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Poland's post-1945 state was one, that was pretty unrecognizable, from anything that came before it.
The most glaring detail was the new Republic's borders.
The Soviet Union forcibly annexed the Eastern half of the nation, they had originally invaded in September of 1939.
In compensation for this, they awarded Poland the territories of Silesia, Pomerania and Prussia from Germany.
Multiples of millions of Poles and Germans were forcibly expelled
from their respective homes, in the largest ethnic redistribution in history.
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After the war, the infamous Nuremberg trials tried the Nazi leaders
for the Holocaust and war crimes, committed on Polish soil.
The Soviets escaped similar trials for their own war crimes,
since they joined the Allies in the late stages of the war.
The Soviet regime would never answer for: the Katyń massacre of 22,000 Polish officers,
the deportation of 1.6 million POWs to Stalin's gulags, or the rape and pillage committed by the Red Army.
Poland remained behind the iron curtain, as a puppet state for the Soviet Union.
The Soviet regime set up the Polish United Workers' Party,
a communist party, creating what we now call the Polish People's Republic.
An important Eastern bloc member, and buffer state to the West.
The Warsaw pact signed in 1955, as an opposition to NATO,
gave the Bolsheviks greater control over Poland's army.
The government of pre-war Poland remained in exile in the UK, and was refused to be recognized by Stalin.
The Cold War loomed, as both East and West became nuclear powers.
The Western allies secretly began talks, of starting a third war to defeat the Soviet Union, called "Operation Unthinkable".
However, this was abandoned, as nuclear bombs changed the nature of war completely.
The first few years were the most brutal. Land, industry, and infrastructure, was seized by the government.
And rather than wealth distribution and prosperity; the resulting brand of socialism
simply created a method of resource and value extraction to the Soviet Union.
This was called the "Stalinist Era", an era characterized by untold poverty.
In true Iron Curtain-fashion, Poland stood close to the front lines of a clash of ideology.
["Vietnamese - we stand with you!"] ["Away with Zionists aka. imperialistic agents!"] The student strike in 1968 against the regime was brutally suppressed.
This decade would also see, what remained of Poland's Jewish population,
emigrate en masse to Israel, ending the Jewish chapter in Polish history.
By 1970, the port cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia and Szczecin exploded in protests,
as these areas were subject to particularly harsh working and living conditions.
The government would crack down, and protests would continue in 1976, and again in 1980,
by which point, the government was 20 billion dollars in debt.
Lech Wałęsa started the first workers' union, called "Solidarity",
quickly becoming a political lobbyist group for change.
"Solidarity" organized the first nationwide workers' strike, in 1981.
The government tried in vain to enact martial law, to stop the spread of chaos.
However, the winds of change were upon the Eastern bloc.
And in the 1989 election, the communists lost nearly all of the allowable contested seats in Parliament.
The wheel began turning, and change was inevitable.
The communist party was disbanded, the Constitution amended,
and the centralized control of the economy was abolished.
The government in exile was finally allowed to return home.
Since then, things have changed pretty drastically.
In 1999, the 3rd Polish Republic officially joined NATO, signaling a huge westward shift in foreign policy.
By 2004, they became part of the European Union, helping stabilize the growing economy.
It has been a very long and hard road for Poland.
The very center of World War II tensions in Poland had left the nation in rubble,
only to be then absorbed into the oppressive regime, of Stalin's communist bloc.
A common observation, made by no less than Winston Churchill,
is that, while the war had brought an end to totalitarianism and tyranny in Western Europe,
in Eastern Europe, it had really only just begun.
And sometimes it's important to remember that.
Poland's post-communist prosperity, has made it one of the Eastern bloc success stories.
And who knows? Maybe one day, "Poland can into space".
Thank you for watching the short conclusion to the story of Poland.
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Until next time.