Demographics of T2K Poland

[Raellus]

In my T2K campaign, and most others I've encountered, the Polish countryside is bereft of young men (aged 16-40 or so). As such, the appearance of a small group of heavily armed young men (like a PC party) always brings both a sense of great danger and of great opportunity to most Polish communities. This has always seemed natural to me but I'm starting to wonder if this assumption is indeed erroneous.

Here's my thinking. I'm sharing it because I'd like to know what your thoughts on this matter are.

In the lead up to the European war, I think that many young Polish men (optimal draft age would be, what, 18-25 or 30) would be drafted/mobilized into either regular army units (to either bring them up to full fighting strength or create new ones) or official ORMO units, or a mix of both. The Soviet Union would have instigated this to both reinforce its newly tenuous military position in Europe and for possible use on the China front. I'm not sure what a reasonable percentage of the adult male population drafted at this point would be.

Once the European war kicks off and NATO enters Poland, I see massive attrition for Polish military units. First off, I assume the Soviets would use them to as a sort of speedbump to delay the NATO advance, with Soviet units kept in reserve or used for counterattacks. As such, many Polish units would be destroyed and many Polish soldiers and ORMO captured by NATO forces. I'm thinking that possibly tens of thousands of Polish men would end up as EPWs. Those Polish prisoners who survived the impending nuclear exchange would become a valuable source of labor, either in a civilian capacity or in a military one, for NATO.

On a side note, I would think that a lot of Polish fighting men would have mixed feelings about both the Soviets and NATO. First off, NATO attacked them and can therefore be rightly blamed for instigating the waves of death and destruction sweeping back and forth across Poland. On the other hand, Polish troops could be rightly resentful of how they were used and abused by their Soviet overlords. Now back on topic...

As PACT forces retreat across Poland towards the Soviet border, I imagine that they would sweep up every able-bodied man they could get their hands on and throw them into battle. Casualties among these hastily trained and inexperienced troops would be massive.

Then the nukes start flying. I doubt many POW camps housing captured Polish troops would be specifically targetted but I'm sure that there would be some collateral damage casualties among the prisoner population. I'm sure that the care and feeding of said would suffer as a result of supply shortages and logistical chaos.

So, by mid-2000, I'm thinking that nearly every Polish male between the ages of 16-50 would either be dead, in PACT military service (regular army or ORMO), or in NATO military service (either in labor, logistics, or combat units). The only other males in this age range that my game's PCs ever meet are deserters who've returned to their homes (and/or turned marauder) or cripples.

Am I being too pessimistic Would the speed and surprise of the NATO blitzkrieg across Poland in the early stages of the European war "save" more of the male population In other words, would the attack forestall a more comprehensive draft Would there be more non-military men throughout the Polish countryside in 2000

I'm also willing to discuss other aspects of Poland's human geography in 2000 in this thread.

[Adm.Lee]

Off the top of my head, I think you may be onto something, with one exception. IIRC, wasn't NATO's 1997 drive months long While that would increase casualties among Poles, I don't think it would result in inordinate amounts of prisoners. (Of course, there could always be a division or two surrounded). Anyway, there's one hard-fought campaign eastward across Poland, one rapid westward withdrawal, and then it's pretty stable there through '98 and '99, right

As for using the Poles as a screen for Soviet troops, that would depend on how many Soviets were pulled to go to China (right now, I forget). There were six Soviet armies in East Germany (4-5 divisions each, a half-dozen of those were East German), and 2 Polish and 1 Soviet army in Poland (half of the Soviet army's divisions were Polish). Nearly half of the Polish divisions are reservists, but that shouldn't matter by spring of '97. So you're talking about at least a quarter of the Pact forces in Poland are Polish. If I were the Pact theater commander, I'd certainly be backstopping the Polish forces with Soviet ones, but they wouldn't be covering the whole line, and I read the situation as more than a speedbump that slowed NATO down.

All that said, I think there will be a dire shortage of military-age men in villages and cities, but not an absence. There could be draft exemptions for key workers as well as draft dodgers and black marketeers, desertions and/or marauders. Oh, and discharged wounded veterans.

I hadn't considered what NATO might do with its EPWs, though. Recruiting them for anti-Soviet forces would seem a natural thing, even if they would have to overcome the anti-German and anti-invasion attitudes of the Poles. (Hmm, something else to fit into my hobbyhorse of the '00 offensive as driven by desire to push a Polish defection.)

Final answer: I was going to argue, but I think I'll agree with you.

[Legbreaker]

Poland is essentially a wasteland in my mind. Some areas are worse off than others, but I think it's Black Maddonna which gives us the best indication of just how bad it can get when it states there's only 3% of the prewar population still in Silesia by autumn 2000 (it give population numbers before and after, the maths is easy from there). Granted, that's possibly the worst part of the country, however it gives us a good indication of how the rest of the battlefield fared.

[Webstral]

I agree that young men aren't going to be on the farm in Poland. They're either carrying weapons or pushing up the daisies. Between chemical weapons, tactical nuclear weapons, strategic nuclear weapons, and the high tide/ebb tide cycle of conventional war across Poland, the place is wreck. Marked and unmarked minefields, UXO, persistent chemical weapons, industrial chemical spills, razed buildings, destroyed bridges, radiation... The only good news is that by 2000 the bodies will have decayed (or have been eaten) to the point at which they no longer present a disease hazard.

[Raellus]

Poland is essentially a wasteland in my mind. Some areas are worse off than others, but I think it's Black Maddonna which gives us the best indication of just how bad it can get when it states there's only 3% of the prewar population still in Silesia by autumn 2000 (it give population numbers before and after, the maths is easy from there). Granted, that's possibly the worst part of the country, however it gives us a good indication of how the rest of the battlefield fared.

That could be a regional thing. Certain parts of Poland are likely more or less wasted than others.

[Fusilier]

That could be a regional thing. Certain parts of Poland are likely more or less wasted than others.

Some of the challenge articles mention this, with a few towns (Sopot for example) being pretty much intact.

[Legbreaker]

That could be a regional thing. Certain parts of Poland are likely more or less wasted than others.

Exactly right. Silesia is bound to be at the worse end of the population spectrum and the numbers don't account for those people who have simply up and left the area. Mind you, they don't account for recent arrivals either.

However, take a look at the city populations pre and post war and you'll see a very dramatic decrease there too. Might not be 97%, but it's still very significant. I think Krakow has 100,000 post war from a pre war figure of 740,000 in 1996 (www.unece.org/env/europe/workshop/krakow.e.pdf). That's still just 13.5% of prewar and many of those post war numbers are refugees from other areas (robotniki, etc).

It's also worth noting Krakow was not nuked, nor was it subject to any significant military action.

[atiff]

Krakow wasn't hit, but Nowa Huta was (3 x 20kT airbursts). There would be some effects, as these circles show...

http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.htmlll=20.07614,50.07799&yd=20

(zoom out a step, and click also on 0.25 psi = breaking windows)

[atiff]

A couple of thoughts:

One thing about the current state of Poland is finding a way to feed the populace that exists. I struck this first thinking about Krakow. If it has 80-100,000 people there, how much farmland is required to support it Without going into details, I made a rough model for it all, and came up with Krakow needing 800-1,000 square kilometers of farmland to support it. Say 30km x 30km. Hence there must be farming villages around in the area. And so forth...

While I agree areas of Poland are wasteland, I think there needs to be large tracts of land that are farmed to support the people who are around. The Eastern European Sourcebook says there are about 9 million in Poland in 2000 (from pre-war 36 million). Doing a bit of digging, I came up with about 160,000 square kilometers of 'open' (farmable) land in Poland. To support 9 million, using the numbers in the paragraph above, I need to use 90,000 sq km of farmland - say half the open land in Poland. Hence my vision of Poland looks a bit different to some others, and also to canon in places (a notable instance being what I worked out for Czestchowa, which is still inhabited in places). When I looked at it, I couldn't make all the canon sources 'agree'; so I just adapted to fit my train of thought.


Finally, on population, while I agree with the idea of masses of young men being drafted, etc, there will also be mass depopulation events that effect the young and the old. Both of these groups at the ends of the age curve will be massively affected by the breakdown of civilization; lack of medical care, and lack of supporting 18-50 year-olds will spell the deaths of many. In the final wash, I actually feel there will be an age demographic that is similar (but not the same) as pre-war. I think the thing that will skew it most is the relative abundance of women versus men in the 18-50 group.

Happy to discuss more!
Andrew

[Webstral]

How much farmland is needed in Poland depends a great deal on variety of factors. The more I learn about food production, the more I understand that a) I know very little and b) many factors play into the yield in calories of a given acreage of land. Regarding Poland, we probably can assume that the crops being grown in Poland in 1997 are generally well-suited to the climate, the soil, the rainfall, etc. Obviously, there will be some exceptions. How much human labor goes into each acre affects the output. Farmland used for large-scale farming prior to the war may be in good condition, or it may have been turned into a hydroponic medium by petrochemical farming. Its possible for a single productive acre to feed five or more people, provided half or more of the people are working a crop well-suited to intensive agriculture and the farmers know what they are doing. Rice and sweet potatoes are good examples of crops that perform well with [different kinds of] intensive agriculture.

The breakdown of order in Europe will prompt a consolidation of the population into defensible communities. This is not new news, but the consolidation of the population will favor labor-intensive use of smaller parcels of land over prewar norms. This will be true in most locations where security is an issue. (One could even say that security is an agricultural resource on par with water, sunlight, good soil, and labor.)

[atiff]

Yep +1 on all that.

From my findings on Poland of the 90s*, it seems there were a very, very large number of small farms, rather than the larger "petro-chem" farms more common these days in the West. Looking at Google Maps satellite view seems to confirm this, even today.

(* example source here: http://polandpoland.com/farming_poland.html)

[Targan]

In the time before modern, intensive farming techniques there were a number of ways to keep soil fertile. In many places in the world people living on flood plains learned to live with the annual floods, taking the good with the bad. The bad being possibly unpredictable flood levels or the need to evacuate the land for part of the year, the good being that flood-fed, alluvial soils are renewed with every flood cycle.

I'm not sure if parts of Poland might fit into this category but I suspect they will. When the dams are no longer functioning or are gone, the annual floods might make a return in many parts of war-torn T2K Europe (and many other parts of the world).

[Mahatatain]

Does anyone know whether the Poles have/had the same attitude to vegetable gardens as other WP countries In the research for my Ukrainian campaign I've come across a lot of information about it being common practice in the Ukraine for everyone to grow vegetables in their gardens at home, a practice that arose due to food shortages during the Soviet era.

I imagine that this would also have happened in other countries like Poland and it means that much of the population has experience of growing food crops on a small scale, even if their main occupation is not farming. That means that they have more capability to become self-sufficient than much of the population of western countries.

[Adm.Lee]

Does anyone know whether the Poles have/had the same attitude to vegetable gardens as other WP countries In the research for my Ukrainian campaign I've come across a lot of information about it being common practice in the Ukraine for everyone to grow vegetables in their gardens at home, a practice that arose due to food shortages during the Soviet era.

You mean urban dwellers, right

[Legbreaker]

Does anyone know whether the Poles have/had the same attitude to vegetable gardens as other WP countries

There's a thread around here somewhere with a report from one of our people (can't remember which one) who toured through Poland about a year or two back. Lots of very interesting and useful information on that in there.