Introduction sample text.

Timeline

“Poland re-emerged in November 1918 after more than a century of partitions by Austria-Hungary, the German, and the Russian Empires. Its independence was confirmed by the victorious powers through the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919, and most of the territory won in a series of border wars fought from 1918 to 1921.”¹

“The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I. The Second Republic ceased to exist in 1939, after Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic, marking the beginning of the European theatre of the Second World War. The Polish government-in-exile was established in Paris and later London after the fall of France in 1940”²

“Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, refers to the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning “Third Realm” or “Third Empire”, referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800/962–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after only 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.”³

Maps

Second Polish Republic (1918 – 1939)

Nazi Germany (1939 – 1945)

Animated map showing the sequence of events
in Europe throughout World War II

Invasions

September Campaign

“The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, … 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. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had approved the pact. One of the aims of the invasion was to divide Polish territory at the end of the operation; Poland was to cease to exist as a country and all Poles (“inferior people”) were to be exterminated. The Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September. The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty.”⁴

Operation Barbarossa

“Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mi) front, with the main goal of capturing territory up to a line between Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan (A-A line). The attack became the largest and costliest military offensive in history, with around 10 million combatants taking part and over 8 million casualties by the end of the operation on 5 December 1941. It marked a major escalation of World War II, opening the Eastern Front—the largest and deadliest land theatre of war in history—and bringing the Soviet Union into the Allied powers.”⁵

Łapanka

“Łapanka was the Polish name for a World War II practice whereby the German SS, Wehrmacht, and Gestapo rounded up civilians on the streets of Polish cities. The civilians arrested were in most cases chosen at random from among passers-by or inhabitants of city quarters surrounded by German forces prior to the action.

Those caught in roundups were most often sent to slave labour in Nazi Germany, but some were also taken as hostages or executed in reprisal actions; imprisoned and sent to concentration camps or summarily executed in numerous ethnic-cleansing operations.

…The term was also used for describing the tactic of cordoning-off of streets, and the systematic searching of buildings. For men in their 20s and 30s, the only reliable defense against being taken away by the Nazis was the possession of an identity card (called Ausweis) certifying that the holder was employed by a Nazi-German company or a government agency locally (for example, by the city utilities or the railways). Thus, many of those who were taken from cafes and restaurants in Warsaw on the night of December 5, 1940 were subsequently released after their documents had been checked.”⁶

War Crimes

“Before the invasion of Poland, the Nazis prepared a detailed list identifying more than 61,000 Polish targets by name, with the help of the German minority living in the Second Polish Republic. The list was printed secretly … and composed only of names and birthdates. It included politicians, scholars, actors, intelligentsia, doctors, lawyers, nobility, priests, officers and numerous others. … The first Einsatzgruppen, (SS) paramilitary death squads, were deployed behind the front lines to murder groups of people considered, by virtue of their social status, to be capable of abetting resistance efforts against the Germans. The most widely used lie justifying indiscriminate murders by the mobile death squads was (always the same) made-up claim of purported attack on German forces.”

Cultural Genocide

“As part of the Nazi plan to destroy Poland, the Germans engaged in cultural genocide in which they looted and then destroyed libraries, museums, scientific institutes and laboratories as well as national monuments and historic treasures. They closed down all universities, high schools, and engaged in systematic murder of Polish scholars, teachers and priests. Millions of books were burned, including an estimated 80% of all school libraries, and three-quarters of all scientific libraries. Polish children were forbidden from acquiring education beyond the elementary level with the aim that the new generation of Polish leaders could not arise in the future.

According to a May 1940 memo from Heinrich Himmler:

According to a May 1940 memo from Heinrich Himmler:

“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.” By 1941, the number of children attending elementary school in the General Government was half of the pre-war number.”⁷

Pacification

“Pacification actions were one of many punitive measures designed by Nazi Germany to inflict terror on the civilian population of occupied Polish villages and towns with the use of military and police force. They were an integral part of the war of aggression against the Polish nation waged by Germany since September 1, 1939. The projected goal of pacification operations was to prevent and suppress the Polish resistance movement in World War II nevertheless, among the victims were children as young as 1.5 years old, women, fathers attempting to save their families, farmers rushing to rescue livestock from burning buildings, patients, victims already wounded, and hostages of many ethnicities including Poles and Jews.”⁸