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Originally Posted by blackdog_kt
A lot of countries that had been conquered managed to evacuate a lot of ships, both merchants and warships, and kept fighting for the duration of the war. For example, the Greek merchant marine was very active throughout the war and there have also been memorable instances of Greek warships too. Destroyers like Adrias which sailed in Alexandria with the bow cut off by a mine and the British fleet formating in lines on the harbour's mouth (honour guard type of thing i guess, they had written the ship off and didn't expect it to come back), or Queen Olga which took part in a lot of allied operations in the med, like shelling the island of Pantelleria during the early stages of the landings on Italy, etc.
I wouldn't be surprised if Polish ships were operating under British control for the duration of the war, much like Polish squadrons in the RAF.  |
It's true what you say for the Polish and Greek Navy and Armed Forces. Still it must be noted that technically the Polish Forces (of all branches of the Armed Forces) were considered either volunteers or answerable to the Excile Polish Government (depending from which side you are looking at it-German/Soviet or British). This is because Poland never signed a Peace Treaty with Germany and USSR, and for the Germans Poland just seezed to exist and was absorbed into the Reich. Actually the reason the USSR used as an excuse for the "intervention" in the Eastern part of the Country (until the Brest-Litovsk Line) was that there was no signal from the Polish government or state for more than 15 days, and therefore the country seezed to exist. In the Greek case because the country signed a formal peace treaty with Germany and Italy, all Greek Armed Forces (especially the Navy) were (technically always) enlisted into the British Army and were treated in the same way as the Commonwealth and Dominion Forces. In the case of the Merchant Hellenic (Greek) Navy the ships were either leased by the Admiralty or seized in Allied ports with "proper compensations".
Therefore as far as the Germans (and unfortunately up to a point the Soviets as well) were concerned a Polish Soldier had no (according to them of course) POW Status either because he was fighting against his "new country" (if considered voluntieer) or because he was conducting "illegal warfare" (since the excile Polish Government was not recognised by Germans and Soviets). The Greeks on the other hand had POW Status as they were enlisted into the British Army (Not that this saved them from suffering in the consentration camps-but that's another story).