I N V A S I O N – 1 SEPTEMBER 1939
Alone and unaided, Poland was the first of the allies to stand up and fight against Germany on 1 September 1939.
On August 25, 1939, the German pre-dreadnought battleship Schleswig-Holstein , commissioned in 1908, arrived in the port of Danzig under the pretense of a courtesy visit. At 4.43 am on the 1st September 1939 it dropped anchor and positioned itself on the bend of the Vistula River and opened fire on the Polish military depot on the Westerplatte peninsula, marking the beginning of World War II.
On 1 September 1939, Germany, employing 85% of her forces (1.5 million) attacked Poland from three sides. During the 36-day campaign, the Poles, inflicted heavy losses on the Germans [i] who suffered a total of 16,000 [ii] officers and men killed; 27,278 wounded; and 5,029 missing. German tanks amounting to 217 (25%) [iii] and 400 (almost 20%) of German aircraft of all types were destroyed during the period 1-3 September. Significantly, in an operation that lasted six weeks, the Germans used eight months of fuel, ammunition and repairs [iv].
Contrary to popular misconceptions, Poland in 1939, fighting two opponents, Germany and Soviet Russia, made a greater impact on German men and equipment than did the British and French forces in their combined efforts of 1940.
From Wspomnienia Z Osad Wojskowych 1921 – 1940 – contribution by Janina Stobniak Smogorzewska
September 17, 1939
The end of military and civil settlements in the Kresy began on 17 September 1939, the day the Red Army invaded Polish lands, and its finale took place on 10 February 1940 when the Soviets, in the first forced transfer, deported settlers and their families to Siberia and to northern regions of the European part of Russia.
It goes without saying that the Soviets were already interested in the Kresy settlements many years before the war. In 1927, in the Krasnaja Zwiezda organ of the Red Army, two virulent articles about Polish military settlements were published. They described how, in the event of war that Piłsudski… was preparing, the Red Army will have to contend with the significant and powerful settlement element…, and they indicated in their threats that… the revolutionary wave in the Kresy region of eastern Poland agaist former masters will also wipe out the new settler semi-masters. It was not a social revolution but Soviet atrocities which destroyed the military settlements. With the entry of the NKVD into Kresy began the arrests of well-known Polish activists including settlers. Among the first to be arrested in Równe was settler Dezydery Smoczkiewicz, the President of the Settlers’ Union Volhynian Province Council.
Soon after, the Soviets began the expropriation, mostly of the landed gentry, military settlers, and rich peasants and in January 1940, they began to prepare for deportations. The settlers, foresters and their families were taken away in February in the first of four forced deportations. This was the most terrible transport because of the freezing weather with temperatures of minus 30°C, which was extremely difficult to survive and led to mass deaths. There is no data concerning the number of expelled settlers and their families but assuming that around 5-10% of people avoided deportation the number that were exiled can be approximated to 90-95 thousand people. This is around 8% of the total civilian population residing in the Kresy before the war that was expelled and, taking into account the deported Polish Kresy population alone, the percentage of settler families reaches 12-13%. This calculation is based on the following data: the number of military and civilian settlers with their families in 1939 came to approx. 95-100 thousand people, the civilian population that was expelled from the lands occupied by the USSR – 1114 thousand, 703 thousand of which were Polish citizens. Data on the expelled population according to Deportacje i przemieszczenia ludności polskiej w głąb ZSRR [The Deportations and Relocation of the Polish Population deep into USSR territory], Warsaw 1989, pp. 23-24.
The number of people who were on the forced transport and survived the inhumane conditions of exile remains unknown. Some of them went to the “free world” with the army of General Anders, while others returned to Poland after the war. That being said, it cannot be ruled out that some individuals stayed in that distant land and live there to this day.