1939: Invaded from West and East
After the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Germany invades Poland on 1 September 1939 and the Soviet Union on 17 September; the two dictatorships divide the country between them.
- Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin — Timothy Snyder, Basic Books (2010)
- God's Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols, revised edition) — Norman Davies, Oxford University Press (2005)
- A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition) — Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, Cambridge University Press (2019)
- Russia's War — Richard Overy, Penguin (1998)
On 23 August 1939 the foreign ministers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow. A secret protocol divided Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and Romania’s Bessarabia into German and Soviet “spheres of influence”.
- Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin — Timothy Snyder, Basic Books (2010)
- Russia's War — Richard Overy, Penguin (1998)
September 1939
On 1 September Germany invaded. The battleship Schleswig-Holstein shelled the Polish garrison on the Westerplatte peninsula at Gdańsk, and the Luftwaffe bombed Wieluń, a small town with no military significance. Britain and France declared war on 3 September but did almost nothing to help. The Polish army fought for five weeks; Warsaw held out under bombardment until 28 September.
- God's Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols, revised edition) — Norman Davies, Oxford University Press (2005)
- A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition) — Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, Cambridge University Press (2019)
On 17 September the Red Army crossed Poland’s eastern border, claiming to protect Ukrainians and Belarusians as the Polish state “ceased to exist”. Many Polish units, ordered not to fight the Soviets, were taken prisoner. On 28 September Germany and the USSR signed a boundary treaty, and at Brest-Litovsk German and Soviet troops held a joint ceremony, often described as a victory parade, as the town was handed over. The last regular Polish forces surrendered on 6 October.
- Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin — Timothy Snyder, Basic Books (2010)
- God's Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols, revised edition) — Norman Davies, Oxford University Press (2005)
Two occupations
The Germans annexed western Poland and turned the rest into the “General Government”. Their aim was to destroy Poland as a nation: they shot members of the intelligentsia, closed universities and secondary schools, expelled hundreds of thousands of Poles from annexed lands, and began forcing Jews into ghettos.
- Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin — Timothy Snyder, Basic Books (2010)
- Polish Victims — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
The Soviets annexed eastern Poland to Soviet Ukraine and Belarus after staged elections. In four great waves in 1940–41 they deported several hundred thousand Polish citizens, landowners, officials, settlers, policemen’s families, to Kazakhstan and Siberia, and in spring 1940 shot about 22,000 Polish officers and other prisoners at Katyn and other sites. The IPN estimates that about 150,000 Polish citizens died as a result of Soviet occupation during the war.
- Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami — Wojciech Materski and Tomasz Szarota (eds), Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (2009)
- Katyn: A Crime Without Punishment — Anna M. Cienciala, Natalia S. Lebedeva and Wojciech Materski (eds), Yale University Press (2007)
- Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin — Timothy Snyder, Basic Books (2010)
The Polish government escaped to France and then London. Polish soldiers, sailors and airmen went on to fight on almost every front: in the Battle of Britain, at Narvik, Tobruk, Monte Cassino, Arnhem and in Germany, and with the Soviet-organised army in the east.
- God's Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols, revised edition) — Norman Davies, Oxford University Press (2005)
- A Concise History of Poland (3rd edition) — Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, Cambridge University Press (2019)
Two totalitarian powers conspired to destroy Poland. The Soviet invasion was a stab in the back and the start of a Soviet occupation that brought mass deportations, Katyn and, eventually, communist rule.
- God's Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols, revised edition) — Norman Davies, Oxford University Press (2005)
- Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin — Timothy Snyder, Basic Books (2010)
The pact bought time after Britain and France sacrificed Czechoslovakia at Munich in 1938. Soviet troops entered territory with a Ukrainian and Belarusian majority after the Polish state had collapsed, and the Soviet Union needed a buffer against Germany.
- Russia's War — Richard Overy, Penguin (1998)
- Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin — Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, Brookings Institution Press (2015)
Western appeasement helped create the situation, but the pact was an active partnership: it divided Eastern Europe into spheres of interest, and both occupiers deported, imprisoned and killed Polish citizens on a massive scale until Germany turned on the Soviet Union in June 1941.
- Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin — Timothy Snyder, Basic Books (2010)
- Russia's War — Richard Overy, Penguin (1998)
- Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami — Wojciech Materski and Tomasz Szarota (eds), Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (2009)
Why it matters today
For Poles, 17 September is as important as 1 September: the war began with two invaders, not one. The memory of Germany and Russia agreeing over Poland's head shapes Polish attitudes to both countries, and to any deal about Eastern Europe made without the countries in it.
The 1939 pact is one of the most contested pieces of Russia's war memory. Soviet leaders denied the secret protocol until 1989; today Russian officials often defend the pact as a forced response to Western appeasement, and treat the 17 September invasion as the "liberation" of western Ukraine and Belarus. Many Russians know little of how Poles remember it.