German-Soviet Invasion of Poland (1939)

Wars in Europe - • Europe
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GERMAN-SOVIET INVASION OF POLAND (1939)
The invasion of Poland (1 September - 6 October 1939) was a joint attack by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on Poland which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviets invaded on 17 September. The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union partitioning and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty.
Timeline
End of World War I - Poland is reconstituted as a sovereign nation, incorporating parts of the eastern German territories of Pomerania and Silesia containing majority Polish populations.
1933 - Hitler comes to power in Germany and implements a comprehensive rearmament program
1934 - Germany and Poland sign a ten-year non-aggression pact, where Germany promises to uphold the territorial integrity of Poland, including the former German regions that had been ceded to Poland
Late 1930s - Germany, now militarily powerful, actively pushes to redefine the German-Polish border
1938 - Germany proposes to Poland renewing their non-aggression treaty with two major changes; Poland rejects the proposed changes, prompting Hitler to abolish the non-aggression pact; the Polish government believes that Hitler is using the same aggressive tactics that he had used on Czechoslovakia and that if it agreed to the German demands on Danzig and the Polish Corridor, ultimately, like the western half of Czechoslovakia, the rest of Poland would be swallowed up by Germany
March 31, 1939 - Britain and France announce that they would “guarantee Polish independence” in case of foreign aggression; by then, Britain and France, which had pursued appeasement toward Hitler, had become skeptical after the German occupation of the Czech region that now formed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which had a non-ethnic German majority population, which was in contrast to what Hitler had said that he only wanted restored those territories with German populations; Britain and France are now determined to resist Germany diplomatically and resolve the Polish crisis through firm negotiations
August 23, 1939 - Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) that dramatically disrupts the balance of power in Europe
August 29, 1939 - Germany presents Poland with a new set of conditions for further negotiations but demands that this must be signed the next day, August 30; then after presenting a further new set of conditions for negotiations and receiving no adequate response from Poland, on August 31, 1939, Hitler suspends further talks and instructs the German High Command to invade Poland for the next day, September 1, 1939
September 1, 1939 - Germany invades Poland from the north, south, and west
September 2, 1939 - Britain and France issue a joint ultimatum to Germany to withdraw within 12 hours; after receiving no reply, they declare war on Germany the next day, September 3; however, the British and French do not undertake significant military action against Germany
September 15, 1939 - German forces lay siege to Warsaw, the Polish capital
September 17, 1939 - The Soviet Union invades Poland from the east to occupy the portion that had been secretly allocated to it under the Soviet-German non-aggression pact
September 17, 1939 - Remaining Polish forces retreat to the Romanian Bridgehead, where they cross cross into Romania and are interned by the Romanian Army
September 28, 1939 - Warsaw falls after a three-week siege that had withstood relentless German air, artillery, and ground attacks; isolated Polish pockets hold out until the first week of October 1939
September 28, 1939 - Germany and the Soviet Union agree to make changes to their respective spheres of influence as set forth in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
October 8 1939, Germany annexes western Poland and forms a German-run administration (called General Governorate) in the rest of German-assigned territory in Poland; the Soviet Unon also annexes its share of Polish territories, partitioning them among its subordinate states: Belarus, Ukraine, and later Lithuania

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