WWII
1939 to 1945. The invasion from both sides, the occupation, the ghettos and the camps, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warsaw Uprising, and the borders redrawn afterwards.
Part of Poland
9 moments in this segment.
- - Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. August 23, 1939. Germany and the USSR sign a non-aggression pact with a secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence. Sealed Poland's fate; Soviet invasion would follow the German one within 17 days.
- - German Invasion. September 1, 1939, 4:45 AM. Battleship Schleswig-Holstein opens fire on Polish positions at Westerplatte, Gdańsk. Luftwaffe bombs Wieluń. World War II begins. Polish defence collapses in 35 days under Blitzkrieg + Soviet rear-attack.
- - Soviet Invasion. September 17, 1939. USSR invades eastern Poland per the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop protocol. The Polish government flees to Romania. Polish state collapses; territory divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
- - Katyn Massacre. April-May 1940. Soviet NKVD murders ~22,000 Polish officers, intelligentsia, and police in the Katyn Forest and other sites. Soviet Union denied responsibility until 1990. The pre-war Polish officer class effectively eliminated.
- - Auschwitz Opens. May 20, 1940. The first concentration-camp inmates arrive at Auschwitz, initially a Polish-political-prisoner camp; expanded into the largest Nazi death camp 1941-42. 1.1 million people killed; ~960,000 of them Jews.
- - Auschwitz Liberated. January 27, 1945. Soviet 60th Army liberates Auschwitz, finds ~7,000 surviving prisoners. Most had been forced on death marches west days earlier. January 27 is now International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
- - Yalta Conference. February 4-11, 1945. Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin agree at Yalta that postwar Poland will be under Soviet sphere of influence. The wartime Polish-government-in-exile in London not invited. Sealed 44 years of communist Poland.
- - Polish Borders Shifted West. 1945. Poland's borders shifted ~200km west, gaining Silesia and former East Prussia from Germany, losing Vilnius and Lwów to the USSR. ~15M people displaced. The most consequential single border-shift of the postwar era.
- - Auschwitz Liberation Ceremony. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum marks the eighty-first anniversary of the camp's liberation on 27 January, honouring the roughly 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, murdered there. The ceremony at Oświęcim is carried live.
