History of Poland

Poland was first inhabited by tribes in prehistoric times. Like most of Europe, tribes gave way to Monarchies and Christianity. The first Polish monarch reign began in 1024. A constitutional Polish monarchy ran from 1370 to 1493, then in 1569 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth era began and lasted until 1795 when internal political struggles and external enemies brought an era of decline and partition.

The once powerful monarchs gradually lost power
and the State was eventually partitioned by the more powerful Austria, Prussia and Russia.

The Polish people didn't give up on independence, resulting in an uprising against the Russian Tsar. Poland then regained it's independence after the First World War, but became the first to fall against the German and Soviet attack at the beginning of the Second World War. Many thousands of Poles served in the armies of the Allied Forces. During the war 6 million Polish citizens were killed by Germans, 2,5 million were transported to labor or extermination camps. After World War II, Poland became a satellite of the Soviet Union, under a communist regime. The uprisings in 1956 and 1968 were suppressed. In 1978 Karol Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II. In 1989, led by a reform movement called Solidarity, Poland became the first Eastern European state to break free of the Communism.

The economy of Poland developed into one of the most robust in Eastern Europe. Poland joined NATO on May 27, 1999 and the European Union on May 1, 2004.







If you need more information, I recommend these books, since I just gave a overview.