more at
http://news.quickfound.net/intl/poland_news
.html
A look at
Poland and the plight of the
Poles during
World War II.
Public domain film from the
Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/
3.0/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_(
1939–45)
The
History of Poland (1939–45) encompasses primarily the period from the
Invasion of Poland by
Nazi Germany to the end of World War II. The outbreak of the war followed the period of intense armament by Nazi Germany and other neighbors of Poland, with which Poland was unable to keep up because of the country's fundamental economic weakness.
Following the German-Soviet non-aggression treaty, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany on
1 September 1939 and by the
Soviet Union on
17 September. The campaigns ended in early October with
Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of
Poland. After the
German attack on the Soviet Union in summer
1941, Poland was occupied by Germany alone.
Under the two occupations,
Polish citizens suffered enormous human and material losses. It is estimated that about
5.7 million Polish citizens died as a result of the
German occupation and about
150,
000 Polish citizens died as a result of the
Soviet occupation.
Ethnic Poles were subjected to both the
Nazi and
Soviet persecution. The
Jews were singled out by the
Germans for a quick and total annihilation and about 90% of
Polish Jews (close to three million people) were murdered. Jews and others were killed en masse at
Nazi extermination camps, such as
Auschwitz,
Treblinka and
Sobibór.
Ethnic cleansing and massacres of civilian populations, mostly Poles, were perpetrated in western
Ukraine from 1943. The historically unprecedented war crimes committed in Poland were divided at the postwar
Nuremberg trials into three main categories of wartime criminality: waging a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
A
Polish resistance movement began organizing soon after the invasions in 1939. Its largest military component was a part of the
Polish Underground State network of organizations and activities and became known as the
Home Army. The whole clandestine structure was formally directed by the
Polish government-in-exile through its delegation resident in Poland. There were also peasant, right wing, leftist and
Jewish partisan organizations. Among the anti-German uprisings waged were the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the
Warsaw Uprising. The latter was a late (August-September
1944), large-scale and ill-fated attempt to prevent the Soviet Union from dominating Poland's postwar government.
Collaboration with the occupiers was limited. The Nazis planned a permanent elimination of any form of Polish statehood and even a longer-term destruction of the
Polish nation.
In September 1939 the
Polish government officials sought refuge in
Romania, but their subsequent internment there prevented the intended continuation abroad as the government of Poland.
General Władysław Sikorski, a former prime minister, arrived in
France, where a replacement government in exile was soon formed. After the fall of France the Polish government was evacuated to
Britain. It was torn by a conflict between the post-Sanation and anti-Sanation elements, with the latter, led by
Prime Minister Sikorski, gaining the upper hand because of the support of the
French and then the
British government. The
Polish armed forces had been reconstituted
and fought alongside the Western Allies in France, Britain and elsewhere.
In order to cooperate with the Soviet Union, after the German attack an important war ally of the
West, Sikorski negotiated in
Moscow with
Joseph Stalin and the formation of a
Polish army in the Soviet Union was agreed, intended to fight on the
Eastern Front alongside the
Soviets. The "
Anders' Army" was indeed created, but with the Soviet and
British permission was instead taken to the
Middle East. Further attempts at a Polish-Soviet cooperation were made, but they failed because of the disagreements over the borders, the discovery of the
Katyn massacre of Polish POWs perpetrated by the Soviets, and the death of
General Sikorski.
Stalin pursued a strategy of facilitating the formation of a Polish government independent of (and in opposition to) the exile government in
London. He empowered the
Polish communists, whose party he eliminated in
1938 by murdering most of its activists
...
Poland was still to experience much internal turbulence and power struggle, but barring the West's war with the Soviet Union, the Soviet domination was a foregone conclusion...
- published: 21 Nov 2014
- views: 2857