Some 85,000 Polish soldiers were raised to fight in France in 1940, and everyone knows about the Polish fighter aces who fought in the Battle of Britain. How did these people escape from Poland when it was attacked from both sides and closed off from the sea?
Mentioning previous answers is not intended to discourage further questions. If anyone has follow-on questions, information, or rebuttals, they are welcome.
These are some previous questions:
Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht and SS to be alert for ‘Francs-tireurs’ (guerrilla/irregular soldiers), this meant the German soldiers often showed no mercy to entire villages of Poles with Anthony Beevor going as far to say ‘the line of German advance was marked at night by the red glow on the horizon from blazing villages and farms’. Grenades would be thrown into cellars full of hiding Poles and Jews, for example.
The ruthlessness and speed of the German forces meant that the vast majority of Polish civilians and soldiers fleeing escaped via the Eastern Front, as the Soviets had began their assault 17 days after the Nazis had, meaning they had a bigger window of time to get out of the country.
The Polish government fled Warsaw on the 17th September, heading for Romania, along with other refugees. Their route was initially blocked by Red Army forces moving in from Kamenets-Podolsk (south west Ukraine), however the Soviets eventually let the Poles through that night. The Romanian people hid them, sometimes in return for bribes, however the government was under pressure from the Nazis to return the exiles to them. The majority of Poles were save from internment and deportation, unfortunately, some areas fell under the jurisdiction of officers who were members of the Nazi sympathetic Iron Guard, meaning some who fled to Romania were sent back.
Bigger parties, organised by the Polish authorities (now a government in exile in Bucharest, later Paris) shipped out of Black Sea ports, primarily from Constanța situated on the Romanian coast and made their way to France.
Other groups fled via Hungary, Yugoslavia and Greece, while an even smaller number escaped north into the Baltic states and then through Scandinavia and into Sweden.
Eventually, these refugees formed back into an army, first in France and the French Middle East, and then Britain. They were used primarily as shock troops - most famously at Monte Cassino - where, after numerous attacks, a patrol from the Polish 12th Cavalry, raised the Polish flag at the summit.