Residents of rural villages and small towns generally did better than big city dwellers, while the By the end of the Soviet invasion, the Soviet Union took 50.1% of the territory of Poland (195,300 km²), with 12,662,000 people.All institutions of the dismantled Polish state were closed down and reopened with new directors who were mostly Russian and in rare cases Ukrainian or Polish.The Soviet authorities attempted to remove all signs of Polish existence and activity in the area.All the media became controlled by Moscow. Vintage Books, New York 2003.
The communist-controlled PKWN was installed in July 1944 in In late 1944 and early 1945, the Poles on the one hand tended to resent the Soviet Union and communism and feared Poland's becoming a Soviet dependency, while on the other the leftist viewpoints were increasingly popular among the population. Historical Map of Europe & the Mediterranean (25 May 1940 - Blitzkrieg in the West: While the Allies were still dealing with the fall of Denmark and Norway, Germany struck west. Map of the provinces of Poland, today, and before 1998 This site is of use in knowing what
The most catastrophic series of events was the extermination of the Jews known as the About one-sixth of Polish citizens lost their lives in the war,Under the terms of two decrees by Hitler (8 October and 12 October 1939), large areas of western Poland were annexed to Germany. Wielka historia świata, tom 11, wielkie wojny XX wieku (1914–1945) [The Great History of the World, vol. Offsetting this was the German campaign of extermination of the Polish By the end of the Polish Defensive War, the Soviet Union took over 52.1% of Poland's territory (~200,000 kmInitially the Soviet occupation gained support among some members of the linguistic minorities who had chafed under the nationalist policies of the Second Polish Republic. 5. Online; Mapa Polski (taktyczna) (Tactical maps of Poland). The Service was replaced by the Polish Government-in-Exile in Paris with the Union of Armed Struggle(Zwi… In schools the language of instruction was changed to Ukrainian or Belarusian.Many enterprises were taken over by the state or failed, small trade and production shops had to join The Soviets exploited past ethnic tensions between Poles and other ethnic groups, inciting and encouraging violence against Poles by calling upon the minorities to "rectify the wrongs they had suffered during twenty years of Polish rule".Parts of the Ukrainian population initially welcomed the end of Polish ruleTerror policies were also applied to the civilian population. ), pp. 11: Great Wars of the 20th century (1914–1945)], pp. Warsaw was eventually bombed into submission. The General Government had the largest in Europe population of Jews and was designated to be the primary location of Nazi installations for the elimination of Jews.Prisoners of many nationalities were kept at Auschwitz and parts of the complex were used as a brutal and deadly labor camp, but about 80% of the arriving Jews were directly selected for death (some 900,000 people). Large numbers were expelled from land intended for German colonisation, and forced to resettle in the General-Government area. The attack began with a German invasion of the Netherlands and northern Belgium. Wielka historia świata, tom 11, wielkie wojny XX wieku (1914–1945) [The Great History of the World, vol. Polska w czasach niepodległości i II wojny światowej (1918–1945) [Poland in Times of Independence and World War II (1918–1945)], Kraków: Fogra, Brzoza, Czesław (2003).
Much of the Ukrainian population initially welcomed the unification with the Soviet Ukraine because twenty years earlier their There were large groups of prewar Polish citizens, notably Jewish youth and, to a lesser extent, the Ukrainian peasants, who saw the Soviet power as an opportunity to start political or social activity outside their traditional ethnic or cultural groups.
Hundreds of thousands of Poles were deported to Germany for forced labour in industry and agriculture, where many thousands died. The Times Complete History of the World (8th ed. Wielka historia świata, tom 11, wielkie wojny XX wieku (1914–1945) [The Great History of the World, vol. Kraków: Fogra.