The use of the Crowned White Eagle as the coat of arms of Poland dates back 700 years. The Eagle has connections to the first capital of Poland, Gniezno, where Lech, the legendary ancestor of the Piast dynasty, found an eagle’s nest and so assumed the Eagle as his personal coat of arms.

In 1295 King Przemysl II instituted the Crowned Eagle as the official emblem of the Kingdom of Poland. In the same year the Crowned Eagle appeared on the reverse side of the Royal Seal.

Since then, the Polish Eagle had undergone various modifications through the ages before it assumed the form in which it appears today, but it always remained the national emblem.
In the 18th century Poland underwent a series of partitions by its neighboring powers, Russia, Prussia and Austria. In 1918, at the end of World War I, after a century and a half of foreign occupation, the Treaty of Versailles established Poland’s long awaited independence. The Crowned White Eagle again reappeared as the state emblem of the Republic of Poland.

After Poland’s defeat at the beginning of World War II in 1939, and during subsequent occupation by Soviet and German troops, the White Eagle continued to be the cherished symbol of the Polish Underground Movement, as well as the official State emblem of the Polish Government in exile. When the war ended, the communist regime in Poland reinstated the Eagle as the State emblem, but without the crown. After the communists were overthrown, the Polish Parliament in December 1985 brought back the White Eagle’s crown, thus restoring an ancient and honorable symbol to its rightful place.

The official Polish flag for general use consists simply of two horizontal fields of equal size, with the top one white and the bottom one red. The flag that features Poland’s white eagle set against a red shield on the white field is known as a “bandera” (ship’s flag or ensign). According to Polish flag tradition, it is meant to be flown by Polish ships at sea and by Polish diplomatic missions and other official institutions abroad.

Many Polish Americans, however, consider the eagle flag more distinctive and prefer it to fly from flag posts or display it at various functions.

The colors of red (amaranth) and white began appearing on banners and flags in the 17th century, although they were still not the official national colors. The SEYM (assembly) introduced Polish national colors in 1831, but they were officially recognized as state colors until Poland regained her independence in 1919, when the white and red flag was first flown. Polish institutions and offices abroad and airports, harbors and merchant vessels fly the flag with the national emblem.