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English: The Nazi-soviet Invasion of Poland, 1939 Death and destruction by the roadside at Kock, where the last battle of the Polish campaign between Polish Independent Operational Group 'Polesie' commanded by General Franciszek Kleeberg and German XIV Motorised Corps led by General Gustav von Wietersheim, took place.
German Navy (Third Reich), SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN, Polish Army; Associated places Westerplatte Peninsula, Gdańsk, Poland; Associated events German-Soviet Invasion of Poland 1939, Second World War; Associated themes Nazi-Soviet Invasion of Poland, 1939, Poland 1939-1945, Polish Armed Forces 1939-1945; Associated keywords Military occupation; Category
The Invasion of Poland, [e] also known as the September Campaign, [f] Polish Campaign, [g] and Polish Defensive War of 1939 [h] [13] (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic, and the Soviet Union, which marked the beginning of World War II. [14]
Polish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Poland. As a result of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers became prisoners of war. Official Soviet estimate for the number of POWs taken during th campaign was 190,584 and is treated as reliable by some historians. [3]
During the German invasion of Poland, which started World War II, Nazi Germany carried out a number of atrocities involving Polish prisoners of war (POWs). The first documented massacres of Polish POWs took place as early as the first day of the war; [2]: 11 others followed (ex. the Serock massacre of 5 September).
In the Obersalzberg Speech delivered on 22 August 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, Hitler gave explicit permission to his commanders to murder "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language." [17] [18] Ethnic cleansing was to be conducted systematically against the Polish people.
The history of Poland from 1939 to 1945 encompasses primarily the period from the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the end of World War II. Following the German–Soviet non-aggression pact, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939 and by the Soviet Union on 17 September.
The Ciepielów massacre [t͡ɕɛˈpjɛluf] that took place on 8 September 1939 was one of the largest and most documented war crimes of the Wehrmacht during its invasion of Poland. On that day, the forest near Ciepielów was the site of a mass murder of Polish prisoners of war from the Polish Upper Silesian 74th Infantry Regiment.