[ A Tour of the Polish Army Museum ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to a virtual tour of the Polish Army Museum on Forgotten Weapons.
I'm Ian McCollum, and of course I'm in the Polish Army Museum in downtown Warsaw today.
And normally I like to do this sort of intro from outside of the building
so you can see the façade, but it's actually raining rather heavily right now.
So we are here in the entrance way to the museum.
We're going to go ahead and take a gander through the display halls
so you can check out what the Polish Army Museum has to offer. Let's get going.
Alright, we're going to start with the hall of basically the 10th century
through the 17th or 18th century.
All of the artifacts in here are originals,
so ... the thousand year old artifacts perhaps have seen better days.
But ... this is an area of subject matter that I am not in any way an expert in,
but it's really impressive to see artifacts like this, that are in fact this old.
We don't have so much of this in the United States.
Anyway, armour and melee type weapons.
It's interesting to me how early there are a lot of firearms involved here though.
Because even at this period in the 1500s we have matchlocks in this case.
A variety of larger firearms
alongside what you normally think of as medieval or Renaissance armour.
All the way through this hall it's primarily sword and armour sorts of exhibits,
but still a significant number of firearms in here.
There is, interestingly, a breech-loading cannon.
There are a couple of proto-machine guns: multi-barrel firearms.
And of course, we have to mention the famous Polish Winged Hussars.
As we continue down here, we are ... going forward in time a bit.
We're up to the 1600s, larger cannon.
Now we get into more of the period of the Poles fighting the Swedes,
and more, and interesting, firearms. A little double-barrel pistol there.
There are a couple of particularly interesting items in here.
I'll point out, right down there is a wheellock revolving carbine, pretty neat.
But, this is ... the pre-modern firearms era.
Finish out this section, and now we will head upstairs.
Alright, there is a little bit of a gap here because the museum is in the process of relocating,
so they've moved some of their exhibits.
So we are going to skip forward to essentially the First World War.
There are a lot of uniforms and small arms on display here.
From World War One, which is lightly covered, we move forward to the Polish-Bolshevik War.
It's actually an early Russian Bolshevik standard.
The museum here had a lot of them from the war,
but they were all, except that one, were given back to the Soviet Union after World War Two.
The museum staff hid that one and managed to keep it.
So this is some of the early inter-war Polish uniforms.
Some of the very earliest items in the museum's collection
are a selection of World War One era heavy machine guns.
Interestingly, this is a Colt 1895 from the original Russian contract.
So that's in 7.62x54. Unfortunately missing the spade grip, but.
There's an intermittent selection of portraits, medals, awards.
But predominantly we have a lot of artifacts out on display.
So this brings us up towards World War Two.
... And a lot of the artifacts here have a very specific direct connection to Poland and to Warsaw.
That's a 37mm gun that was used in the 1939 defence of Warsaw.
French 75.
And like I said, quite a lot of interesting small arms.
Hiding right there is one of the Polish 8mm Mauser Mosin-Nagant conversions.
One of the ... (there we go),
we've got a Maroszek 38, and one of the Model 1935 anti-tank rifles.
Some material here commemorating Poland's hand
in the code breaking efforts that took place.
... The Poles started it, and then the English continued it at Bletchley Park during World War Two.
That is particularly interesting. That is a pre-World War Two board
showing the assembly in the Lviv Arsenal
of a semi-auto conversion of the 1888 Mannlicher straight pull, ... that's really cool.
Continuing around, we have more World War ... Two artifacts and uniforms.
... There's an interesting mix of dug up guns as well as very nice condition guns.
And again a lot of them have specific provenance, there's one of the guns
and some of the pieces of what is possibly the very first aircraft casualty of World War Two,
a Heinkel shot down over Poland.
A 40mm Vickers gun.
And then if that looks not quite right for a Colt commercial water cooled,
that's because that's actually one of the Polish Model 1930 Browning machine guns.
Another one of the 35 anti-tank rifles.
Continuing in here, we have Polish forces that were fighting alongside
some of the other Allied forces. So Poles with French equipment, British equipment.
American equipment a little later on.
There's another neat one, a ShKAS, a Russian really high rate of fire aircraft gun.
There is a bit of a display specifically dedicated to the Peasant Battalion, some of the resistance.
A couple of handmade resistance guns.
The Beha there is missing because actually we took it out for me to film.
So if you come to the museum that one will be back in its place.
So a little legitimate Mauser "obrez".
Some more resistance material here, this is actually
a ... rifling machine for making Sten gun barrels.
The sharp eyed will notice back there,
there you go, the iconic Polish submachine gun of the Warsaw Uprising.
... Really the best example they have here of those is actually also out of its exhibit right now,
because I was filming it as well.
Now we're getting into the interaction with the Russians.
Here are a couple more of the submachine guns.
So the plan is ... the museum is moving to a facility that's going to be
something like two to three times the size of this current exhibition space.
They are planning to expand it, there will be more of an 18th century presence.
And they want to expand the end of the scope of the museum
from where it currently ends at the end of World War Two,
through 1989 to cover the Cold War
as well as Poland's participation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is perhaps ... like, here's all of the best guns in one spot.
We have on top there the Maroszek 38.
... If you recognise that rifle, it's the exact same one
that I did some video on back at Julia many years ago.
That rifle very happily ended up here in the Polish Army Museum.
There are also what appear to be just standard Mausers,
but these first two in front have a very specific
provable provenance to the Polish Home Army, which is pretty cool.
So if you're into Colt Browning guns, we have specifically Polish made ones
with some pretty interesting specifically Polish mounts there.
And this pretty much brings us to the end of the World War Two section.
There's one last room coming off the end of this hall and that is the oriental display.
So up here is Turkish, Chinese, Japanese,
a lot of really remarkably good exhibits.
But it's a subset of the museum's collection,
and so they all get one central room here together.
Let's do a quick look through here.
A particularly rare set of Japanese horse armour, that's really cool.
Lots of squeaky floors in the place.
As always, there are firearms sprinkled throughout everything.
So, that pretty much concludes our tour of the Polish Army Museum.
If you find yourself in Warsaw I would definitely recommend
setting aside a couple of hours to come and check out the exhibits.
Depending on when you see this, the museum may or may not still be at its
present location in Warsaw, because of course they are in the process of moving it.
So I figured it's worth doing a little video tour for you guys anyway,
because this will at least show you the minimum
of what you can expect to see if you come by to have a look.
And if you see this after they've set up the new museum,
well I think you're really going to be in for a treat, because there will be substantially more on display.
Hopefully you enjoyed the little tour.
Thanks for watching.