Polish-Italian relations during the Second World War in 1939-1945

Relations between Poland and Italy in the period 1939-1945 did not play leading role for both countries. After the defeat of September 1939, Polish government in exile (first in France and then in Britain) was interested in rebuilding and strengthening its international position. The Polish government sought support for his efforts in the allied Western powers of France and Britain. Fascist Italy was bound to Nazi Germany by the Pact of Steel and despite initial neutrality in the war, caused primarily from military unpreparedness and aversion to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, gravitated naturally and ideologically towards the Third Reich, eventually acting against France and England alongside Hitler, under the arbitrary decision of Mussolini and against their national interests. Hereby, in the second half of the interwar period Poland and Italy began to lean towards two different and potentially antagonistic configurations in the international system. After the Italian declaration of war against Western powers (made June 10-th 1940), Polish closest allies, they found themselves on opposite sides of the barricade. This meant that both countries now belonged to antagonistic political-military blocks, fighting in the name of completely separate objectives and political principles. It should be noted that from June 1940 these two countries played different and opposing roles. The collapse of fascism alongside failures at the front, the overthrow of Mussoliniin mid-1943 and the armistice signed by the new Italian government with the Allies removed the most important barriers in Polish-Italian cooperation in the international arena. Poland and Italy were among the Allies, but the international situation of the two countries, which were initially indicating some symptoms of similarity, was different. Prospects of enhancing cooperation in all areas raised in the years 1944-1945 were disappointed by a new division of Europe, in which both Italy and Poland took completely separate sides. It is possible to say that both Poland and Italy became in 1944-1945 disputed subjects between the great powers, which necessarily affected their bilateral relationship at the time