out, at least in eastern parts of the country. During the late hours of that day, the Polish government and members of the military high command crossed the Polish–Romanian border with the intention of relocating to France, where the Polish forces in the west were being formed. Polish units were ordered to evacuate Poland and to reorganise in France. Polish units launched new counteroffensives in attempt to clear a path towards the Romanian Bridgehead, such as Kraków Army in the Battle of Tomaszów Lubelski. Some of Kazimierz Sosnkowski's units managed to evade German capture and continued the fight in Lwów, but others were stopped and captured by Soviet armored units. It was the intervention by the Red Army, which created a two-front war, that sealed the fate of the Romanian Bridgehead. Fragmented Polish units attempted to push southward and clear paths with limited success and started diversionary skirmishes, which slowed the Germans. The Polish defeat at the Battle of Lwów by the Germans and the Soviets disintegrated the efforts to clear a path to the Romanian Bridgehead. Nonetheless, many small groups of Polish soldiers crossed the border at night. As many as 120,000 Polish troops withdrew through the Romanian Bridgehead area to neutral Romania and Hungary. Most of those troops joined the newly-formed Polish Armed Forces in the West in France and the United Kingdom during 1939 and 1940. Until Germany attacked the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa and the United States joined the war, the Polish Army was one of the largest forces of the Allies. The Romanian government also received the treasury of the National Bank of Poland in 1939. Part of it, consisting of 1,261 crates containing 82,403 kg of gold, was loaded aboard a commercial ship in the port of Constanța and transported to Western Europe. The transport was escorted by ships of the Romanian Navy to prevent its interception by Soviet submarines in the Black Sea. The second part of the treasury was deposited in the National Bank of Romania and was returned to Poland on 17 September 1947. Gallery See also Romania during World War II Sarny Fortified Area Poland–Romania relations References Michael Alfred Peszke, The Polish Underground Army, The Western Allies, And The Failure Of Strategic Unity in World War II, McFarland & Company, 2004, , Google Print, pp. 27–32 Toma Virgiliu, "Agresorii în ofensivă", in România Liberă, October 13, 2007 Wojciech Włodarkiewicz,