1939–1940 · No Polish state
Two Occupations
Germany attacks on 1 September, the USSR on 17 September. The country is carved up: annexed provinces, the General Government, and a Soviet zone in the east. Poland loses roughly 6 million citizens, close to 3 million of them Polish Jews. The state continues in exile and underground, with its own army, courts and schools.
Population
- about 35,100,000 (estimate, ±500,000) — As of 1939. The 1946 census counted 23.9 million — the result of wartime losses and moved borders.
Rulers and leaders
- 1926–1939 Ignacy Mościcki — President of Poland head of state
- 1935–1939 Edward Rydz-Śmigły — Inspector-General of the Armed Forces, from 1936 Marshal of Poland — "second person in the state" de facto leader
Inspector-General from 13 May 1935, the day after Piłsudski died. In 1936 a circular from the prime minister ranked him first in the state after the President, and in 1937 the Camp of National Unity was built around him. Commander-in-Chief in September 1939; interned in Romania, he gave up his post in November.
- 1935–1939 Józef Beck — foreign minister from 1932; after Piłsudski’s death he ruled together with Mościcki and Rydz-Śmigły de facto leader
He ran foreign policy almost single-handed. On 5 May 1939 he rejected Hitler’s demands before the Sejm: "There is only one thing in the life of men, nations and states that is beyond price, and that is honour."
- 1936–1939 Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski — last prime minister of the Second Republic head of government
- 1939–1945 Adolf Hitler — leader of Nazi Germany — occupying power occupying power
- 1939–1945 Hans Frank — Governor-General — occupying power occupying power
- 1939–1941 Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union — occupier of the eastern half of the country occupying power
The USSR annexed the land it took in September 1939 after staged "elections", and lost it when Germany attacked in June 1941.
- 1939–1947 Władysław Raczkiewicz — President of the Republic in exile head of state, in exile
- 1939–1943 Władysław Sikorski — Prime Minister in exile and Commander-in-Chief head of government, in exile
Events
- 1939Germany and the Soviet Union invade 1 September, 17 September, 28 September loss
Germany attacks on 1 September and the Soviet Union on 17 September, under the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The country is split between two occupiers; the state carries on in exile and underground.
- 1940The Katyń massacre 5 March loss
The NKVD shoots close to 22,000 Polish officers, policemen and officials taken prisoner in 1939. Beria’s proposal to the Politburo called them hardened enemies of Soviet power. When Germany announced the graves in 1943 and the Polish government asked the Red Cross to investigate, Moscow broke off relations with it; the USSR admitted responsibility only in 1990.
Wars, uprisings and longer processes
- 1936–1939The Central Industrial Region reform
The Second Republic’s largest investment: the steelworks at Stalowa Wola, aircraft works at Mielec and Rzeszów, a tyre factory at Dębica, in the fork of the Vistula and the San — far from the borders with Germany and the USSR. September 1939 cuts it short, before many of the plants had reached full production.
- 1939–1945The Second World War war
Germany and the Soviet Union divide Poland; both occupiers destroy its elites, and Germany murders the Polish Jews in ghettos and death camps. The Underground State works at home, the government and army in exile fight beside the Allies — and still Poland comes out of the war in new borders, under a government the USSR imposed, and without close to six million of its citizens.
- 1939–1945The German reign of terror repression
Germany annexes the western provinces to the Reich and expels hundreds of thousands of Poles from them; in the General Government it closes the secondary schools and the universities. Operations against the educated class, street round-ups and public executions, concentration camps, more than two million people taken for forced labour, the expulsions from the Zamość region and children kidnapped for Germanisation: by most estimates the occupation cost close to two million ethnic Poles their lives.
- 1939–1941The Soviet occupation repression
The eastern lands taken by the USSR are annexed to it after sham elections. The NKVD arrests people, shoots prisoners of war, and in four mass deportations in 1940–41 sends more than three hundred and twenty thousand Polish citizens to Siberia and Kazakhstan by its own records; older Polish estimates are much higher.
- 1939–1945The Polish Underground State social movement
Under the occupation a clandestine state answers to the government in exile: the Government Delegation, an underground parliament, courts, secret schooling, a press and the Home Army, more than 300,000 sworn soldiers by 1944. Its last great effort is the Warsaw Uprising; the Home Army is disbanded in January 1945, and the Council of National Unity dissolves itself in July.
People of the age
- 1895–1944 Stefan Rowecki — "Grot", founder and commander of the Home Army; arrested in 1943, murdered at Sachsenhausen
- 1901–1948 Witold Pilecki — Home Army captain; in 1940 he let himself be arrested to set up a resistance network inside Auschwitz; executed in 1948 on a communist court’s sentence
- 1914–2000 Jan Karski — courier of the Underground State; carried word of the Holocaust to the West