A popular myth is that Polish cavalry armed with lances charged German tanks during the September 1939 campaign.

This arose from misreporting of a single clash on 1 September near Krojanty, when two squadrons of the Polish 18th Lancers armed with sabres scattered German infantry before being caught in the open by German armoured cars.

Another myth describes Polish cavalry as being armed with both sabres and lances ; lances were used for peacetime ceremonial purposes only and the primary weapon of the Polish cavalryman in 1939 was a rifle.

Cavalry or mounted gendarmerie units continue to be maintained for purely or primarily ceremonial purposes by the United States, British, French, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, Chilean, Portuguese, Moroccan, Nepalese, Nigerian, Venezuelan, Brazilian, Peruvian, Paraguayan, Polish, Argentine, Senegalese, Jordanian, Pakistani, Indian, Spanish and Bulgarian armed forces.

At the time when the futility of armed resistance without external support was realized by most Poles, the various segments of the Polish society were undergoing deep and far-reaching social, economic and cultural transformations.

One of his major victories during the uprising was the Battle of Racławice where the result was partly due to Polish peasants armed with scythes.

* 1924 – The Border Defence Corps is established in the Second Polish Republic for the defence of the eastern border against armed Soviet raids and local bandits.

These organisations cooperated little with each other and their relationship with the Polish resistance varied between occasional cooperation ( mainly between ZZW and AK ) to armed confrontations ( mostly between ŻOB and NZS ).

Steven J. Zaloga and Richard Hook write that " by the war's end the Polish Army was the fourth largest contingent of the Allied coalition after the armed forces of the Soviet Union, the United States and the Great Britain.

With enrollment in the armies growing as the war progressed and numbers of resistance falling after Operation Tempest, the size of Polish armed contribution can be estimated, at its peak, as one million men.

On August 15, 1943, the Białystok Ghetto Uprising began, and several hundred Polish Jews and members of the Anti-Fascist Military Organisation () started an armed struggle against the German troops who were carrying out the planned liquidation of the ghetto with deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp.

The Norwegian armed forces, together with allied British, French and Polish forces, kept up an organized military resistance for two months, longer than any other country invaded by Germany, except for the Soviet Union.

It was loyal to the Polish government in exile and constituted the armed wing of what became known as the " Polish Underground State.

There are numerous Polish Army reports and German documents confirming the saboteur actions of armed German Poles in other cities.

For a short period between 1918 and 1921 Tychy was just inside the border of the newly formed Weimar Republic and still a part of the German Province of Silesia, only securing its place within the Second Polish Republic after the armed Silesian Uprisings ( 1919 to 1921 ).

This settlement was met with fierce armed resistance by Polish Underground forces ( see Zamość Uprising ).

* Barring gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals from serving in the armed forces or from working in the education field ; this can include policies such as the U. S. military ’ s “ Don't ask, don't tell ” policy or Lech Kaczyński and other conservative Polish politicians ’ stance to exclude gay men and lesbians from entering the teaching profession.

Until the 14th century, the Polish armed forces were composed mostly of mounted soldiers.

Until the 18th century they were considered the elite of the Polish national armed forces.

By Kapuściński's own admission ( made in an interview given to the Union of Polish Youth's newspaper, the Sztandar Młodych, in August 1977 ), he on occasion himself participated in armed combat in Angola on the side of the MPLA.

Similarly, Poland and Czechoslovakia are often excluded from the term, because of their post-war forced inclusion in the Eastern Bloc, even though Polish and Czechoslovak armed forces fought alongside Western Allies ( Poland fought against Germany before any of the Western Allies joined the war ).

* 1943 – World War II: The discovery of a mass grave of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government in exile in London from the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility.

* 1241 – Battle of Liegnitz: Mongol forces defeat the Polish and German armies.

In Poland, fast moving armies encircled Polish forces ( blue circles ), but the blitzkrieg idea never really took hold – artillery and infantry forces acted in time-honoured fashion to crush these pockets.

Panzer forces were dispersed among the three German concentrations without strong emphasis on independent use, being used to create or destroy close pockets of Polish forces and seize operational-depth terrain in support of the largely un-motorized infantry which followed.

While early German tanks, Stuka dive-bombers and concentrated forces were used in the Polish campaign, the majority of the battle was conventional infantry and artillery based warfare and most Luftwaffe action was independent of the ground campaign.

Auxiliary forces sent by duke Eric II of Pomerania, ally of the Polish king, did not enter the battle.

The Polish forces consisted of the mercenaries hired by the Polish king, Casimir IV the Jagiellon and the Hanseatic city of Danzig ( Gdańsk ).

The psychological significance was that this was the first open field battle won by the royal forces, so it increased the morale of the Polish forces and lowered the morale of the Teutonic Knights.

The Polish forces attacked the panicked Cossacks and the battle turned into a slaughter.

By September the Imperial forces under the Duke of Lorraine, together with a powerful Polish army under King John III Sobieski, were poised to strike the Sultan's army investing Vienna.

After a particularly sound defeat by Prussian forces in 1223, Polish forces in Chełmno, the seat of Christian of Oliva and Duchy of Masovia would go on the defensive.

The city is liberated by Soviet and Polish forces.

The HRE army was half Polish / Lithuanian Commonwealth forces, mostly cavalry, and half Holy Roman Empire forces ( German / Austrian ), mostly infantry.

The Duchy's military forces, led by Józef Poniatowski, participated in numerous campaigns, including the Polish – Austrian War of 1809, the French invasion of Russia in 1812, and the German campaign of 1813.

Piłsudski had entertained far-reaching anti-Russian cooperative designs for Eastern Europe, and in 1919 the Polish forces pushed eastward into Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine ( previously a theater of the Polish – Ukrainian War ), taking advantage of the Russian preoccupation with the civil war.

During the Polish – Muscovite War ( 1605 – 1618 ), Polish – Lithuanian forces reached Moscow and installed the impostor False Dmitriy I in 1605, then supported False Dmitry II in 1607.

Elbing was joined to German East Prussia, and was separated from Weimar Germany by the Polish Corridor.

1940-1941, most POWs, only 583 men survived, released in 1942 to join the Polish Armed Forces in the East.

All other lands east of the Oder – Neisse line were put under Polish administration, with the exception of historic northern East Prussia, which went to the USSR.

Piłsudski's planned East European federation of states ( inspired by the tradition of the multiethnic " Republic of Both Nations " and including a hypothetical multinational successor state to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ) was incompatible, at the time of rising national movements, with his assumption of Polish domination and with the encroachment on the neighboring peoples ' lands and aspirations ; as such it was doomed to failure.

Since Poland was regarded as the East European state with the most powerful army, it became imperative to tie Poland to Britain as the best way of ensuring Polish support for Romania, since it was the obvious quid pro quo that Britain would have to do something for Polish security if the Poles were to be induced to do something for Romanian security.

After the war, the League of Nations held the East Prussian plebiscite on 11 July 1920 to determine if the people of the southern districts of East Prussia wanted to remain within East Prussia or to join the Second Polish Republic. The German side terrorized the local population before the plebiscite using violence, Polish organisations and activists were harassed by German militias, and those actions included attacks and murder of Polish activists ; Masurs who supported voting for Poland were singled out and subjected to terror and repressions

Parts of East Prussia and the former Free City of Danzig should be under Polish administration.

The provisional western border should be the Oder-Neisse line, parts of East Prussia and former Free City of Danzig should be under Polish administration, but that the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should await the peace settlement, which had to await the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany in 1990.

In theory, that German ethnic population could have been expelled to the Polish temporarily administered territories of Silesia, Farther Pomerania, East Prussia and eastern Brandenburg.

The expulsion concerned the territories " under Polish administration ", i. e. southern East Prussia ( Masuria ), Farther Pomerania, the New March region of the former Province of Brandenburg, the districts of the Grenzmark Posen-West Prussia, Lower Silesia and those parts of Upper Silesia that had remained with Germany after the 1921 Upper Silesia plebiscite.

When the Treaty of Versailles granted most of former Royal Prussia to the Second Polish Republic as the Polish Corridor in 1920, Pomesania remained in Germany as part of the exclave and province of East Prussia.

These German expellees were transported to the present day Germany ( including the former East Germany ), and they were replaced with Poles, many from former Polish provinces taken over by the USSR in the east.

The horses left behind in East Prussia became important in the breeding of Russian breeds such as the Kirov as well as the Polish Mazury ( also known as the Masuren ) and Pozan ( or Poznan ), which developed into the Wielkopolski.

The Serbian form has parallels in virtually all Slavic languages: Bulgarian and Macedonian вампир ( vampir ), Croatian vampir, Czech and Slovak upír, Polish wąpierz, and ( perhaps East Slavic-influenced ) upiór, Ukrainian упир ( upyr < nowiki ></ nowiki >), Russian упырь ( upyr < nowiki >'</ nowiki >), Belarusian упыр ( upyr ), from Old East Slavic упирь ( upir < nowiki >'</ nowiki >).