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Soviet invasion of Poland; 500,000 Polish nationals imprisoned before June 1941 (90% male) [1] 22,000 Polish military personnel and officials killed in the Katyn massacre alone [2] 320,000 Poles deported to Siberia in 1939-1941 [3] 100,000 women raped during the Soviet counter-offensive (est.) [4] 150,000 killed by the Soviets [5]
German officers present their findings regarding Katyn to captured Allied officers in 1943. Six months before the massacres at Katyn, on August 23, 1939, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin authorized the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression agreement with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany with a secret protocol to partition and annex Eastern Europe.
The Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939, [9] breaking relations with the Polish government and repressing Polish citizens in the occupied territories. [10] The outbreak of the Soviet-German War in 1941 and Sikorski-Mayski Negotiations [11] led to the change of Soviet policies towards the Poles, as leniency was needed if Soviets were to recruit and create a Polish force under their command.
The anti-communist resistance in Poland, also referred to as the Polish anti-communist insurrection fought between 1944 and 1953, was an anti-communist and anti-Soviet armed struggle by the Polish Underground against the Soviet domination of Poland by the Soviet-installed People's Republic of Poland, since the end of World War II in Europe.
Diplomatic relations were, however, re-established in 1941 after the German invasion of the Soviet Union forced Joseph Stalin to look for allies. Thus the military agreement from August 14 and subsequent Sikorski–Mayski Agreement from August 17, 1941, resulted in Stalin agreeing to declare the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in relation to Poland null and void, [29] and release tens of thousands ...
According to the order, the entire operation was to be completed in three months. Subject to arrest and immediate elimination were persons of the following categories: "prisoners of war from the Polish army who after the 1920 war had remained in the Soviet Union, deserters and political émigrés from Poland (such as Polish communists admitted through prisoners' exchange), former members of ...
Approximately 2-3% of Polish POWs in German camps died during the war; according to Nowak, "the mortality rate among the [Polish] POWs remaining in the Soviet captivity was much higher". [16]: 125–126 For the officers, most of whom perished in the Katyn massacre, it was a stark 97%.
During the Soviet occupation, the Polish underground in the eastern territories collapsed. However, after the Germans took control of the area, the structures of the Home Army (AK) were rebuilt. In Volhynia, an Independent District of the Home Army was established, while in Eastern Galicia the Lwów Area of the Home Army was created.