German Reconstruction to compensate for this financial losses and help quickly rebuild the war torn Russian Empire alongside the rest of Eastern Europe. It gave further rise and centralized power to the later EU (Economic Union) under the German Empire.