Soviet invasion of Poland (1939) Totally Explained

Everything about Soviet Invasion Of Poland 1939 totally explained

The 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland was a military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939, during the early stages of World War II, sixteen days after the beginning of the Nazi German attack on Poland. It ended in a decisive victory for the Soviet Union's Red Army.
   From 1936 Stalin through personal emissaries sent out feelers towards Nazi Germany. From the beginning of the negotiations with France and Britain it was clear that Soviet Union demanded the right to occupy Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania Finland was to be included in Soviet sphere of influence as well. The public nature of talks only increased the pressure on Hitler by Stalin to heighten his price in reward for alliance with the Soviets The Soviet government announced that it was acting to protect the Ukrainians and Belarusians who lived in the eastern part of Poland, because the Polish state had collapsed in the face of the German attack and could no longer guarantee the security of its own citizens.
   The Red Army quickly achieved its targets, vastly outnumbering Polish resistance. About 230,000 Polish soldiers or more (452 500) were taken prisoners of war. The Soviet government annexed the territory newly under its control and in November declared that the 13.5 million Polish citizens who lived there were now Soviet citizens. The Soviets quelled opposition by executions and by arresting thousands. They sent hundreds of thousands (estimates vary) to Siberia and other remote parts of the USSR in four major waves of deportations between 1939 and 1941.
The Soviet invasion, which the Politburo called "the liberation campaign", led to the incorporation of millions of Poles, western Ukrainians and western Belarusians into the Soviet Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics. During the existence of the People's Republic of Poland, the invasion was considered a delicate subject, almost taboo, and was often omitted from official history in order to preserve the illusion of "eternal friendship" between members of the Eastern Bloc. They also demanded the right to enter Poland, Romania and the Baltic States whenever they felt their security was threatened. The governments of those countries rejected the proposal because, as Polish foreign minister Józef Beck pointed out, they feared that once the Red Army entered their territories, it might never leave. In view of these concerns, the Soviet Union abandoned the talks and turned instead to negotiations with Germany.
   On 23 August 1939, the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, taking the allies by surprise. The two governments announced the agreement merely as a non-aggression treaty. As a secret appendix reveals, however, they'd actually agreed to partition Poland between themselves and divide Eastern Europe into Soviet and German spheres of influence. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which has been described as a license for war, was a key factor in Hitler’s decision to invade Poland.
   The treaty provided the Soviets with extra defensive space in the west. It also offered them a chance to regain territories ceded to Poland twenty years earlier and to unite the eastern and western Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples under a Soviet government, for the first time in the same state. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin saw advantages in a war in western Europe, which might weaken his ideological enemies and open up new regions to the advance of communism.
Soon after the Germans invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, the Nazi leaders began urging the Soviets to play their agreed part and attack Poland from the east. The German ambassador to Moscow, Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, and the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, exchanged a series of diplomatic communiqués on the matter.
   The Soviets delayed their intervention for several reasons. They were distracted by crucial events in their border disputes with Japan; they needed time to mobilise the Red Army; and they saw a diplomatic advantage in waiting until Poland had disintegrated before making their move. On 17 September 1939, Molotov declared on the radio that all treaties between the Soviet Union and Poland were now void, because the Polish government had abandoned its people and effectively ceased to exist. On the same day, the Red Army crossed the border into Poland. By the time the Soviets invaded, the Polish commanders had sent most of their troops west to face the Germans, leaving the east protected by only 20 under-strength battalions. These battalions consisted of about 20,000 troops of border defence corps (Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza), under the command of general Wilhelm Orlik-Rueckemann.
   At first, the Polish commander-in-chief, Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-Śmigły, ordered the border forces to resist the Soviets. He then changed his mind after consulting with Prime Minister Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski and ordered them to fall back and engage the Soviets only in self-defense.
The two conflicting sets of orders led to confusion, and Jews welcomed the invading troops as liberators. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists rose against the Poles, and communist partisans organised local revolts, for example in Skidel.
   Soviet units often met their German counterparts advancing from the opposite direction. Several notable examples of co-operation occurred between the two armies in the field. The Wehrmacht passed the Brest Fortress, which had been seized after the Battle of Brześć Litewski, to the Soviet 29th Tank Brigade on 17 September. German General Heinz Guderian and Soviet Brigadier Semyon Krivoshein then held a joint parade in the town. Soviet forces had taken Wilno on 19 September after a two-day battle, and they took Grodno on 24 September after a four-day battle. By 28 September, the Red Army had reached the line of the rivers Narew, Western Bug, Vistula and San—the border agreed in advance with the Germans.
   Despite a tactical Polish victory on 28 September at the Battle of Szack, the outcome of the larger conflict was never in doubt. Some isolated Polish garrisons managed to hold their positions long after being surrounded; but the last operational unit of the Polish Army to surrender was General Franciszek Kleeberg's Independent Operational Group Polesie (Samodzielna Grupa Operacyjna "Polesie"). Kleeberg surrendered on 6 October after the four-day Battle of Kock (near Lublin), which ended the September Campaign. The Soviets were victorious. On 31 October, Molotov reported to the Supreme Soviet: "A short blow by the German army, and subsequently by the Red Army, was enough for nothing to be left of this ugly creature of the Treaty of Versailles".

Allied reaction

The reaction of France and Britain to Poland's plight was muted, since neither wanted a confrontation with the Soviet Union at that stage.
The French had also made promises to Poland, including the provision of air support, and these were not honoured. Once the Soviets moved into Poland, the French and the British decided there was nothing they could do for Poland in the short term and began planning for a long-term victory instead. The French had advanced tentatively into the Saar in early September, but after the Polish defeat, they retreated behind the Maginot Line on 4 October. Many Poles resented this lack of support from their western allies, which aroused a lasting sense of betrayal.

Aftermath

Polish prisoners of war. Some, like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński, who was captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were executed during the campaign itself. On 24 September, the Soviets killed forty-two staff and patients of a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec, near Zamość. The Soviets also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack, on 28 September 1939. Over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre. The Soviets then lobbied the Western Allies to recognise the pro-Soviet Polish puppet government of Wanda Wasilewska in Moscow.
On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany had changed the secret terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. They moved Lithuania into the Soviet sphere of influence and shifted the border in Poland to the east, giving Germany more territory.
The Red Army had originally sown confusion among the locals by claiming that they were arriving to save Poland from the Nazis. Their advance surprised Polish communities and their leaders, who hadn't been advised how to respond to a Soviet invasion. Polish and Jewish citizens may at first have preferred a Soviet regime to a German one. However, the Soviets were quick to impose their ideology on the local ways of life. For instance, the Soviets quickly began confiscating, nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property. During the two years following the annexation, the Soviets also arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens and deported between 350,000 and 1,500,000, of whom between 250,000 and 1,000,000 died, mostly civilians.

Territories of Second Polish Republic annexed by Soviet Union

[[Image:Belarus 1939 Greeting Soviets.jpg|thumb|left|thumb|Small-town residents of Western Byelorussia depicted welcoming the Red Army. The banner reads "Long Live the great theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin-Stalin".Such manifestations were not spontaneous, but usually organised by activists of Communist Party of Poland. In practice, the poor generally welcomed the Soviets, and the elites tended to join the opposition, despite supporting the reunification itself.
The Soviets quickly introduced Sovietization policies in Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine, including compulsory collectivization of the whole region. In the process, they ruthlessly broke up political parties and public associations and imprisoned or executed their leaders as "enemies of the people". The authorities even suppressed the anti-Polish Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which had actively resisted the Polish regime since the 1920s; despite their change of overlord, Ukrainian nationalists continued to aim for an independent, undivided Ukrainian state.

Censorship

Soviet censors later suppressed many details of the 1939 invasion and its aftermath. The Politburo had from the first called the operation a "liberation campaign", and later Soviet statements and publications never wavered from that line. On 30 November 1939, Stalin stated that it wasn't Germany who had attacked France and England, but France and England who had attacked Germany; and the following March, Molotov claimed that Germany had tried to make peace and been turned down by "Anglo-French imperialists". All subsequent Soviet governments denied that there had ever been a secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; but when the document was "found" in the Soviet archives in 1989, the truth was finally acknowledged. However, various underground publications (bibuła) addressed the issue,

Orders of battle

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