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The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II (1939–1945) began with the Invasion of Poland in September 1939, and it was formally concluded with the defeat of Germany by the Allies in May 1945.
- Overview
- Occupation, annexation and administration
- Treatment of Polish citizens under Nazi German occupation
- Treatment of Polish citizens under Soviet occupation
- Casualties
- See also
- External links
The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War (1939–1945) began with invasion of Poland in September 1939, and formally concluded with the defeat of Nazism by the Four Powers in May 1945. Throughout the entire course of foreign occupation the territory of Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR). In summer-autumn of 1941 the lands annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Nazi Germany in the course of the initially successful German attack on the USSR. After a few years of fighting, the Red Army was able to repel the invaders and drive the Nazi forces out of the USSR and across Poland from the rest of Eastern and Central Europe.
Both occupying powers were equally hostile to the existence of sovereign Poland, her culture and the Polish people, aiming at their destruction. Before Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union coordinated their Poland-related policies, most visibly in the four Gestapo-NKVD Conferences, where the occupants discussed plans for dealing with the Polish resistance movement and future destruction of Poland.
After Germany and the Soviet Union had partitioned Poland in 1939, most of the ethnically Polish territory ended up under the control of Germany while the areas annexed by the Soviet Union contained ethnically diverse peoples, with the territory split into bilingual provinces, some of which had a significant non-Polish majority (Ukrainians in the south and Belarusians in the north). Many of them welcomed the Soviets, alienated in the interwar Poland. Nonetheless Poles comprised the largest single ethnic group in all territories annexed by the Soviet Union.
Further information: Administrative division of Polish territories during World War II
See also: Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles
From the beginning, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany was intended as fulfillment of the future plan of the German Reich described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf as Lebensraum ("living space") for the Germanic peoples in Eastern Europe. The occupation goal was to turn former Poland into ethnically German "living space", as well as to exploit the material resources of the country and to maximise the use of Polish manpower as a reservoir of slave labour. The Polish nation was to be effectively reduced to the status of Serfdom, its political, religious and intellectual leadership destroyed. One aspect of German policy in conquered Poland aimed to prevent its ethnically diverse population from uniting against Germany. In a top-secret memorandum, "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East", dated 25 May 1940, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, wrote: "We need to divide Poland's many different ethnic groups up into as many parts and splinter groups as possible". Historians, J. Grabowski and Z.R. Grabowski wrote in 2004:
According to the 1931 Polish census, 66% of the prewar population of the country totaling 35 million inhabitants spoke Polish as their mother tongue. Most of them were Roman Catholics. Fifteen per cent were Ukrainians, 8.5% Jews, 4.7% Belarusians, and 2.2% Germans. Poland had a small middle and upper class of well-educated professionals, entrepreneurs, and landowners. Nearly 75% of the population were peasants or agricultural laborers, and another fifth, industrial workers.
In contrast to the Nazi policy of genocide targeting all of Poland's 3.3 million Jewish men, women, and children for elimination, Nazi plans for the Polish Catholic majority focused on the elimination or suppression of political, religious, and intellectual leaders. This policy had two aims: first, to prevent Polish elites from organizing resistance or from ever regrouping into a governing class; second, to exploit the less educated majority of peasants and workers as unskilled laborers in agriculture and industry. This was in spite of racial theory that regarded most Polish leaders as actually being of German blood, and partly because of it, on the grounds that German blood must not be used the service of a foreign nation.
Main article: Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–1946)
Further information: Soviet annexation of Western Ukraine, 1939–1940
By the end of Polish Defensive War the Soviet Union took over 52.1% of territory of Poland (~200,000 km²), with over 13,700,000 people. The estimates vary; Elżbieta Trela-Mazur gives the following numbers in regards to ethnic composition of these areas: 38% Poles (ca. 5,1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14,5% Belarusians, 8,4% Jews, 0,9% Russians and 0,6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees from areas occupied by Germany, most of them Jews (198,000). Areas occupied by USSR were annexed to Soviet territory, with the exception of area of Wilno, which was transferred to Lithuania, although soon attached to USSR, when Lithuania became a Soviet republic.
Initially the Soviet occupation gained support among some members the non-Polish population who had chafed under the nationalist policies of the Second Polish Republic. Much of the Ukrainian population[citation needed] initially welcomed the unification with the rest of Ukraine which Ukrainians had failed to achieve in 1919 when their attempt for self-determination was crushed by Poland and Soviet Union.
There were large groups of pre-war Polish citizens, notably Jewish youth and, to a lesser extent, the Ukrainian peasants, who saw the Soviet power as an opportunity to start political or social activity outside of their traditional ethnic or cultural groups. Their enthusiasm however faded with time as it became clear that the Soviet repressions were aimed at all groups equally, regardless of their political stance.
British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore states that Soviet terror in the occupied eastern Polish lands was as cruel and tragic as Nazi in the west. Soviet authorities brutally treated those who might oppose their rule, deporting by 10 November 1940, around 10% of total population of Kresy, with 30% of those deported dead by 1941. They arrested and imprisoned about 500,000 Poles during 1939–1941, including former officials, officers, and natural "enemies of the people", like the clergy, but also noblemen and intellectuals. The Soviets also executed about 65,000 Poles. Soldiers of the Red Army and their officers behaved like conquerors, looting and stealing Polish treasures. When Stalin was told about it, he answered: "If there is no ill will, they [the soldiers] can be pardoned".
Main article: World War II casualties of Poland
Over 6 million Polish citizens – nearly 21.4% of the pre-war population of the Second Polish Republic — died between 1939 and 1945.[113] Over 90% of the death toll involved non-military losses, as most civilians were targets of various deliberate actions by the Germans and Soviets.[113]
Both occupiers wanted not only to gain Polish territory, but also to destroy Polish culture and the Polish nation as a whole.
Tadeusz Piotrowski, Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire has provided a reassessment of Poland's losses in World War II. Polish war dead include 5,150,000 victims of Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles and the Holocaust, the treatment of Polish citizens by occupiers included 350,000 deaths during the Soviet occupation in 1940–41 and about 100,000 Poles killed in 1943–44 in the Ukraine. Of the 100,000 Poles killed in the Ukraine, 80,000 perished during the massacres of Poles in Wołyn by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Losses by ethnic group were 3,100,000 Jews; 2,000,000 ethnic Poles; 500,000 Ukrainians and Belarusians.
The official Polish government report prepared in 1947 listed 6,028,000 war deaths out of a population of 27,007,000 ethnic Poles and Jews; this report excluded ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian losses. However some historians in Poland now believe that Polish war losses were at least 2 million ethnic Poles and 3 million Jews as a result of the war.[114]
Another assessment, Poles as Victims of the Nazi Era, prepared by USHMM, lists 1.8 to 1.9 million ethnic Polish dead in addition to 3 million Polish Jews[115]
•Polish resistance movement in World War II
•Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany (1939-1944)
•Polish culture during World War II
•Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
•Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union
•Polish minority in Germany
•A review of the Piotrowski book •Michael Phayer, 'Et Papa tacet': the genocide of Polish Catholics
•Research guide to biographical sources for victims of World War II in Poland
Countries occupied by Germany during World War II
•Albania
•Austria (Anschluss)
•Belarus
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* German-occupied Poland. Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union. War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II. Categories: Military history of Poland during World War II. Germany–Poland military relations. World War II occupied territories. Military occupations of Poland. Germanization. 1939 in international relations.
