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A few small changes of wording, and simple reminders of the Soviet's proposed "justification" for their actions.
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Shortly before the onset of the war, in 1939, the Soviet Union attempted to create an anti-German alliance with the [[United Kingdom]], [[France]], [[Romania]] and Poland on the condition that Soviet troops be allowed to enter onto Polish territory.<ref name="Cienciala">[http://web.ku.edu/~eceurope/hist557/lect16.htm THE COMING OF THE WAR AND EASTERN EUROPE IN WORLD WAR II]. University of Kansas, lecture notes by professor [[Anna M. Cienciala]], 2004. Last accessed on 15 March 2006.</ref> The negotiations ended in failure, after which the Soviets instead signed the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]] with [[Nazi Germany]] on [[August 23]]. Officially a [[non-aggression pact]], the treaty contained a secret [[appendix]] in which the Soviet Union and Germany divided the territory of [[Eastern Europe]] into their respective [[Sphere of influence|spheres of influence]]. Meanwhile, the Polish [[High Command]] had withdrawn the majority of their forces from the Polish-Soviet border to face the German onslaught. On [[September 17]], following [[Nazi Germany|German]] successes in western Poland, the [[Red Army]] crossed the eastern Polish border. To justify their actions, the Soviet Union issued a declaration that the Polish state had ceased to exist,<ref name="Piotrowski">[http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0786403713&id=A4FlatJCro4C&pg=PA295&lpg=PA295&dq=1939+Soviet+citizenship+Poland&sig=qETeuFX3hbmM0VPSO13o0LmjgEc Piotrowski, p 295.]</ref> and that the Soviet actions were intended to protect the [[Ukrainians]] and [[Belarusians]] who inhabited the [[Kresy|eastern part of Poland]].<ref name="SCHULENBURG">See telegrams: [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/ns069.htm No. 317] of [[September 10]]: Schulenburg, the German ambassador in the Soviet Union, to the German Foreign Office. Moscow, [[September 10]] [[1939]]-9:40 p.m.; [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/ns073.htm No. 371] of [[September 16]]; [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/ns074.htm No. 372] of [[September 17]] Source: The Avalon Project at Yale Law School. Last accessed on [[14 November]] [[2006]]; {{pl icon}}[http://ibidem.com.pl/zrodla/1939-1945/polityka-miedzynarodowa/1939-09-17-nota-sowiecka-grzybowskiemu.html 1939 wrzesień 17, Moskwa Nota rządu sowieckiego nie przyjęta przez ambasadora Wacława Grzybowskiego] (Note of the Soviet government to the Polish government on [[17 September]] [[1939]] refused by Polish ambassador Wacław Grzybowski). Last accessed on [[15 November]] [[2006]].</ref>
Shortly before the onset of the war, in 1939, the Soviet Union attempted to create an anti-German alliance with the [[United Kingdom]], [[France]], [[Romania]] and Poland on the condition that Soviet troops be allowed to enter onto Polish territory.<ref name="Cienciala">[http://web.ku.edu/~eceurope/hist557/lect16.htm THE COMING OF THE WAR AND EASTERN EUROPE IN WORLD WAR II]. University of Kansas, lecture notes by professor [[Anna M. Cienciala]], 2004. Last accessed on 15 March 2006.</ref> The negotiations ended in failure, after which the Soviets instead signed the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]] with [[Nazi Germany]] on [[August 23]]. Officially a [[non-aggression pact]], the treaty contained a secret [[appendix]] in which the Soviet Union and Germany divided the territory of [[Eastern Europe]] into their respective [[Sphere of influence|spheres of influence]]. Meanwhile, the Polish [[High Command]] had withdrawn the majority of their forces from the Polish-Soviet border to face the German onslaught. On [[September 17]], following [[Nazi Germany|German]] successes in western Poland, the [[Red Army]] crossed the eastern Polish border. To justify their actions, the Soviet Union issued a declaration that the Polish state had ceased to exist,<ref name="Piotrowski">[http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0786403713&id=A4FlatJCro4C&pg=PA295&lpg=PA295&dq=1939+Soviet+citizenship+Poland&sig=qETeuFX3hbmM0VPSO13o0LmjgEc Piotrowski, p 295.]</ref> and that the Soviet actions were intended to protect the [[Ukrainians]] and [[Belarusians]] who inhabited the [[Kresy|eastern part of Poland]].<ref name="SCHULENBURG">See telegrams: [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/ns069.htm No. 317] of [[September 10]]: Schulenburg, the German ambassador in the Soviet Union, to the German Foreign Office. Moscow, [[September 10]] [[1939]]-9:40 p.m.; [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/ns073.htm No. 371] of [[September 16]]; [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/ns074.htm No. 372] of [[September 17]] Source: The Avalon Project at Yale Law School. Last accessed on [[14 November]] [[2006]]; {{pl icon}}[http://ibidem.com.pl/zrodla/1939-1945/polityka-miedzynarodowa/1939-09-17-nota-sowiecka-grzybowskiemu.html 1939 wrzesień 17, Moskwa Nota rządu sowieckiego nie przyjęta przez ambasadora Wacława Grzybowskiego] (Note of the Soviet government to the Polish government on [[17 September]] [[1939]] refused by Polish ambassador Wacław Grzybowski). Last accessed on [[15 November]] [[2006]].</ref>


The Soviets quickly achieved their goals, easily overcoming the sporadic Polish resistance. About 6,000 to 7,000 Polish soldiers died in the fighting against the Red Army;<ref name="Wojsko">{{pl icon}} [http://www.dzp.wojsko.pl/dzial/wydawnictwa/zwarte/pdf/EHW_1_2005.pdf Edukacja Humanistyczna w wojsku]. 1/2005. Dom wydawniczy Wojska Polskiego. ISNN 1734-6584. (Official publication of the Polish Army). Last accessed on [[28 November]] [[2006]].</ref> about 230,000 or more became [[prisoners of war]].<ref name="PWN">{{pl icon}} [http://encyklopedia.pwn.pl/haslo.php?id=3949396 obozy jenieckie żołnierzy polskich] (Prison camps for Polish soldiers) [[Encyklopedia PWN]]. Last accessed on [[28 November]] [[2006]].</ref> The Soviet Union declared all 13.5 million Polish citizens in [[Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union|the annexed areas]] as Soviet, against their will, and quelled unrest by executing or arresting thousands. Hundreds of thousands (estimates vary) were sent to Siberia in four major waves of [[deportation]]s during 1939–41.<ref name="Number_of_deportees_and_dead">The actual number deported in the period of 1939-1941 remains unknown, and various estimates vary from 350,000 ({{pl icon}} Encyklopedia PWN [http://encyklopedia.pwn.pl/53025_1.html 'OKUPACJA SOWIECKA W POLSCE 1939–41'], last retrieved on [[March 14]] [[2006]], Polish language) to over two million (mostly WWII estimates by the underground). The earlier number is based on records made by the NKVD and does not include 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 R. J. Rummel gives the number of 1,200,000; Tony Kushner and Katharine Knox give 1,500,000 in their ''Refugees in an Age of Genocide'', [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0714647837&id=4iehSAirzqQC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=Soviet+genocide+Poland&sig=JUjDTCsgSIuEB2bJi_cNDugaEQY p.219]; in his ''Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917'', [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1560008873&id=sK5CJFpb2DAC&pg=PA132&lpg=PA132&dq=Soviet+genocide+Poland&sig=84WXgJoqbcPSwNIgxheJ4_XahgM p.132]. See also: {{cite journal | author = Marek Wierzbicki, Tadeusz M. Płużański | year = 2001 | month = March | title = Wybiórcze traktowanie źródeł | journal = [[Tygodnik Solidarność]] | volume = | issue = [[March 2]], [[2001]] | pages = | id = | url = http://www.geocities.com/jedwabne/wybiorcze_traktowanie_zrodel.htm }} and {{pl icon}} {{cite conference | author = Albin Głowacki | year = 2003 | month = September | title = Formy, skala i konsekwencje sowieckich represji wobec Polaków w latach 1939-1941 | booktitle = Okupacja sowiecka ziem polskich 1939–1941 | editor = Piotr Chmielowiec | others = | edition = | publisher = [[Instytut Pamięci Narodowej]] | location = Rzeszów-Warsaw | pages = | url = http://www.ipn.gov.pl/a_140803_przemysl_konf.html | id = ISBN 978-83-89078-78-0}} According to [[Norman Davies]], almost half of the approximately one million deported Polish citizens were dead by the time the [[Sikorski-Mayski Agreement]] had been signed in 1941, as quoted by [[Bernd Wegner]], [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1571818820&id=7odfDAlO64UC&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=Davies+million+Sikorski&sig=0CeDv6IvYn5ChKiQWrmnyH2pWZg Google Books, p.78]</ref>
The Soviets quickly achieved their goals, easily overcoming the sporadic Polish resistance. About 6,000 to 7,000 resisting Polish citizens died in the fighting against the Red Army;<ref name="Wojsko">{{pl icon}} [http://www.dzp.wojsko.pl/dzial/wydawnictwa/zwarte/pdf/EHW_1_2005.pdf Edukacja Humanistyczna w wojsku]. 1/2005. Dom wydawniczy Wojska Polskiego. ISNN 1734-6584. (Official publication of the Polish Army). Last accessed on [[28 November]] [[2006]].</ref> about 230,000 or more became [[prisoners of war]].<ref name="PWN">{{pl icon}} [http://encyklopedia.pwn.pl/haslo.php?id=3949396 obozy jenieckie żołnierzy polskich] (Prison camps for Polish soldiers) [[Encyklopedia PWN]]. Last accessed on [[28 November]] [[2006]].</ref> The Soviet Union declared all 13.5 million Polish citizens in [[Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union|the annexed areas]] as Soviet, regardless of consent, and quelled unrest by executing or arresting thousands. Hundreds of thousands (estimates vary) were sent to Siberia in four major waves of [[deportation]]s during 1939–41.<ref name="Number_of_deportees_and_dead">The actual number deported in the period of 1939-1941 remains unknown, and various estimates vary from 350,000 ({{pl icon}} Encyklopedia PWN [http://encyklopedia.pwn.pl/53025_1.html 'OKUPACJA SOWIECKA W POLSCE 1939–41'], last retrieved on [[March 14]] [[2006]], Polish language) to over two million (mostly WWII estimates by the underground). The earlier number is based on records made by the NKVD and does not include 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 R. J. Rummel gives the number of 1,200,000; Tony Kushner and Katharine Knox give 1,500,000 in their ''Refugees in an Age of Genocide'', [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0714647837&id=4iehSAirzqQC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=Soviet+genocide+Poland&sig=JUjDTCsgSIuEB2bJi_cNDugaEQY p.219]; in his ''Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917'', [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1560008873&id=sK5CJFpb2DAC&pg=PA132&lpg=PA132&dq=Soviet+genocide+Poland&sig=84WXgJoqbcPSwNIgxheJ4_XahgM p.132]. See also: {{cite journal | author = Marek Wierzbicki, Tadeusz M. Płużański | year = 2001 | month = March | title = Wybiórcze traktowanie źródeł | journal = [[Tygodnik Solidarność]] | volume = | issue = [[March 2]], [[2001]] | pages = | id = | url = http://www.geocities.com/jedwabne/wybiorcze_traktowanie_zrodel.htm }} and {{pl icon}} {{cite conference | author = Albin Głowacki | year = 2003 | month = September | title = Formy, skala i konsekwencje sowieckich represji wobec Polaków w latach 1939-1941 | booktitle = Okupacja sowiecka ziem polskich 1939–1941 | editor = Piotr Chmielowiec | others = | edition = | publisher = [[Instytut Pamięci Narodowej]] | location = Rzeszów-Warsaw | pages = | url = http://www.ipn.gov.pl/a_140803_przemysl_konf.html | id = ISBN 978-83-89078-78-0}} According to [[Norman Davies]], almost half of the approximately one million deported Polish citizens were dead by the time the [[Sikorski-Mayski Agreement]] had been signed in 1941, as quoted by [[Bernd Wegner]], [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1571818820&id=7odfDAlO64UC&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=Davies+million+Sikorski&sig=0CeDv6IvYn5ChKiQWrmnyH2pWZg Google Books, p.78]</ref>


The Soviet military operation allowed for the joining of [[Ukrainians]] and [[Belarusians]] within the new expanded Soviet [[Ukrainian SSR|Ukrainian]] and [[Byelorussian SSR|Byelorussian]] [[Soviet republic|republics]]. The 1939 annexation of these territories was an important event in the [[history of Ukraine]] and [[history of Belarus|Belarus]], which eventually achieved their independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.<ref name="Wilson">Wilson concedes that "Ukrainian nationalists cannot denounce the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact in the same terms as their Baltic counterparts, as it led to the unification of most Ukrainian lands". Wilson, p 152.</ref> During the existence of the [[People's Republic of Poland]], the Soviet invasion was considered a delicate subject, almost [[taboo]], often omitted from official history, in order to preserve the illusion of "eternal friendship" between members of the [[Eastern Bloc]].<ref name="Ferro"/>
The Soviet military operation allowed for the joining of [[Ukrainians]] and [[Belarusians]] within the new expanded Soviet [[Ukrainian SSR|Ukrainian]] and [[Byelorussian SSR|Byelorussian]] [[Soviet republic|republics]]. The 1939 annexation of these territories was an important event in the [[history of Ukraine]] and [[history of Belarus|Belarus]], with each republic eventually their becoming sovereign states following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.<ref name="Wilson">Wilson concedes that "Ukrainian nationalists cannot denounce the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact in the same terms as their Baltic counterparts, as it led to the unification of most Ukrainian lands". Wilson, p 152.</ref> During the existence of the [[People's Republic of Poland]], the Soviet invasion was considered a delicate subject, almost [[taboo]], often omitted from official history, in order to preserve the illusion of "eternal friendship" between members of the [[Eastern Bloc]].<ref name="Ferro"/>


==Prelude==
==Prelude==
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[[Image:Rzeczpospolita 1939 Polish divisions.png|thumb|left|250px|Deployment of Polish divisions on [[1 September]]. The majority of Polish forces were concentrated on the German border; the Soviet border was mostly stripped of units.]]
[[Image:Rzeczpospolita 1939 Polish divisions.png|thumb|left|250px|Deployment of Polish divisions on [[1 September]]. The majority of Polish forces were concentrated on the German border; the Soviet border was mostly stripped of units.]]


In the late 1930s, the Soviet Union attempted to create an anti-German alliance with the [[United Kingdom]], [[France]] and [[Poland]], all opponents of German expansion.<ref name="Cienciala"/><ref name=Jackson71>Jackson, pp. 71-74.</ref><ref name=Boyce>Boyce, pp. 263-264.</ref><ref name=Scott>William Evans Scott, "Alliance Against Hitler: the origins of the Franco-Soviet pact", Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 1962, {{LCCN|62||020214}}</ref><ref name=Gron>"The USSR proposed a ten-year Anglo-French-Soviet alliance which would include Rumania and Poland." Gronowicz, p. 51.</ref><ref name=Melt>Mel'tiukhov, pp. 181-200.</ref> Negotiations for a Soviet-British-French alliance failed in summer 1939 partly because of Russian insistence on a sphere of influence stretching from Finland to Romania and on activation of the treaty not only by direct aggression but by "indirect aggression" towards territories in the assumed Soviet sphere of influence.<ref>Shaw, p 119; Neilson, p 298.</ref> For their part, the Soviets believed the British and the French could not be trusted on the principle of collective security, since they had failed to [[Spanish Civil War|assist Spain]] or [[Treaty of Munich|protect Czechoslovakia]] from the Fascists and Nazis, and that the western allies might be content to see the Soviet Union and Germany exhaust themselves fighting each other.<ref>Kenez, pp 129-31.</ref> Soviet demands for right of passage and pre-emptive entry into [[Poland]], [[Romania]] and the [[Baltic States]] were rejected by the respective governments, who, as [[Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs]], [[Józef Beck]], put it, did not trust the [[Red Army]], once on their territory, to ever leave.<ref name="Cienciala"/> On 23 August, the Soviets instead signed the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]] with Nazi Germany, nine days before the German invasion. Officially a [[non-aggression pact]], the agreement included a secret [[appendix]] in which the Soviet Union and Germany divided [[Eastern Europe]] into their respective [[Sphere of influence|spheres of influence]]<ref>Estonia and Latvia were placed in the Soviet sphere of influence and Lithuania in the German. According to Von Ribbentrop, Germany had agreed to what Britain had refused: a free hand in the Baltic and a free hand in the Balkan states. Weinberg, p 963.</ref> and partitioned Poland along a line of the Narew, Vistula, and San rivers.<ref>On 28 September, this border was redefined by adding the area between the Vistula and Bug to the German sphere. In return, Lithuania was added to the Soviet sphere. Sanford, p 21.</ref> The treaty was one of the decisive factors in convincing [[Hitler]] to begin the [[invasion of Poland]].<ref name="Cienciala"/>
In the late 1930s, the Soviet Union attempted to create an anti-German alliance with the [[United Kingdom]], [[France]] and [[Poland]], all opponents of German expansion.<ref name="Cienciala"/><ref name=Jackson71>Jackson, pp. 71-74.</ref><ref name=Boyce>Boyce, pp. 263-264.</ref><ref name=Scott>William Evans Scott, "Alliance Against Hitler: the origins of the Franco-Soviet pact", Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 1962, {{LCCN|62||020214}}</ref><ref name=Gron>"The USSR proposed a ten-year Anglo-French-Soviet alliance which would include Rumania and Poland." Gronowicz, p. 51.</ref><ref name=Melt>Mel'tiukhov, pp. 181-200.</ref> Negotiations for a Soviet-British-French alliance failed in summer 1939 partly because of Soviet insistence on a sphere of influence stretching from Finland to Romania and on activation of the treaty not only by direct aggression but by "indirect aggression" towards territories in the assumed Soviet sphere of influence.<ref>Shaw, p 119; Neilson, p 298.</ref> For their part, the Soviets believed the British and the French could not be trusted on the principle of collective security, since they had failed to [[Spanish Civil War|assist Spain]] or [[Treaty of Munich|protect Czechoslovakia]] from the Fascists and Nazis, and that the western allies might be content to see the Soviet Union and Germany exhaust themselves fighting each other.<ref>Kenez, pp 129-31.</ref> Soviet demands for right of passage and pre-emptive entry into [[Poland]], [[Romania]] and the [[Baltic States]] were rejected by the respective governments, who, as [[Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs]], [[Józef Beck]], put it, did not trust the [[Red Army]], once on their territory, to ever leave.<ref name="Cienciala"/> On 23 August, the Soviets instead signed the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]] with Nazi Germany, nine days before the German invasion. Officially a [[non-aggression pact]], the agreement included a secret [[appendix]] in which the Soviet Union and Germany divided [[Eastern Europe]] into their respective [[Sphere of influence|spheres of influence]]<ref>Estonia and Latvia were placed in the Soviet sphere of influence and Lithuania in the German. According to Von Ribbentrop, Germany had agreed to what Britain had refused: a free hand in the Baltic and a free hand in the Balkan states. Weinberg, p 963.</ref> and partitioned Poland along a line of the Narew, Vistula, and San rivers.<ref>On 28 September, this border was redefined by adding the area between the Vistula and Bug to the German sphere. In return, Lithuania was added to the Soviet sphere. Sanford, p 21.</ref> The treaty was one of the decisive factors in convincing [[Hitler]] to begin the [[invasion of Poland]].<ref name="Cienciala"/>


The treaty afforded the Soviet Union additional defensive space in case of hostilities in the West.<ref name="Dunnigan">[[James F. Dunnigan|Dunnigan]], [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0806526092&id=cbzRjpCLzsgC&pg=RA1-PA132&lpg=RA1-PA132&dq=Soviet+invasion+of+Poland+1939+reason&sig=oIamLKBvsBrn86-hHASg59MRtUo p. 132.]</ref> It also offered a chance to regain control over disputed territories lost after the [[Russian Revolution of 1917]] and ceded to Poland in the aftermath of [[Battle of Warsaw (1920)|its defeat twenty years earlier]] and the possibility of reuniting the eastern and western branches of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples under Soviet control.<ref name="Sanford"/><ref name="Snyder_P">[[Timothy Snyder|Snyder]], [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN8849812760&id=TQR5YSY-b1QC&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&sig=4caX_oMm1TLCtmRTOCFtnf9PvvM#PPA77,M1 p. 77.]</ref><ref name="Dmitri Trenin">[[Dmitri Trenin]], [http://www.carnegie.ru/en/pubs/books/volume/56866.htm The Spacial Dimension of Russian History]. From ''The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border Between Geopolitics and Globalization''. Carnegie Moscow Center. Last accessed [[2 March]] [[2007]].</ref>
The treaty afforded the Soviet Union additional defensive space in case of hostilities in the West. Indeed, Soviet infantry doctrine required ground forces to be spread out over scores of miles in order to counter the dagger-thrust tactics that characterised Blitzkrieg.<ref name="Dunnigan">[[James F. Dunnigan|Dunnigan]], [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0806526092&id=cbzRjpCLzsgC&pg=RA1-PA132&lpg=RA1-PA132&dq=Soviet+invasion+of+Poland+1939+reason&sig=oIamLKBvsBrn86-hHASg59MRtUo p. 132.]</ref> It also offered a chance to regain control over disputed territories lost after the [[Russian Revolution of 1917]] and ceded to Poland in the aftermath of [[Battle of Warsaw (1920)|its defeat twenty years earlier]] and the possibility of reuniting the eastern and western branches of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples under Soviet control.<ref name="Sanford"/><ref name="Snyder_P">[[Timothy Snyder|Snyder]], [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN8849812760&id=TQR5YSY-b1QC&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&sig=4caX_oMm1TLCtmRTOCFtnf9PvvM#PPA77,M1 p. 77.]</ref><ref name="Dmitri Trenin">[[Dmitri Trenin]], [http://www.carnegie.ru/en/pubs/books/volume/56866.htm The Spacial Dimension of Russian History]. From ''The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border Between Geopolitics and Globalization''. Carnegie Moscow Center. Last accessed [[2 March]] [[2007]].</ref>
To facilitate a war between the [[capitalist]] powers might lead to their mutual exhaustion,<ref name="Cienciala"/> opening new territories to the spread of [[communist]] [[ideology]].<ref name="Gelven">[[Michael Gelven|Gelven]], [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0271010541&id=ru49HfH1sSEC&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236&dq=Soviet+invasion+of+Poland+1939+reason&sig=e61IZtF39chYJocVQRhdbXG47I0, p.236.]</ref>
To facilitate a war between the [[capitalist]] powers might lead to their mutual exhaustion,<ref name="Cienciala"/> opening new territories to the spread of [[communist]] [[ideology]].<ref name="Gelven">[[Michael Gelven|Gelven]], [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0271010541&id=ru49HfH1sSEC&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236&dq=Soviet+invasion+of+Poland+1939+reason&sig=e61IZtF39chYJocVQRhdbXG47I0, p.236.]</ref>


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The Polish [[battle of the Border|defence of the borders]] was already over by [[17 September]] [[1939]] and the major Polish counter-offensive of the [[Battle of the Bzura]] under way. The Polish military had planned to retreat and reorganize along the [[Romanian Bridgehead]], an area near the southern border with Romania where they intended to hold out and wait for an agreed French attack to distract the Germans in the west. The Poles were forced to abandon that strategy when the over-450,000-1,000,000-strong<ref name="Sanford"/> Soviet Union [[Red Army]] swarmed into the [[Kresy|eastern regions of Poland]] with seven [[field army|field armies]] and created the [[Belorussian Front (1939)|Belarusian]] [[Front (Soviet Army)|front]], under [[Mikhail Kovalyov]], and the [[Ukrainian Front (1939)|Ukrainian]] front, under [[Semyon Timoshenko]].<ref name="Sanford"/> In contrast, the Polish border defence corps in the east (''[[Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza]]'') consisted of only about 20 understrength battalions,<ref name="Wojsko"/> or roughly 20,000 troops, under the command of general [[Wilhelm Orlik-Rueckemann]].<ref name="Sanford">[[George Sanford (scholar)|Sanford]], [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0415338735&id=PZXvUuvfv-oC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&ots=_1tnCiY3_f&dq=Soviet+invasion+of+Poland+1939&sig=WpYsVr5jLk6yIVAYnQqeR3hdXMU Google Books, p. 20-24.]</ref>
The Polish [[battle of the Border|defence of the borders]] was already over by [[17 September]] [[1939]] and the major Polish counter-offensive of the [[Battle of the Bzura]] under way. The Polish military had planned to retreat and reorganize along the [[Romanian Bridgehead]], an area near the southern border with Romania where they intended to hold out and wait for an agreed French attack to distract the Germans in the west. The Poles were forced to abandon that strategy when the over-450,000-1,000,000-strong<ref name="Sanford"/> Soviet Union [[Red Army]] swarmed into the [[Kresy|eastern regions of Poland]] with seven [[field army|field armies]] and created the [[Belorussian Front (1939)|Belarusian]] [[Front (Soviet Army)|front]], under [[Mikhail Kovalyov]], and the [[Ukrainian Front (1939)|Ukrainian]] front, under [[Semyon Timoshenko]].<ref name="Sanford"/> In contrast, the Polish border defence corps in the east (''[[Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza]]'') consisted of only about 20 understrength battalions,<ref name="Wojsko"/> or roughly 20,000 troops, under the command of general [[Wilhelm Orlik-Rueckemann]].<ref name="Sanford">[[George Sanford (scholar)|Sanford]], [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0415338735&id=PZXvUuvfv-oC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&ots=_1tnCiY3_f&dq=Soviet+invasion+of+Poland+1939&sig=WpYsVr5jLk6yIVAYnQqeR3hdXMU Google Books, p. 20-24.]</ref>


The invasion violated the [[Riga Peace Treaty]], the [[Soviet-Polish Non-Aggression Pact]] and other international bilateral and multilateral treaties.<ref name="treaties">The Soviet Union 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|London Convention on the Definition of Aggression]]; see for instance: {{en icon}} {{cite book | author =[[Tadeusz Piotrowski]] | coauthors = | title =Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide... | year =1997 | editor = | pages = | chapter = | chapterurl = | publisher =McFarland & Company | location = | id =ISBN 978-0-7864-0371-4| url =http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0786403713&id=A4FlatJCro4C&pg=PA295&lpg=PA295&dq=1939+Soviet+citizenship+Poland&sig=qETeuFX3hbmM0VPSO13o0LmjgEc | format = | accessdate = }}</ref> Soviet [[diplomat]]s stated that they were "protecting the [[Ukrainians|Ukrainian]] and [[Belarusians|Belarusian]] [[historical demographics of Poland|minorities of eastern Poland]] in view of the imminent Polish collapse."<ref>On 17 September, Molotov declared in a radio speech that treaties between Poland and the Soviet Union no longer applied because the Polish government had abandoned its people and virtually ceased to exist. Degras, pp 374-5. [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vyacheslav_Molotov Read extracts from Molotov's speech on Wikiquote.]</ref> Britain and France denounced Soviet actions as unjustified and reaffirmed their obligations to Poland.<ref>Obligations by the [[Polish-British Common Defence Pact]] and the [[Franco-Polish Military Alliance]].</ref><ref name="Sanford"/>
The invasion violated the [[Riga Peace Treaty]], the [[Soviet-Polish Non-Aggression Pact]] and other international bilateral and multilateral treaties between the Soviet Union and the Polish state, which the Soviets no longer recognised.<ref name="treaties">The Soviet Union 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|London Convention on the Definition of Aggression]]; see for instance: {{en icon}} {{cite book | author =[[Tadeusz Piotrowski]] | coauthors = | title =Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide... | year =1997 | editor = | pages = | chapter = | chapterurl = | publisher =McFarland & Company | location = | id =ISBN 978-0-7864-0371-4| url =http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0786403713&id=A4FlatJCro4C&pg=PA295&lpg=PA295&dq=1939+Soviet+citizenship+Poland&sig=qETeuFX3hbmM0VPSO13o0LmjgEc | format = | accessdate = }}</ref> Soviet [[diplomat]]s stated that they were "protecting the [[Ukrainians|Ukrainian]] and [[Belarusians|Belarusian]] [[historical demographics of Poland|minorities of eastern Poland]] in view of the imminent Polish collapse."<ref>On 17 September, Molotov declared in a radio speech that treaties between Poland and the Soviet Union no longer applied because the Polish government had abandoned its people and virtually ceased to exist. Degras, pp 374-5. [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vyacheslav_Molotov Read extracts from Molotov's speech on Wikiquote.]</ref> Britain and France denounced Soviet actions as unjustified and reaffirmed their obligations to Poland.<ref>Obligations by the [[Polish-British Common Defence Pact]] and the [[Franco-Polish Military Alliance]].</ref><ref name="Sanford"/>


[[Image:Lviv 1939 Soviet Cavalry.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Red Army cavalry in Lviv, 1939]]
[[Image:Lviv 1939 Soviet Cavalry.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Red Army cavalry in Lviv, 1939]]

Revision as of 17:45, 4 April 2007

Soviet invasion of Poland
Part of the invasion of Poland in World War II
Red Army invades Poland, 17 September 1939. Red Army invades Poland, 17 September 1939.
Date17 September – 6 October 1939
Location
Poland
Result Decisive Soviet victory
Belligerents
Poland Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
Edward Rydz-Śmigły Mikhail Kovalov (Belarusian front),
Semyon Timoshenko (Ukrainian Front)
Strength
Over 20,000[1]
20 understrength battalions of Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza[2] and improvised parts of the Polish Army.[3]		 Estimates vary from 466,516[4] to over 800,000[3]
33+ divisions,
11+ brigades
Casualties and losses
Estimates range from 3,000 dead and 20,000 wounded[5] to about 7,000 dead or missing,[2]
not counting about 2,500 POWs executed in immediate reprisals or murdered by anti-Polish OUN bands.[5]
250,000[2]-400,000[6] captured		 Estimates range from 737 dead and under 1,862 total casualties (Soviet estimates)[5][7]
through 1,475 killed and missing and 2,383 wounded[8]
to about 2,500 dead or missing[3]
or 3,000 dead and under 10,000 wounded (Polish estimates).[5]

The Soviet Invasion of Poland of 1939 started on September 17, 1939, more than two weeks after the German attack on Poland which had begun on September 1. It ended in a decisive victory for the Soviet Red Army.

Shortly before the onset of the war, in 1939, the Soviet Union attempted to create an anti-German alliance with the United Kingdom, France, Romania and Poland on the condition that Soviet troops be allowed to enter onto Polish territory.[9] The negotiations ended in failure, after which the Soviets instead signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany on August 23. Officially a non-aggression pact, the treaty contained a secret appendix in which the Soviet Union and Germany divided the territory of Eastern Europe into their respective spheres of influence. Meanwhile, the Polish High Command had withdrawn the majority of their forces from the Polish-Soviet border to face the German onslaught. On September 17, following German successes in western Poland, the Red Army crossed the eastern Polish border. To justify their actions, the Soviet Union issued a declaration that the Polish state had ceased to exist,[10] and that the Soviet actions were intended to protect the Ukrainians and Belarusians who inhabited the eastern part of Poland.[11]

The Soviets quickly achieved their goals, easily overcoming the sporadic Polish resistance. About 6,000 to 7,000 resisting Polish citizens died in the fighting against the Red Army;[2] about 230,000 or more became prisoners of war.[12] The Soviet Union declared all 13.5 million Polish citizens in the annexed areas as Soviet, regardless of consent, and quelled unrest by executing or arresting thousands. Hundreds of thousands (estimates vary) were sent to Siberia in four major waves of deportations during 1939–41.[13]

The Soviet military operation allowed for the joining of Ukrainians and Belarusians within the new expanded Soviet Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics. The 1939 annexation of these territories was an important event in the history of Ukraine and Belarus, with each republic eventually their becoming sovereign states following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.[14] During the existence of the People's Republic of Poland, the Soviet invasion was considered a delicate subject, almost taboo, often omitted from official history, in order to preserve the illusion of "eternal friendship" between members of the Eastern Bloc.[15]

Prelude

The Polish-Lithuanian union of the fourteenth century began the cultural assimilation into Polish culture (Polonization) of the territories with large Ruthenian populations. This process intensified after the Union of Lublin in the sixteenth century. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russian Tsardom fought over the mostly Ruthenian territories for centuries in a series of Polish-Russian Wars.

Deployment of Polish divisions on 1 September. The majority of Polish forces were concentrated on the German border; the Soviet border was mostly stripped of units.

In the late 1930s, the Soviet Union attempted to create an anti-German alliance with the United Kingdom, France and Poland, all opponents of German expansion.[9][16][17][18][19][20] Negotiations for a Soviet-British-French alliance failed in summer 1939 partly because of Soviet insistence on a sphere of influence stretching from Finland to Romania and on activation of the treaty not only by direct aggression but by "indirect aggression" towards territories in the assumed Soviet sphere of influence.[21] For their part, the Soviets believed the British and the French could not be trusted on the principle of collective security, since they had failed to assist Spain or protect Czechoslovakia from the Fascists and Nazis, and that the western allies might be content to see the Soviet Union and Germany exhaust themselves fighting each other.[22] Soviet demands for right of passage and pre-emptive entry into Poland, Romania and the Baltic States were rejected by the respective governments, who, as Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Józef Beck, put it, did not trust the Red Army, once on their territory, to ever leave.[9] On 23 August, the Soviets instead signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, nine days before the German invasion. Officially a non-aggression pact, the agreement included a secret appendix in which the Soviet Union and Germany divided Eastern Europe into their respective spheres of influence[23] and partitioned Poland along a line of the Narew, Vistula, and San rivers.[24] The treaty was one of the decisive factors in convincing Hitler to begin the invasion of Poland.[9]

The treaty afforded the Soviet Union additional defensive space in case of hostilities in the West. Indeed, Soviet infantry doctrine required ground forces to be spread out over scores of miles in order to counter the dagger-thrust tactics that characterised Blitzkrieg.[25] It also offered a chance to regain control over disputed territories lost after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and ceded to Poland in the aftermath of its defeat twenty years earlier and the possibility of reuniting the eastern and western branches of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples under Soviet control.[5][26][27] To facilitate a war between the capitalist powers might lead to their mutual exhaustion,[9] opening new territories to the spread of communist ideology.[28]

The German government followed the Polish September Campaign with repeated requests for the Soviets to act upon the August agreement and attack Poland from the east. The German ambassador to Moscow, Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, and Stalin's protegé Vyacheslav Molotov exchanged a series of diplomatic communiqués on the matter.[11] The Soviets delayed their response because they needed time to mobilise the Red Army and were distracted by the recent flare up in the Soviet-Japanese Border Wars. They also had to consider the possible reaction of the Western Allies were they to intervene before Poland had disintegrated.[29][30] The Soviets and Japan signed an armistice on September 16, following the Battle of Khalkhin Gol. Soviet forces in Europe were about to move.[29][5]

Military campaign

Situation after September 14, 1939. Note the Soviet advance in the east.

The Polish defence of the borders was already over by 17 September 1939 and the major Polish counter-offensive of the Battle of the Bzura under way. The Polish military had planned to retreat and reorganize along the Romanian Bridgehead, an area near the southern border with Romania where they intended to hold out and wait for an agreed French attack to distract the Germans in the west. The Poles were forced to abandon that strategy when the over-450,000-1,000,000-strong[5] Soviet Union Red Army swarmed into the eastern regions of Poland with seven field armies and created the Belarusian front, under Mikhail Kovalyov, and the Ukrainian front, under Semyon Timoshenko.[5] In contrast, the Polish border defence corps in the east (Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza) consisted of only about 20 understrength battalions,[2] or roughly 20,000 troops, under the command of general Wilhelm Orlik-Rueckemann.[5]

The invasion violated the Riga Peace Treaty, the Soviet-Polish Non-Aggression Pact and other international bilateral and multilateral treaties between the Soviet Union and the Polish state, which the Soviets no longer recognised.[31] Soviet diplomats stated that they were "protecting the Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities of eastern Poland in view of the imminent Polish collapse."[32] Britain and France denounced Soviet actions as unjustified and reaffirmed their obligations to Poland.[33][5]

Red Army cavalry in Lviv, 1939

The Polish commander-in-chief, Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-Śmigły, at first ordered the border forces to resist the Soviets. He then consulted Prime Minister of Poland Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski and ordered them to fall back and not to engage the Soviets except in self-defense.[2][7] These conflicting orders created confusion[5]because Polish forces had no option but to respond when attacked by the Red Army, leading to various clashes and small battles.[2] Polish soldiers and the local Polish population attempted to defend their homeland against the new invaders, though in some cases non-ethnic-Polish populations, particularly Ukrainians and Belarusians, welcomed the invading troops as liberators.[8] The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists rose against the Poles, and communist partisans organised local revolts, for example in Skidel.[5][34] The NKVD acted quickly to discipline such rogue elements.

File:Second World War europe.PNG
Invasion of Poland: Germany and its allies from the west (blue), Soviets from the east (red).

Polish political and military leaders believed they were losing the war even before the Soviet invasion put the issue beyond doubt,[5] but they refused to surrender or negotiate a peace with Germany. The Polish military's original fall-back plan had called for a long-term defence against Germany in the south-east of Poland, in the expectation of relief from a promised Western Allies attack on Germany's western border;[5] but the Soviet attack made that impossible. So the Polish government now ordered all units to evacuate Poland and reassemble in France.[5] At around midnight on 17 September, the Polish government crossed into Romania. The Polish government in exile established itself quickly on foreign soil and set up the Polish Underground State to provide military and civilian resistance in Nazi-occupied Poland.[5]

File:German Soviet.jpg
Soviet and German officers meet after the Soviet invasion of Poland.

Polish forces tried to manoeuvre towards the Romanian bridgehead area. They were still actively resisting the German invasion as well as occasionally clashing with the Soviet forces. The Germans defeated the Polish Armies Kraków and Lublin at the Battle of Tomaszów Lubelski, the second largest of the campaign (after the battle of Bzura),[35] which lasted from 17 September to 20 September.[36] Lwów (Lviv) surrendered on 22 September, a week after the Germans had handed operations over to the Soviets in mid-siege.[37][38] In a similar example of co-operation, the Wehrmacht passed the Brest Fortress, taken after the Battle of Brześć Litewski, to the Soviet 29th Tank Brigade when they arrived on 17 September;[39] and the two forces held a joint victory parade in the town under German General Heinz Guderian and Soviet Brigadier Semyon Krivoshein.[39] Soviet forces took Wilno on 19 September after a two-day battle, and the Red Army captured Grodno on 24 September after a four-day battle.

Soviet propaganda poster depicting the Red Army advance into Western Ukraine as liberation of the Ukrainians. The Ukrainian text reads: "We stretched our hand to our brothers so that they could straighten their backs and throw off the despised rule of the whips that lasted for centuries." The person thrown off the peasants' backs could be interpreted as the caricature of Piłsudski in the Polish military uniform holding the whip.

The Red Army reached the line of the rivers Narew, Western Bug, Vistula and San by 28 September. They often met German units advancing from the other side. Soviet troops drove Polish units into the forests at the battle of Wytyczno on 1 October, one of the last battles of the campaign.[40][41]

The Polish capital Warsaw held out till 28 September, defended by militias, civilian volunteers, and reorganised retreating units. And some isolated Polish garrisons managed to hold their positions long after being surrounded by enemy forces. The Modlin Fortress, north of Warsaw, surrendered after an intense sixteen day battle on 29 September. Oksywie garrison held out until 19 September, and Hel was defended until 2 October. The last operational unit of the Polish Army to surrender was General Franciszek Kleeberg's Independent Operational Group Polesie (Samodzielna Grupa Operacyjna "Polesie") on 6 October, after the four-day Battle of Kock, near Lublin, which marked the end of the September Campaign. 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".[42]

Aftermath

Further information: [[:History of Poland (1939-1945), Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union and Treatment of Polish citizens by occupiers]]
File:Guderian, Kriwoszein.jpg
The Red Army takes over in Brześć Litewski. The Wehrmacht general at the centre is Heinz Guderian; the Soviet general is Semyon Krivoshein.
Small-town residents of Western Byelorussia gather to welcome the Red Army as they arrive to take over the territory. The Russian text reading "Long Live the great theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin-Stalin" contains a spelling error.

Between 6,000 and 7,000 Polish soldiers died fighting the Red Army.[2] The Soviets took 230,000 to 450,000 Polish soldiers prisoner—230,000 immediately after the September campaign and 70,000 more after the Soviets annexed the Baltic States and assumed custody of Polish soldiers interned there.[12][2] [6][43][2] The Soviets often failed to honour terms of surrender. In some cases, they promised Polish soldiers freedom after surrender and then arrested them when they lay down their arms.[5]

The Soviet treatment of prisoners was controversial, since they did not regard Polish military prisoners as prisoners of war but as counter-revolutionaries illegitimately resisting the legal Soviet reclamation of West Ukraine and West Belarus.[44] The USSR refused to allow Red Cross supervision of prisoners on the grounds that it had not signed the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Treatment of PoWs and did not recognise the Hague Convention. Prisoners were handed over by the military to the NKVD and sentenced under clauses in the Soviet Penal Code, including treason and counter-revolution, and were not considered subject to the "Regulations for the Treatment of Prisoners of War" approved by the Soviet Council of Ministers.[45]

The Soviets murdered tens of thousands of Polish prisoners-of-war: some—like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński, who was captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September—during the invasion itself.[5][46][47]On the 24 September, in the village of Grabowiec near Zamość, the Soviets murdered forty-two staff and patients of a Polish military hospital.[48] After a tactical Polish victory at the battle of Szack on 28 September, where the combined KOP forces under general Wilhelm Orlik-Rueckemann routed the Soviet 52nd Rifle Division, the Soviets executed all the Polish officers they captured.[49] Over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre.[39][5]

The Soviets conquered about 250,000 square kilometres of territory, inhabited by 13.5 million Polish citizens and suffered, according to Molotov's report to the Supreme Soviet on 31 October, 737 fatalities and 1,862 casualties, and according to Polish specialists, up to 3,000 killed and 8,000–10,000 wounded.[7][50] On 28 September, a further secret German-Soviet protocol adjusted the arrangements of August:[3] now all of Lithuania was made a Soviet, not German, sphere of influence, and the dividing line in Poland was moved in Germany's favour to the Bug River. With few exceptions, the Soviet Union annexed all Polish territory east of the line of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Western Bug, and San. The Soviet and German annexations are sometimes referred to as a 'fourth partition of Poland'.[5] Confiscation of Polish property, both private and state, begun almost immediately; it was either nationalized or redistributed (in case of land). [51]During the following two years, approximately 100,000 Polish citizens were arrested;[52] and between 350,000 and over 1,500,000 Poles were deported, of whom between 250,000 and 1,000,000, mostly civilians, died.[13] The Soviets were as hostile and destructive towards Polish culture and the Polish people as the Nazis.[53][54]

Poland and the Soviet Union did not officially declare war on each other:[5] the Soviets effectively broke off diplomatic relations when they withdrew recognition of the Polish government at the start of the invasion.[11] Polish-Soviet relations were briefly re-established in 1941 after the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement but severed again as news of the Katyn massacre emerged in 1943.[55] The Soviets then lobbied the Western Allies to recognize the pro-Soviet Polish puppet government of Wanda Wasilewska in Moscow.[56]

The reaction of Poland's two main allies, France and Britain, was muted, since neither wanted a confrontation with the Soviet Union at that stage. The British evaded their obligations under the terms of the Anglo-Polish Agreement of 25 August 1939, which had promised Poland full support and assistance if attacked by a European power.[57] British Foreign Secretary Halifax bluntly told Polish Ambassador Raczyński that Britain was free to make up its own mind whether to declare war on the Soviet Union. British Prime Minister Chamberlain suggested to his cabinet that a strong statement condemning the Soviet invasion be released, committing Britain to restoring Polish statehood; but nothing came of it, and the government issued only general statements of condemnation.[58] This lack of action, added to the negligible military assistance provided to Poland during the German invasion, caused great resentment against their western allies among many Poles.

Polish border-changes, 1939-1945.
Dominant nationalities in Poland and surrounding regions, 1931
Rendezvous. David Low's cartoon, published in the Evening Standard on 20 September 1939, shows Hitler greeting Stalin, following their invasion of Poland, with the words, "The scum of the earth, I believe?". To which Stalin replies, "The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?"

Of the 13.5 million civilians living in the newly annexed territories, Poles formed the largest single ethnic group; but Ukrainians and Belarusians together comprised over 50% of the population of those regions.[59] The annexation did not give the Soviet Union control of all territories inhabited by Ukrainians or Belarusians, some of which fell to the west of the new German-Soviet border.[60] Nonetheless, the Soviet annexation united the vast majority of Ukrainians and Belarusians within the expanded Soviet Ukrainian and Belarusian republics.

Not all Ukrainians or Belarusians welcomed reunification under the regime responsible for the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 (in practice, the poor usually welcomed the Soviets, while the elites tended to join the opposition).[61][62] In fact, the Soviets went on to pursue policies of Sovietization inimical to Ukrainian culture and Belarusian culture, as well as to Polish culture.[59] These policies, which required compulsory collectivization of the whole region, were accompanied by the repression, bordering on terror, of any opposition. Soviet authorities broke up all political parties and public associations and imprisoned or executed their leaders as "enemies of the people". Even the anti-Polish Ukrainian Insurrection Army was to meet the same fate after 1939, being finally wiped out in Operation Wisła in 1947.[63] By that time they had done much to convince western Ukrainians that their future lay in the realisation of an independent and undivided Ukrainian state rather than in integration with the Soviet Union.[61][62]The unifications of 1939 were nevertheless an important event in the history of Ukraine and Belarus because the two republics eventually achieved independence after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, forming the Commonwealth of Independent States with the Russian Federation.[14] Orest Subtelny sums up the historical significance of the Ukrainian reunification:

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 postwar period, but an event of epochal significance in the history of Ukraine.[64]

Soviet censors suppressed details of the 1939 invasion and its aftermath. Immediately afterwards, Stalin insisted that the Anglo-French alliance had attacked Germany, not the other way round;[65] and Molotov said Germany had made peace efforts which had been turned down by "Anglo-French imperialists".[66] All Soviet governments denied the existence of the Secret Protocol to the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact until December 1989, when it was "found" in the Soviet archives. [9]This censorship policy was applied in the People's Republic of Poland and in the Eastern Bloc as a whole, in order to preserve the image of "Polish-Soviet friendship" promoted by the respective communist governments. The official policy varied from banning all mention of the invasion to a simplified portrayal of it as a "liberation" of the Polish people from "oligarchic capitalism", and the "reunification of Belarusian and Ukrainian people"; any further study or teaching of the subject was strongly discouraged.[41][39][15] Despite these attempts at whitewashing and the silencing of research and discussion about the the Soviet occupation and massacres in Poland, the matter was treated in various underground publications (bibuła)[41] or in other media, such as the 1982 protest songs of Jacek Kaczmarski (Ballada wrześniowa).[67]

Orders of battle

Battles of the Soviet invasion

The battles related to the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 include:

Notes

  1. ^ It is very hard to judge the strength of Polish forces on the eastern border facing the Soviets. 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 after the war. KOP forces guarding the eastern border numbered around 20,000 (Sanford). On 21 September, an improvised KOP "army" had a strength of 8700 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 (Sanford). The total Polish army on 1 September 1939, counting un-mobilized (and sometimes, never mobilized) units, numbered about 950,000 (PWN). Historians agree that the vast majority of these forces never saw action against the Soviets.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Template:Pl icon Edukacja Humanistyczna w wojsku. 1/2005. Dom wydawniczy Wojska Polskiego. ISNN 1734-6584. (Official publication of the Polish Army). Last accessed on 28 November 2006.
  3. ^ a b c d KAMPANIA WRZEŚNIOWA 1939 (September Campaign 1939) from PWN Encyklopedia. Please note that the above link is the Internet Archive version, mid-2006. The new PWN article is significantly shorter.
  4. ^ According to Soviet sources—Colonel-General Grigory Fedot Krivosheev, Soviet casualties and combat losses in the twentieth century, ISBN 1-85367-280-7.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Sanford, Google Books, p. 20-24.
  6. ^ a b Template:Ru icon Молотов на V сессии Верховного Совета 31 октября цифра «примерно 250 тыс.» (Please provide translation of the reference title and publication data and means)
  7. ^ a b c Review of Jan T. Gross' Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. H-net review, 2003. Last accessed on 14 November 2006.
  8. ^ a b Piotrowski, p 199. Cite error: The named reference "Piotr_p199" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  9. ^ a b c d e f THE COMING OF THE WAR AND EASTERN EUROPE IN WORLD WAR II. University of Kansas, lecture notes by professor Anna M. Cienciala, 2004. Last accessed on 15 March 2006.
  10. ^ Piotrowski, p 295.
  11. ^ a b c See telegrams: No. 317 of September 10: Schulenburg, the German ambassador in the Soviet Union, to the German Foreign Office. Moscow, September 10 1939-9:40 p.m.; No. 371 of September 16; No. 372 of September 17 Source: The Avalon Project at Yale Law School. Last accessed on 14 November 2006; Template:Pl icon1939 wrzesień 17, Moskwa Nota rządu sowieckiego nie przyjęta przez ambasadora Wacława Grzybowskiego (Note of the Soviet government to the Polish government on 17 September 1939 refused by Polish ambassador Wacław Grzybowski). Last accessed on 15 November 2006.
  12. ^ a b Template:Pl icon obozy jenieckie żołnierzy polskich (Prison camps for Polish soldiers) Encyklopedia PWN. Last accessed on 28 November 2006.
  13. ^ a b The actual number deported in the period of 1939-1941 remains unknown, and various estimates vary from 350,000 (Template:Pl icon Encyklopedia PWN 'OKUPACJA SOWIECKA W POLSCE 1939–41', last retrieved on March 14 2006, Polish language) to over two million (mostly WWII estimates by the underground). The earlier number is based on records made by the NKVD and does not include 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 R. J. Rummel gives the number of 1,200,000; Tony Kushner and Katharine Knox give 1,500,000 in their Refugees in an Age of Genocide, p.219; in his Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917, p.132. See also: Marek Wierzbicki, Tadeusz M. Płużański (2001). "Wybiórcze traktowanie źródeł". Tygodnik Solidarność (March 2, 2001). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) and Template:Pl icon Albin Głowacki (2003). "Formy, skala i konsekwencje sowieckich represji wobec Polaków w latach 1939-1941". In Piotr Chmielowiec (ed.). Okupacja sowiecka ziem polskich 1939–1941. Rzeszów-Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. ISBN 978-83-89078-78-0. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) According to Norman Davies, almost half of the approximately one million deported Polish citizens were dead by the time the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement had been signed in 1941, as quoted by Bernd Wegner, Google Books, p.78
  14. ^ a b Wilson concedes that "Ukrainian nationalists cannot denounce the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact in the same terms as their Baltic counterparts, as it led to the unification of most Ukrainian lands". Wilson, p 152.
  15. ^ a b Ferro, Google Books, p.258 See Education in the People's Republic of Poland for other examples.
  16. ^ Jackson, pp. 71-74.
  17. ^ Boyce, pp. 263-264.
  18. ^ William Evans Scott, "Alliance Against Hitler: the origins of the Franco-Soviet pact", Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 1962, LCCN 62-0
  19. ^ "The USSR proposed a ten-year Anglo-French-Soviet alliance which would include Rumania and Poland." Gronowicz, p. 51.
  20. ^ Mel'tiukhov, pp. 181-200.
  21. ^ Shaw, p 119; Neilson, p 298.
  22. ^ Kenez, pp 129-31.
  23. ^ Estonia and Latvia were placed in the Soviet sphere of influence and Lithuania in the German. According to Von Ribbentrop, Germany had agreed to what Britain had refused: a free hand in the Baltic and a free hand in the Balkan states. Weinberg, p 963.
  24. ^ On 28 September, this border was redefined by adding the area between the Vistula and Bug to the German sphere. In return, Lithuania was added to the Soviet sphere. Sanford, p 21.
  25. ^ Dunnigan, p. 132.
  26. ^ Snyder, p. 77.
  27. ^ Dmitri Trenin, The Spacial Dimension of Russian History. From The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border Between Geopolitics and Globalization. Carnegie Moscow Center. Last accessed 2 March 2007.
  28. ^ Gelven, p.236.
  29. ^ a b Zaloga, p 80. Cite error: The named reference "Zaloga-blitz" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  30. ^ Weinberg, P 55.
  31. ^ The Soviet Union 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; see for instance: Template:En icon Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide... McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-0371-4. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
  32. ^ On 17 September, Molotov declared in a radio speech that treaties between Poland and the Soviet Union no longer applied because the Polish government had abandoned its people and virtually ceased to exist. Degras, pp 374-5. Read extracts from Molotov's speech on Wikiquote.
  33. ^ Obligations by the Polish-British Common Defence Pact and the Franco-Polish Military Alliance.
  34. ^ For example, see events as described by Bronisław Konieczny in Mój wrzesień 1939. Pamiętnik z kampanii wrześniowej spisany w obozie jenieckim[1] [2] [3] and Moje życie w mundurze. Czasy narodzin i upadku II RP [4] [5].
  35. ^ The Second World War: An Illustrated History , Putnam, 1975, ISBN 0399114122, Google Books snippet (p.38)
  36. ^ The Vickers Mk. E light tank in the Polish service. Private Land Army Research Institute. Last accessed on 11 March 2007
  37. ^ Template:Pl icon Artur Leinwand (1991). "Obrona Lwowa we wrześniu 1939 roku". Instytut Lwowski.
  38. ^ Ryś, p 50. [6]
  39. ^ a b c d Fischer, Benjamin B., "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field", Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999-2000.
  40. ^ Grzelak, Szack - Wytyczno 1939.
  41. ^ a b c Template:Pl icon Wilhelm Orlik-Rückemann (1985). Leopold Jerzewski (ed.). Kampania wrześniowa na Polesiu i Wołyniu; 17.IX.1939-1.X.1939. Warsaw, Głos. p. 20.
  42. ^ Moynihan, p 93; Tucker, p 612.
  43. ^ Template:Ru icon Отчёт Украинского и Белорусского фронтов Красной Армии Мельтюхов, с. 367. [7] (Please provide translation of the reference title and publication data and means)
  44. ^ Sandford, pp 22-3; See also, Sandford, p 39: "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."
  45. ^ Sandford, p 25 and p 41.
  46. ^ Template:Pl icon Olszyna-Wilczyński Józef Konstanty, entry at Encyklopedia PWN. Last accessed on 14 November 2006.
  47. ^ Template:Pl icon Śledztwo w sprawie zabójstwa w dniu 22 września 1939 r. w okolicach miejscowości Sopoćkinie generała brygady Wojska Polskiego Józefa Olszyny-Wilczyńskiego i jego adiutanta kapitana Mieczysława Strzemskiego przez żołnierzy b. Związku Radzieckiego. (S 6/02/Zk) Polish Institute of National Remembrance. 16.10.03. From Internet Archive.
  48. ^ Template:Pl icon Tygodnik Zamojskim, 15 September 2004 . Last accessed on 28 November 2006.
  49. ^ Template:Pl icon Szack. Encyklopedia Interia. Last accessed on 28 November 2006.
  50. ^ Sandford, p 23. See information box for more estimates.
  51. ^ Piotrowski, p.11
  52. ^ Template:Pl icon REPRESJE 1939-41 Aresztowani na Kresach Wschodnich (Repressions 1939-41. Arrested on the Eastern Borderlands.) Ośrodek Karta. Last accessed on 15 November 2006.
  53. ^ " The prisons, ghettos, internment, transit, labor and extermination camps, roundups, mass deportations, public executions, mobile killing units, death marches, deprivation, hunger, disease, and exposure all testify to the 'inhuman policies of both Hitler and Stalin' and 'were clearly aimed at the total extermination of Polish citizens, both Jews and Christians. Both regimes endorsed a systematic program of genocide.'" Judith Olsak-Glass, Review of Piotrowski's Poland's Holocaust in Sarmatian Review, January 1999.
  54. ^ Peter D. Stachura, Poland, 1918-1945: An Interpretive and Documentary History of the Second Republic, Routledge, 2004, ISBN 0415343585, Google Books, p.132
  55. ^ Soviet Note of April 25 1943, severing unilaterally Soviet-Polish diplomatic relations online, last accessed on 19 December 2005, English translation of Polish document
  56. ^ Dean, Collaborations in the Holocaust.
  57. ^ Agreement of Mutual Assistance between the United Kingdom and Poland.-London, August 25, 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." [8]
  58. ^ Anita J. Prazmowska, Britain and Poland 1939-1943: The Betrayed Ally, Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0521483859. 44–45.
  59. ^ a b Template:Pl icon"Among the population of Eastern territories were circa 38% Poles, 37 % Ukrainians, 14.5 % Belarussians, 8.4 % Jewish, 0.9 % Russians and 0.6 % Germans"
    Elżbieta Trela-Mazur (1997). Włodzimierz Bonusiak, Stanisław Jan Ciesielski, Zygmunt Mańkowski, Mikołaj Iwanow (ed.). Sowietyzacja oświaty w Małopolsce Wschodniej pod radziecką okupacją 1939-1941 (Sovietization of education in eastern Lesser Poland during the Soviet occupation 1939-1941). Kielce: Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna im. Jana Kochanowskiego. p. 294. ISBN 978-83-7133-100-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
  60. ^ Some Ukrainians and Belarusians lived in the areas traded to Germany by the Soviets in the agreement of 28 October (see maps). Chełm and Lemkivshchyna (Łemkowszczyzna), for example, were among the Ukrainian enclaves left in German-occupied Poland.
  61. ^ a b Elena Ivanova, Kharkov National University, Ukraine, Multivoicedness of history textbooks and new social practice in Ukraine, III International Society for Cultural And Activity Research Conference for Sociocultural Research, Campinas, Brazil, July, 2000.
  62. ^ a b Andrzej Nowak, The Russo-Polish Historical Confrontation, Sarmatian Review, January 1997 Volume XVII, Number 1.
  63. ^ The Ukraine and the Present War: "The so-called "pacification" of the Ukrainians in Poland, which took place in September 1930, is well known all over the world to everyone who studied political events at that time. Trials and verdicts against the Ukrainians continued day by day until the fall of Poland. But the most terrible extermination of Ukrainians took place in the Soviet Russia."
  64. ^ Subtelny, p 487.
  65. ^ Pravda, 30 November 1939. [9]
  66. ^ "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." Molotov's report on March 29 1940. [10]
  67. ^ Template:Pl icon Ballada wrześniowa (September's tale). Text from official page of Jacek Kaczmarski. Last accessed on 15 November 2006.

References

  • Boyce, Robert W.D (1998). French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918-1940: The Decline and Fall of a Great Power. Routledge. ISBN 0415150396.
  • Dean, Martin (1999). Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941–44. Palgrave. ISBN 0-312-22056-1.
  • Degras, Jane Tabrisky (1953), (ed.). Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy. Volume I: 1917-1941. Oxford University Press.
  • Dunnigan, James F (2004). The World War II Bookshelf: Fifty Must-Read Books. Citadel Press. ISBN 0806526092.
  • Krivosheev, G.F (1997). Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century. Translated by Christine Barnard. London: Greenhill Books; Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books. ISBN 1853672807.
  • Ferro, Marc (2003). The Use and Abuse of History: Or How the Past Is Taught to Children. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-28592-6.
  • Gelven, Michael (1994). War and Existence: A Philosophical Inquiry. Penn State Press. ISBN 0271010541.
  • Gronowicz, Antoni (1976). Polish Profiles: The Land, the People, and Their History. Westport, Conn.: L.Hill. ISBN 0882080601.
  • Template:Pl icon Grzelak, Czesław (1993). Szack - Wytyczno 1939. Warsaw: Bellona. ISBN 978-83-11-09324-9.
  • Jackson, Julian (2003). The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940. Oxford University Press. ISBN 019280300X.
  • Kenez, Peter (2006, 2nd ed.). A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521864374.
  • Template:Pl icon Konieczny, Bronisław. Mój wrzesień 1939. Pamiętnik z kampanii wrześniowej spisany w obozie jenieckim. KSIĘGARNIA AKADEMICKA SP. Z O.O./Biblioteka Centrum Dokumentacji Czynu Niepodległościowego. ISBN 978-83-7188-328-6.
  • Template:Pl icon ——— (2005). Moje życie w mundurze. Czasy narodzin i upadku. II RP, KSIĘGARNIA AKADEMICKA SP. Z O.O. ISBN 978-83-7188-693-5.
  • Template:Ru icon Mel'tiukhov, M. I (2004). Sovetsko-pol'skie voiny, 2-e izd., ispr. i dop (Soviet-Polish Wars: Political and Military Standoff, 1918-1939). Moskva: EKSMO: IAuza. ISBN 5699076379.
  • Moynihan, Daniel Patrick (1990). On the Law of Nations. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674635752P93.
  • Neilson, Keith (2006). Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse of the Versailles Order, 1919–1939. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521857130.
  • Piotrowski, Tadeusz (1998). Poland’s Holocaust: Ethnic Strife: Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-0371-4.
  • Prazmowska, Anita J (1995). Britain and Poland 1939-1943: The Betrayed Ally. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521483859.
  • Template:Pl icon Ryś, Kazimierz (Kazimierz Ryziński); Ryszard Dalecki. Obrona Lwowa w roku 1939. Palestine-Rzeszów: WEiP APW, Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 50. ISBN 978-83-03-03356-7 (ISBN refers to the 1990 reprint of the original publication).
  • Sanford, George (2005). Katyn And The Soviet Massacre Of 1940: Truth, Justice And Memory. Routledge. ISBN 0415338735.
  • Shaw, Louise Grace (2003). The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union, 1937–1939. Routledge. ISBN 0714653985.
  • Snyder, Timothy (2005). "Covert Polish Missions Across the Soviet Ukrainian Border, 1928-1933." In Confini: Costruzioni, Attraversamenti, Rappresentazionicura. Ed. Silvia Salvatici. Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro): Rubbettino. ISBN 8849812760.
  • Subtelny, Orest (2000). Ukraine: a History. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0802083900.
  • Tucker, Robert C (1992). Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1929-41.
  • Wegner, Bernd (1997). From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia, and the World, 1939-1941. Providence: Berghahn Books. ISBN 1571818820. W.W.Norton & Co Ltd. ISBN 0393308693.
  • Weinberg, Gerhard L (1994). A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. 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. Contributor Howard Gerrard. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1841764086.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Soviet invasion of Poland.

Further reading

  • Jan Tomasz Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's West, Princeton University Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-691-09603-2
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