Misplaced Pages

Soviet invasion of Poland: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 17:47, 12 December 2006 editHolly Cheng (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Administrators116,583 edits rv -- see Misplaced Pages:Images and media for deletion/2006 November 30← Previous edit Revision as of 01:45, 20 December 2006 edit undoIrpen (talk | contribs)32,604 edits POV-title, see talk as well as Talk:Polish–Muscovite War (1605–1618) (in the end)Next edit →
Line 1: Line 1:
{{POV-title}}
] ]
] and ] from the west (blue), Soviet from the east (red).]] ] and ] from the west (blue), Soviet from the east (red).]]

Revision as of 01:45, 20 December 2006

Template:POV-title

File:Polborder1939.jpg
Red Army invades Poland: 17th September 1939.
File:Second World War europe.PNG
Invasion of Poland: Germany and its allies from the west (blue), Soviet from the east (red).
Invasion of Poland
Battle of the Border

Baltic coast

4–10 September

Northern Front

Southern Front

The Soviet invasion of Poland took place sixteen days after the onset of the Second World War, that started on September 1, 1939 by the German attack on Poland. In the midst of the German successes in the western front, the Red Army forces invaded the territory of Poland through the eastern Polish border on September 17.

In the run up to war, the Soviet Union attempted to create an anti-German alliance with other natural opponents of German expansion: the United Kingdom, France and Poland itself. Having been rebuffed, the Soviet Union instead signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Germany nine days before the German invasion. This non-aggression pact had a secret appendix in which the Soviet Union and Germany divided the territory of Eastern Europe between themselves. In the wake of the German victories against the Polish Army, the Polish High Command withdrew almost all forces from the Polish-Soviet border to face the German threat. Sixteen days after the German invasion, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, violating the Soviet-Polish Non-Aggression Pact in order to safeguard territories allocated to the USSR in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. To justify its action, the Soviet Union issued a declaration that Poland as a feasible state no longer existed and the Soviet actions were aimed at protecting the Ukrainians and Belarusians inhabiting the eastern part of Poland.

Easily overcoming the minor Polish resistance, the Soviets quickly achieved their territorial goals. About 6,000 to 7,000 thousand Polish soldiers died in the fights against the Red Army; about 230,000 or more became prisoners of war. In the aftermath, all of the former Polish citizens from the areas annexed by the USSR were treated as if they were Soviet citizens. This resulted in thousands of people being arrested and hundreds of thousands of people (estimates vary) being sent to the east in four major waves of deportations with tens of thousands being executed. The Soviet military operation did result in the unification of Ukrainians and Belarusians, previously living on different sides of the Soviet-Polish border, within the expanded Soviet Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics, and hence is an important event in the history of Ukraine and Belarus, which emerged as independent countries from these Soviet republics in 1991.

Prelude

Another map of the placement of Polish (only) divisions on September 1. Note that the majority of Polish forces were concentrated on the German border; the Soviet border was mostly stripped of units.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had been steadily gaining control of the ethnically Ukrainian and Belarusian territories, from the 13th century onward. The policies of intensive Polonization were effected on those territories since the 16th century, so that "the four centuries of Polish rule had left particularly destructive effects". Mikhailo Hrushevsky estimated that "economic and cultural backwardness in Galicia was the main "legacy of historical Poland, which assiduously skimmed everything that could be considered the cream of the nation, leaving it in a state of oppression and helplessness".

The Soviet government saw the unification of the eastern and western branches of Ukrainian and Belarusian people as their priority. In the wake of the Soviet-German Pact, there dawned the possibility of their unification for the first time in history. Modern historians speak about "the unification of the eastern and western Ukrainians under Soviet rule following the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement". From the beginning of the Polish September Campaign the German government repeatedly asked Stalin to act upon the August agreement and attack Poland from the east; German ambassador to Moscow Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg and Stalin's protegé Vyacheslav Molotov exchanged many diplomatic communiqués on that subject. Soviet forces finally invaded Poland on September 17.

Military campaign

Situation after September 14, 1939.

By 17 September 1939 the Polish defense of the borders was already over and Battle of the Bzura, Polish major counteoffensive, was unravelling. Polish last fall-back plan was to retreat and reorganize along the Romanian Bridgehead. However, these plans were rendered obsolete nearly overnight, when the over 800,000 strong Soviet Union Red Army attacked and created the Belarussian (under Mikhail Kovalyov) and Ukrainian (under Semyon Timoshenko) fronts after invading the eastern regions of Poland. This was in violation of the Riga Peace Treaty, the Soviet-Polish Non-Aggression Pact and other international treaties, both bilateral and multilateral. Soviet diplomats claimed that they were "protecting the Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities of eastern Poland in view of the imminent Polish collapse." In fact, the Soviets were acting in co-operation with the Nazis, carving Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence as specified in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Polish border defence forces in the east, known as the Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza, consisted of about 20 understrenght battalions; The Polish commander-in-chief, Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-Śmigły, after initially ordering the Polish forces to oppose the new invader, soon after consulation with Prime Minister of Poland, Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski, ordered the Polish forces to fall back and not to engage the Soviets unless in self-defence. This, however, did not prevent some clashes and even small battles, as the Red Army had no reservations against engaging Polish forces; thus Polish forces often had no choice but to stand and fight (or surrender). Thus Polish soldiers and the local Polish population attempted to defend their homeland against the new invaders, although in some cases the non-ethnic Polish populations, particularly Ukrainians and Belarusians, actively supported the Soviet advance. Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists rose against the Poles, and communist partisans organised local revolts, e.g. in Skidel, robbing and murdering Poles. Those movements were quickly disciplined by the NKVD.

The Soviet invasion was one of the decisive factors that convinced the legitimate Polish government that the war in Poland was lost. Prior to the Soviet attack from the East, the Polish military's fall-back plan had called for long-term defence against Germany in the south-eastern part of Poland, while awaiting relief from a Western Allies attack on Germany's western border. However, the Polish government refused to surrender or negotiate a peace with Germany and ordered all units to evacuate Poland and reorganize in France; soon afterwards - around midnight of the 17th September - the Polish government itself crossed into Romania - half a day after the Soviet Union declared that the Polish state no longer existed; and days after such a pretext was conceived. The Polish government in exile would re-estabilish itself just weeks later, and the Polish Underground State would function through the entire Second World War in Nazi occupied Poland.

File:German Soviet.jpg
Soviet (left) and German officers meet after the Soviets' invasion of Poland.
File:Germans and Soviets.jpg
The Red Army takes over in Brześć Litewski. The Wehrmacht general at the center is Heinz Guderian; the Soviet general is Semyon Krivoshein.

Meanwhile, Polish forces tried to move towards the Romanian bridgehead area, still actively resisting the German invasion and occasionally clashing with the Soviet forces. In a battle that lasted from 17 September to 20 September, the Polish Armies Kraków and Lublin were defeated by the Germans at the Battle of Tomaszów Lubelski, the second largest battle of the campaign. The city of Lwów capitulated on 22 September in a turn of events illustrative of the bizarre nature the conflict had taken on due to Soviet intervention; the city had been attacked by the Germans over a week earlier and in the middle of the siege, the German troops handed operations over to their new Soviet allies. In another case seemingly unthinkable a few years later, the Soviet 29th tank brigade under Brigadier S.M. Krivosheyin reached the area of Brześć Litewski (now Brest) on 17 September and peacefuly took over the fortress from the Wehrmacht, which had just taken the town; afterwards a joint German-Soviet parade was held in the town. On 19th September Soviet forces took Wilno after a two days battle. On September 24, the Red Army captured Grodno after a 4-day battle.

Soviet treatment of prisoners of war was often controversial. On the 24 September in the village of Grabowiec near Zamość, Soviets murdered 42 members and patients of a Polish military hospital. After a tactical Polish victory at the battle of Szack on 28 September, the Soviets executed all the Polish officers they captured.

Soon afterwards, the Red Army easily reached the line of the rivers Narew, Western Bug, Vistula and San by September 28, in many cases meeting German units advancing from the other side. On October 1, in one of the last battles of the campaign, the battle of Wytyczno, Soviet forces forced the Polish units to withdraw into the forests.

Despite their country attacked by both of its powerful neighbours, some isolated Polish garrisons managed to hold their positions long after being surrounded by enemy forces. The Polish capital of Warsaw, defended by reorganised retreating units, civilian volunteers and militias, held out until its capitulation on 28 September. The Modlin Fortress north of Warsaw capitulated on 29 September after an intense 16-day battle. Oksywie garrison held until 19 September; Hel was defended until 2 October. The last operational unit of the Polish Army, General Franciszek Kleeberg's Samodzielna Grupa Operacyjna "Polesie", capitulated after the 4-day Battle of Kock near Lublin on 6 October, marking the end of the September Campaign.

Aftermath

Further information: ]

Between 6,000 to 7,000 Polish soldiers died fighting the Red Army. 230,000 to 450,000 Polish soldiers were taken prisoner of war by the Soviets. (230,000 immediatly after the September campaign; additional 70,000 after Soviet annexed the Baltic States and took control of interned Polish soldiers there). Soviets conquered about 250,000 square kilometers inhabited by 13.5 million Polish citizens, suffering only about 737 fatalities and 3000 casualties. On September 28, another secret German-Soviet protocol modified the arrangements of August: all Lithuania was to be a Soviet sphere of influence, not a German one; but the dividing line in Poland was moved in Germany's favor, 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. During the following two years, approximately 100,000 Polish citizens would be arrested; between 350,000 to over 1,500,000 Poles would be deported and between 250,000 to 1,000,000 would die; the casualties were mostly civilians; although the Soviets also murdered tens of thousands of Polish prisoners-of-war; some immediately during their invasion, like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński; over 20,000 others would die in the infamous Katyn massacre.

While accusations and claims of betrayal remained part of Western literature regarding the Soviet occupation of Poland, within the People's Republic of Poland, as in the entire Eastern Bloc at large, the events of the Soviet invasion of Poland and their aftermath were forbidden to be taught or researched; or at best portrayed as "liberation" of the Polish people from "oligarchic capitalism." Despite the various attempts at whitewashing or silencing research and discussion of the Soviet occupation and massacres in Poland, they were however discussed in various underground publications (bibuła) or other media, such as the protest songs of Jacek Kaczmarski (Ballada wrześniowa) from 1982.

Polish-Soviet relations would be briefly re-established in 1941 after the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, than broken off again after the news of the Katyn massacre.

Dominating nationalities in Poland and around, 1931
Map of border changes of Poland, 1939-1945.

Out of the 13,5 millions of civilians living in the newly annexed territories, Poles comprised the largest group, however Ukrainians and Belarusians, taken together, comprised over 50% of the population of that region. Further, the operation did not gave Soviet Union control of all territories inhabited by the Ukrainians or Belarusians, as there were still Ukrainians and Belarusians inhabiting territories west of the new German-Soviet border (some of which on the areas Soviet Union traded to Germany with the agreement of the 28th October - see maps). The territory incorporated in 1939 into the Ukrainian SSR as a result of the invasion did not include some areas of Poland with a significant ethnic Ukrainian population, since Chelm, Lemkivshchyna and some other ethnically Ukranian lands remained in the part of Poland occupied by Germany. Nonetheless the Soviet military operation did result in the unification of vast majority of Ukrainians and Belarusians, previously living on different sides of the Soviet-Polish border, within the expanded Soviet Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics, despite the fact that such a reunification of Ukrainian and Belarusian lands was not by itself a main goal of the Soviet invasion which pursued policies of Sovietization, negativly impacting Ukrainian culture and Belarusian culture - and of course Polish culture. Not all Ukrainians or Belarusians welcomed reunification under the rule of government responsible for Holodomor, the division was particularly clear along the lines of poor welcoming the Soviets, and elites joining the opposition. The politics of Sovietization consisting of compulsory collectivization of the whole region, using repression little different from cruel terror to smash any opposition (all political parties and public associations were smashed up, their leaders were announced as "enemies of people" and were put into prison or executed, paradoxially such was the fate of the previously mostly anti-Polish Ukrainian Insurrection Army, which after 1939 realized Soviet Union was a much worse occupier - but was eventually wiped in the Operation Wisła) did much to convince Western Ukrainians that their future would be not in the integration with the Soviet Union (just as it was not in the assimilation into Poland) but in building of independent non-divided Ukrainian state. Nonetheless such a unification is an important event in the history of Ukraine and Belarus, which emerged as independent countries from these Soviet republics in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union. The importance of World War II as a whole, presumably including the effects of this operation, for the genesis of the modern states of Ukraine and Belarus is stressed by Orest Subtelny who sums up the historical importance of the operation as follows: "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".

Gallery

References

  1. ^ Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide... McFarland & Company. p. 295. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
  2. ^ See telegrams: No. 317 of September 10: The German Ambassador in the Soviet Union, (Schulenburg) 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.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ Template:Pl icon obozy jenieckie żołnierzy polskich Encyklopedia PWN. Last accessed on 28 Nov 2006.
  5. ^ The actual number of 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 2 millions (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, also in Soviet captivity. Most modern historians estimate the number of all people deported from areas taken by 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 83-89078-78-3. {{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 in From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia, and the World, 1939-1941, Bernd Wegner, 1997, ISBN 1571818820. Google Print, p.78
  6. 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 Ukrianian lands". Quoted from: Andrew Wilson, Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s: A Minority Faith, Cambridge University Press 1996, page 152.
  7. C. M. Hann, Paul Robert Magocsi. Galicia: A Multicultured Land. University of Toronto, 2005. ISBN 080203781X. Page 85.
  8. Ibidem.
  9. Amir Weiner. Making Sense of War. Princeton University Press, 2002, page 11.
  10. Apart from the two pacts mentioned, the treaties violated by the Soviet Union were: the 1919 Covenant of the League of Nations (to which the USSR adhered 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 0-7864-0371-3. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
  11. ^ 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.
  12. For example, see events as described in: Template:Pl icon Bronisław Konieczny, Mój wrzesień 1939. Pamiętnik z kampanii wrześniowej spisany w obozie jenieckim, KSIĘGARNIA AKADEMICKA SP. Z O.O./Biblioteka Centrum Dokumentacji Czynu Niepodległościowego, ISBN 8371883285 and Moje życie w mundurze. Czasy narodzin i upadku II RP, KSIĘGARNIA AKADEMICKA SP. Z O.O., 2005 ISBN 8371886934
  13. Template:Pl icon Dariusz Baliszewski, "Most honoru", Tygodnik Wprost, Nr. 1138 (19 September 2004), Polish, retrieved on 24 March 2005
  14. Template:Pl icon Artur Leinwand (1991). "Obrona Lwowa we wrześniu 1939 roku". Instytut Lwowski.
  15. Template:Pl icon Kazimierz Ryś (Kazimierz Ryziński) (1943–1990). Obrona Lwowa w roku 1939. Palestine-Rzeszów: WEiP APW, Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza. p. 50. ISBN 8303033565. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: date format (link); ISBN refers to the 1990 reprint of the original publication
  16. ^ Fischer, Benjamin B., "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field", Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999-2000.
  17. Template:Pl icon Tygodnik Zamojskim, 15 September 2004 . Last accessed on 28 November 2006.
  18. Template:Pl icon Szack. Encyklopedia Interia. Last accessed on 28 November 2006.
  19. Template:Pl icon Czesław Grzelak. Szack - Wytyczno 1939. Warsaw, Bellona. 1993. ISBN 8311093245.
  20. ^ 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.
  21. Template:Ru icon Молотов на V сессии Верховного Совета 31 октября цифра «примерно 250 тыс.»
  22. Template:Ru icon Отчёт Украинского и Белорусского фронтов Красной Армии Мельтюхов, с. 367. http://www.usatruth.by.ru/c2.files/t05.html
  23. Template:Pl iconREPRESJE 1939-41 Aresztowani na Kresach Wschodnich (Repressions 1939-41. Arrested on the Eastern Borderlands.) Ośrodek Karta. Last accessed on 15 November 2006.
  24. Template:Pl icon Annoucemnt by Instytut Pamięci Narodowej about start of investigation of Genereal Olszyna-Wilczyński death. Last accessed on 14 November 2006.
  25. Template:Pl icon Olszyna-Wilczyński Józef Konstanty, entry at Encyklopedia PWN. Last accessed on 14 November 2006.
  26. Marc Ferro, The Use and Abuse of History: Or How the Past Is Taught to Children, Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-415-28592-5, Google Print, p.258
  27. Template:Pl icon Ballada wrześniowa (September's tale). Text from official page of Jacek Kaczmarski. Last accessed on 15 November 2006.
  28. ^ 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 83-7133-100-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
  29. ^ 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, Brasil, July, 2000.
  30. ^ Andrzej Nowak, The Russo-Polish Historical Confrontation, Sarmatian Review, January 1997 Volume XVII, Number 1.
  31. The Ukraine and the Present War: Quote: "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."
  32. 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 Ukrianian lands". Quoted from: Andrew Wilson, Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s: A Minority Faith, Cambridge University Press 1996, page 152.
  33. Subtelny, Orest. Ukraine: a History. University of Toronto Press, 2000. Page 487.

See also

External links

Further reading

Categories: