27th January 1945: Auschwitz-Birkenau liberated by Soviet forces

Poland was the first country to put up armed resistance against Hitler. In May 1939 in no uncertain terms Poland rejected German territorial demands. From the Polish gov archives

II. THE OUTBREAK OF WW2 AND SEPTEMBER CAMPAIGN

Poland was the first country to put up armed resistance against Hitler. In May 1939 in no uncertain terms Poland rejected German territorial demands. Poland was not certain to be defeated. She had allies – France and Great Britain. Mutual agreements guaranteed that Hitler’s state would be squeezed tight. After the German invasion of Poland, French military forces were to immediately activate their air force, and after three days launch “an offensive against limited targets”, and within 15 days “in case of German invasion, launch an offensive against the Germans using [their] main military forces”. The Polish-British military alliance clearly stated that should the Germans attack, “all support and assistance” would be offered immediately.

In the meantime, Poland’s powerful and totalitarian neighbours joined forces. As early as October 1938, Stalin strove to establish diplomatic relations and then political cooperation with the Third Reich. On 23rd August 1939 the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed. It included a secret protocol that set out the plan of dividing Poland between the USSR and Germany.

By providing Germany with friendly neutrality, and de facto military aid, Stalin made it possible for Hitler attack Poland on 26 August and thus start World War II. The day before, Great Britain had signed an alliance with Poland, which temporarily held Hitler, who postponed the attack to 1 September.

(„A Guide to the History of Poland”)

THE GERMAN INVASION

On 1 September 1939, Germany attacked Poland from the west and north and, together with Slovakia, also from the south. The armed forces of the Reich consisted of over 1.6 million soldiers. The Polish army was relatively strong but, due to the difference in potential, decidedly smaller than the Wehrmacht. The tenacious resistance of Poland against the German aggression forced the Allies to take clear steps. After Hitler rejected the Western ultimatum, France and Great Britain officially declared war on the German Reich on 3 September 1939. 2 weeks later, the Red Army attacked Poland from the east, while she was fighting alone against the Germans.

The Germans were fully aware of the danger an attack from the west meant for them. Therefore, their goal was to surround and destroy Polish troops as quickly as possible. After hard-fought frontier battles in northern Mazovia, Pomerania, Silesia and southern Poland, Polish troops had to retreat, but the Germans did not succeed in destroying the core of enemy forces. On 8 September 1939, the long defence of the Polsh capital began. A day later, two Polish armies successfully attacked the approaching Germans near the Bzura River, west of Warsaw, starting one of the Polish campaign’s largest battles, lasting over several days. The Polish assault forced the Germans to revise their plans and blunted the thrust of their offensive action. A change of the military situation in Poland was still possible, provided that the Germans were forced to shift some of their armies to the west.

The French and the British shoud have attacked the Germans as soon as possible. Yet despite declaring war on Germany, the French ground forces, much more numerous than the Germany’s, remained nearly inactive. The British likewise failed to fulfil their obligations towards Poland. On 12 September 1939, the Anglo-French Supreme War Council met in the French town of Abbeville for the first time, making a decision whose consequences proved disastrous. The Allies jointly agreed to abandon Poland in the fight against Hitler without any effective military assistance on their part.

Berlin breathed a sigh of relief and satisfaction on 17 September 1939, when the Red Army crossed the Polish-Soviet border along its whole length, as stipulated in the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, and broken or disbanded units of the Polish Army were not dispatched to the west. The Soviets met resistance only from the units of the Polish Border Protection Corps (KOP), a few detachments of the Polish Army and voluntary formations. The aggression of the USSR against Poland was the violation of internationaland bilateral treaties, including the Soviet-Polish non-aggression pact of 1932 (extended in 1934 and was to be effective until 1945). The Soviets reasoned their invasion of Poland, as the Polish state was dissolved and its authorities were disintegrated.

Preisednt of the Republic of Poland Ignacy Mościki  condemned these actions in his speech, but decided not to declare on the USSR. It was his serious mistake that hindered the subsequent political actions of the Polish authorities in relations with the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. The Soviets captured the eastern provinces of Poland by the end of September. They committed crimes in the conquered territories, mainly against the military. Fighting in the western part of Poland petered out in the following days. After the initial Polish success in the Battle of the Bzura the Polish army detachments were eventually crushed. Two Polish armies and individual units withdrawing from the north towards the border with allied Romania yielded to the Germans in two large battles of Tomaszów Lubelski (17-20 and 21-26 September). The Poles continued their defence at several points along the Baltic coast, in the Modlin fortress (until 29 September), and also in the capital, with considerable effort of civilians who resisted the Germans as long as until 28 September. Lwów, which repulsed all attacks by German forces, was surrendered to Soviet troops entering from the east on 22 September. The last major battle of the defensive war in Poland in which the Poles were having the upper hand (until they ran out of ammunition) raged near Kock from 2 to 5 October 1939. Poland, whom her allies left her left to fend for herself in the face of aggressors, fought with determination under dire conditions for over five weeks.

The losses in military equipment incurred by Germans in Poland were large enough to prevent major military engagement in Western Europe. The French and the British did not exploit this opportunity either, remaining generally passive in the face of the course of events. The Germans used the following months to hurriedly reconstruct their army, replace the losses, and reinforce their military potential (in which the supplies from the USSR played a role). With the eastern border protected, they began an invasion of western and northern Europe in the spring of 1940. Although the French Republic had a better strategic situation against the enemy compared to Poland, much stronger armed forces, and assistance from the British, Belgian, and Dutch armies, it fought for only six and a half weeks, just a little longer than Poland, abandoned and invaded along all its borders by the totalitarian powers. The attitude Poland demonstrated in September 1939 put an end to a succession of easy conquests that, left unpunished, bolstered Hitler’s power. Although confronted by the passive stance of the Allies in 1939, the Germans had not yet tasted defeat, and the resistance put up by the Poles transformed their aggression into an international conflict. All the circumstances considered, the Polish campaign sowed the seeds of ultimate defeat of both the German Reich and her Nazi leader.

Poland remained a part of the Allied camp. Despite the position of the French and British members of the coalition in 1939, the Poles vested all their hopes in a change in their lot once the final victory of the Western powers over Germany was achieved. Waiting for an Allied offensive, Poland did not intend to take a backseat. The Polish government in exile immediately set to reconstruct the Polish Armed Forces, which began to be formed in France using those who fought in the 1939 defensive war and arrived on French soil by different routes. In just a few months, over 85,000 subscribed.

In the spring of 1940, using among others resources supplied by the Soviets, the Germans started an offensive on the western front, with Hitler once again emerging triumphant. On 9 April 1940, the German army captured Denmark in one day and immediately invaded Norway, in whose defence Polish naval units and ground troops joined (notably in the battle of Narvik in May and June 1940).

In June 1940, Polish soldiers fought to defend France. Scattered among various French units, they battled the Germans on the Saar River, the Marne-Rhine Canal, near Lagarde, on the Somme, in Champagne, and in sundry other locations. Polish pilots defended Belgium and northern France, protecting among others Paris. From 1939 onwards, vessels of the Polish Navy served to protect Allied convoys in the Atlantic and in Mediterranean operations. Due to the overwhelming pace of German military success, only some of the reconstructed Polish Armed Forces could be salvaged from the collapse of France and evacuated to the British Isles.

Although weakened again after the downfall of France, Poland became Great Britain’s chief European ally for a number of months. President Raczkiewicz was personally welcomed in Britain by the king with great honours. As every soldier mattered, another reconstruction of the Polish Armed Forces began, and an army of over 30,000 was raised.

At that stage of the war, the efforts of over 9,000 Polish airmen in Britain were of particular importance. Polish fighter and bomber squadrons were formed and soon became highly successful in the airborne Battle of Britain, and later in the fights and air raids all over continental Europe. Polish pilots accounted for no fewer than 12% of all German planes shot down during the Battle of Britain. The defence of Britain was also supported by Polish naval and ground units.

In the years 1941–1942, Polish soldiers also fought in Africa, among others in defense of Tobruk. In 1944–45 the Polish Army participated in the liberation of Italy, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The troops of the Polish 2nd Corps of General Władysław Anders, consisting predominantly of Poles, were successfully evacuated from the Soviet Union to Persia and the Middle East and later sent to fight in the Apennine Peninsula in late 1943 and early 1944.

In May 1944, after a heroic struggle, Polish forces captured among others the Monte Cassino abbey, opening the path to Rome to Allied troops. Later, they liberated tens of Italian towns and locations from the Germans, notably Piedmont, Ancona (June–July 1944), and Bologna (April 1945). Polish ships helped to ferry and safeguard Allied troops landing in Normandy, and Polish sailors also participated in the Battle of the Atlantic, convoys sailing to Murmansk, and naval warfare in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. After D-Day, Poles fought (among other places) in France in the Battle of Falaise (8–22 August 1944) and liberated Ypres and Ghent in Belgium and Breda in the Netherlands (28–30 October 1944).

The 1st Independent Parachute Brigade participated in Operation Market Garden (21–25 September 1944). Poles were also present in battles along the Meuse River, and in May 1945 they captured the northern regions of Germany, including the port of Wilhelmshaven. The list of Polish achievements in the struggle against the Third Reich cannot be complete without the feats of Polish cryptologists (notably Marian Rejewski), who passed copies of the Enigma and the entire documentation to French and British intelligence. The breaking of the Enigma codes permitted to intercept German orders and military plans and contributed to the success of numerous Allied operations.

IV. THE SITUATION IN OCCUPIED POLAND

THE SOVIET OCCUPATION

The Soviet Union annexed more than one half of Poland’s territory, over 201,000 square kilometres, with the majority incorporated into the Belarusian and Ukrainian Soviet republics. The merger was “formally” announced after Moscow’s sham “elections” to the so-called “People’s Assemblies”. This was a large-scale propagandist staging of allegedly democratic processes run in an atmosphere of terror, whose results were fixed under the supervision of the Soviet secret police (NKVD). The whole farce was carried out in violation of elementary principles of international law.

The Soviets quickly set to eradicate all signs of the existence of the Polish state. First, power was seized by revolutionary committees set up by appointed communists. Then, former state and territorial authorities were formally replaced by so-called soviets of various levels. The breaking of the foundations of the free market economy, the introduction of new exorbitant taxes, a currency exchange which dramatically devalued the Polish zloty, and initial attempts at collectivisation of the Polish countryside resulted in a quick impoverishment of the population.

These, however, were of far lesser importance than the hastily erected structures of the Soviet party and political police. The population of the occupied territory was forced to accept the previously unknown state administration hierarchy, in which the leading role was played by the Communist party administration and local (district and regional) structures of the NKVD. Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian, respectively, became the official languages of education. Polish schools were replaced with Soviet ones and new Soviet course-books and curricula introduced. Russian civil servants and communist teaching staff with families were brought from the east. The official propaganda also played the Polish worker and peasant classes against former elites, enticing (often efficiently) the lowest strata of society with the prospect of upward movement in the power hierarchy and grants of confiscated land. The Jewish, Ukrainian, and Belarusian minorities in particular were eagerly utilized to find out anti-Bolshevik resistance and set up new local structures of power. Not unlike under the German occupation, it was primarily members of patriotic intellectual elites, political groups supporting independence, landed gentry, civil servants, police officers, Polish Army officers, military settlers, and people who contributed to Polish independence who were the first to annihilated, the reprisals affecting not only them but also their close and not so close families.

MASS CRIMES AND DEPORTATIONS

In 1940-41, the Soviets organised four major deportation campaigns of Polish citizens to labour camps and forced settlement locations deep in the USSR. Meticulously prepared, these huge undertakings consisted in simultaneous arrests of tens of thousands of citizens and took place successively in February, April, and June 1940, and in May and June 1941. Although incomplete, the Soviet sources that became accessible after the fall of the USSR document the deportation of 327,000 Polish citizens. These are only a fraction of the total number of victims, as the figures do not account for all deportees. The available data mostly cover those affected by the four major deportation campaigns described above, and even in this they are incomplete. Apart from these operations, the Soviets systematically arrested individuals, whole families and larger groups on a daily basis. In addition, in the autumn of 1939 several thousand Polish citizens were deported even deeper into the USSR as part of the so-called “cleansing of the border zone”. Apart from Poles, victims of these persecutions included a considerable number of Polish Jews fleeing from areas occupied by Germany.

Carried out in an inhuman setting, the deportations were the beginning of the ordeal of the eastern Poland population resettled in the USSR. The conditions during transport meant that a large percentage of displaced people never reached their destinations. Later, the compulsory and devastating work in labour camps whose inmates served as woodcutters and miners, the omnipresent terror and crime, and the forced resettlement in the steppes of Kazakhstan, the proverbial middle of nowhere, led to a high death toll among deportees.

In parallel with the deportations, a broad campaign of arrests swept throughout the occupied territory of eastern Poland in 1939–41. More than 100,000 people were imprisoned, many of them murdered in individual and mass executions.

The crimes and repressions of the NKVD lasted in the years 1939–41 and went on until the very end of Soviet occupation, and ceased only when Wehrmacht forces invaded the eastern areas of the Republic of Poland in June 1941.

At the same time, the Soviets practiced forced conscription of Polish citizens to the Red Army, with anywhere between 100,000 to 200,000 Poles press-ganged during the first period of Soviet occupation. After the German aggression on the USSR, thousands died in the uniforms of a foreign army.

The pinnacle of all Soviet cruelties and crimes perpetrated on the Polish people was reached in the Katyn forest near Smoleńsk.

THE KATYN CRIME

The Soviets separated the officer corps from other prisoners of war captured during the aggression of 1939 and took them to POW camps, mostly in Kozelsk, Ostashkov, and Starobilsk. After several months of groundwork, following a decision of 5 March 1940, the Soviet authorities decided to launch a “special action” consisting in the ruthless murder of over ten thousand Polish officers who had been taken prisoners of war. Most of them were reserve officers, and therefore belonged to Polish intelligentsia. The action began by the victims being moved to the places of execution in Kalinin (Tver), Katyn, and Kharkiv. There, each officer was killed individually with a shot to the back of the head. Graves of murdered officers can also be found in Bykivnia near Kiev and most probably in Kurapaty near Minsk.

Altogether, the Katyn massacre claimed the lives of nearly 22,000 officers of the Polish Army and of the pre-war Polish state police as well as other members of Polish elites, sifted out and murdered one by one.

THE GERMAN OCCUPATION

The Germans captured the western half of the state, 188,000 square kilometres in total. The northern and western parts of Poland (the regions of Pomerania, Greater Poland, the area around Suwałki, northern and western Mazovia, Łódź and its vicinity, the Polish part of Upper Silesia, and the western reaches of Lesser Poland) were annexed to become integral parts of the Reich, and administered similarly to other German Gaue. The south-eastern part of the German occupation zone was granted a temporary status as the General Government (Generalgouvernement) within the borders of the so-called Greater German Reich (Großdeutsches Reich).

From the first days of the occupation, the rights of Poles were vastly restricted and submitted to the ruthless control of German administration. Jewish citizens of Poland were in turn demoted to the very bottom of the social hierarchy and quickly deprived of any legal protection. The Germans immediately engaged in conspicuous humiliation of the Jewish population. From the first days of the war, individual and collective crime and violence directed towards Jews were a staple occurrence in the reign of terror enacted by the all-powerful German overlords.

From the first weeks of occupation, the Germans were particularly ruthlessly bent on annihilating members of the Polish intelligentsia. Their intention was to liquidate the Polish leading classes and turn the Poles into an eliteless nation. To achieve this purpose, various ruses were used. For example, when the professors of various Kraków universities were invited to a lecture delivered by a representative of the German authorities, they were arrested and sent to concentration camps straight from the university buildings.

In the spring and summer of 1940, Germans conducted the so-called Extraordinary Operation of Pacification, known as AB-Aktion (Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion) in all districts of the GG. It was a campaign of arrests and exterminations that affected around 6,500 people considered likely to engage in resistance, as well as members of the Polish intelligentsia.

Already in the autumn of 1939, the Germans committed mass murders and executions of the population, including hand-picked individuals who made major contributions to the state, political activists, academics, priests, and veterans of independence organizations. One of the many locations where the Germans committed mass murders from 1939 to 1941 was Palmiry, near Warsaw, where around 1,700 were murdered. The campaign to exterminate Poles and destroy Polishness in the region of Pomerania included the mass executions in Piaśnica, which claimed the lives of several thousand people from 1939 to 1940.

The conditions that prevailed in occupied Poland proved incomparably worse than those experienced by citizens of Western European states conquered by Germany.

THE WARSAW UPRISING

The most evident instance of the struggle for the right of the Republic of Poland to be independent was the Warsaw Uprising that broke out on 1 August 1944 while Soviet troops were approaching the Vistula. The Republic of Poland structures started to reveal themselves in the capital city quarters liberated by the Home Army. Stalin did not expect an army raised in secret and consisting of alleged civilians to be capable of long-term and effective resistance against regular German units armed to their teeth.

The Soviets did everything they could so that the uprising fell. Stalin stopped the Red Army offensive near Warsaw, giving up his earlier plans to attack the city. He gave Hitler time to fully liquidate the Polish forces. When the uprising had its greatest successes, the USSR made it impossible to increase the Allied air assistance to the Home Army soldiers. The Soviets brutally liquidated the Home Army units that were going to help the uprising. The Germans did the same on their side of the front. At the beginning of October 1944, after long 63 days of fierce struggle with the overwhelming enemy forces, the insurgents surrendered to the Germans.

Video.
They met some resistance from the remaining Nazi troops in the city, but by 3pm had captured the Main Camp and Auschwitz II-Birkenau. By the end of 1944, the Soviet Union was making significant gains against the Nazis on the Eastern Front. As a result SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the end of gassings across the Reich, and the systematic destruction of written records. Approximately 65,000 prisoners were evacuated deeper into the Reich between August 1944 and January 1945 but tens of thousands of prisoners still remained in Auschwitz. Therefore, on the 17th January, at least another 58,000 inmates were sent on a death march under armed guard; of those who departed around 20,000 made it to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. More than 7,000 prisoners were left behind in the camp because they were deemed too weak or sick to complete the march.

Meanwhile, the Nazis continued to destroy evidence of the crimes committed in the camps by blowing up or burning many remaining buildings including the crematoria. Remaining SS troops were ordered to kill the remaining inmates, murdering over 600 of them before the Soviet forces arrived. However, due to the quick progress of the Red Army some buildings – as well as thousands of inmates – survived. After the liberation, hospital facilities were established at the camp to provide medical treatment for the survivors. On the 2nd July 1947, the Polish parliament passed an act that turned the camp in to a museum.

Putin said Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the atrocity as revenge for the death of Red Army soldiers in Polish prisoner of war camps in 1920. Putin said 32,000 troops under Stalin’s command had died of hunger and disease in the Polish camps.

“It is my personal opinion that Stalin felt personally responsible for this tragedy, and carried out the executions (of Poles in 1940) out of a sense of revenge,” Putin said, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. CSCE.gov