The Invasion of Poland
1 September 1939 - 6 October 1939
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War was an invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union that marked the start of World War II in Europe. The invasion began on 1 September 1939 and ended on 6 October 1939 with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland. Hitler sought the nonaggression pact in order to neutralize the possibility of a French-Polish military alliance against Germany before Germany had a chance to rearm. Many Germans did not approve of this, as they felt cheated by the treaty of Versailles. Through the treaty, Poland received the formerly German land. In 1935, Germany violated the treaty of Versailles, and began rebuilding its military, and annexed Austria in 1938, all with the enforcers of the treaty basically turning the other cheek. In September 1938, after signing away the Czech border regions, known as Sudetenland to Germany at the Munich conference, Britain and France responded by saying for the Polish state to stay left alone. Hitler responded by negotiating a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939. The German-Soviet Pact of August 1939, which stated that Poland was to be split between the two nations, enabled Germany to preemptively attack Poland without the fear of Soviet intervention. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion (known as blitzkrieg). Warsaw, the capital of Poland, surrendered to the Germans on September 27, 1939. Britain and France, standing by their promise of Poland's sovereignty, had declared war on Germany on September 3rd, 1939. The Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland on September 17, 1939. The border declared between German- and Soviet-occupied Poland was along the Bug River. In October 1939, Germany directly annexed those former Polish territories along German's eastern border: West Prussia, Poznan, Upper Silesia, and the former Free City of Danzig. The rest of German-occupied Poland (including the cities of Warsaw, Krakow, Radom, and Lublin) became organized as the General Government under a German civilian governor-general, the Nazi party lawyer Hans Frank. Nazi Germany occupied the remainder of Poland when it invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Poland remained under German occupation until January 1945. The Invasion of Poland is important to the following events of World War II because it marked the official beginning of World War II in Europe.