When: Beginning of WWII (1939-1941)
Where: Eastern Poland / Western USSR
What: In a surprise move on the seventeenth day of the German invasion of Poland, the Soviet Union invaded from the east. The Nazis and Soviets had secretly agreed the month before to divide the country. Because the Polish military leadership had ordered the Polish forces not to engage the Soviets, the Red Army advanced rapidly with little opposition.
Problem: Stalin and the NKVD (the secret police and forerunner of the KGB) planned to quickly transform the eastern portion of Poland into a communist society and incorporate it into the USSR, but the educated classes stood in the way.
Lvov, the third largest city in Poland, was under German attack when Soviet troops arrived on September 19, 1939. Polish General Langner rejected German demands to surrender and abdicated to the Soviets instead. The negotiated agreement called for the 30,000 Polish troops in the city to surrender at 15:00 hours on September 22. The agreement allowed the soldiers to return home and the officers to cross the border into Romania or Hungary.
The Polish officers assembled at the designated time and laid down their arms, but the Soviets marched them off and transported them around the country for four days without food or water.
At station stops the soldiers scrounged for roots in unharvested gardens, and strangers thrust food at them. They eventually landed in prison camps to the east.
after the Soviet invasion of Poland – Wikipedia
Before the war, the Polish government had required every non-exempt university graduate to join the military reserves. University professors, physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, journalists, pilots, and chaplains made up the pool of reservists mobilized when Germany invaded. Those that weren’t captured in the initial surrender were easily rounded up later and transferred into the custody of the NKVD. This included police officers, border guards, landowners, refugees, and a prince.
From October 1939 through February 1940, the soldiers endured lengthy interrogations and constant political agitation in concentration camps established on the former grounds of orthodox monasteries in the western USSR. If the captives resisted the Soviet government, they were condemned to die as enemies of the state.
In March of 1940, Stalin signed the death warrant for over 20,000 officers, soldiers, and civilians. They were secretly shot and buried in mass graves. One such grave site was in Katyn, Russia. Although the captives were executed and buried in various locations, Katyn Forest became the symbol of the atrocity. In all, the NKVD annihilated almost half of the Polish Officer Corp.
Professor Stanislaw Swianiewicz was condemned to die at Katyn, but a NKVD colonel pulled the professor out of line while he waited to board a bus to the execution site. Swianiewicz had studied in Moscow before the Russian Revolution, was an internationally recognized expert on forced labor in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, and had written books on the Soviet economy. He was sent to various prisons, interrogated, and eventually incarcerated in Siberia.
Another officer, General Wladyslaw Anders, had commanded a cavalry brigade which had engaged in heavy fighting with the Germans. While fleeing to the Hungarian border in late September of 1939, he and his troops fought the Soviets. He was injured, captured, and eventually sent to prison in Moscow, thus avoiding the same fate as his fellow officers.
The NKVD arrested, tortured and killed thousands of other Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, and Belorussians from 1940 to 1941. Estimates vary among historians, but it’s believed that 300,000 to 1.2 million Poles were deported to Northern Russia, Siberia, and Central Asia during this time period.
Many died in transit or in exile.
After the Germans overran Eastern Poland and attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviets formed an alliance with Great Britain and the Polish government-in-exile in London. As part of their agreement, Stalin released all surviving Polish prisoners with the understanding that they would assist in the fight against the Nazis.
General Anders was freed and given command of the Polish Army in the east. It was his responsibility to gather and train the recently released Polish prisoners to form the new army. When inquiries were made regarding the whereabouts of the thousands of missing Polish officers, Stalin claimed that he had lost track of them in Manchuria.
Germany uncovered and exposed the Katyn atrocity to the world in 1943. The Soviets denied responsibility, claiming the Germans had killed the soldiers found in the mass graves. The Polish government-in-exile objected, so Stalin broke off relations with them. Great Britain and the United States chose to accept the Soviet explanation of Germany’s guilt rather than rouse the ire of their ally.
General Anders led his freed Polish troops through Iran and Iraq to Palestine where he successfully organized and trained them to fight the Germans. The Anders Army went on to fight in the Italian Campaign, capturing Monte Cassino in 1944. He and his soldiers engaged in other major battles before the war ended. Anders died in London in 1970.
Professor Swianiewicz was released from Siberia, and left the Soviet Union in 1942. He worked with the Polish government-in-exile in London and informed them of the number of Polish officers that were held in the Soviet Union in the spring of 1940. Later he wrote about the Katyn Massacre and lectured at numerous universities around the world. He died near London in 1997 at the age of 97.
The Soviets also released thousands of previously deported Polish civilians, including many women and children who left the Soviet Union with the Anders Army.
It wasn’t until 1990 that Russia admitted responsibility for the massacre and expressed “profound regret” for its actions.
Sources:
Williamson, David G. Poland Betrayed. Stackpole Books, 2007.
“Katyn Massacre.” Wikipedia.
“Katyn Massacre.” Britannica.
“Katyn Forest Massacre: Polish Deaths at Soviet Hands.”
“Stalin’s Killing Field: The Katyn Controversy.” Center for the Study of Intelligence.