Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)

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Occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union
Partition of Poland – aftermath of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact; division of Polish territories in the years 1939–1941 prior to the Operation Barbarossa
, German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941
1941–1945
Changes in administration of occupied Polish territories following German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The map shows district divisions in 1944

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. Throughout the entire course of the occupation, the territory of Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR), both of which intended to eradicate Poland's culture and subjugate its people.[1] In the summer-autumn of 1941, the lands which were annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Germany in the course of the initially successful German attack on the USSR. After a few years of fighting, the Red Army drove the German forces out of the USSR and crossed into Poland from the rest of Central and Eastern Europe.

Sociologist Tadeusz Piotrowski argues that both occupying powers were hostile to the existence of Poland's sovereignty, people, and the culture and aimed to destroy them.[2] Before Operation Barbarossa, Germany and the Soviet Union coordinated their Poland-related policies, most visibly in the four Gestapo–NKVD conferences, where the occupiers discussed their plans to deal with the Polish resistance movement.[3]

Around 6 million Polish citizens—nearly 21.4% of Poland's population—died between 1939 and 1945 as a result of the

occupation,[4][5] half of whom were ethnic Poles and the other half of whom were Polish Jews. Over 90% of the deaths were non-military losses, because most civilians were deliberately targeted in various actions which were launched by the Germans and Soviets.[4] Overall, during German occupation of pre-war Polish territory, 1939–1945, the Germans murdered 5,470,000–5,670,000 Poles, including 3,000,000 Jews in what was described during the Nuremberg trials as a deliberate and systematic genocide.[6]

In August 2009, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers estimated Poland's dead (including Polish Jews) at between 5.47 and 5.67 million (due to German actions) and 150,000 (due to Soviet), or around 5.62 and 5.82 million total.[7]

Administration

In September 1939, Poland was invaded and occupied by two powers:

economic exploitation, and slow but progressive extermination.[12][13][14]

A small strip of land, about 700 square kilometres (270 sq mi) with 200,000 inhabitants[9] that had been part of Czechoslovakia before 1938, was ceded by Germany to its ally, Slovakia.[15]

Poles comprised an overwhelming majority the population of the territories that came under the control of Germany, in contrast the areas annexed by the Soviet Union contained a diverse array of peoples, the population being split into bilingual provinces, some of which had large ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities,[16] many of whom welcomed the Soviets due in part to communist agitation by Soviet emissaries. Nonetheless Poles still comprised a plurality of the population in all territories annexed by the Soviet Union.[17]

German and Soviet soldiers stroll around Sambir after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland.[18]

By the end of the invasion, the Soviet Union had taken over 51.6% of the territory of Poland (about 201,000 square kilometres (78,000 sq mi)), with over 13,200,000 people.

whose borders were significantly shifted westwards.[23]

Treatment of Polish citizens under German occupation

Generalplan Ost, Lebensraum and expulsion of Poles

For months prior to the beginning of

Viscount Halifax regarding Hitler's claims about the treatment Germans were receiving in Poland; he came to the conclusion all the claims by Hitler and the Nazis were exaggerations or false claims.[25]

Expulsion of Poles from western Poland
, with Poles led to the trains under German army escort, 1939.

From the beginning, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany was intended as fulfilment of the future plan of the German Reich described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf as Lebensraum ("living space") for the Germans in Central and Eastern Europe.[11][26] The goal of the occupation was to turn the former territory of Poland into ethnically German "living space", by deporting and exterminating the non-German population, or relegating it to the status of slave laborers.[27][28][29] The goal of the German state under Nazi leadership during the war was the complete destruction of the Polish people and nation.

Germanization, be expelled and deported to the depths of Russia, and suffer other gruesome fates, including purposeful starvation and murder, the net effect of which would ensure that the conquered territories would take on an irrevocably German character.[37][38][39] Over a longer period of time, only about 3–4 million Poles, all of whom were considered suitable for Germanization, would be allowed to reside in the former territory of Poland.[40]

roundup in German-occupied Bydgoszcz
, September 1939

Those plans began to be implemented almost immediately after German troops took control of Poland. As early as October 1939, many Poles

Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Majdanek concentration camps.[11] By 1942, the number of new German arrivals in pre-war Poland had already reached two million.[44]

The Nazi plans also called for Poland's 3.3 million Jews to be

exterminated; the non-Jewish majority's extermination was planned for the long term and initiated through the mass murder of its political, religious, and intellectual elites at first, which was meant to make the formation of any organized top-down resistance more difficult. Further, the populace of occupied territories was to be relegated to the role of an unskilled labour-force for German-controlled industry and agriculture.[11][45] This was in spite of racial theory that falsely regarded most Polish leaders as actually being of "German blood",[46] and partly because of it, on the grounds that German blood must not be used in the service of a foreign nation.[45]

After Germany lost the war, the

Nuremberg Trials and Poland's Supreme National Tribunal concluded that the aim of German policies in Poland – the extermination of Poles and Jews – had "all the characteristics of genocide in the biological meaning of this term."[47][48]

German People's List

Nur für Deutsche ("For Germans only") sign, on Kraków line-8 streetcar

The German People's List (Deutsche Volksliste) classified the willing Polish citizens into four groups of people with ethnic Germanic heritage.[49] Group 1 included so-called ethnic Germans who had taken an active part in the struggle for the Germanization of Poland. Group 2 included those ethnic Germans who had not taken such an active part, but had "preserved" their German characteristics. Group 3 included individuals of alleged German stock who had become "Polonized", but whom it was believed, could be won back to Germany. This group also included persons of non-German descent married to Germans or members of non-Polish groups who were considered desirable for their political attitude and racial characteristics. Group 4 consisted of persons of German stock who had become politically merged with the Poles.

After registration in the List, individuals from Groups 1 and 2 automatically became German citizens. Those from Group 3 acquired German citizenship subject to revocation. Those from Group 4 received German citizenship through naturalization proceedings; resistance to

Germanization constituted treason because "German blood must not be utilized in the interest of a foreign nation," and such people were sent to concentration camps.[49] Persons ineligible for the List were classified as stateless, and all Poles from the occupied territory, that is from the Government General of Poland, as distinct from the incorporated territory, were classified as non-protected.[49]

Encouraging ethnic strife

According to the

Polish teachers guarded by members of ethnic German Selbstschutz battalion before execution

In a top-secret memorandum, "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East", dated 25 May 1940,

SS, wrote: "We need to divide the East's different ethnic groups up into as many parts and splinter groups as possible".[54]

Forced labour

Almost immediately after the invasion, Germans began forcibly conscripting laborers. Jews were drafted to repair war damage as early as October, with women and children 12 or older required to work; shifts could take half a day and with little compensation.

Junkers, Siemens, and IG Farben.[55][56]

Forced labourers were subject to harsh discriminatory measures. Announced on 8 March 1940 was the Polish decrees which were used as a legal basis for foreign labourers in Germany.[57][58] The decrees required Poles to wear identifying purple P's on their clothing, made them subject to a curfew, and banned them from using public transportation as well as many German "cultural life" centres and "places of amusement" (this included churches and restaurants).[11][57][59] Sexual relations between Germans and Poles were forbidden as Rassenschande (race defilement) under penalty of death.[11][57][60] To keep them segregated from the German population, they were often housed in segregated barracks behind barbed wire.[11] Nonetheless, many Polish women were sexually enslaved in German camp and military brothels.[61]

  • Polish-forced-workers' badge
    Polish-forced-workers' badge
  • Poster in German and Polish listing decrees of labour obligations
    Poster in German and Polish listing decrees of labour obligations
  • Notice of death penalty for Poles refusing to work during harvest
    Notice of death penalty for Poles refusing to work during harvest

Labor shortages in the German war economy became critical especially after German defeat in the battle of

Stalingrad in 1942–1943. This led to the increased use of prisoners as forced labourers in German industries.[62] Following the German invasion and occupation of Polish territory, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens, including teenagers, became labourers in Germany, few by choice.[11] Historian Jan Gross estimates that "no more than 15 per cent" of Polish workers volunteered to go to work in Germany.[63] A total of 2.3 million Polish citizens, including 300,000 POWs, were deported to Germany as forced laborers.[64] They tended to have to work longer hours for lower wages than their German counterparts.[11]

Concentration and extermination camps

Auschwitz
, volunteered to die in place of another prisoner.

A network of

extermination through labor.[55][68]

Auschwitz received the first contingent of 728 Poles on 14 June 1940, transferred from an overcrowded prison at

Ravensbrueck each, 10,000 at Dachau, and tens of thousands perished in other camps and prisons.[11]

The Holocaust

1941 announcement of death penalty for Jews caught outside the Ghetto, and for Poles helping Jews

Following the

Jewish Question".[70] The extermination program was codenamed Operation Reinhard.[71]
Three secret
Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.[72] In addition to the Reinhard camps, mass killing facilities such as gas chambers using Zyklon B were added to the Majdanek concentration camp in March 1942[72] and at Auschwitz and Chełmno.[67]

Cultural genocide

Nazi Germany engaged in a concentrated effort to destroy Polish culture. To that end, numerous cultural and educational institutions were closed or destroyed, from schools and universities, through monuments and libraries, to laboratories and museums. Many employees of said institutions were arrested and executed as part wider persecutions of Polish intellectual elite. Schooling of Polish children was curtailed to a few years of elementary education, as outlined by Himmler's May 1940 memorandum: "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. ... I do not think that reading is desirable".[11][73]

Extermination of elites

Photos from The Black Book of Poland, published in London in 1942 by the Polish government-in-exile.

The extermination of the Polish elite was the first stage of the Nazis' plan to destroy the Polish nation and its culture.

Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen), prepared before the war started, identified more than 61,000 members of the Polish elite and intelligentsia leaders who were deemed unfriendly to Germany.[75] Already during the 1939 German invasion, dedicated units of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen) were tasked with arresting or outright killing of those resisting the Germans.[11][76]
They were aided by some regular German army units and "self-defense" forces composed of members of
collective guilt principle and holding entire communities responsible for the actions of unidentified perpetrators.[11]

One of the most infamous German operations was the

Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion (AB-Aktion in short, German for Special Pacification), a German campaign during World War II aimed at Polish leaders and the intelligentsia, including many university professors, teachers and priests.[78][79] In the spring and summer of 1940, more than 30,000 Poles were arrested by the German authorities of German-occupied Poland.[11][78] Several thousands were executed outside Warsaw, in the Kampinos forest near Palmiry, and inside the city at the Pawiak prison.[11][79] Most of the remainder were sent to various German concentration camps.[78] Mass arrests and shootings of Polish intellectuals and academics included Sonderaktion Krakau[80][81] and the massacre of Lwów professors.[82][83]

Public execution of Polish priests and civilians in Bydgoszcz's Old Market Square on 9 September 1939.

The Nazis also persecuted the Catholic Church in Poland and other, smaller religions.

Nazi policy towards the Church was at its most severe in the territories it annexed to Greater Germany, where they set about systematically dismantling the Church – arresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen and nuns were murdered or sent to concentration and labor camps.

Buchenwald, Dachau and Oranienburg.[85] Protestant clergy leaders who perished in those purges included charity activist Karol Kulisz, theology professor Edmund Bursche, and Bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland, Juliusz Bursche.[85]

Boys' roll call at main children's concentration camp in Łódź (Kinder-KZ Litzmannstadt). A sub-camp was KZ Dzierżązna, for Polish girls as young as eight.

Germanization

In the

Germanization", i.e. full cultural, political, economic and social assimilation. The Polish language was forbidden to be taught even in elementary schools; landmarks from streets to cities were renamed en masse (Łódź became Litzmannstadt, and so on). All manner of Polish enterprises, up to small shops, were taken over, with prior owners rarely compensated.[11] Signs posted in public places prohibited non-Germans from entering these places warning: "Entrance is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs.", or Nur für Deutsche ("Only for Germans"), commonly found on many public utilities and places such as trams, parks, cafes, cinemas, theaters, and others.[11][87][88]

The Nazis kept an eye out for Polish children who possessed Nordic racial characteristics.[89] An estimated total of 50,000 children, majority taken from orphanages and foster homes in the annexed lands, but some separated from their parents, were taken into a special Germanization program.[11][49] Polish women deported to Germany as forced labourers and who bore children were a common victim of this policy, with their infants regularly taken.[11][90] If the child passed the battery of racial, physical and psychological tests, they were sent on to Germany for "Germanization".[41]: 250 

At least 4,454 children were given new German names,

Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte), where many were murdered through calculated malnourishment, neglect, and unhygienic conditions.[41]: 400–1 [92][93]

Nazi plunder in Poland

Following the

occupation of Poland by German forces, the Nazi regime attempted to destroy Polish culture.[94] As part of that policy, the Nazis confiscated Polish national heritage assets and much private property.[95][96] Acting on the legal decrees of October 19 and December 16 (Verordnung über die Beschlagnahme Kunstgegeständen im Generalgouvernement), several German agencies began the process of looting Polish museums and other collections, ostensibly considered necessary for the "securing" of German national interests.[97]

Nazi plunder included private and public art collections, artefacts, precious metals, books, and personal possessions. Hitler and Göring in particular were interested in acquiring looted art treasures from occupied Europe,[98] the former planning to use the stolen art to fill the galleries of the planned Führermuseum (Leader's Museum),[99] and the latter for his personal collection. Göring, having stripped almost all of occupied Poland of its artworks within six months of Germany's invasion, ultimately grew a collection valued at over 50 million Reichsmarks.[100]

Resistance

Earliest World War II partisan unit, commanded by Henryk "Hubal" Dobrzański, winter 1939

Despite the military defeat of the Polish Army in September 1939, the Polish government itself never surrendered, instead evacuating West, where it formed the

Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa).[103]

Batalion Zośka armored platoon commanded by Wacław Micuta

In response to the occupation, Poles formed one of

People's Army (Polish Armia Ludowa or AL), backed by the Soviet Union and controlled by the Polish Workers' Party (Polish Polska Partia Robotnicza or PPR), though significantly less numerous than the Home Army.[11][106] In February 1942, when AK was formed, it numbered about 100,000 members. In the beginning of 1943, it had reached a strength of about 200,000. In the summer of 1944 when Operation Tempest begun AK reached its highest membership numbers. Estimates of AK membership in the first half of 1944 and summer that year vary, with about 400,000 being common.[107] With the imminent arrival of the Soviet army, the AK launched an uprising in Warsaw against the German army on 1 August 1944. The uprising, receiving little assistance from the nearby Soviet forces, eventually failed, significantly reducing the Home Army's power and position.[11] About 200,000 Poles, most of them civilians, lost their lives in the Uprising.[108]

Effect on the Polish population

The Polish civilian population suffered under German occupation in many ways. Large numbers were expelled from land intended for German colonisation, and forced to resettle in the General-Government area. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were deported to Germany for forced labour in industry and agriculture, where many thousands died. Poles were also conscripted for labour in Poland, and were held in labour camps all over the country, again with a high death rate. There was a general shortage of food, fuel for heating and medical supplies, and there was a high death rate among the Polish population as a result. Finally, thousands of Poles were killed as reprisals for resistance attacks on German forces or for other reasons. In all, about three million Poles died as a result of the German occupation, more than 10% of the pre-war population. When this is added to the three million Polish Jews who were killed as a matter of policy by the Germans, Poland lost about 22% of its population, the highest proportion of any European country in World War II.[109][110]

Walling-off Świętokrzyska Street seen from Marszałkowska Street on the 'Aryan side' of the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940

Poland had a large Jewish population, and according to Davies, more Jews were both killed and rescued in Poland, than in any other nation, the rescue figure usually being put at between 100,000 and 150,000.

Zegota) was established in late 1942, in cooperation with church groups. The organisation saved thousands. Emphasis was placed on protecting children, as it was nearly impossible to intervene directly against the heavily guarded transports. The Germans implemented several different laws to separate Poles and Jews in the ghettos with Poles living on the "Aryan Side" and the Jews living on the "Jewish Side", despite the risk of death many Poles risked their lives by forging "Aryan Papers" for Jews to make them appear as non-Jewish Poles so they could live on the Aryan side and avoid Nazi persecution.[113] Another law implemented by the Germans was that Poles were forbidden from buying from Jewish shops in which, if they did, they were subject to execution.[114] Jewish children were also distributed among safe houses and church networks.[111] Jewish children were often placed in church orphanages and convents.[115]

Some three million gentile Polish citizens perished during the course of the war, over two million of whom were ethnic Poles (the remainder being mostly Ukrainians and Belarusians). The vast majority of those killed were civilians, mostly killed by the actions of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.[116][117]

Aside from being sent to

Mauthausen and 20,000 to Sachsenhausen.[118]

The population in the General Government's territory was initially about 12 million in an area of 94,000 square kilometres, but this increased as about 860,000 Poles and Jews were expelled from the German-annexed areas and "resettled" in the General Government. Offsetting this was the German campaign of extermination of the Polish intelligentsia and other elements thought likely to resist (e.g. Operation Tannenberg). From 1941, disease and hunger also began to reduce the population. Poles were deported in large numbers to work as forced labour in Germany: eventually about a million were deported, and many died in Germany.

Treatment of Polish citizens under Soviet occupation

Identifying ethnic German prisoners massacred by Soviet secret police NKVD near Tarnopol, July 1941

By the end of the Polish Defensive War, the Soviet Union took over 52.1% of Poland's territory (~200,000 km2), with over 13,700,000 people. The estimates vary; Prof.

Lithuania became a Soviet republic
.

Initially the Soviet occupation gained support among some members of the linguistic minorities who had chafed under the nationalist policies of the Second Polish Republic. Much of the Ukrainian population initially welcomed the unification with the Soviet Ukraine because twenty years earlier their attempt at self-determination failed during both the Polish–Ukrainian War and the Ukrainian–Soviet War.[119]

There were large groups of prewar 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 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.[120]

British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore states that Soviet terror in the occupied eastern Polish lands was as cruel and tragic as the Nazis' 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.[121] 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".[122]

Soviet Ukraine
"

The Soviet Union had ceased to recognize the Polish state at the start of the invasion.

Polish prisoners of war. Some, like General Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński, who was captured, interrogated and shot on 22 September, were executed during the campaign itself.[125][126] On 24 September, the Soviets killed 42 staff and patients of a Polish military hospital in the village of Grabowiec, near Zamość.[127] The Soviets also executed all the Polish officers they captured after the Battle of Szack, on 28 September.[128] Over 20,000 Polish military personnel and civilians perished in the Katyn massacre.[129][130]

The Poles and the Soviets re-established diplomatic relations in 1941, following the

On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany had changed the secret terms of the

partition of Poland,[130] the Soviet Union secured almost all Polish territory east of the line of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Western Bug and San. This amounted to about 200,000 square kilometres of land, inhabited by 13.5 million Polish citizens.[133]

The Red Army had originally sowed confusion among the locals by claiming that they were arriving to save Poland from the Nazis.

nationalising and redistributing all private and state-owned Polish property.[138] During the two years following the annexation, they arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens[139] and deported between 350,000 and 1,500,000, of whom between 150,000 and 1,000,000 died, mostly civilians.[b][140][5][141]

Removal of Polish governmental and social institutions

While Germans enforced their policies based on racism, the Soviet administration justified their Stalinist policies by appealing to the Soviet ideology,[142] which in reality meant the thorough Sovietization of the area. Immediately after their conquest of eastern Poland, the Soviet authorities started a campaign of Sovietization[143][144] of the newly acquired areas. No later than several weeks after the last Polish units surrendered, on 22 October 1939, the Soviets organized staged elections to the Moscow-controlled Supreme Soviets (legislative body) of Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine.[145] The result of the staged voting was to become a legitimization of Soviet annexation of eastern Poland.[146]

Communist Party of West Belarus affiliated with the Communist Party of Poland, delegalized in both countries by 1938.[147]

Subsequently, all institutions of the dismantled Polish state were closed down and reopened under the Soviet appointed supervisors.

Lviv University was reopened and started to teach in accordance with Soviet curricula.[148]

Simultaneously, Soviet authorities attempted to remove the traces of Polish history of the area by eliminating much of what had any connection to the Polish state or even Polish culture in general.[17] On 21 December 1939, the Polish currency was withdrawn from circulation without any exchange to the newly introduced rouble, which meant that the entire population of the area lost all of their life savings overnight.[149]

All the media became controlled by Moscow. Soviet authorities implemented a political regime similar to a

Communist Party
was allowed to exist along with organizations subordinated to it.

All organized religions were persecuted. All enterprises were taken over by the state, while agriculture was made collective.[154]

Rule of terror

An inherent part of the Sovietization was a rule of terror started by the

NKVD massacres of prisoners in mid-1941, after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.[citation needed
]

Similar policies were applied to the civilian population as well. The Soviet authorities regarded service for the pre-war Polish state as a "crime against revolution"[158] and "counter-revolutionary activity",[159] and subsequently started arresting large numbers of Polish intelligentsia, politicians, civil servants and scientists, but also ordinary people suspected of posing a threat to the Soviet rule. Among the arrested members of the Polish intelligentsia were former prime ministers Leon Kozłowski and Aleksander Prystor, as well as Stanisław Grabski, Stanisław Głąbiński and the Baczewski family. Initially aimed primarily at possible political opponents, by January 1940 the NKVD aimed its campaign also at its potential allies, including the Polish communists and socialists. Among the arrested were Władysław Broniewski, Aleksander Wat, Tadeusz Peiper, Leopold Lewin, Anatol Stern, Teodor Parnicki, Marian Czuchnowski and many others.[160]

Deportation

During 1942–1945, nearly 30,000 Poles were deported by the Soviet Union to Karachi (then under British rule). This photo shows a memorial to the refugees who died in Karachi and were buried at the Karachi graveyard.

In 1940 and the first half of 1941, the Soviets deported more than 1,200,000 Poles, most in four mass deportations. The first deportation took place 10 February 1940, with more than 220,000 sent to northern European Russia; the second on 13 April 1940, sending 320,000 primarily to Kazakhstan; a third wave in June–July 1940 totaled more than 240,000; the fourth occurred in June 1941, deporting 300,000. Upon resumption of Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations in 1941, it was determined based on Soviet information that more than 760,000 of the deportees had died – a large part of those dead being children, who had comprised about a third of deportees.[161]

Approximately 100,000 former Polish citizens were arrested during the two years of Soviet occupation.

Sikorski-Mayski Agreement had been signed in 1941.[165]

According to the Soviet law, all residents of the annexed area, dubbed by the Soviets as citizens of former Poland,[166] automatically acquired Soviet citizenship. However, actual conferral of citizenship still required the individual's consent and the residents were strongly pressured for such consent.[167] The refugees who opted out were threatened with repatriation to Nazi controlled territories of Poland.[4][168][169]

Exploitation of ethnic tensions

In addition, the Soviets exploited past ethnic tension between Poles and other ethnic groups, inciting and encouraging violence against Poles calling the minorities to "rectify the wrongs they had suffered during twenty years of Polish rule".[170] Pre-war Poland was portrayed as a capitalist state based on exploitation of the working people and ethnic minorities. Soviet propaganda claimed that unfair treatment of non-Poles by the Second Polish Republic was a justification of its dismemberment. Soviet officials openly incited mobs to perform killings and robberies[171] The death toll of the initial Soviet-inspired terror campaign remains unknown.

Casualties

Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East, Warsaw

Around 6 million Polish citizens – nearly 21.4% of the pre-war population of the Second Polish Republic — died between 1939 and 1945.[172] Over 90% of the death toll involved non-military losses, as most civilians were targets of various deliberate actions by the Germans and Soviets.[172]

Both occupiers wanted not only to gain Polish territory, but also to destroy

Polish culture and the Polish nation as a whole.[2]

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 Ukraine. Of the 100,000 Poles killed in Ukraine, 80,000 perished during the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Losses by ethnic group were 3,100,000 Jews; 2,000,000 ethnic Poles; 500,000 Ukrainians and Belarusians.[116]

In August 2009 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers estimated Poland's dead (including Polish Jews) at between 5.47 and 5.67 million (due to German actions) and 150,000 (due to Soviet), or around 5.62 and 5.82 million total.[7]

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.[173]

Another assessment, Poles as Victims of the Nazi Era, prepared by

ethnic Polish dead in addition to 3 million Polish Jews.[11]

POW deaths totaled 250,000; in Germany (120,000) and in the USSR (130,000).[174]

The genocide of

Holocaust victims totaled 3,000,000.[176]

See also

References

  1. .
  2. ^
    ghettos, internment, transit, labor and extermination camps, roundups, mass deportations, public executions, mobile killing units, death marches, deprivation, hunger, disease, and exposure all testify to the 'inhuman policies of both Hitler and Stalin and 'were clearly aimed at the total extermination of Poland's citizens, both Jews and Christians. Both regimes endorsed a systematic program of genocide
    .
  3. ^
  4. ^ )
  5. ^ Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict Genocide James Hughes, edited by Karl Cordell, Stefan Wolff page 123, 2011
  6. ^ )
  7. .
  8. ^ a b c d e f Piotr Eberhardt, http://rcin.org.pl/Content/15652/WA51_13607_r2011-nr12_Monografie.pdf Political Migrations on Polish Territories (1939–1950), Polish Academy of Sciences Stanisław Leszczycki Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Monographies, 12. Pagea 25
  9. ^ Piotr Eberhardt, http://rcin.org.pl/Content/15652/WA51_13607_r2011-nr12_Monografie.pdf Political Migrations on Polish Territories (1939–1950), Polish Academy of Sciences Stanisław Leszczycki Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Monographies, 12. Pages 27–29
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al "Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 27 March 2010. Retrieved 1 July 2015.See also: Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era Archived 22 June 2019 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ .
  12. ^ .
  13. .
  14. .
  15. .
  16. ^ . Among the population of Eastern territories were circa 38% Poles, 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans.
  17. ^ T. Wiśniewski (2016). "Sowiecka agresja na Polskę". Media Depository. NowaHistoria. Interia.pl.
  18. .
  19. ^ Bartłomiej Kozłowski (2005). ""Wybory" do Zgromadzeń Ludowych Zachodniej Ukrainy i Zachodniej Białorusi". Polska.pl (in Polish). NASK. Archived from the original on 28 June 2006. Retrieved 13 March 2006.
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  31. ^ . General Plan Ost, which provided for the liquidation of the Slavic peoples
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Further reading

External links