Soviets Invade Poland

On September 17, 1939 Soviet troops crossed the border into Poland to claim their portion of Poland under the secret protocol of the Nazi – Soviet nonaggression pact.. Polish troops were ordered not to resist except in direct self defense or to avoid capture. Soviet troops initially did not go out of their way to attack the Poles where it was possible to advance without doing so. Later, however they did become more aggressive and sought to prevent Polish troops from escaping across Polish borders with neutral countries attacking and capturing Polish troops in order to do so.

By now, Warsaw was encircled by the Germans. Another Polish army in the South was on the brink of surrender. Remaining Polish units were either holding out in small pockets, most notably on the Baltic coast, trying to escape into Rumania, Hungary or Lithuania or trying to join up with the defenders of Warsaw or Modlin for a last stand.

Back in my high school days I hadn’t paid attention to the date of the Soviet invasion and had casually assumed it was on more or less the same date as the German one. However, upon further review it seems that the situation was attended by some confusion on the part of the Soviets. They intended to keep as low a profile as possible by coming in after the Germans had invaded. They would try and obscure the true nature of their actions with a cloud of propaganda about protecting Soviet nationalities such as Ukrainians and Byelorussians and providing civil order.

In fact, the Germans at least were concerned about a power vacuum in eastern Poland and on September 3rd their Foreign Minister Ribbentrop had cabled his Soviet counterpart Molotov urging the Russians to commence their attack from the east. The Soviets however were surprised by the speed of the German advance and Molotov was forced to send a series of cables providing assurances and promises of action. During this time the Soviet army was frantically completing logistical preparations. They did not use the army units located nearest the Polish border which contained large percentages of troops with an ethnic affinity to some of the peoples of eastern Poland. Moving troops from the Soviet interior increased the scale and complexity of the logistical task. Hence, September 17th.