ABSTRACT
With the closing months of the Second World War, it was clear that its eventual end would not restore Poland's independence. The Yalta Conference of February 1945 simply confirmed and made public the decisions reached at Tehran in late 1943. Poland's Western allies had agreed to the Soviet Union annexing the eastern half of Poland, compensating the latter westwards and leaving the country firmly within the Soviet sphere of influence. For the Polish state authorities in exile and the majority of armed forces personnel and their dependents, in total over 250,000 people in 1945, the fight to regain Poland's freedom continued, albeit in a different form. Among the myriad matters to be resolved was the question of the future of the state archives, both of the civilian ministries as well as the armed forces, not to mention the vast collection of historical exhibits collected during the war with the idea of replenishing, in part, the looted musuems and collections in Poland.
