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Under two occupations

1939–1945 · 13 articles · about 120 min of reading

After the defeat of September 1939, Poland was divided between two totalitarian states. Germany annexed western Poland to the Reich, turned the centre into the General Government and from the first days murdered Poland’s leading figures. The Soviet Union annexed the eastern half of the country, deported hundreds of thousands of people deep into the USSR and in the spring of 1940 murdered almost 22,000 Polish officers and other prisoners at Katyn and elsewhere. The series runs through both occupations and the Volhynia massacres to Operation Tempest and the Augustów roundup in the summer of 1945.

1939

  1. 011 September 1939Event8 minOperation TannenbergThe start of German terror: lists of names drawn up before the war show that the blow against the Polish elites was planned.On 1 September 1939 Security Police and SD Einsatzgruppen followed the Wehrmacht into Poland, carrying lists of names to “neutralise” Poland’s leading strata.
  2. 0226 October 1939EventKey moment9 minThe annexation of Polish lands and the General GovernmentHitler’s decrees fix the shape of German occupation for years: part of the lands annexed to the Reich, the rest in the General Government.On 26 October 1939 Hitler’s decrees took effect. Western Poland was annexed to the Reich and central Poland became Hans Frank’s General Government.
  3. 031 November 1939Event9 minThe USSR annexes eastern PolandThe other side of the partition: the USSR formalises its seizure of the eastern lands, opening the way to deportations and terror there.On 1–2 November 1939 the Supreme Soviet annexed eastern Poland to the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs, citing rigged “elections” of 22 October.
  4. 046 November 1939Event8 minSonderaktion KrakauKraków’s scholars fall victim to the same drive to destroy the Polish elites, arrested and deported to Sachsenhausen.On 6 November 1939 the Germans lured Kraków professors to a bogus lecture in the Collegium Novum, arrested 183 people and deported them to Sachsenhausen.

1940

  1. 053 April 1940EventKey moment11 minThe Katyn massacreThe Soviet counterpart to German killings of the elite: in spring 1940 the NKVD murders almost 22,000 prisoners.On 3 April 1940 the first prisoners left Kozelsk for their deaths. By mid-May the NKVD had killed almost 22,000 Polish officers, policemen and prisoners.

1941

  1. 061 March 1941Event8 minHimmler orders the expansion of AuschwitzThe camp founded a year earlier in former Polish army barracks is enlarged and tied to industry on Himmler’s orders, one of the instruments of German terror.On 1 March 1941 Himmler first visited Auschwitz. He ordered the camp enlarged for 30,000 prisoners and 10,000 prisoners provided to build the IG Farben plant.
  2. 074 July 1941EventKey moment13 minThe massacre of the Lwów professorsTerror against the elites reaches Lwów with the German advance, onto land the USSR had occupied earlier, and relatives are shot together with the professors.During the night of 3–4 July 1941 the German Security Police in Lwów arrested Polish professors and their relatives. At dawn they were shot on the Wulka Hills.

1943

  1. 0816 March 1943Event7 minThe discovery of the Katyn gravesMoscow gives the government in London no answer about the missing prisoners, and it is the Germans who find and open the graves of the 1940 crime.In March 1943 the German Secret Field Police examined mass graves of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. The world learned of them only in April.
  2. 0913 April 1943EventKey moment9 minThe Germans announce the Katyn massacreThe two occupations collide in politics: German propaganda announces Katyn, and Stalin uses the dispute over an inquiry to break with the Polish government.On 13 April 1943 Berlin radio announced the discovery of Polish officers’ graves near Smolensk. The dispute let Stalin break with the Polish government.
  3. 1011 July 1943EventKey moment11 minBloody Sunday in VolhyniaVolhynia under German occupation: the UPA strikes at Polish villages while the Germans generally do not intervene to defend those attacked.On 11 July 1943 UPA units and local peasants attacked nearly 100 Polish villages and settlements in Volhynia – the bloodiest day of the Volhynia massacres.

1944

  1. 117 July 1944Event9 minOperation Ostra BramaOperation Tempest at Wilno: the Home Army tries to take the city on its own before the Red Army enters, but it is the Soviet army that captures it.On 7 July 1944 Home Army units attacked Wilno to take it before the Red Army. The same day the spearheads of the 3rd Belorussian Front reached the city.
  2. 1223 July 1944Event10 minThe Lwów uprisingLwów repeats the experience of Wilno: the Home Army fights the Germans alongside the Red Army, and its coming into the open ends in disarmament and arrests.On 23 July 1944 the Home Army and the Red Army fought the Germans in Lwów. The city fell on 27 July; days later the NKVD arrested the Home Army commanders.

1945

  1. 1310 July 1945Event8 minThe Augustów roundupTwo months after Germany’s surrender Soviet terror continues: the break-up of the post-Home Army underground ends with some 600 people disappearing.On 10–25 July 1945 the Red Army, NKVD and SMERSH, aided by the UB and the militia, combed the Suwałki region; some 600 detainees vanished without trace.