The Soviet Occupation of Poland 17.09.1939

Stalin's order for the KATYN FOREST MASSACRE


Top Secret

5 March 1940

USSR People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs

Moscow

To Comrade Stalin

A large number of former officers of the Polish Army, employees of the Polish Police and intelligence services, members of Polish nationalist, counter-revolutionary parties, members of exposed counter-revolutionary resistance groups, escapees and others, all of them sworn enemies of Soviet authority full of hatred for the Soviet system, are currently being held in prisoner-of-war camps of the USSR NKVD and in prisons in the western provinces of Ukraine and Belarus.

The military and police officers in the camps are attempting to continue their counter-revolutionary activities and are carrying out anti-Soviet agitation. Each of them is waiting only for his release in order to start actively struggling against Soviet authority.

The organs of the NKVD in the western provinces of the Ukraine and Belarus have uncovered a number of counter-revolutionary rebel organisations.

Former officers of the Polish Army and police as well as gendarmes have played an active role in all of these organisations.

Amongst the detained escapees and violators of the state borders a considerable number of people have been identified as belonging to counter-revolutionary espionage and resistance organisations.

14,736 former officers, government officials, landowners, police, gendarmes, prison guards, settlers in the border regions and intelligence officers [more than 97% are Poles] are being held in prisoner-of-war camps. This number includes soldiers and junior officers.

Included are:

generals, colonels and lieutenant colonels- 295
majors and captains- 2080
lieutenants, second lieutenants and ensigns- 6049
officers and juniors of the police, gendarmes, prison guards and intelligence officers- 1030
rank and file police officers, gendarmes, prison guards and intelligence personnel- 5138
government officials, land owners, priests, settlers in border regions- 144
18,632 detained people are being kept in the western region of the Ukraine and Belarus
[10,685 are Poles]

They include:

former officers- 1207
former intelligence officers of the police and gendarmerie 5141
spies and saboteurs- 347
former land owners, factory owners and government officials- 465
members of various counter-revolutionary and resistance organisations and other counter-revolutionary elements- 5345
escapees- 6127


In view of the fact that all are hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet authority, the USSR NKVD considers it necessary:

[1] To instruct the USSR NKVD that it should try before special tribunals:

[a] the cases of the 14,700 former Polish officers, government officials,land owners, police officers, intelligence officers, gendarmes, settlers in the border regions and prison guards being held in prisoner-of-war camps;

together with the cases of 11,000 members of various counter-revolutionary organisations of spies and saboteurs, former land owners, factory owners, former Polish officers, government officials, and escapees who have been arrested and are being held in the western provinces of the Ukraine and Belarus and apply to them the supreme penalty: shooting.

[2] Examination of the cases is to be carried out without summoning those detained and without bringing charges, the statements concerning the conclusion of the investigation and the final verdict should be as follows:

[a] for persons being held in prisoner-of-war camps, in the form of certificates issued by the NKVD of the USSR NKVD;

for arrested personnel in the form of certificates issued by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR and the NKVD of the Belarus SSR.

[3] The cases should be examined and the verdict pronounced by a three person tribunal consisting of comrades Merkulov, Kobulov and Bashtakov.

People's Commissar for the Internal Affairs of the USSR

L Beria

[Signed by: Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov, Mikoyan, Kalinin and Kaganovich]

And there are their true colours.

Guys

This order does not prove genocide, it proves a war crime, and state sponsored mass murder, but this is different to genocide. Not better, or less culpable, just different....

Compare that to the Nazi liquidation of the eastern european slavic populations, gypsies, and Jews. There was no trial (not that that makes a difference), you were simply hered into a cattle car, after having found to be racially impure, and disposed of in the most efficient manner that the state could devise. First on the list were the Jews, and Hitler had very nearly complewted that in Poland by wars end. However they had made a big start on the other "undesirable minorities by wars end as well. Thats the main reason why Poland suffered more than five million casulaties during the war. The Soviets were perhaps responsible for 300000 deaths, the germans were responsible for the rest...Not that the number makes the difference...just that the Soviets targtetted groups likley to resist their imperial designs on the region.

I dont believe that there are not ethnic Poles living in the eastern provinces today. I believe that they are still there, but because of Stalins policies, there was a frightful toll taken to remove potential agitators against Soviet rule.

To prove the point you need to uncover the proof. Specifically I would like to see evidence that no ethic Poles exist anymore in the east, and that written orders exist requiring the complete liquidation of that population.

Accusing a country of genocide is a serious business. Simply saying that it happened and then asserting that as "the facts" and accusing others of not accepting "the facts" is not the way to convince people. Providing evidence of the genocide is what is needed.

Now, this is where my own opinion rests at the oment. I believe that the Soviets committed heinous war crimes against the Polish army at katyn, and elsewhere. I believe that the Russians unlawfully and brutally displaced many Poles during after the war, to gain control of the eastern provinces of Poland. I believe that the russians used any means including murder, rape andtorture, as well as unlawful deterntion to achieve that objective. I dont believe that the Soviets are any better, or worse that the Nazis. The one thing I am not convinced about is that the Soviets are guilty of genocide in the case of Poland (elsewhere they are eg...in the ukraine against the jewish population there).

For the record, genocide is defined as follows:

Term created after World War II to describe the systematic murder of an entire political, cultural, or religious group. ...
The El Paso Holocaust Museum - Glossary of Terms

Systematic, state-sponsored or encouraged killings of members of a specific, identifiable group.
ICONS Project | Research Library | Glossary of Scenario Terms

killing or extermination of a whole race or nation
History : History Vocabulary II

(from the Greek genos ("race") and the suffix -cide, "to kill". The methodical destruction of an ethnic group. Term used for the first time in 1944 in reference to the Nazis' extermination of the Jews.
Glossary | STRUTHOF

The general plan "Ost"

Formulated after the liquidation of the Polish state in 1939, this is an extract 9again from the ubiquitous wiki)

Phases of the plan and its implementation
The final version of Generalplan Ost, essentially a grand plan for ethnic cleansing, was divided into two parts; the "Small Plan" (Kleine Planung), which covered actions which were to be taken during the war, and the "Big Plan" (Grosse Planung), which covered actions to be undertaken after the war was won (to be carried into effect gradually over a period of 25-30 years).

GPO envisaged differing percentages of the various conquered nations undergoing Germanisation (for example, 50% of Czechs, 35% of Ukrainians and 25% of Belarusians), extermination, expulsion and other fates, the net effect of which would be to ensure that the conquered territories would be Germanized. In ten years' time, the plan effectively called for the extermination, expulsion, Germanisation or enslavement of most or all East and West Slavs living behind the front lines in Europe. The "Small Plan" was to be put into practice as the Germans conquered the areas to the east of their pre-war borders. In this way the plan for Poland was drawn up at the end of November 1939 and probably is responsible for much of the WWII expulsion of Poles by Germany. After the war, under the "Big Plan", GPO foresaw the eventual expulsion of more than 50 million non-Germanized Slavs of the Eastern Europe through forced migration, as well as some of the Balts (especially almost all of Lithuanians) through "voluntary" migration, beyond the Ural Mountains and into Siberia. In their place, up to 8-10 million Germans would be settled in an extended "living space" (Lebensraum) of the 1000-Year Empire (Tausendjähriges Reich).

In 1941 it was decided to destroy the Polish nation (believed by the Nazis to be Untermenschen, that is "sub-people"

completely and the German leadership decided that in 10 to 20 years the Polish state under German occupation was to be fully cleared of any ethnic Poles and settled by German colonists.

A majority of them, now deprived of their leaders and most of their intelligentsia (through human losses, destruction of culture, and the ban on education above the absolutely basic level), would have to be deported to regions in the East and scattered over as wide an area of Western Siberia as possible, according to the plan resulting in their assimilation by the local populations which would cause the Poles to vanish as a nation.

By 1952, only about 3-4 million non-Germanized Poles (all of them peasants) were supposed to be left residing in the former Poland. Those of them who would still not Germanize were to be forbidden to marry, the existing ban on any medical help to Poles in Germany would be extended, and eventually Poles would cease to exist.


A widely varying policies were envisioned by the creators of GPO and/or employed by Germany in regards to the different Slavic territories and ethnic groups. For example, Einsetzgruppen deaths squads and concentration camps were employed to deal with the Polish elites already by August-September 1939 (Operation Tannenberg, followed by the A-B Aktion in 1940), while the Czech intelligentsia members were to be allowed to emigrate overseas. Parts of Poland were already annexed by Germany early in the war (leaving aside the occupied General Government and the areas perviously annexed by the Soviet Union), while the other territories were officially occupied by or allied to Germany (for example, the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia became a theoretically-independent German puppet state, while the ethnic-Czech part became a "protectorate"). It is unknown in what degree the plan was actually directly connected to the various German war crimes and crimes against humanity in the East, especially in the latter phases of the war (the time the Germans were withdrawing). In any case, majority of Germany's 12 million forced laborers were abducted in the Eastern Europe, mostly in the Soviet territories and Poland (both Slavs and local Jews).

Among charges listed in the indictment presented at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer responsible for transportation part of the Final Solution, one was that he was responsible for the deportation of 500,000 Poles. Eichmann was convicted on this count, too, and the sentence assumed he had been motivated by his intention to destroy the intelligentsia class of Polish society.[5]

Keep talking, Parsifal. Nobody listens anyway.
This accusation of Russians trying to exterminate Poles is ridiculous even considering that fact that under "russian occupation" Poles had 25 times higher birth rate and population grows from what they have now. Not even mention free housing, healthcare and education.
Poles suffered from Stalin's attrocities no less no more then Russians, Ukrainians and other peoples of the Soviet Empire.

stasoid said:

Keep talking, Parsifal. Nobody listens anyway.

Click to expand...

I'm listening and I warned you once - now put on your dunce cap and sit in the corner. If you behave yourself I'll give you a blue crayon and let you play once again after you learned your lesson.

Guys

I went away and looked once again and looked for this evidence of genocide by the Soviets. I dont profess to be any sort of expert in this field, so my sources are pretty lame (just the wiki articles mostly, but they seem pretty thorough in this case).

I have to apologise. I have changed my view having looked at this article. it appears that the Soviets were pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing, with an estimated 1.5 million Polish casualties in 1939-41 in the Soviet controlled zone of Poland. I confess i didnt realize the magnitude of the slaughter , nor did it occur to me that the Soviets were attempting to alter the demographics of these regions. it appears that the Belorussians and the ukrainians that also occupied these regions were seen as being more sympathetic to the "Sovietization" of the eastern provinces than the ethnic Poles. given that the Russians had viewed the treatment of the ethnic ukrainians and Belorussians in Poland in 1919 and 1920 as a form of abuse in itself (a topic I have not investigated as yet) it starts to make a crazy kind of sense....the russianswere exterminating the Poles to make their control over the regions and their claims of sovereignty more secure.

So please accept my apologies. I simply did not realize the magnitude of the crime, nor the intent behind it

Anyway here is the link for anyone who is interested

Occupation of Poland (1939â€"1945 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)


Occupation of Poland (1939â€"1945 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Stasoid, you need to cool it, and not be so confrontational and dogmatic in your approaches. I dont agree with your position, and your "proofs" to support your position are poor. You also need to be a little more respectful toward the feeling for the other members here. Some of them have quite strong feelings, which is understandable. A little lighter footprint is called for on this issue, I would suggest.

Thank you Parsifal....

Great post, Parsifal.

I got a few things to say here....

I've had the opportunity to live and work around Polish ex-pats while living in Canada and while spending time in the suburbs outside of Buffalo NY. I've heard horrific stories from the fathers and grandfathers of those who lived through some of the atrocities mentioned here. I've also met a number of Russians who have immigrated to North America and it seems that some of these folks not only seem to downplay the treatment of the Poles, but also seem to look at them as second class human beings. I make this comment with regard to a troubled few as I know in any race or nationality there are good and bad.

There is absolutely no reason, except for personal prejudice or ignorance to downplay the suffering of the Polish people at the hands of the Soviet Union during WW2 and in the post war years.

My 2 cents - invest it wisely!

My 2 cents is - regardless of whether it was Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russian - 17 September 1939 was a monumental day in Polish history and that is what should be remembered and a moment to reflect on.

THX guys for these words.

Parsifal , I'm very glad you've got the proper information on the matter.