A THOUSAND YEAR HISTORY OF POLAND-PART 13 (the impact of World War II on Poland)" by Prof. Piotr Wrobel

The Devil's Playground was first presented in the fall of 1999 at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, where Professor Wrobel was scholar-in-residence, as part of the program commemorating the 60th anniversary of the invasion of Poland and the start of World War II. Professor Wrobel holds the Konstanty Reynart Chair in Polish Studies in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Prior to his appointment in 1994, he taught Polish and Modern European, German and Russian history at the University of Warsaw, at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), at Michigan State University (East Lansing) and at the University of California (Davis). He has been a visiting scholar at the Institute of European History at Mainz, at Humboldt University in Berlin, and at the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies in Oxford. During 1987-1991, he was a research fellow at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and during 1987-1988 he served as research director of the clandestine Eastern Archives which collected materials about Polish deportees in the Soviet Union after 1939. He serves on the Advisory Board of Polin: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies and he has authored or co-authored seven books and more than 75 scholarly articles. His most recent work is "The Historical Dictionary of Poland" published by Greenwood Press in 1998.

Fortune governs human affairs unfairly. There are countries in Europe, such as Sweden or Switzerland, where dramatic historical events happen rarely. At the same time, there are European countries where disasters strike frequently. Poland belongs to this second, underprivileged group of countries. During the last three hundred years, every generation in Poland went through either a devastating war, or a bloody uprising, or a merciless occupation and genocide. During some periods of this unhappy era, the Poles faced major historical challenges every ten or twenty years. In this long list of national tragedies, one experience stands out as the most horrific: World War II, which destroyed a large part of the Polish cultural heritage, devastated the economy, devalued the morale of the Polish people, and scared them for a long time. To most Americans and West Europeans, World War II constitutes the
proverbial ancient history: vague, remote, and irrelevant. To most East Europeans and to the Poles among them, the war is a recent memory, the emotional wounds are still fresh, and new important events, rooted in the World War II tragedy, continue to develop. This subjective difference in the perception of the past makes the East-West dialog, cooperation, and integration difficult.
John Keegan, probably the most outstanding historian of World War II, concludes one of his books in the following way:"No six years of history have been more written about than 1939-1945." Unfortunately, this sentence does not apply to the history of the Second World War in Poland. Most Westerners, even those educated and well-read, know next to nothing on this subject. They operate with stereotypes and fragmented information taken out of context. Paradoxically, with changes in historical education
and the passing away of the war generation, a tiny group of people, who do know about the Polish tragedy in and after 1939, is getting increasingly smaller. More and more frequently, the Poles face an unpleasant dilemma: to hide their sensitivity and to swallow their pride or to look overidealistic or nationalistically biased.
Fighting for freedom and independence dominated the previous two hundred years of Polish history. After the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, the Poles were downgraded to an unhappy class of
stateless people. While other, more successful nations built their modern political systems and economies, the Poles had to concentrate on simply surviving as an ethnic entity. They were denationalized, economically exploited, and deported. Their desperate uprisings ended with displays of bloody vengeance on the part of their enemies. Occupied by three powerful empires, Russia, Austria, and Germany, the Poles asked themselves, if they would be able to save their national identity, language, and culture, and
if they ever could rebuild their state.
At last, in 1914, a great "war of nations" began. The war delivered a miracle. Germany, Austria, and Russia became enemies, they fought at two different sides of the front and, finally, each of the three
found themselves on the losing side of the war. The Austrian Empire disintegrated and disappeared.
A bloody revolution pushed Russia into chaos. Germany, also facing the threat of a revolution, could not
single-handedly defeat the united forces of Great Britain, France, and the United States and eventually collapsed. Thus, a political vacuum emerged in East Central Europe in 1918. This vacuum was filled by a group of newborn or rebuilt states, among them the Polish Second Republic. It was not an easy independence. Reborn Poland had to stop a Soviet aggression in 1919 and, later, she faced other serious problems, such as the national minorities question and the heritage of socio-economic backwardness. These were difficult to solve. But, at least, Poland was free and sovereign, decided independently about her fate and, consequently, improved her situation greatly. There is no doubt that without the short interwar period of independence there would be no free Poland today.
Unfortunately, by the late 1930s, the political vacuum in East Central Europe disappeared. The traditional enemies of Poland, Germany and Russia, had recovered their strength and began to reconstruct their empires. Their foreign ministers, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Viacheslav Molotov, signed the sinister pact of August 23, 1939. The pact divided East Central Europe and Poland into two "spheres of influence" controlled by the Germans and the Soviets. Stalin and Hitler decided that Poland --
in Molotov's words -"this bastard of the Versailles treaty"- should cease to exist once and for all.
Thus, on September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland and seventeen days later, the Soviet Union followed suit. "The Poles" - wrote the British historian Nicholas Bethell -"were fighting the Germans to the last man, believing that this was a decisive battle of the war, that the allies would organize an offensive to prevent Poland from being conquered." Unfortunately, a short-sighted selfishness prevailed in France and Great Britain. Their governments betrayed Poland and broke all promises from before the war. London and Paris accepted Poland's deadly struggle as a "useful diversion providing a breathing space." The Polish army surrendered after 35 days of bloody fighting. Warsaw was the only European
capital, which was besieged by the Germans and was able to defend itself for several weeks. The city paid a high price for it: 10% of Warsaw was destroyed as early as September 1939. The Polish army, which under French and British pressure had not started its mobilization until August 30, was crushed by the troops of two hostile and powerful totalitarian giants.
Poland was the only country attacked at the same time by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
In 1939, there was no power in the world which could stop this deadly coalition. Most people in the West do not realize how tragic Poland's situation was and how heroic the Polish defense was in 1939.
John Keegan writes on this: "There still is no satisfactory account in English of the German-Polish War of 1939, which precipitated the general outbreak. The Polish army - almost completely unmechanized, almost without air support, almost surrounded by the Germans from the outset and, shortly, completely surrounded when the Red Army joined the aggression - fought more effectively than it has been given credit for. It sustained resistance from September 1 until October 5, five weeks, which compares
highly favorably with the six and a half weeks during which France, Britain, Belgium, and Holland kept up the fight in the west the following year."
The Germans also initiated a propaganda war against Poland. The best known element of this propaganda war is the legendary "Blitzkrieg" in Poland. The Allies gladly accepted the version about the "quick war" because it justified their betrayal. After the war, the most outstanding western historians, like John Wheeler-Bennett in his "The Nemesis of Power," used the "Blitzkrieg" interpretation. Several documentary film directors took as authentic material staged scenes from the Goebbels propaganda film "Feldzug in Polen." As a result, many people in the West believe that the Poles did not really fight in 1939, and that the Polish cavalry attacked the German tanks.
After the lost September campaign, Poland was partitioned again. Almost 50% of her territory was taken by the Soviet Union, 48.4% by Nazi Germany, and 1.6% by Lithuania. The occupation of Poland by the Germans lasted longer than in any other country (leaving aside a milder occupation of Bohemia) and was the most severe. Historians often divide German occupational systems in Europe into seven categories. The most liberal occupational system was introduced in Denmark. The German invasion of 1940 barely interrupted normal life in this country. Denmark was controlled by the German Foreign Office, the Danish king spent the entire war in his palace, and democratic elections were held in 1943. Also life in occupied France was comparatively not bad. In Holland and in Belgium government was
carried on by the pre-war senior civil servants (1)*. Poland was on the opposite side of the spectrum of occupational systems: there was no other country in Europe, where the Germans were so cruel and consistently hostile towards the local population. The Poles were ranked by the Nazis as the second lowest racial group in Europe. As a result, over 6 million Polish citizens, both Christian and Jewish, were killed during the war, which constituted probably the largest casualty rate among the European states.
Millions were deported to Germany and Russia or left in the territories taken by the Soviet Union after the war. In 1939, Poland had about 35 million inhabitants, in 1945 - only about 23 million. One third of the
nation was lost.
Poland's citizens were killed not only by the Germans. In fact, Soviet occupation resembled German rule in many respects. Most scholars believe that "In the Soviet occupation zone conditions were only marginally less harsh than under the Germans." For their part, many Poles believe that the Soviet occupation was worse. Both the Soviets and the Germans cooperated against the Poles after September 1939. Both invaders followed the old rule: divide et impera. The first element of this division was
the territorial fragmentation of Poland. The Germans partitioned their booty into two segments. The entire north-western part of Poland and a portion of central Poland were incorporated directly into the Reich and
became an integral part of it, which meant, among many other things, that young Poles had to serve in the Wehrmacht. The remaining part of central and southern Poland was transformed into a colony of the Third Reich: the Generalgouvernment fur die besetzten Polnischen Gebiete. The Soviets also divided their spoils: between Soviet Belorussia and Soviet Ukraine. A small region of Vilna was given to Lithuania, still free in 1939 but occupied by the Soviets in 1940.
Moreover, the population of Poland was divided on both sides of the Ribbentrop-Molotov line. On the top of the social structure in German-occupied territories were the Reichsdeutsche, the pre-war citizens of the Reich. Then, there were four categories of the so-called Volksdeutsche, followed by the Slavic minorities in Poland: the Belorussians and the Ukrainians, who enjoyed some kind of autonomy and
several privileges, and then the Poles. The Slavs, including the Poles, were the Untermenschen, the "subhumans." They were to work for the Reich and some of them were considered for Germanization. Among the Polish population of the Generalgouvernement, 3% was destined for Germanization;
among the Czechs, for example, 50%. Eventually, most Slavs were destined for "extermination through labor" or for deportation to the East. On the very bottom of the German-constructed social ladder were the groups, considered by the Nazis to be non-human and destined for immediate extermination: the Jews and the Gypsies.
The Soviets also built a similar social ladder. On its top, there were Soviet people sent to the newly incorporated areas from the pre-war Soviet territories. Than, there were native communists and lower classes of the local population, mostly representatives of the non-Polish people who, at least initially, were happy that the Polish state had disappeared. On the bottom of the Soviet-constructed ladder there were the so-called "enemies of the people," the Soviet equivalent of subhumans, mostly Poles and the non-Polish staff members of the destroyed state apparatus as well as owners of local business, larger farms, and estates. Both the Soviets and the Germans did their best to deepen the abyss between the various groups within the local population and contributed greatly to the old Polish-Jewish, Polish-Ukrainian, and Polish-Belorussian conflicts. Some stereotypes and lies, invented by the Germans and the Soviets to aggravate
inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts in Poland are still used today.
On the both sides of the Ribbentrop-Molotov line, the most savage and devastating attack was organized by the invaders against the elite of Polish society. Both the Germans and the Soviets were determined to kill "the best and the brightest" and, to a large extent, they succeeded in doing this. During World War II, the Polish nation was decapitated: the most promising youth, the most patriotic intelligentsia, and the most outstanding intellectuals were killed. Two months after the outbreak of
the war, at the beginning of November 1939, all the professors of Cracow's Jagiellonian University and the Mining Academy were invited by the Germans for a meeting. Most of them, one hundred and sixty-seven, were arrested and sent to the concentration camp of Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen. One hundred and three survived and returned to Cracow, but some died immediately after their release. Similar treatment was applied by the Germans to the professors of other Polish universities. Eighty per cent of Polish intellectuals sunk into deep poverty and after the war many of them never returned to their pre-war intellectuals activities.
The Soviets were killing "the best and the brightest" too. In March 1940, Stalin decided to execute almost twenty-two thousand Polish war prisoners, including over fifteen thousand officers from the three POW camps in Kozielsk, Starobielsk, and Ostaszkow. The Poles were executed in April and May 1940 in Katyn, near Kharkiv and near Tver. Most of the victims were reserve officers, the elite of the Polish nation. Only in Katyn, twenty-one university professors, 300 physicians, and hundreds of lawyers, teachers, and engineers were killed. Altogether, during World War II, Poland lost 45% of her physicians and dentists (both christian and Jewish), 57% of her lawyers, over 15% of her teachers, 40% of university
professors and over 18% of her clergy.
The Soviets also led a very efficient propaganda campaign against Poland. From the first days of the war, the Soviets, the communist parties in the West, as well as the leftist organizations and individuals
influenced by the communists furiously attacked the Polish government-in-exile, the Polish Army, and the Polish institutions in the West. The accusations leveled against them most frequently were anti-Sovietism, anti-Semitism, political irresponsibility, and chauvinism. A group of British communist and labor parliamentary deputies, for example, tried to stop the establishment of the Polish Armed Forces in England in 1940. These attacks became more intense after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, when the Soviets became "our brave Russian allies" and Stalin was transformed from a bloody dictator and Hitler's best partner to "good uncle Joe." "An incredible thing seemed to have happened to the American mind" - wrote a Soviet defector Victor Krevchenko at that time - "the Soviet dictatorship was fully identified with the Russian people." What the communists had not yet succeeded in doing in their own country - as the purges and the millions of political prisoners indicate - they succeeded in doing in America! ... I saw men and women, who themselves called President Roosevelt a dictator, grow furious when Stalin was called a dictator." Another successful aspect of Soviet propaganda was that many
people in the West, including numerous university history professors, journalists, and writers, accepted the Soviet lie about Katyn and truly believed that the Polish officers were murdered by the Germans. Until the
1980s, many American "liberal intellectuals" considered the true version of the Katyn crime to be a glaring example of Polish anti-Sovietism, intellectual conservative backwardness, and chauvinism.
In destroying the elite of the Polish nation, the occupiers waged war on Polish culture. "The Poles" - announced Hans Frank, the Governor General of the Generalgouvernement - "do not need universities or
secondary schools; the Polish lands are to be changed into an intellectual desert." In order to do this, the Germans closed all Polish scientific, artistic, and educational institutions except for simplified primary
schools. The Germans destroyed many historical buildings, scientific and artistic collections, and libraries. Most museums, public and private art collections, archives, and scientific laboratories were pillaged. Many outstanding German professors and scholars were involved in the robbery of the Polish cultural heritage. The German struggle against this heritage included as well a carefully planned destruction of the monuments to Polish kings, heroes, writers, and scholars. The publication of Polish books was
forbidden and the Polish press, numbering over 22 hundred periodicals before the war, was reduced - leaving aside the underground press - to a few dozen titles fully controlled by the Germans. The bookstores were forbidden to sell English and French books, dictionaries, handbooks, newspapers, and periodicals. A list of about three thousand forbidden books was published and the mere possession of these publications was punishable. The Germans initiated an organized struggle against the Polish
language. In the territories incorporated into the Reich, the German authorities ordered the removal of all public notices and inscriptions in Polish, they Germanized Polish place-names, and banished the Polish
language from public use, including the life of the Church. Frequently, people who spoke Polish in the streets were insulted and beaten. To some degree, this Germanization operation was extended to the
Generalgouvernement. The German administration not only tried to deprive the Poles of education and culture. The Germans did their best to lower the intellectual and moral level of Polish society, to corrupt and demoralize it, to promote drunkenness and collaboration.
The Soviet occupiers also destroyed Polish monuments, removed Polish street signs, and closed Polish book shops, publishing houses, and newspapers. Ukrainian and Belorussian became the languages of instruction in schools and universities. Russian became compulsory, Polish textbooks were removed, the teaching of religion was banned, and religious life was paralyzed. The campaign against Polish culture was presented as a rebuilding of Belorussian and Ukrainian cultures unfairly suppressed by the
Poles. Soviet propaganda showed the Polish population in the former Eastern Polish provinces as a small group of colonizers and exploiters, although, out of 13 million people living in the territories occupied by
the Soviets, the Poles numbered 5 million, the Ukrainians 4,5 million, the Belorussians 1.5 million and the Jews 1.5 million.
Mass deportations were the most efficient Soviet method of de-Polonizing the territories newly incorporated into the USSR. The deportations started immediately after September 1939 and lasted until the very day of the German attack on the Soviet Union. Altogether, the Soviets deported about 1.5 million people, mostly Poles, to Siberia, the Arctic regions of European Russia, and to Central Asia. Probably about 30% of those deported died in the Soviet Union. A part of those who survived did not manage to return to Poland or to escape abroad. The Soviet deportation constituted a successful case of ethnic cleansing. Six hundred years of Polish contribution to the development of the territories of the former
Grand Duchy of Lithuania and of Ukraine were wiped out almost completely.
A similar deportation and de-Polonization plan was implemented by the Germans. In the winter of 1939-1940, under extremely harsh conditions, about one million Poles were deported from the territories incorporated into the Reich to the Generalgouvernement. The expelled were allowed to take with them only little cash and few possessions. Their property was confiscated by the Germans. Thousands of the deportees died during the transportation in unheated freight trucks or immediately after they were
dropped off in the General Government. Later, the Germans decided that this area should also be Germanized. The Nazi authorities brutally deported local populations from several attractive regions, such as the Zamosc region, and tried to colonize them with German settlers. More than 200,000 Polish children were kidnapped and taken to the Reich for Germanization.
Both the Germans and the Soviets terrorized Polish society. The terror started immediately after the Wehrmach crossed the Polish borders in September 1939. Before October 25, 1939, when the Polish territories were under administration of the German Army, the Wehrmacht executed over 16,000 Poles. The German Air Forces, participating in the September campaign, deliberately bombed civilian objects and civilians escaping from the burning towns and cities. As early as November 1939, street round-ups started in Poland. During the next several years the Germans established in Poland over 300 labor, concentration, and extermination camps. In April 1940, Heinrich Himmler ordered the establishment of a large
concentration camp near Oswiecim, which had been previously incorporated into the Reich and renamed Auschwitz. In June 1940, the first transport of Polish political prisoners was brought to the camp. In March 1941, its population reached 11,000. Soon Auschwitz acquired ill fame as the harshest camp, where tortures and executions of prisoners defined the daily routine. Until the fall of 1941, the Poles constituted a majority among the prisoners of Auschwitz. In August 1942, a systematic killing of the
Jews started in the gas chambers of the Birkenau section of Auschwitz. Auschwitz became the main Nazi center of mass extermination of the Jews.
The Soviets also initiated a policy of terror immediately after the Red Army crossed the Polish borders. Frequently, the Soviet army shot prisoners of war on the spot. People's militias, established by the new authorities and including demoralized Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews, initiated random retribution against Polish officers, policemen, local officials, judges, and any other staff members of the Polish state
apparatus. In October 1939, the NKVD forced the local population to "elect" "People's Assemblies" of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Their representatives were sent to Moscow, where they asked the Supreme Soviet to incorporate the eastern Polish provinces into the Soviet Union.
From over 6 million Poles killed during the war, almost 5,400 000 died as a direct result of German and Soviet mass terror. Both the Germans and the Soviets started a systematic economic exploitation of the conquered Polish territories. Between 1939 and 1944, the Germans deported about 2 million Poles to the Reich to work in agriculture and industry. There was one striking difference between the Soviet and
the German occupation in Poland. From the beginning of the war, the Germans started an extermination campaign against the Jews. The first ghettos were organized in October 1939. In November 1940, the large ghetto of Warsaw was sealed. The Jews were tortured, robbed, and starved to death. The Germans did their best to encourage Polish anti-Semites, who participated in various activities directed against the Jews.(2)*
In June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and occupied all the territories of the pre-war
Polish state. Now, Poland was divided between the Reich (30.8%), the Generalgouvernement (38.8%) and the so-called Reichskommissariats (30.3%). After their initial victory in Russia, the Germans assumed even more cruel policies toward the population of Poland. In 1942 and 1943, most Polish Jews were killed, mostly in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Chelm, Sobibor, Belzec, and other extermination camps. Altogether, the Germans exterminated 3 million Jewish citizens of Poland and 3 million Jews brought to occupied Poland from abroad.
Throughout centuries, the Jews contributed to Poland's economy and culture. Thousands of Polish-Jewish professionals, writers, scholars, physicians, musicians, and artists helped to build the Polish national heritage and fortune. In killing the Jews, the Germans cut off one of Poland's hands and destroyed Polish common peace of mind. Because some Poles helped the Germans to exterminate the Jews (2)*, and because the killing took place on Polish soil, postwar Poland inherited a most difficult legacy. As a result of the war, other Polish national minorities also disappeared. A long tradition of Polish multinational and
multicultural society came to a tragic end.
Immediately after September 1939, Poles were devastated. It appeared as if the Nazi propaganda slogan about Poland as a "Saisonstaadt" - a "Season state" was right. After a short and uneasy independence, the Polish state disappeared again. Yet, despite the initial desperation, most Poles never relinquished their hope for a final victory. In September 1939, the Poles believed that the war was not yet finished, that only the first campaign had been lost. The Polish Government-in-Exile was
established abroad. Thousands of Polish soldiers escaped from occupied Poland. Polish army units were organized in France and in the Middle East. In 1940, Polish soldiers fought the Germans during their aggression on Norway (3)*, defended France, participated in the British naval operations and
the Battle of England. In June 1940, Poland was Britain's only ally, and the kill ratio of the Polish pilots was twice that of the British during the Battle of England. In 1941, the Poles played a crucial role during the defense of Tobruk in Libya. In 1944, Polish troops participated in the Allied invasion of France and distinguished themselves during the battle of Falaise in Normandy. The Second Polish Corps, led by General Wladyslaw Anders, conquered the German stronghold on Monte Cassino and opened the way
to Rome in May 1944. The First Polish Army organized by the Soviets in 1943 went with the Red Army to Berlin. The Second Polish Army, established by the communists in 1944, stopped the relief of Berlin during the battle of Bautzen in April 1945. By the end of World War II, the Polish Armed Forces were the fourth largest among the Allies, following the armies of the Soviet Union, America, and the British Commonwealth. As early as September 1939, the Poles started organizing their underground (4)* and the anti-German resistance. To quote John Keegan again, the Poles "produced few collaborators and no puppet chief, a unique distinction in the record of European response to German aggression." Soon, communication lines between the Polish Government-in-Exile and the underground in Poland was established. Polish clandestine political parties, operating under the German occupation, began a process of uniting the armed underground. In 1943, most of the underground's units merged into the Home Army, in Polish Armia Krajowa or AK. The Home Army reached 300,000 organized and sworn resistance fighters, the largest anti-German underground army in occupied Europe. The Polish underground state included also a clandestine civilian administration, secret educational institutions, and a justice system. Some of the accomplishments of the Polish resistance made a "decisive contribution to the Allied war efforts," as General Eisenhower said about the breaking of the German secret military code by Polish intelligence. In July 1939, the Poles delivered to the British a complete duplicate of the German coding machine "Enigma," constructed by the Polish secret service.(5)* This achievement helped the Allies to break the German secret code and to read the German secret dispatches during the war. The Home Army actions towards solving the problem of the V-1 bombs and V-2 rockets were of similar importance. The
Polish resistance located the place where the Germans experimented with their secret weapons. Due to this reconnaissance, more than 600 RAF bombers were able to destroy the experimentation plant in August 1943. Later, the Home Army managed to forward to London two V-2 rockets.
Before the summer of 1941, the situation of Poland appeared to be bleak. She was occupied by two major powers, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. America was a neutral state, and the British policy towards the USSR was not to antagonize it in any way. Plans for Poland's future were vague and uncertain. However, on June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. The news was accepted with relief in Great Britain. Churchill joked that if Hitler declared war on the devil, he, Churchill,
would look for an alliance with hell. After Churchill's unconditional invitation of the Soviet Union into the anti-Hitler coalition, the Soviet-British alliance was signed on July 12, 1941. One of Poland's foes
became her potential partner. The English cabinet started to press the Polish Government-in-Exile to come to an agreement with Russia. Under extreme conditions created by Hitler's occupation of Europe -- it was
argued -- any differences and conflicts with the Soviets should be laid aside. The Poles in London understood this and were ready to join forces with Moscow against Berlin. However, the Polish condition sine qua non was that the Soviets had to nullify the Ribbentrop-Molotov line of Poland's partition and should guarantee the interwar Polish-Soviet border, established by the Treaty of Riga in 1921 and confirmed by the Polish-Soviet non-aggression treaty of 1932.
The Soviets were ready to announce the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact null and void, but they rejected the demand for a return to the interwar borders. Also, the Britons refused to guarantee these borders. A majority of Polish public opinion in England believed that in this case no agreement with Moscow was possible. Several members of the Polish Government-in-Exile resigned before the signing of the Polish-Soviet pact of July 30, 1941. Nevertheless, the pact was signed, because resignation and withdrawal from active international politics was not an alternative for Poland. The British and the American governments accused the Poles of lacking a sense of reality, and asked them to be more flexible, and to compromise on their eastern border. Stalin told the British ambassador in Moscow, that the Soviets planned to create
a "Polish National Committee" and a large army, which would fight on the Soviet side. A Polish puppet
government in Moscow would jeopardize not only the eastern borders of Poland but also her independence. About 180,000 Polish soldiers and close to 1.5 million Polish civilians were in the Soviet "Gulag." They could be either saved and used against the Germans or wasted and killed in the camps.
The Prime Minister of Poland and the Commander-in-Chief, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, decided that in this situation Polish territorial questions should be left for discussion after the war. He broke the opposition within his government and signed the treaty.
Only some of the treaty's objectives were translated into reality. An "amnesty" was offered to the Polish people in the "Gulag," and a Polish army was organized in Russia. Not all the Polish prisoners were amnestied, and not all of those who were released could join the army. Yet, the treaty saved tens of thousands of Polish lives. Poland maintained her status of an ally and the Government-in-Exile could continue its activities. Establishing cordial Polish-Soviet relations, however, was not possible. Stalin's government announced with an increasing frequency that it was going to deal with "ethnic Poland" only. The Curzon Line, practically identical with the Ribbentrop-Molotov line, appeared more and more often in Soviet official statements as the legal western border of the USSR. Anglo-American officials told the Polish politicians in London that the "Curzon Line with certain modifications" should be accepted, and that
the Polish question would be handled by the Soviets rather than by the Western Allies. A conflict over the Polish Army in Russia ended with the evacuation of the Polish troops to Persia, and Soviet-Polish relations
deteriorated even further. On April 13, 1943, the Berlin radio announced the discovery of mass graves at Katyn. Moscow called it a "fabrication by Goebbels' slanderers," but there were so many indications that the officers were indeed executed by the NKVD, that the Polish Government-in-Exile asked the International Red Cross to investigate. Moscow used it as a convenient pretext and broke its relations with the Polish government. The relations were never resumed. In January 1944, the Red Army crossed the Polish inter-war borders and, in July 1944, the Soviets entered Polish ethnic territories West of the Curzon Line. The Soviet-controlled Polish Committee of National Liberation was established as a de facto government and started administrating the Polish communist Piedmont, the Lublin area taken by the Soviets in the summer of 1944.
By the end of 1943, the Polish Government-in-Exile and the leaders of the Polish underground state in occupied Poland realized that the question of Poland's eastern borders was beyond their control. They also
understood that Poland's post-war independence was thus jeopardized. This became clear after the establishment of "Lublin Poland." Everywhere in the Soviet-controlled "liberated" territories, the Soviet authorities used methods and implemented policies well known to the Polish people from the
period 1939-41.
The Polish leaders were desperately looking for a solution. In December 1943, the commander of the Home Army, General Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, issued an order for the Operation "Tempest."(6)*
The Home Army planned to organize a local rising in back of the German front in order to assist the Soviets during the decisive moments of their offensives. Polish resistance soldiers were to cooperate with the Red Army and help it to break the German lines. Militarily, the "Tempest" was directed against the Germans, but politically, the operation was intended to manifest the existence of the Polish Republic and to weaken the position of the Soviets during negotiations on Poland's future. The "Tempest" began in March and April 1944 in Volynia, where the Home Army helped to capture the city of Kowel. At the same time, other Home Army units drove the Germans from the Nowogrodek region. In July, the Polish underground armed forces attacked Vilna and contributed to the capture of Lvov and Lublin. In all these
cases, the Soviets cooperated with the Home Army during the fighting. Immediately after the fighting, however, the NKVD units disarmed the Poles, merged the soldiers into the Polish communist army or into the Red Army, and arrested the officers. Many of them were executed, and a majority was imprisoned and deported to the "Gulag." The Polish underground administration was not tolerated by the Soviets anywhere. Members of the anti-German conspiracy, who tried to reshape Polish secret agencies into
regular organs of state administration, were arrested by the Soviets as leaders of anti communist sabotage and diversionary activity. The "Tempest" in Eastern Poland did not reach its political goal, and was not
even noticed by the Western Allies. Moscow kept claiming that the Polish Government-in-Exile was just a group of political reactionary émigrés who had no support in Poland.
The original plan of the "Tempest" did not foresee any fighting in large cities. It was feared that casualties would be too large, and in addition, a number of Polish towns were already heavily damaged. However, on July 29, 1944, Soviet units appeared in Warsaw's eastern suburbs. The Germans panicked and started evacuating their institutions in Warsaw. The Home Army Command knew about the attempt on Hitler's life which took place on July 20. The Soviet-sponsored Polish Radio in Moscow, known as the
Kosciuszko Station, constantly called the population of Warsaw to fight the Germans along with the Red Army. The capture of the Polish capital seemed imminent, even though the Germans had managed to recover from the panic and ordered the mobilization of 100,000 young people for work on Warsaw's
fortification. The Wehrmacht was going to reshape the city into a stronghold which was to stop the Soviet offensive. Therefore, the Home Army commanders believed it was necessary to take Warsaw before its siege. At the same time, the Polish Government-in-Exile believed that it was the last opportunity to establish Polish independent authorities in Warsaw.
On August 1, 1944 (7)*, Warsaw's units of the Home Army (attacked the Germans and gained control of most of the city within three days. Yet, only 10% of the Polish fighters were armed. The Red Army stopped its offensive and remained idle. The Soviet Air Force, so active over Warsaw before, disappeared and the Germans could bomb the city unrestrained. The Red Army stopped and disarmed detachments of the Home Army marching to Warsaw. The Soviet government refused to allow the Western Allies to use
Soviet air bases to airlift supplies for the fighting Poles. For their part, the Germans sent fresh strong units to Warsaw and, in three weeks, the Nazi forces reached 40,000 well-armed men with artillery, tanks, and
planes. On October 2, after 63 days of desperate fighting, the Uprising surrendered.
The Home Army Command and about 12,000 insurgents were taken as prisoners-of-war. The Germans deported the remainder of the city's population to various camps and almost completely destroyed the city. About 18,000 Home Army soldiers were killed and about 7,000 wounded. Over
200,000 civilians died. The main body of the Home Army was eliminated. The best representatives of the Polish youth of Warsaw, almost the entire generation, perished. When the Red Army took the Polish capital in January 1945, it was a gigantic ruin. Over 80 percent of the city buildings were destroyed. Many politicians and architects doubted if it would ever be possible to rebuild Warsaw. The fall of the Uprising weakened the organized resistance in Poland and helped the Soviets to establish their
political domination over the country.
The disastrous fate of Poland was confirmed during the Yalta conference in February 1945. The conference was a culmination and a "catastrophic consummation of wartime strategic decisions" of American and British leaders and a product of their protracted appeasement policies toward Moscow.
In the Polish political vocabulary the name of Yalta became a symbol of treason and betrayal, and the Yalta conference is considered to be a close copy of the Munich conference.
In February 1945, it was too late, of course, to reverse old mistakes and to change the situation in East Central Europe already occupied by the Red Army. Unfortunately, during the conference, new grave
errors and miscalculations were added to the previous ones. The American President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt accepted the loss of East Central Europe in exchange for a Soviet agreement on his United Nations plan and a Soviet promise to participate in the final stage of anti-Japanese operations.
The Western Allies lost Poland and the entire region of East Central Europe -- the key to the western parts of the Old Continent and to international stabilization during the post-war era. During World War II,
the Americans were unprepared to deal with Stalin. Roosevelt and most of his closest advisors were for the most part ignorant of East European and Soviet history and politics. According to George F. Kennan, probably the best American specialist on the Soviet Union and one of the most outstanding "sovietologists" at large, Roosevelt's diplomatic performance could be explained only by "an inexcusable body of ignorance about the nature of the Russian Communist movement, about the history of its diplomacy, about what had happened in the purges, and about what had been going on in Poland and the Baltic States."
Soon after the German invasion of June 1941, the Soviet Union was on the edge of collapsing. The possibility of the USSR's collapse and of German hegemony over Eastern Europe and maybe even the northern part of Asia were perceived to be very dangerous for everybody. Great Britain and later the United States rightly began to cooperate with and to support the Soviet Union. From the very beginning, however, the Western powers assumed an exaggerated approach and started an unlimited, unconditional, and almost enthusiastic cooperation with Moscow, as if the Soviet Union were not yesterday's - and potentially a future - dangerous rival. Kennan was probably right that during the dark months immediately after the Nazi invasion against the Soviet Union "One might very well have said to Stalin: 'Look here, old boy, our memories are no shorter than yours. We know very well how you tried to arrange your affairs in this war. We are perfectly aware of the feeling toward us by which your pact with Hitler was inspired. Now you have come a cropper in your effort to collaborate with Hitler, and this is your affair. If you
are interested in receiving our material aid, we will give it to you precisely in the measure that we find suitable and for precisely so long as this suits our purposes. Meanwhile we want no sentimentality and no
nonsense. You have revealed to us what your aims are in Europe; and while we may help you to repel the German invaders, you may expect small comfort from us in those of your ambitions which extend beyond the territory that was recognized as yours up to 1938."
Instead, the British and the Americans started an unconditional support and did not design any alternative policy toward Moscow. They did not understand the importance of a free Poland and East Central Europe for the future of Germany and for the whole postwar order. Kennan concludes:
And there is no reason to suppose that, had we behaved differently either with respect to land-lease or with respect to the wartime conferences, the outcome of military events in Europe would have been greatly different than it was. We might have wasted less money and material than we did. We might have arrived in the center of Europe slightly sooner and less encumbered with obligations to our Soviet ally. The postwar line of division between East and West might have lain somewhat farther east than it is today, and that would certainly be a relief to everyone concerned.
To the Poles this "postwar division line located somewhat farther east" would mean freedom. The Poles feel to this day that their country was treated unfairly by the Allies. The Second World War started in and because of Poland, which first stood up to the Nazi Germany. Poland fought for the longest time in Europe, went through the most vicious occupation, and suffered the heaviest proportional casualties. Polish soldiers fought on most fronts of the war and, during its last year, the Polish military units constituted the forth strongest allied armed force after the Red Army, American, and British troops.
In spite of all that, after the war, Poland was treated in the same way or in even a worse way than some East European allies of Hitler (like, for example, Finland). The representatives of the Polish Armed Forces (except for 25 pilots) were not invited to participate in the victory parade in London in June 1946. The British authorities systematically concealed the truth about the Polish contribution to the breaking of the German secret code and to the destruction of the Penemunde V-1 and V-2 experiment plant. In 1945-1947, the British did their best to get rid of tens of thousands of Polish Armed Forces soldiers who were in England and Scotland. The Nazi totalitarian occupation of Poland was replaced by Soviet totalitarian control. After 1945, the Polish people continued to be deported to the Soviet camps and were exterminated. The new oppressor drastically changed the borders of Poland, which lost 20% of her pre-war area and two major centers of Polish national culture: Vilna and Lvov. The Soviets continued the economic exploitation of Poland and the extermination of the Polish elites. The Poles came to the conclusion that the Western
powers, America and Great Britain, in their own selfish interest, had cynically surrendered the idealistic principles previously presented by them in the Atlantic Charter. The Poles felt betrayed by their Western
allies. Half a century later, communism collapsed, Poland regained independence, joined NATO, and is going to enter the European Union. Poland's access to the Union is strongly supported by Germany. Most Polish people understand that integration with Europe and reconciliation with Germany are necessary. Yet, the Poles do not trust. They remember.

Website Editor comments:
(1) - Poland was the only country in all German occupied Europe where there was no local authorities collaborating with the occupants. The pre-war administration and civil services were dissolved by the occupation forces. The Polish government in exile helped to organize the clandestine underground administration, directing both military and civilian resistance against the German occupation. (See the chapter "Polish Home Army and secret underground State…" on this Website).
(2) - In isolated cases some Poles and even some Jews helped the Germans by blackmailing or denunciating hiding Jews. Those persons were judged by the Polish Underground Courts and mostly executed. Only in Poland, the Polish government in exile together with Polish political parties acting underground, organized an action ("Zegota") providing the Jews with false "arian" papers and hiding places. (See the book "Zegota-the rescue of Jews in wartime Poland" by Irene Tomaszewski & Tecia Werbowski,-Price_patterson Ltd.,1994). It must be also underline that Poland was the only country in the whole occupied Europe where Germans introduced the death penalty for anyone and
his family for helping the Jews to hide and survive the Holocaust. (See "Polish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust" in the chapter "Holocaust of Poland People" on this Website).
(3) - The battle of Narvik.
(4) - See "Polish Home Army and Secret (Underground) State…" chapter on this Website.
(5) - See "The truth about Enigma finally surfaces" in the chapter "Poland History" on this Website.
(6) - "Burza" in Polish.
(7) - "The Warsaw Uprising" (Battle of Warsaw) of 1944 was one battle against German occupants and
"The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising" of 1943 was another.