PLANY APROWIZACJI WOJSKA POLSKIEGO W CHLEB NA CZAS WOJNY W 1939 ROKU

Making use of the literature on the subject, but first and foremost of numerous, 
hitherto overlooked in research, accounts of the officers of the Polish Army's 
intendant service written down during the Second World War operations, the author 
presents issues related to the planning of the Polish Army's victualling during the war 
in the basic food product, namely bread. Describing this subject in a chronological and 
problematic order, the author shows that the victualling system created in the 1930s 
proved successful to a limited extent, namely only in terms of accumulating the 
supply of rye necessary for baking bread in the first stage of military operations. 
Using concrete examples, he goes on to demonstrate that the preparations made in 
connection with the storage of rye, its processing and bread baking, as well as its 
distribution, were inadequate and insufficient even in peacetime, and that these 
problems were significantly exacerbated during the war. This, in turn, had a direct 
impact on the collapse of bread supplies to numerous units of the Polish Army as 
early as the first week of the September battles, and consequently contributed to a 
decline in their combat capability and morale. The short-lived war did not reveal all 
the shortcomings associated with the army's bread supply preparations, although even 
so, by the end of the first decade of September it was not a regular item on the daily 
menu of fighting soldiers in the field. With each passing day, however, the situation 
worsened. Therefore, the problem described would certainly have been particularly 
acute in a prolonged conflict.