The Treaty of Versailles severely limited Germany's military capabilities. In the spring of 1922, an international conference was held in the northern Italian city of Rapallo, the main theme of which was the mutual refusal to put forward claims for compensation for damage caused during the fighting in the First World War. The result of the conference was the conclusion of the Treaty of Rapallo on April 16, 1922 between the RSFSR and the Weimar Republic. The treaty provided for the immediate restoration in full of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Germany. For Soviet Russia, this was the first international treaty in its history. For Germany, which until now has been outside the law in the field of international politics, this agreement was of fundamental importance, since in this way it began to return to the ranks of states recognized by the international community.

Shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo, on August 11, 1922, a secret cooperation agreement was concluded between the Reichswehr and the Red Army. Germany and Soviet Russia had the opportunity to maintain and mutually develop the military-technical potential accumulated during the First World War, even if only slightly. As a result of the Rapallo agreements reached and subsequent secret agreements, an aviation training center was established in Lipetsk in 1925, in which German instructors trained German and Soviet cadets. Near Kazan in 1929, a training center for commanders of tank formations (the secret training center "Kama") was established, in which German instructors also trained German and Soviet cadets. During the functioning of the school, 30 Reichswehr officers were trained for the German side. In 1926-1933, German tanks were also tested in Kazan (the Germans called them "tractors" for secrecy). In Volsk, a center was established for training in handling chemical weapons (the "Tomka" facility). As a result of cooperation, the Red Army gained access to the technical achievements of the German military industry and the methods of work of the German General Staff, and the Reichswehr could begin training pilots, tankers and chemical weapons specialists in three schools on the territory of the USSR, and introduce future officers on the basis of subsidiaries of the German military industry Wehrmacht with new models of weapons banned in Germany.

With the coming to power of the National Socialist Workers' Party led by Adolf Hitler in 1933, Germany, without encountering any special objections from England and France, and in some places with their support, soon begins to ignore many of the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles - in particular, restores conscription into the army and is rapidly increasing the production of weapons and military equipment. October 14, 1933 Germany withdraws from the League of Nations and refuses to participate in the Geneva Disarmament Conference.

In October 1938, as a result of the Munich Agreement, Germany annexed the Sudetenland that belonged to Czechoslovakia. England and France give consent to this act, and the opinion of Czechoslovakia itself is not taken into account. March 15, 1939 Germany, in violation of the agreement, occupies the Czech Republic. A German protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia is created on Czech territory. Hungary and Poland participate in the partition of Czechoslovakia, and Polish troops enter the vicinity of the city of Český Teszyn.

Until now, the aggressive actions of Germany have not met with serious resistance from Great Britain and France, who do not dare to start a war and are trying to save the system of the Versailles Treaty with reasonable, from their point of view, concessions (the so-called "appeasement policy"). However, after Hitler violated the Munich Treaty, both countries began to realize the need for a tougher policy, and in the event of further German aggression, Great Britain and France give military guarantees to Poland.

On March 21, 1939, Ribbentrop demanded in an ultimatum from his Polish colleague Beck to satisfy all the demands of Germany, after which "to pursue a joint anti-Soviet policy with Germany." Poland categorically rejected the German demands, and on March 31, Chamberlain announced on behalf of England and France that guarantees would be provided to Poland in the event of aggression. On April 6, these guarantees were formalized into a Polish-British military convention. In a speech to the Reichstag on 28 April, Hitler announced the rupture of the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 26 January 1934 and the Anglo-German Naval Convention. It was again noted that Hitler in his speech "avoided the traditional attacks on the Soviet Union." On May 23, Hitler announced to the military elite about his firm intention to attack Poland and get "living space in the East." At the same time, England was called the main enemy of Germany, the fight against which was "a matter of life and death." As for Russia, Hitler did not rule out that “the fate of Poland will remain indifferent to her.

Poland was important to Hitler. Influenced by unpleasant memories of the First World War, he decided to avoid a war on two fronts with a non-aggression pact concluded with Poland in 1934. Hitler thought that Poland, in fear of Soviet Russia, would willingly become a satellite of Germany.

However, there was one obstacle: in the minds of the Germans there lived a discontent, much deeper than that which was associated with an independent Austria or the German-speaking population of Czechoslovakia. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Gdansk (German Danzig) became a free city and the so-called Polish Corridor separated East Prussia from the Reich. Hitler had to remove this discontent in order to maintain his prestige, especially in front of the German generals. He expected that the Poles would voluntarily make concessions in the hope of subsequently obtaining Ukraine.

He was very mistaken because the leaders of Poland considered their country a sovereign power and wanted to maintain independence from both Soviet Russia and Germany and not yield to anyone. As Poland became stubborn, Hitler tried to influence the negotiations in the usual way, with a vague threat of military action.

Hitler expected that Britain and France would do the same with Poland as they had done with Czechoslovakia the previous year—they would force her to make concessions. This time, his expectations were in vain. The Poles did not want to give up an inch. They learned a lesson from the Czech crisis: there is one way not to give up too much - not to give up anything.

During the political crisis of 1939, two military-political blocs emerged in Europe: Anglo-French and German-Italian, each of which was interested in an agreement with the USSR.

Poland, having concluded allied treaties with Great Britain and France, which were obliged to help it in the event of German aggression, refuses to make concessions in negotiations with Germany (in particular, on the issue of the Polish Corridor). Undoubtedly, Poland overestimated its strength. In addition, of course, the Poles thought that the Western powers would honor their obligations, and this would ensure victory.

On August 23, 1939, Joachim Ribbentrop, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the German Reich, flew to Moscow and on the same day reached an agreement with Stalin. The USSR and Germany sign the Non-Aggression Pact. The secret additional protocol to the treaty provided for the division of spheres of interest in Eastern Europe, including the Baltic states and Poland. The secret protocol pinpointed areas of interest. Finland, Estonia and Latvia were included in the Soviet sphere of interests, Lithuania - in the German one. If, as has been formulated, changes take place in Poland, the division of the spheres of interest should approximately correspond to the ethnic division.

Hitler believed that now the resistance of England and France to the seizure of Poland would cease, that they had lost all hope of Soviet help. Emboldened by his success, he set the date for the attack on Poland as August 26, even though Germany could not complete military preparations by that date. On August 25, he postponed the start of hostilities. Perhaps he was stopped by the official signing of an alliance agreement between England and Poland. But most likely he simply understood that the army was not yet ready. 6 days of energetic negotiations followed, the British tried to get concessions from Poland, the Poles refused to give in. Hitler could not wait any longer. On August 31, Hitler ordered the offensive to begin at dawn the next day.

On September 1, 1939, the troops of the Third Reich invade Poland. On September 1, dawn in Eastern Europe came at 4:45 am. A German ship, the battleship Schleswig-Holstein, which arrived in Gdansk on a friendly visit and was enthusiastically greeted by the local population, opens fire on the Polish fortifications on Westerplatte. The German armed forces invade Poland. Slovak troops are taking part in the fighting on the side of Germany.

Geographically and militarily, Germany had all the prerequisites for a quick victory over Poland. German lands - East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia surrounded most of Poland from the north and west. The collapse of Czechoslovakia expanded the areas of strategic deployment of the German armed forces, allowing the use of Slovakia, friendly to Germany.

In total, 44 German divisions were deployed for the war against Poland (including 6 tank and 2 motorized divisions), the 1st Air Fleet (Aviation General Kesselring) and the 4th Air Fleet (Aviation General Löhr) - a total of about 2 thousand aircraft.

The German Army Group South (Colonel General von Rundstedt) consisted of the 8th, 10th and 14th armies. It was to advance from Silesia in the general direction of Warsaw (10th Army - 2 tank, 8 infantry, 3 light divisions, Colonel General von Reichenau). The 14th Army (2 tank, 6 infantry, 1 light, 1 mountain divisions, Colonel General List) - in the direction of Krakow, it was supposed to be supported by the armed forces of Slovakia. The 8th Army (4 infantry divisions, 1 regiment of SS troops, Colonel General Blaskowitz) aimed at Lodz.

The German Army Group North (Colonel General von Bock) consisted of the 3rd (1 tank, 5 infantry divisions, Colonel General von Küchler) and 4th (1 tank, 2 motorized, 6 infantry divisions, Colonel General von Kluge) armies. Its goal is to defeat the Polish forces in the region of the northern Vistula with a simultaneous strike from East Prussia and Pomerania.

In total, the Polish armed forces included 39 infantry divisions, 2 motorized brigades, 11 cavalry brigades, 3 mountain brigades. The commander-in-chief of the Polish forces was Marshal Rydz-Smigly. His plan is to defend the western border of Poland and conduct offensive operations in East Prussia.

On the border with East Prussia, the Modlin army (4 infantry divisions and 2 cavalry brigades) was deployed, as well as 2 infantry divisions and 2 cavalry brigades in the Suwalki region. In the Polish corridor - the Pomorie army (6 infantry divisions).

Against Pomerania - the army "Lodz" (4 infantry divisions and 2 cavalry brigades).

Against Silesia - the army "Krakow" (6 infantry divisions, 1 cavalry and 1 motorized brigades).

Behind the armies "Krakow" and "Lodz" - the army "Prussia" (6 infantry divisions and 1 cavalry brigade).

The southern border of Poland was to be defended by the Karpaty army (from reserve formations).

Reserves - 3 infantry divisions and 1 cavalry brigade - near the Vistula in the region of Warsaw and Lublin.

On August 31, the German press reported: "... on Thursday at about 20 o'clock the radio station in Gleiwitz was seized by the Poles." No evidence has been provided to support these allegations, either then or since. In fact, they were SS men dressed in Polish uniforms (terrorist police of "black shirts"), led by Otto Skorzeny.

On September 1 at 10 am, Hitler addressed the Reichstag in military uniform, and, as usual, in the role of a victim. He sought a peaceful settlement through negotiations with the Poles, but they allegedly ignored his proposals. In justifying the attack on Poland, Hitler refers to the Gleiwitz incident. At the same time, he carefully avoids the term "war", fearing the entry into the conflict of England and France, which gave Poland the appropriate guarantees. The order he issued spoke only of "active defense" against Polish aggression. Until the last day, Hitler and his entourage hoped that the Allies would not dare to enter the war and the matter would end with a second Munich.

The invasion of Poland provokes a declaration of war on Germany by England, France and other countries that had an alliance with Poland. September 3 at 9 o'clock England, at 12:20 France, as well as Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany. Canada, Newfoundland, the Union of South Africa and Nepal join within days. World War II has begun.

The offensive of the German troops developed according to plan. The Polish troops turned out to be a weak military force compared to the coordinated tank formations and the Luftwaffe. However, on the Western Front, the allied Anglo-French troops do not take any active action. On the western front, "the Strange War is going on." Only at sea, the war began immediately: already on September 3, the German U-30 submarine attacked the English passenger liner Athenia without warning.

Thus the Poles were left to fight alone. The delay in mobilization to please the Western powers led to the fact that more than half of the Polish divisions were never completed. In addition, the Germans had 6 armored divisions and 2,000 aircraft, while the Poles had few tanks and aircraft. The Poles, in order to protect their industrial regions, located mainly in the west, placed their armies at the forefront. Two German armies, one from East Prussia and the other from Silesia, penetrated the rear of the Polish positions and disrupted communications. The German armored divisions rushed forward, relying more on their speed than on firepower. The infantry only consolidated what had been achieved. Chaos broke out in the Polish armies.

On September 7, German troops under the command of Heinz Guderian launch an attack on the Polish defensive line near Wizna. 720 Polish soldiers and officers held back the 40,000 enemy grouping until September 10.

On September 8, the Polish troops retreating to the east ran into the German flank near the Bzura River. Until September 14, a heavy battle continued for six days. The Battle of Bzura was the largest battle in Europe of all time before the German attack on Soviet Russia in 1941. The German command was greatly alarmed: this is an indicator of how a tank attack can fail if the pace of the offensive is lost.

In Poland, during the first week of fighting, German troops cut through the Polish front in several places and occupy part of Mazovia, western Prussia, the Upper Silesian industrial region and western Galicia. By September 9, the Germans managed to break the Polish resistance along the entire front line and approach Warsaw.

On September 10, the Polish commander-in-chief Edward Rydz-Smigly orders a general retreat to southeastern Poland, but the main part of his troops, unable to retreat beyond the Vistula, is surrounded. By mid-September, having not received support from the West, the armed forces of Poland cease to exist as a whole; only local centers of resistance remain.

September 14, Guderian's 19th corps captures Brest from East Prussia. Polish troops under the command of General Plisovsky defend the Brest Fortress for several more days. On the night of September 17, its defenders leave the forts in an organized manner and withdraw beyond the Bug.

On September 16, the Polish ambassador to the USSR was told that since the Polish state and its government had ceased to exist, the Soviet Union took under its protection the lives and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus.

On September 17 at 6 o'clock in the morning, fearing that Germany would refuse to comply with the terms of the secret additional protocol to the non-aggression pact, the USSR began to send troops into the Eastern regions of Poland. Soviet troops cross the state border in two military groups and occupy Western Belorussia and the Ukraine. On the same day, Molotov sent congratulations to the German Ambassador to the USSR Schulenburg on the "brilliant success of the German Wehrmacht."

On September 19, Polish President Ignacy Mościcki and the Polish government, who had fled to Romania on the night of September 18, were interned.

On September 28, the Germans occupy Warsaw. On the same day, the Treaty of Friendship and Border between the USSR and Germany was signed in Moscow, which established the line of demarcation between German and Soviet troops on the territory of former Poland approximately along the "Curzon Line".

On October 2, in the Kock area, the last major Polish formation, the grouping of General Kleeberg, entered the battle with the German (13th and 29th motorized divisions) and Soviet troops approaching from the east. Although these battles were generally successful for the Poles, the lack of food and ammunition forced them to capitulate to the Germans on 5 October.

But that last battle of the regular units of the Polish army was not. Until April 30, 1940, the "Special Detachment of the Polish Army" under the command of Major Henryk Dobzhansky (pseudonym "Hubal") actively fought. One of the first (if not the very first) partisans of World War II.

Continuing to fight, Dobzhansky inflicted significant losses on the Germans. In March 1940, he defeated the Wehrmacht infantry battalion near Khutsiski, a few days later he badly battered another German unit near Shalasy. To destroy the detachment of the "mad major", the Germans formed a special anti-partisan group of SS, infantry and tank units. In the operation against the partisans, of which there were no more than 300, the Germans involved 8,000 soldiers. At the end of April 1940, the Dobzhansky detachment was surrounded and defeated after a hard battle, and Dobzhansky died with a weapon in his hands. The remnants of the Dobzhansky detachment fought until June 25, after which they were disbanded.

The German occupation of Poland was particularly brutal. Part of the western Polish lands that were previously part of Prussia (Poznanshchina, Pomerania) were directly annexed to the Third Reich. These lands are subject to "Germanization". The Polish population is deported from here to the central regions of Poland, where a governor-general is created in which an occupation administration is organized.

All industrial and agricultural production in Poland was subordinated to the military needs of Germany. Polish higher educational institutions were closed, and the intelligentsia was persecuted. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to work or imprisoned in concentration camps. Massive repressions are being carried out against the Polish people. In the former territories of Poland, completely occupied by the Germans, the Polish language was banned, the entire Polish press was closed, almost all the clergy were arrested, all Polish universities and secondary schools were closed, Polish cultural institutions were liquidated, a systematic policy was carried out to replace Polish names, and the Polish intelligentsia and civil servants persecuted and methodically destroyed. The Poles lost about 2 million people who were not military personnel, including 45% of doctors, 57% of lawyers, 40% of university professors, 30% of engineers, 18% of priests, almost all journalists. It is believed that during the Second World War, Poland lost more than 20% of its population - about 6 million people.

Polish Jews were subjected to particular cruelty, who were first concentrated in several large ghettos. When in 1942 the leaders of the Reich took the "final solution" of the Jewish question, Polish Jews were deported to death camps. The largest and most infamous Nazi death camp in Poland was the camp near the city of Auschwitz, where more than 4 million people died.

The territories that fell into the zone of influence of the USSR were included in the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR (partly also independent at that time Lithuania). In the occupied territories included in the USSR, Soviet power is established, "socialist transformations" are carried out (nationalization of industry, collectivization of the peasantry), which is accompanied by deportation and repressions against the Polish population. Ethnic Poles living in these territories in 1939-1941. were partially deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia.

Struggle in occupied Poland

The Polish people offered both civil disobedience and military resistance to the Nazi occupiers. The resistance of the Poles began already from the first days of the German occupation. A "Secret Fighting Organization", "Polish Organization of the Fight for Freedom", "Organization of the White Eagle" arose. Later, the People's Battalions (NB) and the People's Military Organization (NVO) were created by the underground People's Party. People's battalions attacked economic objects in occupied Poland, destroyed the administrative apparatus of the Germans, set up ambushes on the roads. The maximum number of fighters of the People's Battalions reached 100 thousand. In February 1942, General Sikorsky ordered the creation of the Home Army, under the command of General Rowiecki. It was assumed that the NB and NVO would enter the AK, but a partial unification with them was carried out only in 1943.

Active actions of the Home Army (AK) began in 1943. AK staged sabotage on the railways, passed on to the Western Allies information about the German Peenemünde missile range (as a result, the Allies bombed the range), released prisoners from a prison in Warsaw, killed high-ranking Germans, including the German general Kuchera.

The Polish Home Army became the strongest resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe.

In addition to the AK, during the Second World War, other resistance organizations operated on the territory of Poland, which often had opposite goals and were subordinate to different leading centers. The Guards of Ludow (since 1944 - the Army of Ludow) was created as a military organization of the Polish Communist Party, and the Chlopske Battalions were created by the peasant party. There were also Jewish militant organizations that organized the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. When the deportation of Warsaw Jews to the death camps began in April 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto (350,000 Jews) revolted. After a month of hopeless struggle, without any outside help, the uprising was crushed. The Germans destroyed the ghetto, and the surviving Jewish population was deported to the Treblinka extermination camp.

Warsaw Uprising

The largest military action of the AK was the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. When parts of the Red Army were already approaching Warsaw, on the orders of the “London government”, an uprising began, led by the Home Army and led by its commander, General Bur-Komorowski, in order to liberate the capital of Poland before the arrival of Soviet troops.

Meanwhile, the Germans launched a counterattack near Warsaw, and Rokossovsky (a few hours before the start of the uprising in Warsaw) was forced to order the 2nd Panzer Division advancing on the city to go on the defensive. For his part, Stalin disregarded the Zhukov-Rokossovsky plan, which assumed the resumption of the offensive after the regrouping, and after an appeal from Churchill, who supported the "London government", did not allow the use of Soviet airfields to help the rebels.

The uprising began on August 1, 1944. The AK had about 50,000 fighters in the Warsaw area, but due to difficulties with mobilization, about 25,000 participated in the beginning of the uprising, of which about 10% had weapons. By the beginning of the uprising, the German garrison in Warsaw numbered about 20,000. From August 4, the German forces in Warsaw were increased to 50 thousand, due to parts of the German 9th Army, which occupied the defense in the east of Warsaw, as well as the Russian SS division, Cossack and Azerbaijani units of the Ost-truppen. SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach commanded the German forces in Warsaw.

The rebels managed to capture a number of German facilities in Warsaw and some parts of the city. However, the Germans retained their barracks and control of the transport hubs. On August 5, the Germans began to retake the districts of Warsaw. Soon the rebels were isolated in several separate pockets (Old Town, center, Mokotov, Zholibozh). The fighting continued, the number of civilian casualties increased, and there was a lack of food, medicine and water.

On October 2, 1944, Bur-Komorowski signed the surrender. Surrendered participants in the uprising were guaranteed the status of prisoners of war. The Germans brutally suppressed the uprising. Most of the city was destroyed (later, special German brigades destroyed the surviving buildings). During the 63 days of the uprising, 10 thousand rebels died, 6 thousand were missing, 20 thousand were injured (5 thousand seriously), 15 thousand were captured (including 2 thousand women). In addition, about 150 - 250 thousand civilians died, about 500 - 550 thousand residents of the city and 100 thousand residents of the surrounding area were expelled from their homes, and about 150 thousand of them ended up in concentration camps or were sent to forced labor to Germany. The Germans also suffered significant losses, about 10 thousand soldiers were killed, about 7 thousand were missing, and 9 thousand were wounded, German troops also lost 300 tanks, guns and armored vehicles.

The uprising did not achieve either military or political goals, but became for the Poles a symbol of courage and determination in the struggle for independence. Soviet propaganda interpreted these events as an ill-prepared adventure. All responsibility for the failure of the uprising rested with the government in exile in London. The offensive of the Red Army resumed on January 12, 1945, and on January 17 Warsaw was liberated by the Red Army.

Polish units in France

Polish military units in France began to form after the signing of the Franco-Polish Protocol on September 21, 1939. In total, at the end of June 1940, the Polish armed forces in France numbered about 85 thousand. General Władysław Sikorski became the commander-in-chief of the Polish forces in France. At the end of 1939, the Polish 1st and 2nd Infantry Divisions were formed. In February 1940, a separate mountain rifle brigade was formed (commander - General Zygmunt Bohush-Shyshko). In early May 1940, the brigade was sent as part of the Anglo-French expeditionary corps to Norway to fight against the Germans. There, the Polish brigade successfully stormed the German-occupied villages of Ankenes and Nyborg in the battle for Narvik, the Germans were pushed back to the Swedish border. However, due to the advance of the Germans in France, the Allied forces, including the Poles, left Norway.

At a time when a separate mountain rifle brigade was sent to Norway, the Polish 1st Infantry Division (on May 3, 1940 renamed the 1st Grenadier Division), under the command of General Bronisław Dukh, was sent to the front in Lorraine. On June 16, the Polish division was almost surrounded by the Germans and received an order from the French command to retreat. On June 19, General Sikorsky ordered the division to retreat to the south of France or, if possible, to Switzerland. However, this order was difficult to fulfill, and therefore only 2 thousand Poles managed to reach the south of France, about a thousand left for Switzerland. The exact losses of the division are still unknown, but at least a thousand Poles were killed, and at least 3 thousand were wounded. The Polish 2nd Infantry Division (renamed 2nd Rifle Division) under the command of General Prugar-Ketling also fought in Lorraine. On June 15 and 16, this division covered the retreat of the French 45th Corps to the Swiss border. The Poles crossed into Switzerland on 20 June and were interned there until the end of World War II.

In addition to the infantry, the Polish armed forces in France included the 10th Armored Cavalry Brigade under the command of General Stanisław Maczk. She was stationed at the front in Champagne. From June 13, the brigade covered the withdrawal of two French divisions. Then, on orders, the brigade retreated, but on June 17 it was surrounded. Having managed to break through the German lines, the brigade was then evacuated to Britain.

In addition to the aforementioned Polish units, several Polish anti-tank companies attached to French infantry divisions took part in the fighting in France. The Polish 3rd and 4th Infantry Divisions were in the process of formation in June 1940 and did not have time to take part in the battles.

When the defeat of France became apparent, the commander-in-chief of the Polish forces decided to evacuate them to Britain. On June 18, 1940, General Sikorsky flew to England. At a meeting in London, he assured British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that the Polish troops were not going to surrender to the Germans and wanted to fight until complete victory. Churchill ordered the organization of the evacuation of Polish troops to Scotland.

While Sikorsky was in England, his deputy, General Sosnkovsky, asked the French General Denin to help the Poles evacuate. The Frenchman replied that "the Poles themselves need to hire ships for evacuation, and you have to pay for it in gold." He also suggested that the Polish troops surrender to the Germans, as did the French. As a result, 17 thousand Polish soldiers and officers managed to evacuate to Britain.

Polish units in the Middle East

In April 1940, the Polish Carpathian Rifle Brigade was formed in Syria under the command of Colonel Stanisław Kopanski (from Polish soldiers and officers who fled through Romania). After the surrender of French troops in Syria to the Germans, the French command ordered the Poles to surrender to German captivity, but Colonel Kopansky did not obey this order and took the Polish brigade to British Palestine. In October 1940, the brigade was redeployed to Egypt. In October 1941, the Polish Carpathian Brigade was landed in the Libyan town of Tobruk, besieged by the Germans, to help the Australian 9th Infantry Division, which was defending there. In December 1941, the allied forces attacked the German and Italian troops, and on December 10 the siege of Tobruk was terminated. On December 14-17, 1941, the Polish brigade took part in the battle in the Gazala region (in Libya). Of the 5 thousand fighters, the Poles lost more than 600 killed and wounded.

Polish units in Britain

In August 1940, British Prime Minister Churchill signed the Polish-British military agreement, which allowed Polish troops to be stationed in Britain. The Polish armed forces in Britain received the same status as the troops of the countries of the British Commonwealth, and received the right to form new Polish units. By the end of August 1940, the Polish ground forces in Britain consisted of 5 rifle brigades (3 of them were manned almost exclusively by command personnel, due to a lack of privates). On September 28, 1940, the Polish commander-in-chief, General Sikorsky, ordered the formation of the 1st Polish Corps. In October 1941, the 4th Rifle Brigade was reorganized into the 1st Separate Parachute Brigade (under the command of Colonel Sosnovsky). In February 1942, the formation of the Polish 1st Panzer Division (under the command of General Machka) began. After the death of General Sikorsky in a plane crash on July 4, 1943 near Gibraltar, General Sosnowsky became the commander-in-chief of the Polish troops.

Anders Army

On July 30, 1941, General Sikorsky and the Soviet ambassador in London Maisky signed a Polish-Soviet agreement on joint military operations against Germany. On August 4, 1941, Polish General Vladislav Anders, who had been appointed Sikorsky commander of the Polish troops in the USSR, was released by the Soviet authorities from imprisonment in the Lubyanka prison. On August 12, 1941, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR by its decree declared an amnesty for all Polish citizens who were imprisoned in the USSR. The USSR agreed to the formation of parts of the Polish armed forces - 2 divisions with a total number of 25 thousand. Then, at the request of Sikorsky, the numerical restrictions were lifted. By November 1941, the number of Poles gathered in the training camps had reached 44,000. On December 3, 1941, General Sikorsky, who arrived in the USSR, met with Stalin in the Kremlin. As a result of their negotiations, the number of the Polish army in the USSR was set at 96,000, and permission was received to evacuate 25,000 Poles outside the USSR. In March 1942, the head of the rear of the Red Army, General Khrulev, informed General Anders that the Polish army in the USSR would receive only 26,000 food rations per day. Anders, at a meeting with Stalin, achieved the receipt of 44 thousand food rations per day and permission to evacuate Polish troops from the USSR. By April 1942, 33,000 Poles-military personnel, as well as almost 11,000 civilian Poles, including 3,000 children, were transferred to Krasnovodsk for evacuation to Iran. The second stage of the evacuation of Poles from the USSR took place in August 1942. In total, 78,600 military and 38,000 civilian Poles were evacuated from the USSR.

In September 1942, Polish units evacuated from the USSR were deployed in northern Iraq. They were consolidated into 3 infantry divisions and 1 tank brigade, which formed the 2nd Polish Corps. In July 1943 the corps was redeployed to Palestine. On December 7, 1943, the British command decided to send the 2nd Polish Corps to Italy.

On March 24, 1944, the commander of the 2nd Polish Corps, General Anders, received an order from the British command to break through German positions in the Monte Cassino area, storm the monastery and occupy the town of Piedimonte, and thereby clear the way to Rome. By this point, the Allied forces had stormed Monte Cassino three times without success. In April 1944, the 2nd Polish Corps consisted of the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division (commander General Duh), the 5th Kresova Infantry Division (General Sulik), the 2nd Tank Brigade (General Rakovsky) and the 2nd Artillery Group. The number of the corps is 46 thousand soldiers and officers. The 4th Battle of Monte Cassino began on 11 May. After fierce battles with the defending German 1st parachute and 5th mountain divisions, on the morning of May 18, the Poles took the monastery and raised the regimental banner of the 12th Podolsk Lancers and the flag of Poland over it (later, by order of General Anders, the British flag was hoisted) . On the morning of May 19, the entire Monte Cassino massif was cleared of German troops. The victory of the Poles provided the 13th British Corps with a passage to the Leary Valley. On May 25, Canadian, British and Polish units broke through the German "Hitler Line". In total, during the battle in the Monte Cassino area, the 2nd Polish Corps lost a thousand people killed and 3 thousand wounded. After a short rest, General Anders was ordered to move the Polish corps along the Adriatic coast to capture the port city of Ancona. Heavy fighting in this direction began on June 21. On July 17, the Poles launched an assault on Ancona. On July 18, the 2nd Tank Brigade cut off Ancona in the northwest, then the Carpathian Lancers entered the city. The port, as required by the command, was taken intact. In the battle for Ancona, the Poles lost more than 600 killed and almost 2,000 wounded. The capture of the port allowed the British 8th Army to continue their advance on Bologna. Then the Polish corps received an order to break through the German "Gotha line", which was completed in August 1944. By the end of 1944, the 2nd Polish corps was reinforced by two infantry brigades, the 2nd tank brigade was reorganized into the 2nd Warsaw tank division. In January 1945, the American commander of the 15th Army Group, General Clark, ordered the allied units to prepare for the last offensive in Italy. Since General Anders was appointed to the post of supreme commander of the Polish armed forces, General Bohusz-Szyszko became commander of the 2nd Polish Corps. The offensive began on April 9, 1945. On April 21, the Poles stormed Bologna, losing over 200 killed and over 1,200 wounded.

1st Panzer Division of General Macka

The Polish 1st Panzer Division under the command of General Stanisław Machka was landed in Normandy in July 1944 and took an active part in the liberation of Belgium and Holland. The main combat mission of the Canadian Corps in August 1944 was to capture the area around the city of Falaise and join with the American units advancing from Argentan. During the Battle of Falaise, the Polish 1st Panzer Division helped the Allied forces to surround significant German forces (the division itself captured more than 5,000 Germans). The losses of the Poles amounted to more than 400 killed and 1 thousand wounded. At the end of August 1944, the Polish division advanced, with heavy fighting, to the east. On September 6, the Poles crossed the Franco-Belgian border and took the city of Ypres. Then the Poles took the cities of Tilt, Ghent, Lokeren, St. Nicholas. On September 16, the Poles crossed the Belgian-Dutch border. General Maczek was ordered to take Antwerp. The task was completed, but then the Polish division fought for three weeks against the Germans who went on the counteroffensive. Then, in October, the Poles advanced into Holland and took the city of Breda (the city council of Breda declared all the fighters of the Polish division to be honorary citizens of the city, and after the end of World War II, many veterans of the Polish 1st Panzer Division settled there). On November 8, 1944, the Poles reached the banks of the Meuse River. There, the advance stopped - until April 14, 1945, when the Polish division, after five days of fighting, broke through the German defenses and entered German territory. On May 6, 1945, the Poles captured the German naval base at Wilhelmshaven.

Operation Market Garden

On September 17, 1944, the Allies launched Operation Market Garden, an airborne landing in Holland. On September 18, part of the Polish 1st Parachute Brigade was landed on the north bank of the Rhine to help the British 1st Airborne Division besieged in Arnhem. However, due to bad weather conditions, only a little over 1,000 Polish paratroopers managed to land. The rest of the brigade was landed on September 23, but 30 km from the first landing. Only a small part of the Poles managed to link up with the British. In general, this Allied operation was unsuccessful. The Poles lost more than 200 dead and missing and more than 200 wounded there.

Polish Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic

The Polish navy continued to fight in the west after September 1939, since even before the start of World War II, 3 (out of four) Polish destroyers - Bliskawitz, Grom and Buzha - were sent to Britain. After the start of the war, two of the five Polish submarines - "Wilk" and "Orzhel" - broke through from the Baltic to Britain. Cooperation between the Polish Navy and the British Navy was established by a naval agreement of November 1939. Shortly thereafter, the Polish Navy leased several ships from Britain - 2 cruisers ("Dragon" and "Konrad"), 6 destroyers "Garland ”, “Piorun”, “Krakowiak”, “Kujawiak”, “Shlenzak”, “Orkan”) and 3 submarines (“Falcon”, “Yastshemb”, “Dzik”). The submarine "Orzhel" in April 1940 sank the German transport "Rio de Janeiro", which participated in the landing of German troops in Norway. The destroyer Piorun, together with a flotilla of British destroyers, participated in 1941 in the pursuit of the German battleship Bismarck. In 1942, the destroyer Schlensack provided artillery support for the Canadian-British landing at Dieppe. The submarines "Falcon" and "Dzik" operated in the Mediterranean Sea and received the nickname "Terrible Twins". Polish warships ensured the landing of Allied troops in the Narvik operation (1940), North African (1942), Sicilian (1943) and Italian (1943). They also escorted Allied caravans bringing weapons, food and other supplies to the USSR. In total, Polish naval sailors sank several enemy warships (German and Italian), including 2 German submarines, shot down about 20 aircraft and sank about 40 transport ships. About 400 (out of a total of about 4 thousand) Polish sailors died. Most of the survivors of World War II ended up living in the West.

Polish aviation in the Battle of Britain

After the September campaign of 1939, many Polish military pilots tried to move to France. During the defense of France, Polish pilots shot down about 50 German aircraft, 13 Poles pilots died. Then the Polish pilots crossed over to Britain. The Battle of Britain (July-October 1940) involved 145 Polish fighter pilots. 2 Polish squadrons were formed as part of the British Air Force (302nd and 303rd, Poles also served in other British squadrons). Polish pilots achieved great success - 303 Squadron became one of the most productive among the British Air Force, shooting down 125 German aircraft. In total, during the Battle of Britain, the Poles shot down 201 enemy aircraft. In the summer of 1940, 2 Polish bomber squadrons were formed, soon the total number of Polish squadrons in Britain reached 15: 10 fighter, 4 bomber and 1 artillery guidance squadrons. A group of Polish pilots fought in North Africa in 1943 (the so-called Skalsky Circus). Polish pilots bombed Germany (15 kilotons of bombs), including Berlin, the Ruhr and Hamburg, and dropped weapons and ammunition for partisans in Poland (426 sorties) and other countries (909 sorties). In total, during the war, Polish pilots made 73.5 thousand sorties from Britain. They shot down 760 German aircraft and 190 V-1 missiles, sank 2 submarines. The most productive of the Polish pilots were Stanislav Skalsky, Witold Urbanovich, Evgeniush Horbachevsky and Boleslav Gladysh, who shot down 15 or more enemy aircraft each. The loss of the Polish Air Force amounted to 2 thousand dead.

Winston Churchill, in a speech before the British Parliament on August 20, 1940, said this about the Polish pilots defending England - "Never before in the history of human conflicts did so many owe so much to so few" (Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few). After the end of World War II, most of the Polish flight and technical personnel (there were more than 14 thousand in May 1945) remained to live in the West.

Polish army on the eastern front

In March 1943, the Soviet command decided to create new (pro-Soviet) Polish troops. In May 1943, the Stavka appointed retired (since June 1939) Lieutenant Colonel Zygmunt Berling as commander of this Polish army (as part of one infantry division), and Wanda Wasilewska as political commissar, who was promoted to the rank of colonel. (Berling was a prisoner of war, released under an amnesty in August 1941 from a Soviet prison, enlisted in the Polish army of General Anders, was appointed division chief of staff, in 1942 (when Anders left for the Western allies) remained in the USSR. Vasilevskaya, daughter of the minister of pre-war Poland, after Occupation of Lvov by the Red Army in 1939, she accepted Soviet citizenship, joined the CPSU (b), was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and became a Soviet writer).

1st Polish Infantry Division named after Tadeusz Kosciuszko ( Polish 1 Polska Dywizja Piechoty im.Tadeusza Kościuszki) was formed in June 1943. On August 10, the Supreme Commander (Stalin) ordered the formation of a Polish corps consisting of 2 infantry divisions, a tank brigade, an artillery brigade, an aviation regiment and corps units. On the same day, the command awarded Berling the rank of general and appointed him commander of the Polish corps.

As of July 5, 1943, the division consisted of 14,380 people (of which 13,520 Poles, 439 Jews, 209 Ukrainians, 108 Belarusians and 112 Russians). On July 15, 1943 (on the anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald), the fighters of the division took the military oath, on the same day the Union of Polish Patriots presented the division with a combat banner (red and white, with the motto "For your and our freedom!").

On August 10, 1943, the 1st Polish Corps was created, which included the existing Polish military units (including the 1st Polish Infantry Division) and the formation of new Polish units began. On September 1, 1943, the 1st Polish Infantry Division was sent to the front. October 12 - 13, 1943 near Lenino in the Mogilev region, the first battle of the 1st Polish Infantry Division took place. During the two-day battles, parts of the Polish division inflicted significant damage on the enemy. Three fighters of the Polish division were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, 247 were awarded orders and medals. The division's own losses in the "Battle for Lenino" reached 25% of the personnel.

On March 13, 1944, the Headquarters decided to deploy Polish units on the territory of the USSR into the 1st Polish Army. The number of the Polish army was increased to 78 thousand. On July 20, 1944, units of the army crossed the Western Bug and entered the territory of Poland. On July 21, 1944, the 1st Polish Army was merged with the partisan Army of the People into a single Polish People's Army. In the Polish Army there were deputy commanders for political affairs and political agencies, but at the same time there were also chaplains in the units. As of July 22, 1944, the total strength of the 1st Army of the Polish Army was 100,000 servicemen. In late July - early August, the 1st Polish Army participated in the liberation of Deblin and Pulaw. The 1st Polish armored brigade participated in the defense of the Studzyansky bridgehead on the western bank of the Vistula south of Warsaw.

On September 14, 1944, the Polish 1st Army liberated the right-bank suburb of Warsaw - Prague, and then made an unsuccessful attempt to force the Vistula to help the Warsaw Uprising. In January 1945, the 1st Polish Army participated in the liberation of Warsaw, and then the Polish Army participated in the breakthrough through central Poland. On January 28, 1945, Bydgoszcz was liberated by them. Then the 1st Polish Army was transferred to the north, and the main forces of the army participated in the assault on Kołobrzeg (German Kolberg), and the 1st Polish armored brigade advanced on Gdansk (East Pomeranian operation). In April 1945 the 2nd Polish Army was organized. In 1945, the number of the Polish Army reached 200,000 people (1st and 2nd Polish armies, 1st tank corps, 1st air corps and other units), amounting to approximately 10% of the total number of forces participating in the Berlin operations on the Soviet side. By June 1945, the Polish Army numbered about 400,000 people. It was the largest regular military force that fought alongside Soviet troops.

The essence of the falsification of Russian history begun by liberal-bourgeois circles - both home-grown and outlandish - is to replace our common past, the biography of the people, and with it the biographies of millions of compatriots who have dedicated their lives to the revival and prosperity of our Motherland, the struggle for her freedom from foreign domination. The falsification of history is an attempt at a brazen substitution of Russia itself.

According to the pages of the Pravda newspaper, Alexander Ognev, front-line soldier, professor, honored worker of science

One of the main objects of falsification, the anti-Soviet chose the story of the heroic deed of the Soviet people, who liberated the world from German fascism. It is clear that sincere patriots do not accept this game of thimble-makers. Therefore, the readers of Pravda warmly approved the article published by the newspaper on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, an article by a front-line soldier, Doctor of Philology, Honorary Professor of Tver State University Alexander Ognev and strongly recommended that the newspaper continue publishing his revelations of falsifiers of history. Fulfilling the wishes of readers, the editorial board of Pravda decided to publish the chapters of the study of the Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation A.V. Ognev in the Friday issues of the newspaper.

Planned deception

World War II began as a result of Poland's refusal to meet German demands. Hitler presented an ultimatum to Poland: to transfer the "free city of Danzig" to the Third Reich, to allow the construction of extraterritorial highways and railways that would connect East Prussia with the main part of Germany.

The Western democracies sowed illusions among the Poles that in the event of war they would provide proper assistance to Warsaw. On March 31, 1939, British Prime Minister N. Chamberlain declared in the House of Commons: “In the event of any action that will clearly threaten the independence of Poland and in which the Polish government accordingly considers it necessary to resist with its national armed forces, His Majesty’s Government considers itself obliged immediately give the Polish government all the support it can. It gave the Polish government assurance of this. I may add that the French Government have authorized me to make it clear that they take the same position on this matter as His Majesty's Government."

On May 14-19, 1939, during the Franco-Polish negotiations, France promised, in the event of an attack by Hitler on Poland, "to launch an offensive against Germany with the main forces of its army on the 15th day of mobilization." Anglo-Polish negotiations on May 23-30 led to London declaring its readiness to provide Warsaw with 1,300 combat aircraft for the Polish Air Force and to undertake aerial bombardment of Germany in case of war.

These promises were a deliberately planned deception, and the puffy Polish leadership naively believed them. It arrogantly believed that Hitler would not dare to start a war, cherished plans for the creation of a great Poland, waited with greedy stupidity for the time when it would be possible to seize Ukraine and Belarus.

Analyzing the military-political situation in Europe in 1939, historian L. Hart considered: “The only way to avoid war was to enlist the support of Russia, the only power that could provide Poland with direct assistance, and thus restrain Hitler.” But this disgusted the British conservatives. According to A. Taylor, "the British recoiled in horror" from the proposal to conclude an agreement with the Soviet Union: "A war in which they would fight on the side of Soviet Russia against Germany was unthinkable for them" In March 1939, in the Report of the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b) I. Stalin warned the Western rulers: "A dangerous and big political game, begun by the supporters of the policy of non-intervention, may end in a serious failure for them." This prediction has completely come true.

Great Britain and France, realizing that the military-political situation was not developing as we would like, suggested that the Soviet government make a commitment: if they were involved in hostilities, it would provide "immediate assistance, if it is desirable." April 15 England and France gave guarantees to Poland, Greece and Romania. Assessing Britain's demands for the unilateral commitments of the USSR, J. Stalin recommended that V. Molotov ask the plenipotentiaries' opinions about them. I. Maisky wrote: "I have repeatedly had to point out that Chamberlain's 'soul of the soul' in the field of foreign policy comes down to collusion with aggressors at the expense of third countries."

The Soviet leaders reasonably considered that “a united front of mutual assistance should be created between the three powers on the principles of mutual and equal obligations. Where there is no reciprocity, there is no way to establish true cooperation.” V. Molotov at the session of the Supreme Council on May 31, 1939 noted a serious deterioration in the international situation and stressed that the basis of the agreement should be "the principle of reciprocity and equal duties." On June 26, the Soviet ambassador in London, Maisky, informed Commissar for Foreign Affairs Molotov: “Beaverbrook told me yesterday that the war was close and that it would probably begin this autumn ... Ribbentrop convinced Hitler that England and France were not capable of a serious war and that from negotiations on a tripartite alliance will not work."

Chamberlain still cherished the dream that Hitler would lead his troops to conquer the eastern territories. In mid-July 1939, British and German representatives held talks in London, which, in their military-political orientation, were anti-Soviet in nature. The situation became more tense, but the British and French governments did not want to conclude an equal treaty with the Soviet Union. In order to cunningly revive the already completely failed "policy of appeasement", they tried to create the appearance of negotiations, looking for an acceptable way for them to make a deal with the insolent aggressor, to force Poland to meet German demands. They wanted to conclude an agreement similar to the Munich one.

Sly negotiations

On July 24, 1939, German Ambassador Dirksen reported to his Foreign Minister Ribbentrop that "reaching an agreement with Germany is still the most important and desirable goal for England." The most insightful bourgeois politician of that time, W. Churchill, soberly assessing the situation, sharply criticized the policy of Chamberlain and Halifax, which was detrimental to the Western democracies themselves: , if she is not sure that the methods used by the allies - the front of the world - can lead to success. ... Our government must understand that none of these states of Eastern Europe will be able to hold out, say, a year of war, if they do not have solid and strong support from friendly Russia, combined with an alliance of Western powers.

The British government, in an effort to lull alarmed public opinion, accepted the Soviet proposal in early August to start military negotiations. On August 11, 1939, the British and French missions arrived in Moscow for negotiations, not having the authority to conclude a military agreement (a document authorizing the negotiations was sent to the British Admiral Drax only to their completion). Already this could not inspire confidence in the goals set for them by the governments of England and France. The Soviet delegation headed by People's Commissar of Defense K. Voroshilov presented a detailed plan of possible military operations against the aggressor. “From the documents recently declassified by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of Russia, it follows,” writes historian A. Pivovarov, “that literally ten days before the conclusion of the Pact and two weeks before the official start of the war, i.e. Until September 1, 1939, I. Stalin met with representatives of the delegations of England and France, proposing not only to conclude a tripartite agreement on mutual assistance in the event of aggression, but also to transfer up to a million soldiers to the German border in order to prevent and contain the obvious aggressive aspirations of Germany.

According to the British diplomat G. Ferker, "long before the arrival of the British military mission, the British embassy in Moscow received instructions from the government, which indicated that the negotiations should in no case end successfully." The secret instruction to the British delegation was that "the British Government does not wish to be drawn into any definite obligation which might tie our hands under any circumstances." On August 8, 1939, the US embassy in England reported to Washington: "The military mission, which is currently leaving for Moscow, has been instructed to make every effort to extend the negotiations until October 1."

The negotiations stalled. On August 21, Admiral Drax proposed to postpone them for 3-4 days, since no answer was received on the question of the passage and actions of Soviet troops in the territories of Poland and Romania. US Secretary of the Interior G. Ickes concluded: “Chamberlain ... hopes that Hitler eventually decides to move east, not west. That's why he's procrastinating on an agreement with Russia." Hart had reason to accuse the British government of disrupting the Moscow negotiations and creating the conditions that prepared the way for the conclusion of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact. He wrote about him: “When considering the situation in Europe in subsequent years, it cannot be said with such certainty as in 1941 that the measures taken by Stalin harmed Russia. All this has done immeasurable damage to the West.”

Backroom deals

When Czechoslovakia was persistently forced to surrender, Chamberlain sought to explain to Hitler the position of Great Britain: “... proceeding from the fact that Germany and England are the two pillars of the European world and the main pillars against communism and therefore it is necessary to overcome our present difficulties by peaceful means ... Probably, it will be possible to find a solution acceptable to everyone except Russia. The last phrase - "except Russia" - emphasizes what Chamberlain longed for when he hatched a plan to create an Anglo-German alliance. On June 29, 1939, Halifax, on behalf of his government, expressed his readiness to reach an agreement with the Germans on all issues that "inspire alarm in the world." A preliminary sounding was carried out by prominent members of the Conservative Party, suggesting that "Hitler divide the world into two spheres of influence: Anglo-American in the West and German in the East." Knowing that the Wehrmacht would attack Poland no later than September (April 11, 1939, Hitler signed the Weiss plan to prepare for war against Poland), England decided to sacrifice it in order to clear the way for Germany to the east.

The Chief of the General Staff of the German Land Forces, Colonel General F. Halder (he held this post from August 14, 1939 to September 24, 1942 and often met with Hitler) wrote in his official diary on August 14, 1939: for Germany, the Polish question will once again turn to England with proposals. Understood in London. Paris also knows about our determination. Therefore, the whole great spectacle is drawing to a close... England is already now probing the soil on the subject of how the Fuhrer imagines the further development of the situation after the resolution of the Polish question. There is an entry in Halder's diary: “08/28/1939. 13 o'clock 30 min. Visit N. Henderson (British Ambassador to Germany) to the Fuhrer. Presentation of a memorandum. N. Henderson: “There is no basis for negotiations. The Fuhrer will not be offended by England if she wages an imaginary war.

It is worth remembering this idea of ​​"imaginary war".

In England, Chamberlain and his supporters were opposed by more far-sighted politicians—Churchill, Eden, and others. They saw the main danger in Hitler, and not in the policy of the Bolsheviks. On May 4, 1939, commenting on the proposal for an alliance made by the USSR to the British, Churchill wrote: “Ten or twelve days have already passed since the Russian proposal was made. The English people, who ... have now accepted the principle of conscription, have the right, together with the French Republic, to call on Poland not to put obstacles in the way of achieving the common goal. It is necessary not only to agree to the full cooperation of Russia, but also to include in the union the three Baltic states - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. These three states with warlike peoples, which together have armies numbering probably twenty divisions of courageous soldiers, absolutely need a friendly Russia, which would give them weapons and other assistance.

Much then depended on the policy of the Polish rulers. On June 20, 1939, Polish Foreign Minister J. Beck instructed his deputy Artsishevsky to meet with the German ambassador in Warsaw, von Moltke, and assure the latter that the Polish government would not conclude "no agreement with the Soviets." It is noteworthy that the Polish-English agreement of August 25, 1939 "had a secret appendix, in which, in particular, Lithuania was declared a sphere of interests of Poland, and Belgium and Holland - of Great Britain."

The Polish government categorically refused Soviet assistance in the event of German aggression. The French Foreign Minister, finally realizing that she was falling into an ominous German trap, considered it necessary on August 22, 1939 "to try to make new efforts as soon as possible before Marshal Rydz-Smigly in order to eliminate, while there is still time, the only obstacle that together at the same time hinders the conclusion of tripartite agreements in Moscow.” In fact, there was no longer time to decisively change the stubborn policy of Poland, to force her to soberly assess the most dangerous situation.

Churchill described the situation in 1939 as follows: “It made sense to enter the battle for Czechoslovakia in 1938, when Germany could hardly put up half a dozen trained divisions on the Western Front, when the French, with 60-70 divisions, undoubtedly could break through the Rhine or the Ruhr . However, all this was considered unreasonable, careless, unworthy of modern views and morality. ... And now, when all these advantages and all this help have been lost and discarded, England, leading France, offers to guarantee the integrity of Poland - the same Poland that only six months ago, with greed of a hyena, took part in the robbery and destruction of the Czechoslovak state " .

Hitler had no doubt that England and France would leave Poland to its fate, and decided to use their plans for his far-reaching goals. On August 11, 1939, Hitler, in a conversation with the Commissioner of the League of Nations in Danzig, K. Burckhardt, indicated: “Everything that I do is directed against the Russians. If the West is too stupid and blind to understand this, then I will be forced to make an agreement with the Russians, beat the West and then, after its defeat, turn again against the Soviet Union with all my forces. On August 22, 1939, at a meeting with the military, announcing his decision to start a war with Poland, Hitler said: "England and France will not go to war if nothing forces them to do so." He emphasized: “The unfortunate worms - Daladier and Chamberlain - I recognized in Munich. They are too cowardly to attack us… Poland will be devastated and populated by Germans…”

General Z. Westphal in the collection of articles “Fatal Decisions” admitted: “The main fatal decision was the one that came from Hitler’s erroneous assumption that the Western powers would allow him to destroy Poland without standing up for his ally. As soon as the decision was made to invade Poland, our fate was also decided. General G. Guderian in "Memoirs of a Soldier" confirmed: "Hitler and his foreign minister were inclined to believe that the Western powers would not dare to start a war against Germany and therefore her hands were free to achieve her goals in Eastern Europe." General K. Tippelskirch, in his History of the Second World War, wrote about Hitler's conviction that England and France would not dare to attack Germany if it fell on Poland: “When the ultimatum of the British government was translated to Hitler, he seemed to be petrified - he understood that he was mistaken about the possible reaction of the British and acted too carelessly. After a long silence, he asked Ribbentrop: "What will happen now?"

"Imaginary War"

On September 1, 1939, Germany swiftly invaded Poland. England and France, having declared war on Germany on September 3, did not conduct active hostilities against it, which Poland very much hoped for, which, under the blows of German troops, began to crumble like a house of cards. Having made a public commitment to defend it, England and France cynically betrayed their ally, surprisingly calmly watching the German formations crush the Polish army.

The Poles clearly exaggerated their military capabilities then. The Polish ambassador in Paris, Y. Lukasiewicz, in a conversation with French Foreign Minister J. Bonnet on August 18, 1939, said: “Not the Germans, but the Poles will break deep into Germany in the very first days of the war!”

G. Isserson wrote in his work “New Forms of Struggle” (1940) about the main mistake of the Polish command: “On the Polish side, it was believed that the main forces of Germany would be tied up in the west by the performance of France and England and would not be able to concentrate in the east. It was assumed that about 20 divisions would be left against Poland and that all other forces would be thrown to the west against the Anglo-French invasion. So great was the faith in the strength and speed of the Allied offensive. Thus, the plan for the strategic deployment of Germany in the event of a war on two fronts seemed completely wrong. The possibilities of Germany in the air were also evaluated. Finally, they firmly counted on the direct effective assistance of England by air and naval forces. The historical lessons of the past have passed without a trace, which have more than once shown the true value of the promised help to England, which has always been able to fight only with foreign soldiers.

F. Halder wrote in his diary on September 7, 1939: "Some facts indicate that the Western powers do not want war ... The French cabinet is by no means in the mood for decisiveness and heroism." The chief of the British General Staff believed that Poland would be able to hold out against Germany for at least six months. On August 31, the Commander-in-Chief of the French Army expressed the hope that the Poles would be able to resist the Germans for a long time, "to fight until the spring of 1940." In 2007, the American R. Pais justified the behavior of the British and French in September 1939 by saying that "they had neither the strength nor the ability to help Poland at that time." Our publicist G. Rychkov considered the main reason for the shameful inaction of Poland's Western allies that France "could not mobilize the army and put the economy on a war footing."

Weighty facts refute these versions. M. Meltyukhov in the book “Stalin's Missed Chance. The Soviet Union in the Struggle for Europe: 1939-1941. (2002) wrote: “The forces for the offensive were quite enough. By the beginning of September 1939, French troops on the German border numbered 3253 thousand people, 17.5 thousand guns and mortars, 2850 tanks, 1400 first-line aircraft and 1600 in reserve. In addition, over a thousand British aircraft could be used against the Germans. They were opposed by 915 thousand German troops, who had 8640 guns and mortars, 1359 aircraft and not a single tank.

The English historian D. Kihme, in his book "The Battle That Didn't Take Place" (1967), argued that France and England, having started hostilities against Germany, would have won a decisive victory. But they refused to give "exactly the kind of battle that would end the war, and possibly Hitler himself, in the autumn of 1939." Field Marshal E. Manstein in his book "Lost Victories" noted that "from the first day of the war, the French army was many times superior to the German forces operating on the Western Front." A. Taylor emphasized: "If the French launched an offensive, the Germans would not have been able to resist."

Z. Westphal concluded: “If the French army launched a major offensive on a wide front against the weak German troops covering the border (it is difficult to call them softer than the security forces), then there is almost no doubt that it would break through the German defenses, especially in the first ten days of September. Such an offensive, launched before the transfer of significant German forces from Poland to the West, would almost certainly give the French the opportunity to easily reach the Rhine and, perhaps, even force. This could significantly change the course of the war."

Colonel General A. Jodl, Chief of Staff of the Operational Command of the Armed Forces (OKW), admitted at the Nuremberg trials: “If we were not defeated back in 1939, it was only because about 110 French and British divisions that stood during our wars with Poland in the West against 23 German divisions, remained completely inactive.

The French writer Roland Dorgeles, who at that time was a war correspondent, who visited the front line, was surprised at the silence that reigned there: “The gunners stationed along the Rhine looked with folded arms at the German columns with military equipment moving on the other side of the river, our pilots flew over the fire-breathing stoves factories in the Saar without dropping bombs. Obviously, the main concern of the high command was not to provoke the enemy. On September 8, the very alarmed Polish military attache in France, Colonel Fyd, reported to Warsaw: “Until 10 o’clock on September 7, 1939, there is virtually no war in the west. Neither the French nor the Germans shoot at each other. In the same way, there are still no air actions. My assessment is that the French are making neither further mobilization nor further action and are awaiting the results of the battle in Poland." Polish military representatives on September 9, 1939, at a meeting with the Chief of the British Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal E. Ironside, learned that there was no British plan for military assistance to Poland at all.

The "timid" government of France

When asked why the French army, which had overwhelming superiority in the west, did not launch an offensive, as General Gamelin and the French government had promised in writing, the American publicist Shearer replied: “There were many reasons: the defeatist mood of the French high command, government and people; the memory of how France was bled white during the First World War, and the desire to prevent such a massacre at the slightest opportunity; the realization that by mid-September the Polish armies would be finally defeated and the Germans would soon be able to transfer their superior forces to the west and stop the initial French advance; fear of German superiority in artillery and aviation."

The French government insisted from the outset that the British Air Force should not bomb targets in Germany itself, fearing that the Germans might retaliate by bombing French factories, although the bombing of the Ruhr, the industrial heart of the Reich, could backfire on the Germans. disaster. ... When asked why France did not oppose Germany in September, Churchill gave the most reasonable answer: “This battle ... was lost several years ago. In Munich in 1938; during the German occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, a year before Hitler introduced conscription, ignoring the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty. Now the time has come to pay for the sorrowful inaction of the Allies, although in Paris and London it seemed that this payback could be avoided.

The future president of France, General Charles de Gaulle, wrote: “When in September 1939 the French government ... decided to enter the war in Poland, which had already begun by that time, I had no doubt that it was dominated by illusions that, despite the state of war, before there will be no serious fights." He noted that at that time in France "some circles saw the enemy rather in Stalin than in Hitler, they were preoccupied with how to strike at Russia."

Speaking in the House of Commons on October 4, 1939, British Foreign Secretary Halifax expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that Hitler, having concluded a non-aggression pact with Stalin, acted contrary to all his previous policies. The French political scientist R. Aron unconditionally justified the Munich agreement and even the shameful capitulation of France in 1940. Why? Yes, only because she helped "throw the Germans in the direction of their eastern claims." And if France had not been defeated, then "the attack on the Soviet Union would have been completely postponed." The national interests of their people and state are mere trifles for such figures, the most important thing is to significantly weaken and dismember the USSR. The main reason for the surprising inaction of France at that time was rooted in the undermining of the national spirit of the people, especially the ruling circles, they began to appreciate the state independence of their country with surprisingly little.

Polish calculations and miscalculations

On May 5, 2005, the Polish Sejm turned to the Russian government with a demand to condemn Stalin for supporting Germany in the 1939 war against Poland. For some reason, the Sejm completely "forgot" that Poland took an active part in the vile division of Czechoslovakia and adopted a short-sighted anti-Soviet policy.

Immediately after the conclusion of the Munich Agreement on September 30, 1938, the Polish government sent an ultimatum to the Czech Republic, in which it demanded the immediate transfer of the border Teszyn region to it. In 1938, 156,000 Czechs and only 77,000 Poles lived in it. Churchill assessed the behavior of the rulers of Poland as follows: “The heroic character traits of the Polish people should not force us to turn a blind eye to their recklessness and ingratitude, which for a number of centuries caused them immeasurable suffering. In 1919, it was a country that the Allied victory, after many generations of partition and slavery, had turned into an independent republic and one of the major European powers. Now, in 1938, because of such an insignificant issue as Teszyn, the Poles broke with all their friends in France, in England and in the USA, who returned them to a single national life and whose help they should soon need so much. .

The Non-Aggression Pact with Poland, signed in Berlin on January 26, 1934 (Germany tore it up on April 28, 1939), contained secret anti-Soviet articles: the Poles were going to fight together with the Wehrmacht against the USSR, wanting to get Ukraine as a reward. On September 25, 1938, the Polish ambassador to Paris, J. Lukasiewicz, arrogantly told the American ambassador W. Bullitt: “A religious war between fascism and Bolshevism is starting ... Poland is ready for war with the USSR shoulder to shoulder with Germany. The Polish government is confident that within three months the Russian troops will be completely defeated and Russia will no longer even be a semblance of a state.

In December 1938, the report of the intelligence department of the General Staff of the Polish Army stated: “The dismemberment of Russia lies at the heart of Polish policy in the east ... Therefore, our possible position will be reduced to the following formula: Poland should not remain passive at this remarkable historical moment. The task is to prepare well in advance physically and spiritually... The main goal is to weaken and defeat Russia.”

On December 28, 1938, Rudolf von Shelia, adviser to the German embassy in Poland, had a conversation with the Polish envoy to Iran, J. Karsho-Sedlevsky, who said: “The political perspective for the European East is clear. In a few years, Germany will be at war with the Soviet Union, and Poland will support, voluntarily or involuntarily, Germany in this war. It is better for Poland to definitely take the side of Germany before the conflict, since the territorial interests of Poland in the west and the political goals of Poland in the east, primarily in Ukraine, can only be ensured through a previously reached Polish-German agreement. He, Karsho-Sedlevsky, will subordinate his activity as the Polish envoy in Tehran to the realization of this great Eastern concept, since it is necessary in the end to convince and induce also the Persians and Afghans to play an active role in the future war against the Soviets.

On January 26, 1939, Polish Foreign Minister J. Beck told Ribbentrop that his country "claims the Great Ukraine and access to the Black Sea." What historical blindness! This was said 8 months before the catastrophic collapse of the Polish state as a result of the German attack. On August 20, 1939, Yu. Beck told the ambassadors of France and England: “I do not admit that there can be any use of our territory by foreign troops. We do not have a military agreement with the USSR. We don't want him."

How and why were we supposed to help Poland at that time, which flatly rejected our help and cherished the cherished dream of seizing Ukraine? What intelligible answer can the detractors of the policy of the Soviet government give in answering this question?

Quite a lot has been written about the role of Poland in World War II, both in Russia and abroad. And I have no desire to once again go over well-known facts, glue colorful labels, appoint “lambs and goats” by my will.

I would not even write this article, but I was really struck by the statements of some Polish politicians and public figures recently. And the reaction to these statements of "our" experts of the most different dignity and level of education was especially indignant.

I will not open America for you if I say that Poland is currently taking an extremely hostile position towards Russia. And they want NATO battalions on their territory, and anti-missiles, and "resist Russian aggression."

• Why and why?
• Because Russia is about to invade Polish territory with its entire army, as it has happened more than once.
• And what gives you reason to believe that Russia is hatching some kind of aggressive plans against Poland? What has Russia really done?

I will not list all the arguments broadcast and will immediately put aside (for a while. This is a topic for a separate serious conversation) pearls about the attack on poor peace-loving Georgia and about the ongoing war with Ukraine, since we are talking about Poland. This is where the Second World War appears in our discussion. Not the whole war in general, but what the USSR (and hence Russia) did badly to Poland on the eve of this war and after it ended.

The Polish and generally consolidated Western position looks, in general, like this:

• after the First World War, Poland freed itself from the occupation by the terrible Russian Empire and began to build its own European, and therefore peaceful, state. And, here the USSR attacked the young Polish state insidiously. They also remember Lenin's slogans about the world revolution, and Tukhachevsky, and Budyonny. But it so happened that the Polish army was able to repel this unprovoked aggression from the USSR. But the fact of aggression was;
• Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The USSR concluded an agreement with Nazi Germany and, together with this very Germany, attacked, again, peaceful Poland. Poland, most likely, would have fought off the Nazis, but it could not resist a couple of such bloodthirsty and powerful invaders. And the USSR still chopped off a decent piece of Polish territory. Again the fact of aggression;
• near Katyn, Polish prisoners of war were brutally shot. The Polish people and the entire West cannot forget such an unprecedented atrocity. And this proves the aggressiveness of Russia;
• in 1944, Stalin stopped the advance of Soviet troops on Warsaw and, thereby, doomed Polish patriots and civilians to death. The uprising was suppressed and the blame for the death of the Poles lies entirely with the USSR, and therefore with modern Russia. They could have helped, but deliberately did not help;
• after the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands of Poles ended up in the dungeons of the NKVD, tens of thousands were shot. What was their fault? They simply did not want to live under socialism. And that's it!!! If the USSR had been a peace-loving liberating state, then after the end of the war it would have withdrawn its troops from the territory of Poland. And the troops remained - 45 years of terrible Soviet occupation. Doesn't this prove the aggressiveness of the Russians?

I will not go over other evidence that Poland has reason to be afraid of modern Russia. Enough of these. In general, "the collection is chosen with taste." It's been chosen.

Remember, at the beginning of this article, I wrote that I was outraged by the reaction to these accusations of "our" experts? I would also understand if patriotic, but mostly poorly educated, modern teenagers expressed their opinion in talk shows and political programs on TV. People with higher education speak out. Moreover - gentlemen with academic degrees and considerable positions. I will say a very strange thing - many of them claim that they are historians by education and their current profession. Just luminaries with whom you can not argue - they know everything!

And how do they parry accusations of primordial Russian aggressiveness?

• It was still under Soviet rule, i.e. it was a long time ago, but today Russia is completely different;
• For Katyn, we have already asked for forgiveness;
• Poland planned to attack the USSR together with Germany, which means that our fault is, as it were, half of the fault;
• They could not attack Warsaw because there was no military possibility, and if there was a possibility, they would definitely help. And we're sorry;
• After 1945, they did not leave because the Polish people themselves wanted it that way. And in general, these were the times of the USSR and Stalin made decisions, and we are not responsible for this ... And again we are very sorry. If this happened today, we would definitely leave.

Do you like this kind of argument? I don't really. You definitely need to apologize. But first it would be nice to understand what we are called to apologize for.

History is not at all a collection of some events torn from the general flow and separated from each other in time. And our "Western partners" can clearly see a well-thought-out entertaining game in a single event that took place.

Do you remember how, on one of the TV shows, Michael Bohm, already widely known in Russia, proved the aggressiveness of the Russians?

• Let's not remember the reasons, but Russian troops ended up on the territory of Georgia (the events of 2008 in South Ossetia and Abkhazia), and this fact proves Russia's aggressiveness. Everything! If you find yourself in a foreign territory, it means the aggressors.

Here are some great arguments. You can't take a word out of a song, as they say. Especially if the song has only one single word. However, I don't like such songs, for the simple reason that I imagine the song differently - there are a lot of completely non-random words.

With such, it seems to me, an understandable desire to collect all the words, all the actual circumstances, without any political correctness and distortion of facts, I decided to figure out what Poland was like in World War II. Most impartial. In any case, I will try to keep it that way.

Why did I focus my attention on the Second World War? Do you remember what happened on September 1, 1939?

I have always wondered who and why marked the start of the Second World War with this date? However, this is a separate and very interesting story.

Poland after World War I

In order not to be like our "Western partners" and not to pull out convenient facts, I decided to start my research from the moment the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was formed.

After the end of the First World War, Poland miraculously found itself in the ranks of the winners. Why miraculously? The country did not participate in the war as a state for the simple reason that there was no such country. It is a fact.

Okay, suppose that she got the laurels of the winner for the reason that a certain amount of Polish lands were part of the Russian Empire and a certain number of Poles took part in the war on the side of the Entente. However, no less number of Poles fought on the side of the enemy.

On January 26, 1919, Jozef Pilsudski became the head of the Polish state. Let's leave aside his rich anti-Russian pre-war past, but in August 1914 it was this pan who led the archery detachments as part of the Austro-German army. And he not only formally led, but actually led these detachments to the territory of the Kingdom of Poland and participated in the war on the side of the Triple Alliance. I can guess how and why a recreated Poland was named the winner. Even then, Anti-Russia was needed. But that's just my guess.

For a while, let's leave aside aggressive Russia, which voluntarily abandoned the original Polish lands that were part of the Russian Empire, and turn our eyes to the western borders of the new Commonwealth. And in the west, Poland had an appetite - from the defeated Germany they wanted to get East Pomerania, Upper Silesia, Danzig, and ... much more.

The League of Nations tried to resolve disputed territorial issues through negotiations and a plebiscite, but the negotiations were unsuccessful, the plebiscite was lost by the Poles, and then the peace-loving panate decided to annex the desired territories by force. I assume you know how it all ended up. If you suddenly don’t know, the Germans were very offended in the end, but the winners, for the time being, are not judged.

In the same period, Poland also had territorial claims against Czechoslovakia - it really wanted to get a good piece of Cieszyn Silesia (an area with developed industry and large deposits of coking coal). The negotiations ended in armed conflict. Here, in fairness, it should be said that the Czechs were the first to take up arms, whom such a “fair” division simply offended.

It was in the west, where some courtesy had to be observed. And in the east, the Polish army captured the Lithuanian Vilnius, continued the offensive and reached the Minsk-Kyiv line. This is a fact, but for some reason it was “forgotten”. Yes, on May 7, 1920, Polish troops took Kyiv. Iron fact, which is difficult to dispute. And on June 5 of the same year, the 1st Cavalry Army, without any declaration of war (treacherously), attacked the peace-loving Polish troops that occupied half of Ukraine and half of Belarus. The armies of Budyonny and Tukhachevsky reached almost the walls of Warsaw ... And then a catastrophe happened for the Red Army, with a huge number of dead and prisoners.

Thus, we got to the first argument, allegedly proving the aggressiveness of Russia. It turns out that there were reasons for this military conflict, but for our "Western partners" again it does not matter who started it. It is all the more inconvenient for the respected Polish gentry to remember such trifles. Was there a fact of aggression?

And as a result of such "combinations" on all fronts, the territory of Poland grew with lands privatized from Germany, lands of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, lands already Lithuanian and good pieces of Russian land. As a result, only one single country did not suffer territorially from the Polish peacefulness (I mean immediate neighbors). Such joy fell to Romania. All other adjacent territories were very dissatisfied and had every reason to fear the Polish peacefulness. This is a fact - relations with all neighbors (with the exception of Romania) were quite tense until September 1, 1939.

What is especially interesting is the active assistance in the formation of the territories of the Commonwealth from England and, to a greater extent, France. Supported. The Polish appetite was very strictly supported.

I will not now discuss why they needed it ... Almost a hundred years have passed since then, and the situation is repeating itself in an amazing way. But now the Poles have another strong and wise friend who is ready to support ... But let's go back to the beginning of the twentieth century. On the Polish-Soviet border.

And the border was, as they liked to write in Soviet newspapers in those days, on fire. From Polish territory, both ideological fighters and outright bandits penetrated into the USSR, who were engaged in robberies and murders on Soviet territory. And after the actions they went under the protection of the Polish army. The USSR, on the other hand, did not want an armed conflict with Poland, since France and England could be involved in this conflict. They wiped themselves, sent notes and endured.

One could assume that the Poles fought not with the Russians, but with the bloody Soviet regime. Just like today, then they were afraid of the primordial Russian aggressiveness and delivered preemptive strikes.

However, relations did not develop with no less aggressive, presumably, Lithuanians. In 1923, because of Memel, in 1926, the war between Lithuania and Poland did not happen solely due to the tough intervention of the League of Nations, and on March 17, 1938, Poland demanded that Lithuania transfer the city of Vilnius in an ultimatum, within 48 hours. If not, war.

And then there was October 1938, when Germany bargained for the Czechoslovak Sudetenland in Munich. In Poland, they decided that it was a sin not to take advantage of such an opportunity and demanded from the Teszyn region sold by the allies of Czechoslovakia. The Polish government liked the new territorial acquisition so much that already on November 29 it demanded that part of the Czech Carpathians be transferred to them. But here the holiday did not happen at someone else's expense - the Slovaks got scared and ... asked for protection from Hitler.

I cannot blame the Slovaks - they knew how the Poles treat prisoners of war and national minorities in the newly acquired territories. The Slovaks decided that it was better to go under Hitler than under the pans.

And here is the time to recall the Polish-German relations in the described period.

To be continued

08 Aug 2016 Tags: 2407

(Total 45 photos)

1. View of a Polish city not yet affected from the cockpit of a German aircraft, most likely a Heinkel He 111 P, in 1939. (Library of Congress)

2. In 1939, there were still many reconnaissance battalions in Poland that participated in the Polish-Soviet War of 1921. There were legends about the desperate Polish cavalry attacking the Nazi tank troops. Although the cavalry sometimes encountered panzer battalions on their way, their target was the infantry, and their attacks were quite often successful. Nazi and Soviet propaganda managed to fuel this myth of the famous but slow Polish cavalry. In this photo, a Polish cavalry squadron during maneuvers somewhere in Poland on April 29, 1939. (AP Photo)

3. Associated Press correspondent Alvin Steinkopf broadcasts from the Free City of Danzig, at that time a semi-autonomous city-state, part of a customs union with Poland. Steinkopf transmitted the tense situation in Danzig to America on July 11, 1939. Germany demanded the entry of Danzig into the countries of the Third Reich and, apparently, was preparing for military operations. (AP Photo)

4. Joseph Stalin (second from right) at the signing of a non-aggression pact by Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov (sitting) with German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (third from right) in Moscow on August 23, 1939. Standing to the left is Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov, Deputy Minister of Defense and Chief of Staff of the Army. The non-aggression pact included a secret protocol dividing eastern Europe into spheres of influence in case of conflict. The pact guaranteed that Hitler's troops would meet no resistance from the USSR if they invaded Poland, which meant that the war was one step closer to reality. (AP Photo/File)

5. Two days after Germany signed the non-aggression pact with the USSR, Great Britain entered into a military alliance with Poland on August 25, 1939. This photo was taken a week later, on September 1, 1939, during one of the first military operations to invade Poland by Germany and start World War II. In this photo, the German ship Schleswig-Holstein shells a Polish military transit depot in the Free City of Danzig. At the same time, the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) and infantry (Heer) attacked several Polish targets. (AP Photo)

6. German soldiers on the Westerplatte peninsula after it surrendered to German troops from the Schleswig-Holstein ship on September 7, 1939. Less than 200 Polish soldiers defended the small peninsula, which held out against the German forces for seven days. (AP Photo)

7. Aerial view of the bombings during the bombing over Poland in September 1939. (LOC)

8. Two tanks of the 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" cross the river Bzura during the invasion of Poland in September 1939. The Battle of the Bzura - the largest of the entire military campaign - lasted more than a week and ended with Germany taking most of western Poland. (LOC/Klaus Weill)

9. Soldiers of the 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" on the side of the road on the way to Pabianice during the invasion of Poland in 1939. (LOC/Klaus Weill)

10. 10-year-old Polish girl Kazimira Mika cries over the body of her sister, who died under machine-gun fire while picking potatoes in a field near Warsaw in September 1939. (AP Photo/Julien Bryan)

11. Vanguard troops of Germany and intelligence in the Polish city under fire during the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939. (AP Photo)

12. German infantry advances cautiously on the outskirts of Warsaw on September 16, 1939. (AP Photo)

13. Prisoners of war with their hands up on the road during the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. (LOC)

14. British King George VI addresses his nation on the first evening of the war on September 3, 1939 in London. (AP Photo)

15. The conflict, which will end with the explosion of two nuclear bombs, began with an announcement by a herald in the city center. In photo 6, herald W. T. Boston reads a declaration of war from the steps of the London Stock Exchange on September 4, 1939. (AP Photo/Putnam)

16. The crowd reads the headlines "The Bombing of Poland" in front of the US Department of State, where a conference on martial law in Europe was held, September 1, 1939. (AP Photo)

17. On September 17, 1939, the British battlecruiser HMS Courageous was hit by torpedoes from the German submarine U-29 and sank within 20 minutes. The submarine pursued the Courageous, which was on anti-war patrols off the coast of Ireland, for several hours and then fired three torpedoes. Two torpedoes hit the ship, sinking her along with 518 of her 1,259 crew. (AP Photo)

18. Devastation on the street in Warsaw March 6, 1940. The corpse of a dead horse lies among the ruins and rubble. While Warsaw was shelled almost non-stop, only on one day - September 25, 1939 - about 1150 combat aircraft flew over the Polish capital, dropping 550 tons of explosives on the city. (AP Photo)

19. German troops entered the city of Bromberg (the German name for the Polish city of Bydgoszcz) and lost several hundred of their own there from sniper fire. The snipers were supplied with weapons by the retreating Polish troops. In the photo: bodies lie on the side of the road on September 8, 1939. (AP Photo)

20. The injured Polish armored train with tanks, captured by the 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" near Blonie in September 39th. (LOC/Klaus Weill)

22. A young Pole returned to where his house had once been, now in ruins, during a break in the air bombardment of Warsaw in September 39th. The Germans continued to attack the city until it surrendered on 28 September. A week later, the last Polish troops capitulated at Lublin, handing over complete control of Poland to Germany and the Soviet Union. (AP Photo/Julien Bryan)

23. Adolf Hitler welcomes Wehrmacht troops in Warsaw October 5, 1939 after the German invasion of Poland. Behind Hitler are (left to right): Colonel General Walther von Brauchitsch, Lieutenant General Friedrich von Kohenhausen, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel. (AP Photo)

24. Earlier in 1939, the Japanese army and military units continued to attack and advance into China and Mongolia. In this photo, Japanese soldiers advance further along the beach, landing at Svatov, one of the remaining ports in South China, which at that time still belonged to China, on July 10, 1939. After a brief conflict with Chinese forces, Japan entered the city without much opposition. (AP Photo)

25. On the border with Mongolia, Japanese tanks cross the vast plains of the steppe on July 21, 1939. The Manchukuo troops were fortified by the Japanese when hostilities suddenly broke out on the border with Soviet troops. (AP Photo)

26. A machine gun unit advances cautiously past two Soviet armored personnel carriers abandoned in a battle near the Mongolian border in July 1939. (AP Photo)

27. After the demands of the USSR to Finland remained unanswered, and he asked for some Finnish lands and the destruction of fortifications on the border, the USSR invaded Finland on November 30, 1939. 450 thousand Soviet soldiers crossed the border, starting a fierce battle, dubbed the Winter War. In this photo, a member of the Finnish anti-aircraft unit in white camouflage uniform works with a rangefinder on December 28, 1939. (AP Photo)

28. A burning house after the bombing of the Finnish port city of Turku by Soviet troops in southwestern Finland on December 27, 1939. (AP Photo)

29. Finnish soldiers run for cover during aerial bombardment "somewhere in the forests of Finland" January 19, 1940. (AP Photo)

30. Representatives of one of the Finnish ski battalions that fought with Russian soldiers, with deer on March 28, 1940. (Editor's note - the photo was retouched manually, apparently for clarity). (AP Photo)

31. Military booty - captured Soviet tanks in the snow on January 17, 1940. Finnish troops have just defeated the Soviet division. (LOC)

32. Swedish volunteer "somewhere in Northern Finland" in a protective mask at the post on February 20, 1940 in sub-zero temperatures. (AP Photo)

33. The winter of 1939-1940 was especially cold in Finland. Temperatures dropped below 40 degrees Celsius in some places in January. Frost was a constant threat, and the corpses of soldiers frozen to death were often found on the battlefield in eerie poses. This photo on January 31, 1940 shows a frozen Russian soldier. After 105 days of fighting, the USSR and Finland signed a peace treaty, according to which Finland retained sovereignty, giving 11% of the territory to the Soviet Union. (LOC)

34. The German heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee burns off Montevideo, Uruguay, December 19, 1939. The cruiser's crew had just been at the Battle of La Plata after three British cruisers found it and attacked it. The ship did not sink, it had to be sent to the harbor of Montevideo for repairs. Not wanting to stay under repair for a long time and not being able to go to battle, the crew took the ship out to sea and sank it. In the photo, the cruiser is a few minutes before the flood. (AP Photo)

35. Restaurant manager Fred Horak of Somerville, Massachusetts, USA, points to a sign in the window of his establishment on March 18, 1939. The inscription on the sign: "We do not serve the Germans." Horak was a native of Czechoslovakia. (AP Photo)

36. Production of Curtiss P-40 fighters, probably in Buffalo, New York, around 1939. (AP Photo)

37. While the German troops concentrated in Poland, excitement increased on the Western Front - France welcomed the British soldiers who landed near the border with Germany. In this photo, French soldiers pose in France on December 18, 1939. (AP Photo)

38. A crowd of Parisians gathered at the Sacré-Coeur Basilica on the Mormatre hill for a religious service and prayer for peace. Part of the crowd gathered outside a church in France on August 27, 1939. (AP Photo)

39. French soldiers with a coordinate manipulator on January 4, 1940. This device was one of many experiments designed to record the sound of aircraft engines and locate them. The introduction of radar technology made these devices obsolete rather quickly. (AP Photo)

40. A meeting of newspapermen on the Western Front somewhere on the Maginot Line in France on October 19, 1939. A French soldier points them to the "no man's land" separating France from Germany. (AP Photo)

41. British soldiers on the train on the first stage of the trip to the western front in England on September 20, 39th. (AP Photo/Putnam)

42. London's Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, shrouded in darkness, after the first massive blackout on August 11, 1939. This was the first test power outage of the British Home Office in preparation for possible air attacks by German forces. (AP Photo)

43. A scene at London City Hall where children were reacting to respirators designed to protect against poisonous gases, March 3, 1939. Several children under the age of two were given "baby helmets". (AP Photo)

44. German chancellor and dictator Adolf Hitler inspects a geographic map with generals including Heinrich Himmler (left) and Martin Bormann (right) at an undisclosed location in 1939. (AFP/Getty Images)

45. A man looks at a photograph of Johann Georg Elser on a monument in Freiburg, Germany, October 30, 2008. German citizen Elser tried to kill Adolf Hitler with a pipe bomb at the Buergerbraukeller in Munich on November 8, 1939. Hitler ended his speech early, avoiding the explosion by 13 minutes. As a result of the assassination attempt, eight people were killed, 63 were injured, and Elzer was caught and imprisoned. Shortly before the end of World War II, he was executed in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. (AP Photo/Winfried Rothermel)

post-war years. The Poles, counting on the support of Great Britain and France (who declared war on Germany), offered heroic resistance to the German aggressors, but the Polish armed forces were quickly defeated. According to the Soviet-German agreement on friendship and border on September 28, 1939, the territory of the Polish state was divided. Germany included part of the western and northern territories of Poland into its composition, and formed a general government in the rest. The USSR annexed Western Ukraine and Belarus to the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs. Vilna (Vilnius) region was annexed to Lithuania. In 1940, over 4,000 captured Polish officers interned as prisoners of war during the "liberation campaign" of the Red Army in the autumn of 1939 were shot at Katyn and other places. Information about this punitive action of the NKVD (which was carried out in the strictest secrecy) was later made public and had a negative impact on Soviet-Polish relations for a long time.

The Polish government emigrated first to France, and after the defeat of the latter, to Great Britain. The surviving Polish military units (up to 300 thousand people) also joined the armies of the Western allies of Poland. Until the German attack on the USSR, the government in exile was the only legal successor to the Polish government, and the Western allies were the only potential force with which hopes for the return of independence were pinned. The situation changed after the USSR, Great Britain and the USA became allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. The Polish government in London was forced to establish diplomatic relations with the USSR.

In 1944, two partisan armies operated in Poland - the Army of Ludow, created by the communists, and the more numerous and efficient Home Army (AK). The AK was subordinate to the London government of Poland in exile and sought to survive as an independent "third force" that could fight in the future for the re-establishment of an independent Polish state. The AK command planned to organize an uprising in Warsaw and capture the city before the approach of Soviet troops. According to the leaders of the AK, liberated by the Polish people, and not by the Soviet troops, Warsaw could become the core of an independent Poland. Refusing direct interaction with the Soviet troops, AK could not know about their plans. As a result, the uprising began in August 1944 at a time when the center of gravity of the Soviet offensive shifted to the south. In September, the Soviet units nevertheless broke through to Warsaw, but attempts to create a bridgehead on the other side of the Vistula failed. The German command was able to pull up large forces to Warsaw and, despite the help of the allies from the air, suppress the uprising. The Warsaw tragedy had a negative impact on Soviet-Polish relations.

In July 1944, with the support of the USSR, the pro-Soviet Polish Committee of National Liberation was created in Lublin, which in January 1945 was transformed into the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland. Considering that it was the USSR that liberated Poland from the German invaders, the Lublin government becomes the main contender for power. At the Yalta Conference (February 4-11, 1945), Great Britain and the United States officially recognized the inclusion of the eastern regions of Poland into the USSR due to the expansion of the Polish border to the west along the Odra and Nysa Luzhytska rivers, as well as due to the inclusion of the southern part of the Eastern Prussia. Members of the cabinet of the emigration government became part of the Lublin government. After the victory over Germany, it was recognized as the allies of the USSR.

After the end of the war, Poland entered the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. The state became known as the Polish People's Republic (PNR). In 1949, Poland became one of the founders of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), and in 1955, the Warsaw Pact Organization. Changes in internal life largely corresponded to the principles of the political structure of the USSR. In the country there was a displacement (albeit incomplete) of non-communist forces from the authorities. In the parliamentary elections of 1947, out of 444 seats in the Sejm, the Communists (Polish Workers' Party) received 382 seats, and the Polish Peasants' Party - 28 seats. Since 1948, political power has been concentrated in the hands of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP), created in 1948 on the basis of the Polish Workers' Party and the Polish Socialist Party. The PUWP was headed by the Stalinist Boleslav Bierut. Formally, several parties were represented in the legislative body - the Democratic Party and the United Peasant Party functioned in a coalition with the PUWP. But by 1949 they were completely under the control of the communists. Within the communist movement itself, pluralism was not allowed. In 1948, the first secretary of the PUWP Central Committee, Vladislav Gomulka, was removed from his post for a "nationalist" bias and then arrested. Until the 1950s, the struggle against the armed opposition of the AK continued.

Despite Stalinization and the establishment of authoritarian institutions, Poland, with the support of the USSR, managed to quickly overcome the consequences of the war. Industrial production and infrastructure were restored, the army was revived, part of the German reparations was invested in the Polish economy. The most acute social problems of the post-war years—hunger, lack of housing, and the like—were overcome. In 1952, the constitution of the PPR was adopted.

However, the communist regime in its Stalinist version came into serious conflict with Polish political traditions, including the traditions of pluralism, local self-government and multi-party parliamentarism. Moreover, the regime came into conflict with the Catholic Church, which for centuries was the basis of the Polish national identity. In 1953, the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyshinsky, was arrested. K. Rokossovsky, a Soviet marshal, a Pole by nationality, was appointed Minister of Defense of the PPR.

In June 1956, dissatisfaction with the excesses of the regime resulted in an open demonstration in Poznań: 50,000 workers and students came out with anti-communist and anti-Soviet slogans. The performance was suppressed by force, which led to numerous casualties. However, the Poznań uprising and the softening of the regime in the USSR after the death of I. V. Stalin led to a softening of the regime in Poland as well. Cardinal Vyshinsky released from prison. Gomulka was rehabilitated and in October 1956, despite the opposition of the CPSU, he was elected First Secretary of the PUWP. This caused a conflict with the USSR, Soviet troops advanced to Warsaw, and a delegation of the CPSU headed by N. S. Khrushchev arrived in the capital of Poland. However, in the face of the threat of an armed clash and in the context of the aggravation of the situation in Hungary, the parties preferred to reach an agreement. Gomułka kept his post, Moscow authorized limited reforms. The "Stalinist" composition of the Central Committee was replaced, and Rokossovsky and other pro-Soviet military leaders were removed from their posts in the armed forces of Poland. As a result, Poland's dependence on the USSR somewhat decreased.