On September 17, 1939, the Polish campaign of the Red Army began. Officially, during the Soviet era (and in some sources even now), this military conflict was called the “Liberation Campaign in Western Belarus and Western Ukraine.” The official pretext was quite interesting - “to take under protection the lives and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus.” The reason for the invasion sounds simply ridiculous, considering that it was from this population that the Soviet government took away all their property, and from very many also their lives.
On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland, its troops successfully and quite quickly advanced deep into Polish territory. Not long ago, a very interesting historical fact was discovered - already on September 1, the USSR provided a radio station in Minsk to the German Air Force as a special radio beacon, which carried out coordinate reference using radio compasses. This lighthouse was used by the Luftwaffe to bomb Warsaw and some other cities. Thus, from the very beginning the USSR did not hide its intentions. On September 4, partial mobilization began in the Soviet Union. On September 11, two fronts were created on the basis of the Belarusian and Kyiv military districts - Belarusian and Ukrainian. The main blow was to be delivered by the Romanian front, because Polish troops retreated to the Romanian border, from there a counter-offensive against German troops was planned.
Soviet troops launched a massive attack on eastern Polish territories. 620 thousand soldiers, 4,700 tanks and 3,300 aircraft were thrown into the attack, that is, twice as many as the Wehrmacht had, which attacked Poland on September 1st.
The Polish government, having given the troops an incomprehensible order not to engage in battle with the Red Army, fled from their country to Romania.
At that time there were no regular military units on the territory of Western Ukraine and Belarus. Militia battalions were formed without heavy weapons. The incomprehensible order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief disoriented the commanders on the ground. In some cities the Red Army was greeted as allies, in some cases the troops avoided clashes with the Red Army, there were also attempts at resistance and stubborn battles. But the forces were not equal, and most of the Polish generals and senior officers behaved exclusively cowardly and passively, preferring to flee to neutral Lithuania. Polish units on the territory of Western Belarus were finally defeated on September 24, 1939.
Already in the first days after the Red Army's invasion of Poland, war crimes began. First they affected Polish soldiers and officers. The orders of the Soviet troops were replete with appeals addressed to the Polish civilian population: they were encouraged to destroy the Polish military, portraying them as enemies. Ordinary soldiers were encouraged to kill their officers. Such orders were given, for example, by the commander of the Ukrainian Front, Semyon Timoshenko. This war was fought in violation of international law and all military conventions.
For example, in the Polesie Voivodeship, the Soviet military shot an entire captured company of the Sarny Border Guard Corps battalion - 280 people. A brutal murder also occurred in Velyki Mosty, Lviv Voivodeship. Soviet soldiers herded the cadets of the local School of Police Officers to the square, listened to the report of the school commandant and shot everyone present from machine guns placed around. No one survived. From one Polish detachment that fought in the vicinity of Vilnius and laid down their arms in exchange for a promise to let the soldiers go home, all the officers were withdrawn and were immediately executed. The same thing happened in Grodno, taking which Soviet troops killed about 300 Polish defenders of the city. On the night of September 26-27, Soviet troops entered Nemiruwek, Chelm region, where several dozen cadets spent the night. They were captured, tied with barbed wire and bombarded with grants. The police who defended Lviv were shot on the highway leading to Vinniki. Similar executions took place in Novogrudok, Ternopil, Volkovysk, Oshmyany, Svisloch, Molodechno, Khodorov, Zolochev, Stryi. Individual and mass killings of Polish military prisoners were carried out in hundreds of other cities in the eastern regions of Poland. The Soviet military also abused the wounded. This happened, for example, during the battle of Wytyczno, when several dozen wounded prisoners were placed in the building of the People's House in Włodawa and locked there without providing any assistance. Two days later, almost everyone died from their wounds, their bodies were burned at the stake.
Sometimes the Soviet military used deception, treacherously promising Polish soldiers freedom, and sometimes even posing as Polish allies in the war against Hitler. This happened, for example, on September 22 in Vinniki near Lvov. General Wladislav Langer, who led the defense of the city, signed a protocol with the Soviet commanders on the transfer of the city to the Red Army, according to which Polish officers were promised unhindered access to Romania and Hungary. The agreement was violated almost immediately: the officers were arrested and taken to a camp in Starobelsk. In the Zaleszczyki region on the border with Romania, the Russians decorated tanks with Soviet and Polish flags to pose as allies, and then surround the Polish troops, disarm and arrest the soldiers. The prisoners were often stripped of their uniforms and shoes and allowed to continue without clothes, shooting at them with undisguised joy. In general, as the Moscow press reported, in September 1939, about 250 thousand Polish soldiers and officers fell into the hands of the Soviet army. For the latter, the real hell began later. The denouement took place in the Katyn forest and the basements of the NKVD in Tver and Kharkov.
Terror and murder of civilians acquired special proportions in Grodno, where at least 300 people were killed, including scouts who took part in the defense of the city. Twelve-year-old Tadzik Yasinsky was tied to a tank by Soviet soldiers and then dragged along the pavement. Arrested civilians were shot on Dog Mountain. Witnesses of these events recall that piles of corpses lay in the center of the city. Among those arrested were, in particular, the director of the gymnasium, Vaclav Myslicki, the head of the women's gymnasium, Janina Niedzvetska, and the deputy of the Seimas, Constanta Terlikovsky.
They all soon died in Soviet prisons. The wounded had to hide from Soviet soldiers, because if discovered, they would be immediately shot.
The Red Army soldiers were especially active in pouring out their hatred on Polish intellectuals, landowners, officials and schoolchildren. In the village of Greater Ejsmonty in the Białystok region, Kazimierz Bisping, a member of the Landowners' Union and senator, was tortured and later died in one of the Soviet camps. Arrest and torture also awaited engineer Oskar Meishtovich, owner of the Rogoznitsa estate near Grodno, who was subsequently killed in a Minsk prison.
Soviet soldiers treated foresters and military settlers with particular cruelty. The command of the Ukrainian Front gave the local Ukrainian population 24-hour permission to “deal with the Poles.” The most brutal murder occurred in the Grodno region, where, not far from Skidel and Zhidomli, there were three garrisons inhabited by former legionnaires of Pilsudski. Several dozen people were brutally killed: their ears, tongues, noses were cut off, and their stomachs were ripped open. Some were doused with oil and burned.
Terror and repression also fell on the clergy. Priests were beaten, taken to camps, and often killed. In Antonovka, Sarnensky district, a priest was arrested right during the service; in Ternopil, Dominican monks were expelled from monastery buildings, which were burned before their eyes. In the village of Zelva, Volkovysk district, a Catholic and Orthodox priest was arrested, and then they were brutally dealt with in the nearby forest.
From the first days of the entry of Soviet troops, prisons in cities and towns in Eastern Poland began to rapidly fill up. The NKVD, which treated prisoners with brutal cruelty, began creating its own makeshift prisons. After just a few weeks, the number of prisoners had increased at least six to seven times.
On September 28, German troops captured Warsaw; the last armed clashes on Polish territory were on October 5. Those. Despite the USSR's assertions, the Polish army continued to resist after September 17.
At the end of September, Soviet and German troops met at Lublin and Bialystok. Two joint parades of Soviet and German troops (sometimes called parades) were held; in Brest, the parade was hosted by brigade commander S. Krivoshein and General G. Guderian, in Grodno by corps commander V. Chuikov and a German general (last name is not yet known).
As a result of the undeclared war, the Red Army lost 1,173 people killed, 2,002 wounded, 302 missing, 17 tanks, 6 aircraft, 6 guns and 36 vehicles. The Polish side lost 3,500 people killed, 20,000 missing, 454,700 prisoners and a large number of guns and aircraft.
During the era of the Polish People's Republic, they tried to convince the Poles that on September 17, 1939, there was a “peaceful” entry of Soviet troops to protect the Belarusian and Ukrainian population living on the eastern borders of the Polish Republic. However, it was a brutal attack that violated the provisions of the 1921 Treaty of Riga and the 1932 Polish-Soviet non-aggression pact. The Red Army that entered Poland did not take into account international law. It was not only about the capture of the eastern Polish regions as part of the implementation of the provisions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed on August 23, 1939. Having invaded Poland, the USSR began to implement the plan that originated in the 20s to exterminate the Polish elite. The Bolsheviks acted according to their usual pattern.
September 1, 1939 attack by Germany and Slovakia on Poland the second world war began.
German troops cross the border with Poland
On September 3 at 11:00 England and at 17:00 France declared war on Germany. However, 110 French and British divisions, which were then stationed on the Western Front against 23 German divisions, remained completely inactive.
Taking advantage of the inaction of England and France, the German command stepped up attacks in Poland. As German troops rapidly advanced deeper into Polish territory, disorganization grew in Poland. In a number of places, performances took place by the “fifth column” of Germans living in Poland and members of the OUN, prepared by the Abwehr. On the very first day of the war, the country's president, Ignacy Moscicki, left Warsaw, and on September 4, the evacuation of government offices began. 
Ignacy Moscicki
On September 5, the government left Warsaw, and on the night of September 7, Commander-in-Chief Edward Rydz-Smigly fled from the Polish capital.
Edward Rydz-Smigly
German troops advanced rapidly: taking advantage of the Poles' loss of centralized control of their units, they reached the approaches to Warsaw on September 8th. 
Polish light tank 7TR produced in 1937. Combat weight - 9.9 tons. Crew - 3 people. Armament: one 37 mm cannon, one 7.92 mm machine gun. Armor thickness: hull front - 17 mm, side - 13 mm, turret - 15 mm. Engine - diesel "Saurer VBLD" 110 l. With. Speed on the highway is 32 km/h. Cruising range on the highway is 160 km. 
Polish propaganda poster
On September 12, German troops reached the middle reaches of the Vistula in a number of sectors; they crossed the Western Bug - Narew line, covering Warsaw from the east, and advanced to the San, crossing its upper reaches. Units of the German 21st Army Corps occupied Belsk on September 11, and Bialystok on September 15. On the afternoon of September 14, the 19th Motorized Corps occupied Brest. 
parade in Warsaw 
Hitler's plans initially did not include the conquest of Poland and the liquidation of the Polish state. All he needed was the restoration of land communication with East Prussia. Before signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler defined the goal of the Polish campaign as the return of Poznan, Silesia, Pomerania, part of the Lodz, Warsaw and Kielce voivodeships - that is, those territories that were part of Germany as of 1914. However, stunned by such an unexpected success, the Germans began to think about what to do with that part of Poland that had previously been part of the Russian Empire, but was taken away from us under the Treaty of Riga in 1921. 
And then on September 12, at a meeting held on Hitler’s train, the head of the Abwehr, Admiral Wilhelm Karlovich Canaris, proposed to the Fuhrer to create a Ukrainian state out of Eastern Poland, the head of which was to be the former ataman of the Petliura army of the UPR Andrei Atanasovich Melnik, and the military leader was the commander of the Ukrainian Legion created by the Wehrmacht Roman Sushko.
A.A. Melnik R.K. Sushko
The Germans had long dreamed of creating an independent Hochland. Back in 1918, they created the regime of Hetman Skoropadsky in Ukraine, and now, in the thirty-ninth, the former Clear Grand Hetman of All Ukraine lived in Berlin at 17 Alzenstrasse. Later, in 1945, he would die under American bombs.
In the spring of 1939, shortly before the Germans occupied the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, they created the “Vyskovi Viddily Nationalistov” (VVN), which, together with the Slovaks, entered Poland.
Hitler liked the idea, and he instructed the admiral to form a Ukrainian gasket between Asia and Europe.
However, the Germans did not take into account the fact that the entire leadership of the OUN was stuffed with our agents, and already on September 13, when in Vienna Canaris met with Melnik about his consent to lead Greater Ukraine, the plans of the Nazis became known to Beria, which he immediately reported to Stalin.
Allow the creation of a pro-German Hochland It was impossible, and Stalin ordered the entry of the Red Army into Eastern Poland. September 14 to the Military Councils of BOVO (commander of the 2nd rank M.P. Kovalev, divisional commissar P.E. Smokachev and chief of staff corps commander M.A. Purkaev) and KOVO (commander of the district troops S.K. Timoshenko, members of the Armed Forces V.N. Borisov, N. S. Khrushchev, Chief of Staff Corps Commander N. F. Vatutin) directives of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union Voroshilov and the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army - Army Commander 1st Rank Boris Mikhailovich Shaposhnikov are sent for No. 16633 and 16634, respectively, “On the start of the offensive.” against Poland."
B.M. Shaposhnikov
At 2 a.m. on September 17, Stalin summoned the German Ambassador Schulenburg to the Kremlin and, in the presence of Molotov and Voroshilov, informed him that the Red Army would cross the Soviet border all the way from Polotsk to Kamenets-Podolsk at 6 a.m. today.
Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg
“In order to avoid incidents,” Stalin requested that Berlin be urgently informed so that German planes would not fly east of the Bialystok-Brest-Lvov line. He also informed Schulenburg that Soviet planes would bomb the area east of Lvov.
On the morning of September 17, the Red Army troops began moving into Polish territory. 
T-28 crosses the river
It was met with little resistance from individual units of the Polish Border Guard Corps.
With further advancement, the regular Polish army units encountered by the Red Army units mostly did not offer resistance and disarmed or surrendered, and some tried to retreat to Lithuania, Hungary or Romania. Organized resistance to units of the Red Army, which lasted more than a day, was provided only in a few cases: in the cities of Vilna, Grodno, Tarnopol, the villages of Navuz and Borovichi (near Kovel), in the Sarnensky fortified area. Resistance was provided mainly by the gendarmerie, detachments of Polish border guards and militia from the Poles. 
The local Ukrainian, Belarusian and Jewish ethnic population mainly assisted parts of the Red Army, in a number of places creating armed detachments that acted against the Polish authorities. 
meeting of the Red Army in a Polish town 
In a number of settlements in Western Ukraine, there were protests initiated by OUN supporters, directed against ethnic Poles, who in some cases were brutally suppressed by retreating Polish units.
The news of the Red Army's performance came as a surprise to the OKW. Walter Warlimont, deputy chief of the operations department of the Supreme Command of the German Armed Forces (OKW), was notified of the start of the Red Army's attack by Ernst Köstring several hours before it entered Polish territory, and the latter himself found out about it at the last moment.
OKW representative at Hitler's headquarters, Nikolaus von Wormann, provides information about an emergency meeting at Hitler's headquarters with the participation of senior German political and military leaders, where possible options for action by German troops were considered, at which the start of hostilities against the Red Army was considered inappropriate. Thus, anti-Soviet fabrications about a preliminary Soviet-German agreement regarding the division of Poland are completely refuted.
Trophies obtained in Poland
On September 19, after a shootout between German and Soviet troops in the Lvov area, at the Soviet-German negotiations that took place on September 20-21, a demarcation line was established between the German and Soviet armies, which ran along the Pisa River until it flows into the Narev River, then along the Narev River to its confluence with the Western Bug, further along the Bug River until its confluence with the Vistula River, further along the river. Vistula until the San River flows into it and further along the San River to its source. 
During the clearing of the rear of the Red Army from the remnants of Polish troops and armed detachments, clashes took place in a number of cases, the most significant of which was the battle between September 28 and October 1 of units of the 52nd Infantry Division in the Shatsk area with units of the Polish operational group "Polesie", formed from border units, gendarmerie, small garrisons and sailors of the Pinsk flotilla under the command of General Kleeberg. 
As a result of the Liberation Campaign, a territory of 196 thousand km² with a population of about 13 million people, almost entirely located east of the “Curzon Line”, recommended by the Entente as the eastern border of Poland in 1918, came under the control of the USSR. 
The fighting ended by October 6. The Red Army lost 737 people killed and 1862 wounded.
Lithuanian troops enter Vilna: On October 10, 1939, the Vilna region, with an area of 6909 km² and a population of 490 thousand inhabitants, mostly Belarusians, was transferred to Lithuania, and Vilna became the Lithuanian capital.
In September 1939, an event occurred that is one of the most significant milestones in the history of Belarus. As a result of the Liberation Campaign of the Red Army, the forcibly torn Belarusian people became united again. This was an act of great historical justice, which is an indisputable fact, but, unfortunately, not everyone understands it.
There are influential forces in the West who are trying not only to attribute to Russia/the Soviet Union complicity with Nazi Germany in the attack on Poland in September 1939, but also to impose on our people a sense of guilt for those events. And behind this lies not only a selfish desire to try to demand “moral” and “material” compensation for the loss of Western Belarusian lands returned to the true owners, but also to provide a “legal” basis for a possible territorial revision of existing borders.
At first glance, it may seem that such a scenario is absolutely incredible. But where is the not so long ago still flourishing European country of Yugoslavia? It is necessary not only to know history, but also to be able to draw the right conclusions from it. And this is also necessary in order to clearly understand where your brother and ally is, and where, at best, your partner is.
On September 17, 1939, the Red Army crossed the Russian-Polish border, which cut the territory of Belarus almost in half. By and large, calling the border that existed until mid-September 1939 “old” was only possible with a large degree of convention, since it appeared only in accordance with the Treaty of Riga of March 18, 1921, i.e. existed for only 18 years.
This document was the result of an unsuccessful war with Poland for Soviet Russia, as a result of which vast Belarusian and Ukrainian territories were transferred to the latter. In pre-war Poland, these lands were called “Kresy voskhodnye” (eastern outskirts) and consistently turned into a poor and powerless appendage of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Here are just some numbers. In the 30s of the twentieth century in the Novogrudok and Polesie voivodeships, from 60 to 70 percent of the population were illiterate. The vast majority of land was in the possession of large Polish landowners and paramilitary Polish settlers - “siege workers”.
As for the economic development of the region, during the “Polish hour” the industry inherited from pre-revolutionary times fell into complete decline. And in those few enterprises that were available, workers' earnings were 40-50 percent lower than in Poland itself. But Polish workers were also in a difficult financial situation - the vast majority had incomes below the then subsistence level. Therefore, life from hand to mouth was typical for the majority of the Western Belarusian population.
But extreme poverty was not the darkest side of life for Western Belarusians. In the eastern lands of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Warsaw pursued a policy of strict polonization, which resulted in the almost complete elimination of education in the Belarusian and Russian languages, the closure and destruction of hundreds of Orthodox churches.
It is impossible without shuddering to read and listen to the recollections of eyewitnesses (some are still alive) about the insults and humiliations that Belarusian children in Polish schools were subjected to by “teachers” for accidentally dropping a Belarusian or Russian word. The Belarusian intelligentsia, especially teachers, received especially close attention from the Polish authorities, who were strongly encouraged to convert to Catholicism and change their national self-determination from Belarusian and East Slavic to Polish. Otherwise, stubborn people faced either deprivation of work (this is in the best case) or political repression ( prison or concentration camp in Bereza-Kartuzskaya). A person could end up in a Polish dungeon just for reading (!) Pushkin or Dostoevsky. The situation of the Belarusian population in the “emergence lands” was simply desperate, which resulted in numerous, at times quite harsh, protests.
In 1921-1925, there was an active partisan movement in Western Belarus directed against the Polish government. The partisans attacked police stations, burned the estates of Polish landowners and the farmsteads of besieged Poles. According to the Second Intelligence Department (the notorious “two”) of the General Staff of the Polish Army, in 1923 the total number of partisans operating in the Vilna region, in Polesie, in the Nalibokskaya, Belovezhskaya and Grodno forests ranged from 5 to 6 thousand people.
Among the famous leaders of the Western Belarusian partisan movement were Kirill Orlovsky, Vasily Korzh, Philip Yablonsky, Stanislav Vaupshasov. The most influential forces in this movement were the Communist Party of Western Belarus (KPZB), the Belarusian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, as well as the Belarusian Revolutionary Organization (BRO), which emerged from the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.
In December 1923, the BRO became part of the KPZB, since both organizations had almost identical programs - confiscation of landowners' lands with free transfer to peasants, an eight-hour working day, the unification of all Belarusian lands into a workers' and peasants' republic.
During these years, Western Belarus was actually engulfed in a popular uprising for liberation from the rule of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. To suppress the partisan movement, the Polish government made extensive use of the regular army, primarily mobile cavalry units. As a result of brutal repression and mass terror, the partisan movement began to decline by 1925. According to the Polish authorities, in the Polesie Voivodeship alone in April 1925, 1,400 underground fighters, partisans and their assistants were arrested.
Under these conditions, the leadership of the KPZB decides to change the tactics of the struggle, abandons partisan actions and goes deep underground. By the end of the 1930s, there were about 4,000 people in the ranks of the KPZB. In addition, more than 3,000 members of this party were constantly in prison. At the same time, starting in 1924, the Red Help organization to assist revolutionaries operated quite legally in Western Belarus.
In November 1922, parliamentary elections were held in Poland, as a result of which 11 and 3 Belarusian deputies entered the Sejm and the Senate, respectively, who created a faction in the Sejm - the Belarusian Ambassadorial Club (BPK). In June 1925, the left faction of the BPC, together with the CPZB and other revolutionary democratic organizations, created the Belarusian Peasant-Worker Community (BCRG), which quickly grew into a mass socio-political movement.
By the beginning of 1927, the Gromada had more than one hundred thousand members and by that time had effectively established political control over many regions of Western Belarus. In May 1926, the BKRG program was adopted, which demanded the confiscation of landowners' lands with their subsequent transfer to landless peasants, the creation of a workers' and peasants' government, the establishment of democratic freedoms and self-determination of Western Belarus.
The Polish government did not tolerate such political initiative for long, and on the night of January 14-15, 1927, the defeat of Hromada began. Massive searches and arrests of members of the BKRG were carried out. Without the consent of the Sejm, deputies Bronislav Tarashkevich, Simon Rak-Mikhailovsky, Pavel Voloshin and others were arrested. And on March 21, 1927, the BKRG was banned.
By the early thirties, practically the only truly capable political organization in Western Belarus remained only the KPZB, which was largely due to support from the Comintern. In May 1935, the second congress of the CPZB decided to switch to the tactics of creating a broad popular front based on general democratic demands - the abolition of the repressive constitution, free distribution of land to peasants, the introduction of an 8-hour working day and the liquidation of the concentration camp in Bereza-Kartuzskaya. On this platform, in 1936, the CPZB concluded an agreement on joint action with the Belarusian Christian Democracy.
It would seem that the tactics of a broad popular front had good political prospects, but the blow to the West Belarusian communists was unexpectedly dealt from a direction from which it was not expected. In 1938, by decision of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, the Communist Parties of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine were dissolved. What was this connected with? It is obvious that the communists of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine were active revolutionaries and were too committed to the ideas of freedom and democracy (in modern bureaucratic language, they were extremists), which could not suit the Soviet leaders who had long ago taken the path of left totalitarianism.
Be that as it may, the struggle of the Communist Party of Western Belarus and other revolutionary democratic organizations for liberation from the power of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is one of the most heroic pages in the history of the Belarusian people. This struggle in various forms continued throughout the entire period of Polish occupation and was a manifestation of the deep rejection by the Western Belarusian population of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was alien and hostile to them.
Throughout the entire period of the “Polish Hour,” Western Belarusians believed and hoped that liberation would come from the east. Not understanding for the most part the peculiarities of the state structure of the USSR, and even more so the vicissitudes of the party-political struggle in the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Western Belarusians knew that east of the Negoreloe station, near Minsk, there was a great country that remembered him and for which he is the son.
Polish Wehrmacht campaign
On September 1, 1939, Hitler's Germany began a lightning war against Poland, and in 16 days completely defeated the Polish army and the government system of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. As the Pravda newspaper rightly wrote on this occasion on September 14: “A multinational state, not bound by the bonds of friendship and equality of the peoples inhabiting it, but, on the contrary, based on the oppression and inequality of national minorities, cannot represent a strong military force.”
To be fair, it should be noted that Germany, in quantitative terms, did not have an overwhelming superiority over the Polish armed forces. To conduct the Polish campaign, the German command concentrated 55 infantry and 13 mechanized and motorized (5 tank, 4 motorized and 4 light) divisions. In total, this amounted to about 1,500,000 people. and 3500 tanks. The air force formed two air armies consisting of about 2,500 aircraft.
Poland fielded 45 infantry divisions against Germany. In addition, it had 1 cavalry division, 12 separate cavalry brigades, 600 tanks and a total of about 1,000 operational aircraft. All this amounted to a population of approximately 1,000,000 people. In addition, Poland had approximately 3 million trained soldiers, more than half of whom were trained after 1920. However, the Polish command was never able to use a huge part of this trained reserve in this war. As a result, up to 50 percent of those eligible for military service remained outside the army in September 1939.
Polish infantry 1939
For its part, the German command managed in the last period before September 1 to quickly concentrate and deploy a powerful strike group of troops. In general, the Polish campaign revealed the overwhelming qualitative and organizational superiority of the Wehrmacht over the Polish army, which ensured the transience of the war. A cruel joke on the Polish government was also played by the fact that throughout the interwar years Poland was preparing for war with the Soviet Union and, as a result, turned out to be completely unprepared for armed confrontation with Germany, on the border with which there were practically no serious fortifications on the Polish side.
By the end of the first ten days of September, the Polish government fled to Romania, and the population of the territories not yet captured by German troops and the remnants of the Polish armed forces were left to their fate. Based on this course of events, on September 10, 1939, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Vyacheslav Molotov, made a statement saying that “Poland is disintegrating, and this forces the Soviet Union to come to the aid of the Ukrainians and Belarusians who are threatened by Germany.”
And at this time, German troops were quickly moving east, the advanced tank detachments had already approached Kobrin. There is a real threat of Hitler's occupation of Western Belarusian lands. The situation required decisive and immediate action from the leadership of the Soviet Union.
Forced measure
On September 14 in Smolensk, the commander of the troops of the Belarusian Special Military District M.P. Kovalev, at a meeting of senior command staff, said that “in connection with the advance of German troops into the interior of Poland, the Soviet government decided to protect the lives and property of citizens of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, send its troops into their territory and thereby correct historical injustice.” By September 16, the troops of the specially formed Belorussian and Ukrainian fronts occupied their starting lines, awaiting orders from the People's Commissar of Defense.
On the night of September 17, the German Ambassador Schulenberg was summoned to the Kremlin, to whom Stalin personally announced that in four hours the Red Army troops would cross the entire length of the Polish border. At the same time, German aviation was asked not to fly east of the Bialystok-Brest-Lvov line.
Immediately after receiving the German Ambassador, Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V.P. Potemkin presented the Polish Ambassador in Moscow V. Grzhibovsky with a note from the Soviet government. “The events caused by the Polish-German war,” the document said, “showed the internal failure and obvious incapacity of the Polish state. All this happened in the shortest possible time... The population of Poland was left to the mercy of fate. The Polish state and its government virtually ceased to exist. Due to this kind of situation, the agreements concluded between the Soviet Union and Poland ceased to be valid... Poland became a convenient field for all sorts of accidents and surprises that could pose a threat to the USSR. The Soviet government remained neutral until recently. But due to these circumstances, it can no longer be neutral about the current situation.”
Currently, one can hear a lot of speculation about the legality of the actions of the Soviet Union in September 1939. The Polish side, for example, focuses on the fact that the advance of German troops across Polish territory would not have been so successful if Red Army units had not crossed the Soviet-Polish border on September 17, 1939. It is emphasized that the entry of Soviet troops into the territory of Poland occurred without a declaration of war, and in the eastern lands there were all the possibilities (they were preparing for a war against the USSR) to provide long-term resistance to the advancing units and formations of the Red Army. And finally, Polish historiography is trying to argue that Soviet troops carried out some special plan, developed jointly by the leaders of the USSR and Nazi Germany.
In fact, the actions of the Soviet Union in that situation were dictated by the situation that arose in connection with Germany’s aggression against Poland and were justified not only in military-political terms, but also from the standpoint of international law. Suffice it to say that by the time the operation began, the then Poland as a state no longer existed. The incompetent Polish “sanation” government fled besieged Warsaw. Any orderly system of state power completely collapsed, control of the Polish troops was completely lost, chaos and panic reigned everywhere.
However, the Polish side, on the contrary, claims that only after receiving a message that Soviet troops had crossed the eastern border of Poland, Supreme Commander Rydz-Smigly, together with the president and government, left for Romania. Moreover, Polish historians specifically draw attention to the fact that the Polish troops did not offer any resistance to the Red Army, since they allegedly received the corresponding order from above. But who could give such an order at a time when the entire Polish state-political and military leadership was already under virtual arrest in Romania? Which headquarters of Polish formations and units were able to receive this directive in conditions of total disorganization of communication and control systems?
As for the military component of the Liberation Campaign of 1939, it had all the signs, speaking in modern terms, of a peacekeeping operation.
At 5:40 a.m. on September 17, 1939, troops of the Belorussian and Ukrainian fronts crossed the Soviet-Polish border established in 1921. The Red Army troops were prohibited from subjecting populated areas and Polish troops that did not offer resistance to air and artillery bombardment. It was explained to the personnel that the troops came to Western Belarus and Western Ukraine “not as conquerors, but as liberators of the Ukrainian and Belarusian brothers.” In his directive dated September 20, 1939, the head of the USSR border troops, divisional commander Sokolov, demanded that all commanders warn all personnel “about the need to maintain proper tact and politeness” towards the population of the liberated areas. The head of the border troops of the Belarusian district, brigade commander Bogdanov, in his order directly emphasized that the armies of the Belarusian Front were going on the offensive with the task of “preventing the seizure of the territory of Western Belarus by Germany.”
Particular attention was paid to the need to protect the lives and property of all Ukrainian and Belarusian citizens, a tactful and loyal attitude towards the Polish population, Polish civil servants and military personnel who do not offer armed resistance. Polish refugees from the western regions of Poland were given the right to move freely and organize the security of sites and settlements themselves.
Carrying out the general peacekeeping plan of the operation, Soviet troops tried to avoid armed contact with units of the Polish armed forces. According to the Chief of Staff of the Polish High Command, General V. Stakhevich, the Polish troops “are disoriented by the behavior of the Bolsheviks, because they generally avoid opening fire, and their commanders claim that they are coming to the aid of Poland against the Germans.” The Soviet Air Force did not open fire on Polish aircraft unless they were bombing or strafing units of the advancing Red Army. For example, on September 17 at 9:25 a.m., a Polish fighter was landed by Soviet fighters in the area of the Baymaki border outpost; a little later, in another area, a Polish twin-engine P-3L-37 aircraft from the 1st Warsaw bomber squadron was forced to land by Soviet fighters. shelf. At the same time, separate military clashes were noted along the line of the old border, along the banks of the Neman River, in the areas of Nesvizh, Volozhin, Shchuchin, Slonim, Molodechno, Skidel, Novogrudok, Vilno, Grodno.
It should be added that the extremely soft attitude of the Red Army units towards the Polish troops was largely due to the fact that at that time a large number of ethnic Belarusians and Ukrainians were drafted into the Polish army. For example, soldiers of the Polish battalion stationed at the Mikhailovka guard three times appealed to the command of the Red Army with a request to take them prisoner. Therefore, if the Polish units did not offer resistance and voluntarily laid down their arms, the rank and file were almost immediately sent home, only officers were interned.
In modern Poland, they are trying to concentrate public attention exclusively on the tragic fate of part of the Polish officer corps who died in Katyn and other camps for captured Polish officers. Meanwhile, materials and facts on the complete liberation in the summer of 1941 of almost a million Poles who were temporarily living in settlements in Central Asia and Siberia are being suppressed. The opportunity given to the Poles in the USSR under an agreement with the government of General Sikorski in London (06/30/1941) to recreate the Polish armed forces on Soviet territory is also hushed up. But, despite the difficult conditions of the first year of the war with Nazi Germany and its allies, by 1942 the USSR helped create a 120,000-strong Polish army on its territory, which, in agreement with the Polish government in exile, was then transferred to Iran and Iraq.
It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that when meeting with German troops, Red Army units were ordered to “act decisively and advance quickly.” On the one hand, do not give German units unnecessarily a reason for provocations, and on the other, do not allow the Germans to seize areas populated by Ukrainians and Belarusians. When the German troops tried to start a battle, they had to give them a decisive rebuff.
Naturally, when large masses of unfriendly (even if not yet hostile) troops operate in opposing directions, various misunderstandings and isolated military clashes become almost inevitable. Thus, on September 17, units of the German 21st Army Corps were bombed east of Bialystok by Soviet aircraft and suffered losses in killed and wounded. In turn, on the evening of September 18, near the town of Vishnevets (85 km from Minsk), German armored vehicles fired at the location of the 6th Russian Rifle Division, killing four Red Army soldiers. On September 19, in the Lvov area, a battle took place between units of the German 2nd Mountain Division and Russian tank crews, during which both sides suffered losses in killed and wounded. However, neither Russia nor Germany were interested in armed conflict at that time, much less in war. In addition, the decisive military demonstration carried out by the Red Army helped stop the advance of German troops to the east.
Residents of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine in September 1939 greeted the Red Army troops with great enthusiasm - with red banners, “Long live the USSR!” posters, flowers and bread and salt. The deputy chief of the USSR border troops, brigade commander Apollonov, in his report, in particular, noted that “the population of Polish villages everywhere welcomes and joyfully greets our units, providing great assistance in crossing rivers, advancing convoys, and destroying the fortifications of the Poles.” The command of the Belarusian Border District also reported that “the population of Western Belarus greets the Red Army units and border guards with joy and love.” Only a small part of the intelligentsia and wealthy Belarusians and Ukrainians took a wait-and-see attitude. They, of course, feared not the “coming of Russia” as such, but the anti-bourgeois transformations of the new government. The exception was the local Poles, who for the most part experienced what was happening as a national tragedy. It was they who organized armed gangs and spread provocative rumors among the population.
Rebel detachments and revolutionary committees provided assistance to the troops of the Belorussian Front in a number of places. Insurgent units (self-defense units) began to emerge already in the first days of the German-Polish war from among communists and Komsomol members who escaped arrest or escaped from prison, deserters of the Polish army and local youth who did not show up at conscription stations. The actions of the rebels, who ambushed police convoys and repelled the arrested “Bolsheviks” who destroyed police stations, landowners’ estates and the farms of the Osadniks (Polish military settlers), were facilitated by the anarchy that arose after the flight of the Polish administration from the countryside to the cities - under the protection of the army and gendarmerie.
On September 19, Molotov informed the German Ambassador Schulenberg that the Soviet government and Stalin personally considered it inappropriate to create a “Polish Soviet Republic” in the Western Belarusian and Western Ukrainian lands (previously such a possibility was considered), where the East Slavic population accounted for 75% of all residents.
At dawn on September 23, Soviet troops were to begin moving to a new demarcation line. The withdrawal of Wehrmacht formations to the west should have begun a day earlier. When marching between Soviet and German troops, it was assumed that a distance of 25 kilometers would be maintained.
However, Soviet troops entered Bialystok and Brest a day earlier, fulfilling orders to prevent the Germans from removing “war booty” from these cities - simply, to prevent the looting of Bialystok and Brest. In the morning of September 22, the advance detachment of the 6th Cavalry Corps (120 Cossacks) entered Bialystok to take it from the Germans. This is how the commander of the cavalry detachment, Colonel I.A., describes these events. Pliev: “When our Cossacks arrived in the city, what the Nazis feared most and what they tried to avoid happened: thousands of townspeople poured into the hitherto deserted streets and gave the Red Army soldiers an enthusiastic ovation. The German command observed this whole picture with undisguised irritation - the contrast with the meeting of the Wehrmacht was striking. Fearing that further developments of events would take an undesirable turn for them, the German units hastened to leave Bialystok long before the evening fell - already at 16.00, commander Andrei Ivanovich Eremenko, who arrived in Bialystok, did not find anyone from the German command.”
By September 25, 1939, the troops of the Belorussian Front reached the demarcation line, where they stopped. On September 28, with the surrender of the remnants of the Polish troops stationed in the Augustow Forest, the military operations of the Belorussian Front ceased. During the 12 days of the campaign, the front lost 316 people killed and died during the sanitary evacuation stages, three people were missing and 642 were wounded, shell-shocked and burned.
From September 17 to September 30, 1939, the front captured (and essentially interned) 60,202 Polish military personnel (including 2,066 officers). By September 29, the troops of the Belarusian and Ukrainian fronts were on the line Suwalki - Sokolow - Lublin - Yaroslav - Przemysl - r. San. However, this line did not last long.
On September 20, Hitler decided to quickly transform Lithuania into a German protectorate, and on September 25 he signed Directive No. 4 on the concentration of troops in East Prussia for the march on Kaunas. In search of salvation, Lithuania requested help from the USSR. On the same day, Stalin, in a conversation with Schulenberg, makes a completely unexpected proposal: to exchange Lublin and part of the Warsaw Voivodeship, which were transferred to the USSR, for Germany’s renunciation of claims to Lithuania. This eliminated the possible threat of a German invasion of Belarus from the north.
The issue was discussed at the end of September during Ribbentrop's visit to Moscow. In accordance with the Soviet-German Treaty “On Friendship and Border” signed on September 29, 1939, Lithuania moved into the Soviet sphere of interests, and the new Soviet-German border followed the line of the river. Narev - r. Western Bug - Yaroslav - r. San. By October 5-9, all units of the Soviet troops were withdrawn beyond the line of the new state border. On October 8, 1939, in the Belarusian territories, the border with Germany was taken under protection by five newly formed border detachments - Augustow, Lomzhansky, Chizhevsky, Brest-Litovsk and Vladimir-Volynsky.
In the Polish lands that were transferred to the Reich in 1939, essentially the entire Polish intelligentsia was either exterminated, sent to concentration camps, or evicted. In other former Polish territories included by the Germans in the so-called. General Government, an “extraordinary action of pacification” (“Action AB”) began, as a result of which several tens of thousands of Poles were immediately destroyed. Since 1940, German authorities began to force former Polish citizens into the Auschwitz death camp, and later into concentration camps with gas chambers in Belzec, Treblinka and Majdanek. Polish Jews were almost completely destroyed - 3.5 million people, the Polish intelligentsia was subjected to mass terror, and youth were purposefully and mercilessly exterminated. The education of Poles in secondary schools and universities was strictly prohibited. In elementary school, the occupation German administration excluded from the curriculum a list of subjects: Polish history and literature, geography. The Poles were transferred to an animal existence, the Reich continued German colonization in the former Polish territories, turning the surviving Polish citizens into slaves. Attempts at a mass transition of the Polish population to the territory of Western Belarus were harshly suppressed by the German occupation forces.
A completely different picture was observed in the lands occupied by the Red Army. After the completion of the military phase of the operation, political and social changes began. In an extremely short time, a system of temporary bodies of “revolutionary democratic power” was created: temporary administrations in cities, povets and voivodeships, workers’ committees at enterprises, peasant committees in volosts and villages. The temporary administration included the departments of food, industry, finance, health, public education, utilities, political education, and communications. The composition of the temporary management bodies was initially approved by the command of the Red Army; The temporary administration, in turn, approved the composition of peasant committees elected by peasant gatherings.
Relying on detachments of the workers' guard and peasant militia, the temporary authorities took control of the political, administrative, economic and cultural life of cities and villages. Having taken control of the available reserves of raw materials, products and goods, the organs of the “revolutionary democratic government” provided the population with food and essential goods at fixed prices and fought profiteering. They accepted and distributed food and goods coming from the USSR as free aid.
In September - October 1939, a significant number of new schools opened in Western Belarus, education in which was translated at the choice of citizens into their native language - Belarusian, Russian, Polish. Free education sharply expanded the number of students to include the children of peasants and workers. Newly opened hospitals, outpatient clinics and first-aid posts served the population free of charge.
In October 1939, with high political activity of voters, general and free elections to the People's Assembly of Western Belarus (NSZB) were held. Polish researchers, on the contrary, claim completely the opposite, that the elections in Western Belarus and the October 1939 referendum in Lithuania took place in an atmosphere of total Bolshevik terror. But the facts indicate something else: on October 28-30, a meeting of the legally elected People’s Assembly opened in Bialystok, during which 4 fundamental documents were adopted: “Appeal with a request for the admission of Western Belarus into the USSR”, “On the establishment of Soviet power”, “On confiscation of landowners’ lands,” “On the nationalization of large-scale industry and banks.” Already on November 2, 1939, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided to satisfy the request of the People's Assembly of the Belorussian Republic and include Western Belarus into the USSR with its reunification with the Belarusian SSR. On November 14, the extraordinary III session of the Supreme Council of the BSSR decided: “To accept Western Belarus into the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic” and decided to develop a set of measures for the accelerated Sovietization of Western Belarus. On the same day, the Belorussian Front was transformed into the Western Special Military District with headquarters in Minsk.
This is how the Liberation Campaign of the Red Army of 1939 ended, which became, in fact, a brilliant peacekeeping operation that not only radically changed the then political map of Europe in favor of the Soviet Union, but also gave modern shape (with some post-war changes) to the current Republic of Belarus.
On September 17, 1939, the Polish campaign of the Red Army began. The London Times assessed this event as “a stab in the back of Poland.” For the USSR, this campaign was of strategic importance and was recognized as liberation. 7 facts about the Polish campaign of the Red Army in 1939.
1. If there is a war on two fronts - the Polish answer
In April 1939, Poland demonstratively conducted large-scale military maneuvers on the border of the USSR. At the same time, the Soviet side invited the Polish government to consider the issue of a defensive alliance against third countries, to which it received a very strict refusal, the meaning of which was that if necessary, the Polish army was ready to defeat both Stalin and Hitler at the same time. The Soviet Union did not react to this essentially offensive demarche. Ironically, a few months later in September 1939, the Polish army had to deal with both German and Soviet troops within a short period of time. Of course, it is impossible to talk about a war on two fronts. There was only spotty resistance to the Soviet troops, and even more so not from the army, but from the siege troops, the police and the local militia.
2. Disaster in Balbasovo
On the eve of the Liberation Campaign, on September 16, an absurd and tragic plane crash occurred, in which the most successful Soviet pilot of the 30s, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Major Sergei Ivanovich Gritsevets, died. Gritsevets, a participant in the Spanish Civil War, destroyed 7 enemy aircraft, for which he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Gritsevets was remembered for his new victories at Khalkhin Gol, having shot down 12 Japanese planes. In addition, he took his commander, Major V. Zabaluev, from the territory captured by the enemy, landing his I-16 near Japanese positions. Remaining invincible in the air, Gritsevets died through no fault of his own during landing at the Balbasovo airfield near Orsha. According to all the rules, in the twilight and in foggy conditions, he made an exemplary landing and, fearing a collision with the pilots following him to land, taxied from the landing strip to the neutral one. At this moment, Major P. Hara, against all odds, came in to land from the opposite side, mistaking the neutral strip for a landing strip. There was a collision between the fighters, and while Khara escaped with bruises, Gritsevets died from the impact of the propeller. As the campaign began, it was decided not to report the death of the famous pilot. Gritsevets was never destined to see his native village of Borovtsy, liberated by Soviet troops during the 1939 campaign in Belarus.
3. Skidel's tragedy
30 km from Grodno is the small town of Skidel, in which, after receiving news that the Red Army had crossed the border, an uprising against the Polish authorities began, brutally suppressed by punitive forces: “30 people were immediately shot by punitive forces. They also shot just those who turned up. Before the execution they mocked: some had their eyes gouged out, others had their tongues cut, others had their fingers broken with rifle butts...” There could have been more casualties if it had not been for a group of Soviet tanks that arrived at the scene and defeated the Polish detachment in a short but fierce battle.
4. At one gas station
It is noteworthy that during the Liberation Campaign, a number of Soviet tank units often had only one fuel refueling. The lack of fuel made it necessary to form attack mobile groups from tanks and quickly move on, transferring fuel to them from other combat vehicles. Since there was no serious opposition from Polish troops, this experiment was successful. However, the same fuel shortage would fatally affect in June 1941, when hundreds of Soviet tanks were abandoned or destroyed by their crews due to lack of fuel.
5. Liberation campaign in art
The liberation campaign was definitely reflected in literature, cinema and music. In memory of the Soviet tank in Antopol, which was burned by the gang that surrounded it (by no means Polish soldiers), together with the crew, Alexander Tvardovsky wrote the poem “Tank”, then set to music by V. Kochetov. The appearance of the famous “Song of the Red Regiments” is also connected with the history of the Liberation Campaign.
6. Vilna
On the evening of September 18, 1939, mobile tank groups of the 3rd and 11th armies of the Belorussian Front broke into Vilna and by the middle of the next day completely captured the city. Losses amounted to 9 tanks and armored cars: 13 were killed and 24 Red Army soldiers were wounded. The city, according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (point 1), was transferred to Lithuania (this was later secured by the corresponding Soviet-Lithuanian treaty). Thus, Lithuania regained its capital, lost during the conflict with Poland in 1922. Until this time, Vilna was still considered the official capital of Lithuania (its loss was not recognized), but all government structures were located in Kaunas.
7. Polish monitors
On September 18, 1939, Polish crews on Pripyat and Pina sank 5 river monitors as Soviet troops approached. They were examined and raised at the same time, in September 1939, and then put into operation with a change of names - “Vinnitsa” (“Torun”), “Bobruisk” (“Gorodishche”). "Vitebsk" ("Warsaw"), "Zhitomir" ("Pinsk"), "Smolensk" ("Krakow"). The ships became part of the Dnieper and then the Pinsk flotilla. The military biography of the monitors in the Great Patriotic War turned out to be short, but bright - they all distinguished themselves while operating on Pripyat, Berezina and the Dnieper, managing to complete a number of combat missions, more than once breaking out of disastrous traps in June-September 1941. When leaving Kyiv on September 18, 1941 "Vitebsk" died - the last of the five captured monitors remaining at that time.
On the eve of the Liberation Campaign, on September 16, an absurd and tragic plane crash occurred, in which the most successful Soviet pilot of the 30s, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Major Sergei Ivanovich Gritsevets, died. Gritsevets, a participant in the Spanish Civil War, destroyed 7 enemy aircraft, for which he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Gritsevets was remembered for his new victories at Khalkhin Gol, having shot down 12 Japanese planes. In addition, he took his commander, Major V. Zabaluev, from the territory captured by the enemy, landing his I-16 near Japanese positions. Remaining invincible in the air, Gritsevets died through no fault of his own during landing at the Balbasovo airfield near Orsha. According to all the rules, in the twilight and in foggy conditions, he made an exemplary landing and, fearing a collision with the pilots following him to land, taxied from the landing strip to the neutral one. At this moment, Major P. Hara, against all odds, came in to land from the opposite side, mistaking the neutral strip for a landing strip. There was a collision between the fighters, and while Khara escaped with bruises, Gritsevets died from the impact of the propeller. As the campaign began, it was decided not to report the death of the famous pilot. Gritsevets was never destined to see his native village of Borovtsy, liberated by Soviet troops during the 1939 campaign in Belarus.
