This week, seventy years ago, 800,000 soldiers of the Red Army, divided into two “Fronts,” or army groups, led by Generals Mikhail Kovalyov and Semyon Timoshenko, moved into eastern Poland, in order to protect, “...the Ukranian and Belorussian minorities of eastern Poland in view of the imminent Polish collapse.”  Within a year, General Timoshenko would be named a Marshal of the Soviet Union and People’s Commissar of Defense.
    The Germans had suggested that the Soviets join them at the outset of the invasion. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov responded that it would be done, “...at a suitable time, but that, “...this time had not yet come.”  On September 8, 1939, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop cabled German Ambassador, Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg that events in Poland were, “...progressing beyond our expectations...” and that the Reich would like to know, “...the military intentions of the Soviet government.”  During the ensuing week, Molotov refined the Soviet rational for its coming action.
    On September 17, 1939, Ambassador Schulenburg was summoned to the Kremlin for a 2:00 A.M. meeting with the top Soviet officials. Stalin told him that, “At 6:00 A.M., four hours from now, the Red Army will cross into Poland.”
    Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov announced that:
“Events arising out of the Polish-German War have revealed the internal insolvency and obvious impotence of the Polish State.  Polish ruling circles have suffered bankruptcy.  Warsaw, as the capital of the Polish State, no longer exists.  No one knows the whereabouts of the Polish government.  The population of Poland has been abandoned by their ill-starred leaders to their fate.  The Polish state and its government has virtually ceased to exist.  In view of this state of affairs, treaties concluded between the Soviet Union and Poland have ceased to operate.  A situation has arisen in Poland which demands of the Soviet government a special concern for the security of its state.  Poland has become a fertile field for any accidental and unexpected contingency that may create a menace to the Soviet Union.  Nor can it be demanded of the Soviet government that it remain indifferent to the fate of its blood brothers, the Ukranian and Belorussians, inhabiting Poland, who even formerly were without rights and who now have been abandoned entirely to their fate.  The Soviet government deems it its sacred duty to extend a hand of assistance to its brother Ukrainians and brother Belorussians inhabiting Poland.”
    With that, Poland ceased to exist. Again.
    By the time the Red Army moved west, the Poles had stripped their eastern border of troops to meet the German and Slovakian onslaught. Polish defenses were further undermined by the anti-Polish activities of the Ukrainians, Belorussians and Jews living in eastern Poland, and who, collectively comprised more than half of the area’s population, resented their Polish rulers and welcomed their Soviet “liberators.”
    On September 8, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop had written the Soviets, explaining that military necessity required the Wehrmacht to occupy Brzesc-Litewski, but that, as soon as possible, it would be transferred to Soviet administration. The letter was written because the Nazi/Soviet Pact of August divided Poland into Soviet and German spheres and Brzesc-Litewski was in the Soviet sphere. It had taken General Heinz Guderian’s XIX Panzer Corps three days to dislodge a makeshift defense force commanded by General Konstanty Plisowsky. Finally, on September 17, General Guderian was able to deliver the city and fortress to Soviet Brigadier General Semyon Krivoshein. On September 22, the two commanders reviewed a joint parade.  “Victory Arches” were erected which the Soviet soldiers decorated with swastikas and red stars. General Plisowsky was arrested by the NKVD and was one of the thousands of Poles executed at Katyn.
    Ironies abounded! First, this city was the scene of the execution of the Treaty of Brest-Litofsk between Imperial Germany and Communist Russia, in March of 1918, which ended World War I for Russia and stripped it of the Baltic States, Finland, Ukraine, Belarus, Bessarabia and Russian Poland (including Warsaw) that had been a part of the Russian Empire for over a century. Second was the fact that General Krivoshein was Jewish. Third was that, in less than two years there, Soviet troops would heroically resist the German invasion to the extent that the Belorussian city of Brest would be recognized as one of the thirteen Hero Cities of the Soviet Union.
    On September 19, the Red Army occupied Wilno, (or allowed Lithuanian troops to occupy it) which today is the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. Since Lwów was also in the Soviet sphere, General Wilhelm List turned over the siege to the Red Army, which occupied the city on September 22. It is now the Ukrainian city of L’viv. Two days later, the city of Grodno was occupied. It is now a part of Belarus. A few minor battles were left to be fought, but the end was never in doubt.
    It had all been so easy for the Red Army. This led to extreme overconfidence which, in turn, led to problems a few months later, in the invasion of Finland.
    The Soviets captured between 200,000 - 500,000 prisoners, who were then shipped east. However, because the Soviet Union did not consider itself at war with Poland, since it did not consider that Poland existed, it did not treat the captives as POWs, but rather as rebels against the new Soviet government.  Tens of thousands were shot, upon capture. Eight thousand officers were part of the 22,000 Poles murdered in the Katyn Forest, near Smolensk, Russia, to which there is a monument in Baltimore at Inner Harbor East. Although some Polish railroad workers had discovered the mass grave in 1942, nobody paid any attention to them. But when German soldiers discovered it, the Reich’s Propaganda Minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, recognizing a propaganda prize when he saw it, cranked up the volume.
    A team of twelve eminent European forensic scientists and their staffs was assembled and transported to the site to examine the bodies. Journalists and the Red Cross were invited to the site. The Soviets attempted to blame it on the Germans. But the scientists determined that the murders occurred in 1940, before the Germans arrived.  It was very embarrassing for the Soviet government and by implication, its Western Allies. Since the Soviet Union has been dismantled, and documents declassified, it has become obvious that the Soviets were responsible for the murders.
    Great Britain and France figured they had enough on their hands with the Wehrmacht and did not need to be dealing with the Red Army at the same time. When Polish Ambassador, Count Edward Racynski, reminded British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, of Britain’s obligation to come to Poland’s aid should it be attacked by another European country, he was rebuffed with the observation that it was Britain’s business whether to declare war on the U.S.S.R.
    On September 28, the German Reich and the Soviet Union, at Stalin’s suggestion, made adjustments to their division line, whereby, Lithuania joined the other Baltic states in the Soviet Union’s sphere, while shifting the Soviet Union’s share of Poland east of the Pisa/Narew/Bug/San rivers line. By this adjustment, the Germans were given more of Poland to administer than the two countries had originally envisioned.
    The Soviet share of Poland incorporated an additional 200 square miles of territory and 13,500,000 additional citizens into the Soviet Union, not counting Lithuania. More importantly, it moved the country’s western border 150 miles west, giving it that much more of a buffer against the German Reich. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were shipped east, with untold numbers dying.
    On October 26, “elections” were held for the newly reconstituted Ukrainian and Belorussian assemblies and the contiguous former Polish territories incorporated into the Ukrainian and Belorussian Soviet Republics. For the first time, the Ukraine was not divided amongst other countries.
    Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov reported to the Supreme Soviet, on October 31, that, “A short blow by the German army, and subsequently by the Red Army, was enough for nothing to be left of this ugly creature [Poland] of the Treaty of Versailles.”  This was the Soviet Union’s first step at reclaiming the lands of Imperial Russia lost after The Great War.
    The eastern border of Poland remains where Stalin affixed it in September 1939.

Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.