Today in history, September 17, 1939, the Soviet Union declared that the Polish government no longer existed, and began invading the country under the Hitler-Stalin pact.
Germany had previously invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and World War 11 began just days later.
The secret Hitler-Stalin pact had left Poland sandwiched between invaders from the East and the West now, as the German army’s land and air offensive pushed the Polish army into the “arms” of the Soviets.
The Germans handed over thousands of Polish troops to the Soviets after having fought their way to the eastern front in a little more than two weeks.
Poland had hoped Russia would be an ally and a “blood brother” to help rescue them from the ruthless Germans, unaware of the pact that Stalin and Hitler had agreed upon to partition their country in August of 1939.
Ultimately the Soviet Union would dominate and control more than three-fifths of Poland and 13 million people due to the September 17th invasion.
The Final Solution to kill all of Europe’s Jews would be decided in 1942 at the Wannsee Conference, and as a result, millions of Jews and Poles would die in the concentration camps at Auschwitz in Poland.
Reinhard Heydrich was the architect of this plan for the extermination of the Jews in the German occupied territories.
In the course of the meeting, Heydrich presented a plan, presumably approved by Hitler, for the deportation of the Jewish population of Europe to German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union, and the use of the Jews fit for labour on road-building projects, in the course of which they would eventually die. (wikipedia)
Germany had planned on winning the war against the Soviet Union, but as the saying goes, “the best laid plans of Mice and Men” didn’t quite work out as expected.
It is estimated that more than 27 million Russians died during World War 11 at the “hands” of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Historians estimate that more than 55 million people died during World War 11.
In 1990, the details of the Soviet-German pact to partition Poland became public after the Wall came down and the Soviet empire collapsed.
