Soviet invasion of Poland

This article is about the invasion in 1939. For the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1920, see Polish-Soviet War.

Soviet invasion of Poland
Part of the invasion of Poland in World War II
Soviet cavalry and tanks passing a an overturned Polish border marker. Soviet forces crossing the Polish-Soviet border
Location Poland Result Soviet victory
Belligerents
Poland	Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
Edward Rydz-Śmigły	Mikhail Kovalov (Belarusian Front), Semyon Timoshenko (Ukrainian Front)
Strength
Over 20,000[a] 20 understrength battalions of Border Protection Corps and improvised parts of the Polish Army.	Estimates vary from 466,516 to over 800,000 33+ divisions, 11+ brigades
Casualties and losses
Estimates range from 3,000 dead and 20,000 wounded to about 7,000 dead or missing, not counting about 2,500 POWs executed in immediate reprisals or by anti-Polish OUN bands. 250,000	Estimates range from 737 dead and under 1,862 total casualties (Soviet estimates) through 1,475 killed and missing and 2,383 wounded to about 2,500 dead or missing or 3,000 dead and under 10,000 wounded (Polish estimates).

The 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland was a military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939, during the early stages of World War II, sixteen days after the beginning of the Nazi German attack on Poland. It ended in a decisive victory for the Soviet Union's Red Army.

In early 1939, the Soviet Union was in negotiations to form an alliance against Nazi Germany with the United Kingdom, France, Poland, and Romania; but difficulties arose, including the Soviet demand that Poland and Romania allow Soviet troops transit rights through their territories as part of collective security. With the failure of the negotiations, the Soviets on 23 August 1939 signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. As a result, on 1 September the Germans invaded Poland from the west; and on 17 September the Red Army invaded Poland from the east. The Soviet government announced that it was acting to protect the Ukrainians and Belarusians who lived in the eastern part of Poland, because the Polish state had collapsed in the face of the Nazi German attack and could no longer guarantee the security of its own citizens. The Soviet government announced that it was acting to protect the Ukrainians and Belarusians who lived in the eastern part of Poland, because the Polish state had collapsed in the face of the German attack and could no longer guarantee the security of its own citizens.

The Red Army achieved its targets, vastly outnumbering Polish resistance. About 230,000 Polish soldiers or more (452,500) were taken prisoners of war. The Soviet government annexed the territory newly under its control and in November declared that the 13.5 million Polish citizens who lived there were now Soviet citizens. The Soviets quelled opposition by executions and by mass arrests of thousands of people. According to data published by IPN in 2009, they sent 320,000 to Siberia and other remote parts of the USSR in four major waves of deportations between 1939 and 1941. IPN estimates the number of Polish citizens who perished under the Soviet rule during World War II at 150,000. Earlier estimates cited much higher numbers of victims.^[b]

The Red Army invasion, which the Soviet Politburo called "the liberation campaign", led to the incorporation of millions of Poles, Polish Jews, western Ukrainians, and western Belarusians into the Soviet Ukrainian and Belorussian republics. Many residents of the area, particularly its poorer inhabitants and the Jewish community, reacted positively to the change of government, in part out of fear that a power vacuum would favor the Nazis. These expressions were later freighted with great significance in terms of national loyalty. During the existence of the People's Republic of Poland, the invasion was a taboo subject in post war Poland, almost omitted from the official history by the communist authorities in order to preserve the illusion of "eternal friendship" between members of the Eastern Bloc. The territories gained during the invasion would later be incorporated into the Soviet Socialist Republics of Ukraine and Belarus, which became independent states in 1991.

Prelude

In the late 1930s the Soviet Union tried to form an anti-German alliance with the United Kingdom, France, and Poland.^[h] The negotiations, however, proved difficult. The Soviets insisted on a sphere of influence stretching from Finland to Romania and asked for military support not only against anyone who attacked them directly but against anyone who attacked the countries in their proposed sphere of influence. From the beginning of the negotiations with France and Britain it was clear that Soviet Union demanded the right to occupy the Baltic States (Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania). Finland was to be included in the Soviet sphere of influence as well and the Soviets finally also demanded the right to enter Poland, Romania, and the Baltic States whenever they felt their security was threatened. The governments of those countries rejected the proposal because, as Polish foreign minister Józef Beck pointed out, they feared that once the Red Army entered their territories it might never leave. The Soviets did not trust the British and French to honour collective security, since they had failed to assist Spain against the Fascists or protect Czechoslovakia from the Nazis. They also suspected that the Western Allies would prefer the Soviet Union to fight Germany by itself, while they watched from the sidelines. In view of these concerns the Soviet Union abandoned the talks and turned instead to negotiations with Germany.

On 23 August 1939 the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, taking the allies by surprise. The two governments announced the agreement merely as a non-aggression treaty. According to a secret appendix, however, they had agreed to partition Poland between themselves and divide Eastern Europe into Soviet and German spheres of influence.^[d] The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which has been described as a license for war, was a key factor in Hitler’s decision to invade Poland.

Planned and actual divisions of Poland, according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with later adjustments

The treaty provided the Soviets with extra defensive space in the west. It also offered them a chance to regain territories ceded to Poland during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin saw advantages in a war in western Europe, which might weaken his ideological enemies and open up new regions to the advance of communism.^[f]

Soon after the Germans invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, the Nazi leaders began urging the Soviets to play their agreed part and attack Poland from the east. The German ambassador to Moscow, Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, and the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, exchanged a series of diplomatic communiqués on the matter.

Then Molotov came to the political side of the matter and stated that the Soviet Government had intended to take the occasion of the further advance of German troops to declare that Poland was falling apart and that it was necessary for the Soviet Union, in consequence, to come to the aid of the Ukrainians and the White Russians "threatened" by Germany. This argument was to make the intervention of the Soviet Union plausible to the masses and at the same time avoid giving the Soviet Union the appearance of an aggressor.

— Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, German ambassador to Moscow in a telegram to the German Foreign Office, Moscow, September 10 1939

There were several reasons why the Soviet invasion did not coordinate perfectly with the Nazi one. The Soviets were distracted by crucial events in their border disputes with Japan; they needed time to mobilize the Red Army. On 17 September 1939, Molotov declared on the radio that all treaties between the Soviet Union and Poland were now void.^[g] The failure of France and the United Kingdom to help Poland either by sending expeditionary forces or by starting a full scale ground offensive against western Germany, or even by bombing the industrial areas of western Germany, might have prompted Stalin to invade. On the same day, the Red Army crossed the border into Poland.

Military campaign

Disposition of all troops following the Soviet invasion.

The invasion was planned by Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov, Boris Shaposhnikov, and Grigory Kulik. A few hours before it began, already on September 17, 1939, at 2 a.m., Stalin, with Molotov and Voroshilov, informed German ambassador in Moscow, Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, that Soviet troops would soon cross the border. Stalin said: "At 6 a.m., four hours from now, the Red Army will cross into Poland".

The Red Army entered the eastern regions of Poland with seven field armies and between 450,000 and 1,000,000 troops. These were deployed on two fronts: the Belarusian Front under Mikhail Kovalyov, and the Ukrainian Front under Semyon Timoshenko. By this time, the Poles had already failed to defend their western borders, and in response to German incursions had launched a major counter-offensive in the Battle of the Bzura. The Polish Army originally had a well-developed defensive plan to deal with the threat of the Soviet Union, but was unprepared to face two invasions at once; nor did the Polish military strategists believe that it made any sense to offer more than a token resistance if attacked by both the Germans and the Soviets. However, in spite of that belief, the Polish military had not developed an evacuation plan for this contingency, leading to the death or capture of Polish soldiers who engaged in an uncoordinated and ineffective defense. By the time the Soviets invaded, the Polish commanders had sent most of their troops west to face the Germans, leaving the east protected by only twenty under-strength battalions. These battalions consisted of about 20,000 troops of border defence corps, or Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza, under the command of general Wilhelm Orlik-Rueckemann.

Soviet tanks invading Poland on 17 September

At first, the Polish commander-in-chief, Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-Śmigły, ordered the border forces to resist the Soviet invasion, but changed his orders after consulting with Prime Minister Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski, commanding them to fall back and engage the Soviets only in self-defense.

The Soviets have entered. I order a general retreat to Romania and Hungary by the shortest route. Do not fight the Bolsheviks unless they assault you or try to disarm your units. The tasks for Warsaw and cities which were to defend themselves from the Germans - without changes. Cities approached by Bolsheviks should negotiate the issue of withdrawing the garrison to Hungary or Romania.

— Edward Rydz-Śmigły, Commander-in-Chief of the Polish armed forces, September 17 1939}

The two conflicting sets of orders led to confusion, and when the Red Army advanced on Polish units, clashes and small battles inevitably broke out. The response of non-ethnic Poles to the situation added a further complication. Many Ukrainians,^[m] Belarusians and Jews welcomed the invading troops as liberators. It was mentioned by Lev Mekhlis, who told Stalin that people of West Ukraine welcomed the Soviets "like true liberators". The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists rebelled against the Poles, and communist partisans organized local uprisings, such as that in Skidel.^[j]

The Polish military's original fall-back plan was to retreat and regroup along the Romanian Bridgehead, an area in south-east Poland near the border with Romania. The idea was to adopt defensive positions there and wait for the much-expected French and British attack in the west. This plan assumed that Germany would have to reduce its operations in Poland in order to fight on a second front in Western Europe. The allies had expected Polish forces to hold out for up to several months, which whether or not it was ever realistic was quickly made impossible under the weight of a second front in the east.

German and Soviet troops shaking hands following the invasion

The Polish political and military leaders knew that they were losing the war against Germany even before the Soviet invasion settled the issue. Nevertheless, they refused to surrender or negotiate a peace with Germany, deciding to abandon the remaining areas of Poland under their control as indefensible and place their hopes in the Allies to retake Poland. In keeping with this new strategy, the Polish government ordered all military units to evacuate Poland and reassemble in France. The government itself crossed into Romania at around midnight on 17 September 1939 through the border-crossing in Zaleszczyki. Polish units proceeded to manoeuvre towards the Romanian bridgehead area, sustaining German attacks on one flank and occasionally clashing with Soviet troops on the other. In the days following the evacuation order, the Germans defeated and disintegrated the Polish Armies Kraków and Lublin at the Battle of Tomaszów Lubelski, which lasted from 17 September to 20 September.

Soviet units often met their German counterparts advancing from the opposite direction. Notable examples of co-operation occurred between the two armies in the field. The Wehrmacht passed the Brest Fortress, which had been seized after the Battle of Brześć Litewski, to the Soviet 29th Tank Brigade on 17 September. The town was handed over by German army to the Soviets, with German withdrawal ceremony included a joint parade. Lwów (Lviv) surrendered on 22 September, days after the Germans handed the siege operations over to the Soviets. Soviet forces had taken Wilno on 19 September after a two-day battle, and they took Grodno on 24 September after a four-day battle. By 28 September, the Red Army had reached the line formed by the Narew, Western Bug, Vistula and San rivers—the border agreed in advance with the Germans.

Despite a tactical Polish victory on 28 September at the Battle of Szack, the outcome of the larger conflict was never in doubt. Civilian volunteers, militias, and reorganised retreating units held out in the Polish capital, Warsaw, until 28 September. The Modlin Fortress, north of Warsaw, surrendered the next day after an intense sixteen-day battle. On 1 October, Soviet troops drove Polish units into the forests at the battle of Wytyczno, one of the last direct confrontations of the campaign.

Several isolated Polish garrisons managed to hold their positions long after being surrounded, such as those in the Volhynian Sarny Fortified Area which held out until September 25, but the last operational unit of the Polish Army to surrender was General Franciszek Kleeberg's Independent Operational Group Polesie (Samodzielna Grupa Operacyjna "Polesie"). Kleeberg surrendered on 6 October after the four-day Battle of Kock (near Lublin), which ended the September Campaign. The Soviets were victorious. On 31 October, Molotov reported to the Supreme Soviet: "A short blow by the German army, and subsequently by the Red Army, was enough for nothing to be left of this ugly creature of the Treaty of Versailles".

Allied reaction

Political cartoon showing Hitler greeting Stalin.

The reaction of France and Britain to the Soviet invasion and annexation of Eastern Poland was muted, since neither country wanted to start a confrontation with the Soviet Union at that time. Under the terms of the Polish-British Common Defence Pact of 25 August 1939, the British promised assistance if a European power attacked Poland.^[k] When Polish Ambassador Edward Raczyński reminded Foreign Secretary Edward Frederick Lindley Wood of the pact, he was bluntly told that it was Britain's business whether to declare war on the Soviet Union. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain considered making a public commitment to restore the Polish state in the entirety of its pre-war territory, but in the end issued only general statements of condemnation.

The French had also made promises to Poland, including the provision of air support, but also opted not to attack the USSR. Once the Soviets moved into Poland, the French and the British decided there was nothing they could do for Poland in the short term and began planning for a long-term victory instead. The French had advanced tentatively into the Saar in early September, but after the Polish defeat, they retreated behind the Maginot Line on 4 October. Many Poles resented this lack of support from their western allies, which aroused a lasting sense of betrayal.

Aftermath

Main article: Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)

Further information: [[:History of Poland (1939-1945), Polish prisoners of war in Soviet Union (after 1939)]]

Polish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Poland

In October 1939, Molotov reported to the Supreme Soviet that the Soviets had suffered 737 deaths and 1,862 casualties during the campaign, though Polish specialists claim up to 3,000 deaths and 8,000 to 10,000 wounded.^[e] On the Polish side, between 6,000 and 7,000 soldiers died fighting the Red Army, with 230,000 to 450,000 taken prisoner. The Soviets often failed to honour terms of surrender. In some cases, they promised Polish soldiers freedom and then arrested them when they laid down their arms.

The Soviet Union had ceased to recognise the Polish state at the start of the invasion. As a result, the two governments never officially declared war on each other. The Soviets therefore did not classify Polish military prisoners as prisoners of war but as rebels against the new legal government of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia.^[n] The Soviets killed tens of thousands of Polish prisoners of war. Some, like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński, who was captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were executed during the campaign itself. On 24 September, the Soviets killed forty-two staff and patients of a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec, near Zamość. The Soviets also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack, on 28 September 1939. Over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre. About 300 Poles were executed after the Battle of Grodno [2].

Soviet document of decision regarding the mass execution of Polish Officers.

Torture was used on a wide scale in various prisons, especially those in small towns. Prisoners were scalded with boiling water in Bobrka; in Przemyslany, people had their noses, ears, and fingers cut off and eyes put out; in Czortkow, female inmates had their breasts cut off; and in Drohobycz, victims were bound together with barbed wire. Similar atrocities occurred in Sambor, Stanislawow, Stryj, and Zloczow. Also, in Podolian town of Czortków, a local Polish uprising broke out in January 1940, brutally suppressed by the Soviets. According to historian Jan T. Gross:

"We cannot escape the conclusion: Soviet state security organs tortured their prisoners not only to extract confessions but also to put them to death. Not that the NKVD had sadists in its ranks who had run amok; rather, this was a wide and systematic procedure."

The Poles and the Soviets re-established diplomatic relations in 1941, following the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement; but the Soviets broke them off again in 1943 after the Polish government demanded an independent examination of the recently discovered Katyn burial pits. The Soviets then lobbied the Western Allies to recognise the pro-Soviet Polish puppet government of Wanda Wasilewska in Moscow.

On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany had changed the secret terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. They moved Lithuania into the Soviet sphere of influence and shifted the border in Poland to the east, giving Germany more territory. By this arrangement, often described as a fourth partition of Poland, the Soviet Union secured almost all Polish territory east of the line of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Western Bug and San. This amounted to about 200,000 square kilometres of land, inhabited by 13.5 million Polish citizens.

The Red Army had originally sown confusion among the locals by claiming that they were arriving to save Poland from the Nazis. Their advance surprised Polish communities and their leaders, who had not been advised how to respond to a Soviet invasion. Polish and Jewish citizens may at first have preferred a Soviet regime to a German one. However, the Soviets were quick to impose their ideology on the local ways of life. For instance, the Soviets quickly began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property. During the two years following the annexation, the Soviets also arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens and deported between 350,000 and 1,500,000, of whom between 250,000 and 1,000,000 died, mostly civilians.^[b] In 2009 the Polish IPN lowered this estimate to 320,000 deported and 150,000 dead (of all causes, not just deportation).

Territories of Second Polish Republic annexed by Soviet Union

Further information: [[:Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union]]

A Sovietization propaganda poster addressed to the Western Ukrainian population.

Of the 13.5 million civilians living in the newly annexed territories, Poles were the largest single ethnic group; but Belarusians and Ukrainians together made up over 50% of the population.^[c] The annexation did not give the Soviet Union control of all the areas where Belarusians or Ukrainians lived, some of which fell west of the new German–Soviet border.^[l] Nonetheless, it united the vast majority of the two peoples within the expanded Soviet Belorussian and Ukrainian republics.

On 26 October 1939, "elections" to Belorussian and Ukrainian assemblies were held (see Elections to the People's Assemblies of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus), to give the annexation an appearance of validity.^[i] The Belarusians and Ukrainians in Poland had been increasingly alienated by the Polonization policies of the Polish government and its repression of their separatist movements, so they felt little loyalty towards the Polish state. Not all Belarusians and Ukrainians, however, trusted the Soviet regime, which was responsible for the Ukrainian Famine of 1932–33. In practice, most Poles as well as many Belorussians and Ukrainians opposed Soviet rule. The exception were the local Communist party members, various opportunists who saw the new regime as a chance for making a new career, and occasionally the very poor (although in areas where the Communists party had not been active before the invasion, even the poor did not welcome the Red Army).

The Soviets quickly introduced Sovietization policies in Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine, including compulsory collectivization of the whole region. In the process, they ruthlessly broke up political parties and public associations and imprisoned or executed their leaders as "enemies of the people". The Soviet authorities also suppressed the anti-Polish Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which had actively resisted the Polish regime since the 1920s; aiming for an independent, undivided Ukrainian state. The unifications of 1939 were nevertheless a decisive event in the history of Ukraine and Belarus, because they produced two republics which eventually achieved independence in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Since 1654, when the tsars began steadily to extend their control over Ukraine, Ukrainians had lived in two distinct worlds: one ruled by the Russians and the other by Poles or Austrians. As a result of the Second World War, the East/West Ukrainian dichotomy finally ceased to exist, at least on the political level. The process of amalgamation—of unification of two long-separated branches of the Ukrainian people—was not only a major aspect of the post-war period, but an event of epochal significance in the history of Ukraine.

— Orest Subtelny a Canadian historian of Ukrainian descent

Censorship

Soviet censors later suppressed many details of the 1939 invasion and its aftermath. The Politburo had from the start called the operation a "liberation campaign", and later Soviet statements and publications never wavered from that line. On 30 November 1939, Stalin stated that it was not Germany that had attacked France and Britain, but France and Britain that had attacked Germany; and the following March, Molotov claimed that Germany had tried to make peace and been turned down by "Anglo-French imperialists".^[o] All subsequent Soviet governments denied that there had ever been a secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; but when the document was "found" in the Soviet archives in 1989, the truth was finally acknowledged. Censorship was also applied in the People's Republic of Poland, to preserve the image of "Polish-Soviet friendship" promoted by the two communist governments. Official policy allowed only accounts of the 1939 campaign that portrayed it as a reunification of the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples and a liberation of the Polish people from "oligarchic capitalism.” The authorities strongly discouraged any further study or teaching on the subject. However, various underground publications (bibuła) addressed the issue, as did other media, such as the 1982 protest song of Jacek Kaczmarski (Ballada wrześniowa).

Orders of battle

See articles:

• Polish army order of battle in 1939
• Soviet order of battle for invasion of Poland in 1939

See also

• History of Poland (1939–1945)

Notes

a. ^{^} Increasing numbers of KOP units, as well as most Polish Army units stationed in the East during peacetime, were sent to the Polish-German border before or during the German invasion. KOP forces guarding the eastern border numbered around 20,000. On 21 September 1939, an improvised KOP "army" had a strength of 8,700 troops. Polish army units which fought the Soviets had mostly been disrupted and weakened by their retreat from the Germans, making estimates of their strength problematic; it is estimated about 250,000 of such troops found themselves in the line of Soviet advance and offered sporadic resistance. The total Polish army on 1 September 1939, counting un-mobilised (and sometimes, never mobilised) units, numbered about 950,000. Historians agree that the vast majority of these forces never saw action against the Soviets.

b. ^{1 2} The exact number of people deported in the period 1939–1941 remains unknown, and estimates vary from between 350,000 and (old WWII estimates by the Polish Underground State) over two million. The first figure is based on NKVD records and does not include the roughly 180,000 prisoners of war in Soviet captivity. Most modern historians estimate the number of all people deported from areas taken by the Soviet Union during this period at between 800,000 and 1,500,000. For example, Rummel estimates the number at 1,200,000 and Kushner and Knox at 1,500,000. Bernd Wegner quotes Norman Davies's estimate that half of an approximately one million deported Polish citizens were dead by the time the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement was signed in 1941.

However, newest estimates published by the authoritative Polish Institute of National Remembrance IPN in 2009 give the number of Poles deported into Soviet interior as 320,000 and the number of Polish citizens that perished under Soviet rule during World War II as 150,000 .

The mass deportations were motivated by class warfare—Soviet propaganda hammered home the message that they were fighting a war against barbarism on behalf of civilization—and obsessive security concerns. Less openly admitted advantages of the deportations were the redistribution of deportees' housing and land, the establishment of a back-up labour force prior to the inevitable war with Germany, and the radical alteration of the ethnic demographic of the annexed region.

c. ^{^} Among the population of Eastern territories were circa 38% Poles, 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jewish, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans.

d. ^{^} Estonia and Latvia were placed in the Soviet sphere of influence and Lithuania in the German. According to Joachim von Ribbentrop, Germany had agreed to what Britain had refused: a free hand in the Baltic and a free hand in the Balkan states. On 28 September, the border was redefined by adding the area between the Vistula and Bug to the German sphere and moving Lithuania into the Soviet sphere.

e. ^{^} "Polish specialists claim up to 3000 killed and 8,000–10,000 wounded."

f. ^{^} On 7 September 1939, Stalin told the secretary general of the Comintern, Georgi Dimitrov: "War is going on between two groups of capitalist countries...for the division of the world, for domination of the entire world. We are not against their tearing one another to pieces and weakening one another." He called Poland a fascist state which had oppressed Ukrainians, Belorussians and others, and stressed that "the liquidisation of this government under present conditions would mean one fascist government less. It wouldn’t be so bad if as a result of the destruction of Poland we extended the socialist system to new territories and populations."

g. ^{^} The Soviets in effect repudiated the Riga Peace Treaty and the Soviet-Polish Non-Aggression Pact. They also violated the 1919 Covenant of the League of Nations (to which the USSR subscribed in 1934), the Briand-Kellog Pact of 1928 and the 1933 London Convention on the Definition of Aggression.

h. ^{^} "The USSR proposed a ten-year Anglo-French-Soviet alliance which would include Rumania and Poland."

i. ^{^} The voters had a choice of only one candidate for each position of deputy; the communist party commissars then provided the assemblies with resolutions that would push through nationalization of banks and heavy industry and transfers of land to peasant communities.

j. ^{^} For other examples, described by an officer witness, see: Bronisław Konieczny, in Mój wrzesień 1939. Pamiętnik z kampanii wrześniowej spisany w obozie jenieckim and Moje życie w mundurze. Czasy narodzin i upadku II RP.

k. ^{^} The "Agreement of Mutual Assistance between the United Kingdom and Poland" (London, 25 August 1939) states in Article 1: "Should one of the Contracting Parties become engaged in hostilities with a European Power in consequence of aggression by the latter against that Contracting Party, the other Contracting Party will at once give the Contracting Party engaged in hostilities all the support and assistance in its power."

l. ^{^} Some Ukrainians and Belarusians lived in the areas traded to Germany by the Soviets in the agreement of 28 October. For example, Chełm and Lemkivshchyna (Łemkowszczyzna), both with significant Ukrainian populations, were among the Ukrainian enclaves left in German-occupied Poland (see maps).

m. ^{^} "How are we ... to explain the phenomenon of Ukrainians rejoicing and collaborating with the Soviets? Who were these Ukrainians? That they were Ukrainians is certain, but were they communists, Nationalists, unattached peasants? The answer is "yes—they were all three".

n. ^{^} "The Soviet Union's invasion and occupation of Eastern Poland in September 1939 was a clear act of aggression in international law...But the Soviets did not declare war, nor did the Poles respond with a declaration of war. As a result there was confusion over the status of soldiers taken captive and whether they qualified for treatment as PoWs. Jurists consider that the absence of a formal declaration of war does not absolve a power from the obligations of civilised conduct towards PoWs. On the contrary, failure to do so makes those involved, both leaders and operational subordinates, liable to charges of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity."

o. ^{^} "It is generally known, however, that the British and French governments turned down German peace efforts, made public by her already at the end of last year, which for its part, owed to preparations to escalate the war." Vyacheslav Molotov, 29 March 1940.

References

Notes

This section lists full details for web sources cited in this article and shortened references for printed books. For full book details, see Bibliography below.

Bibliography

This section lists printed references used for this article. For inline citations, see references section above.

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• Davies, Norman (1994). Boże Igrzysko, vol. 2 (in Polish). ZNAK. ISBN 8370063114. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help) – God's Playground (revised edition ed.). Columbia University Press. 2002. ISBN 0231128193. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
• Dean, Martin (2000). Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941–44. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1403963711.
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• Konieczny, Bronisław. Mój wrzesień 1939. Pamiętnik z kampanii wrześniowej spisany w obozie jenieckim (in Polish). Księgarnia Akademicka. ISBN 83-7188-328-5. {{cite book}}: Text "SP. Z O.O./Biblioteka Centrum Dokumentacji Czynu Niepodległościowego" ignored (help)
• Konieczny, Bronisław (2005). Moje życie w mundurze. Czasy narodzin i upadku (in Polish). ISBN 83-7188-693-4. {{cite book}}: Text ". II RP, Księgarnia Akademicka SP. Z O.O" ignored (help)
• Krivosheev, G. F. (1997). Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century. Barnard, Christine (tr.). London: Greenhill Books. ISBN 1853672807. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |location2= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |publisher2= ignored (help)
• Kubik, Jan (1994). The Power of Symbols Against the Symbols of Power: the Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State. Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press. ISBN 0271010843.
• Kushner, Tony (1999). Refugees in an Age of Genocide. London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0714647837. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Miner, Steven Merritt (2003). Stalin's Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance Politics, 1941–1945. North Carolina: UNC Press. ISBN 0807827363.
• Moynihan, Daniel Patrick (1990). On the Law of Nations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674635752.
• Neilson, Keith (2006). Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse of the Versailles Order, 1919–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-052185713-0.
• Piotrowski, Tadeusz (1998). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife: Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. ISBN 0786403713.
• Prazmowska, Anita J. (1995). Britain and Poland 1939–1943: The Betrayed Ally. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521483859.
• Rieber, Alfred Joseph (2000). Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe: 1939–1950. London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 071465132X.
• Rummel, Rudolph Joseph (1990). Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. New Jersey: Transaction. ISBN 1560008873.
• Ryziński, Kazimierz (1990). Obrona Lwowa w roku 1939 (in Polish). ISBN 9788303033567. {{cite book}}: Text "Palestine-Rzeszów: WEiP APW, Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 50" ignored (help)
• Sanford, George (2005). Katyn and the Soviet Massacre Of 1940: Truth, Justice And Memory. London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415338735.
• Shaw, Louise Grace (2003). The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union, 1937–1939. London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0714653985.
• Snyder, Timothy (2005). "Covert Polish Missions Across the Soviet Ukrainian Border, 1928–1933". In Silvia Salvatici (ed.) (ed.). Confini: Costruzioni, Attraversamenti, Rappresentazionicura. Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro): Rubbettino. ISBN 8849812760. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Stachura, Peter D. (2004). Poland, 1918–1945: An Interpretive and Documentary History of the Second Republic. London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415343577.
• Subtelny, Orest (2000). Ukraine: a History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0802083900.
• Szubański, Rajmund (1994). Plan operacyjny "Wschód" (in Polish). ISBN 8311083134. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |publisger= ignored (help)
• Taylor, A. J. P. (1975). The Second World War: An Illustrated History. London: Putnam. ISBN 0399114122.
• Trela-Mazur, Elżbieta (1997). Włodzimierz Bonusiak, et al. (eds.) (ed.). Sowietyzacja oświaty w Małopolsce Wschodniej pod radziecką okupacją 1939–1941 (Sovietization of Education in Eastern Lesser Poland During the Soviet Occupation 1939–1941) (in Polish). Kielce: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna im. Jana Kochanowskiego. ISBN 978-837133100-8. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Tucker, Robert C. (1992). Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1929–1941. New York: Norton. ISBN 0393308693.
• Wegner, Bernd (1997). From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia, and the World, 1939–1941. Providence: Berghahn Books. ISBN 1571818820.
• Weinberg, Gerhard (1994). A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521443172.
• Wilson, Andrew (1997). Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s: A Minority Faith. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521574579.
• Zaloga, Steven J. (2002). Poland 1939: The Birth of Blitzkrieg. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1841764086.

External links

• The Soviet invasion of Poland during World War II.
• Template:Pl icon Documents related to the Soviet invasion of Poland (II wojna światowa: Źródła do historii Polski).
• Template:Pl icon IPN investigation concerning Grodno crimes