Soviets tricked the governments of Baltic countries, invited them to Moscow to discuss business relations, but instead demanded bases in the Baltics. Bear in mind, The Soviets were allied with the Nazis at the time. Next summer, in 1940, while having received military bases with personnel outnumbering the local defense forces in the Baltics, Soviets orchestrated coups under ultimatums of military action against the Baltic countries, who had declared impartiality (like Switzerland). We were occupied three times during WW2 - 1940-1941 by the Soviets, 1941-1944 by the Nazis and 1944-1991 by the Soviets. 1945 did not mean liberation for Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, unlike in the Western Europe. We were sold out by the Allies.
The arrangement between the USSR and Germany was definitely not defensive. The secret clauses of the Ribentrop-Molotov Pact clearly stated that not if, but when one side attacked, the other would help it. Stalin did not believe that the Germans would attack the USSR, he believed that they would go west, start fighting there and then he could take advantage of it. Hitler did not believe that Stalin would attack Germany, so he counted on surprise. So both sides came to an agreement with the idea that Poland had no right to exist, and we would attack the other side when it was not expected. Once there was a fight between them, as evidenced by documents shown by Russia under Jelcyn and then hidden again by Putin, the USSR was preparing to attack Germany. But not as a liberator and ally of the Allies, but as the "fire of the revolution", the plan was to attack Germany by surprise and occupy it and all the conquered countries, incorporating it into the USSR. Poland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands were all supposed to be part of the great Soviet empire.
Hi Connor, yes there were many types of fuse, some detonated on impact, some were designed to detonate after impact, some airburst, it was dependant on the target, sometimes the fuse failed to detonate we are still digging them today, there is a great tv series from the early 80's called "Danger UXB" it about the bomb disposal teams dealing with these UneXploded Bombs during the war (there are episodes on youtube if you fancy watching)
The Katyn massacre[a] was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD (the Soviet secret police), at Stalin's order in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv NKVD prisons and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered by Nazi German forces in 1943.[2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
6:00: There exised different bombs for aerial bombing. Allied air strikes on German cities were quite sophisticated and would typically have 3 types: First: High explosive bombs (detonating on impact). Second: incindiary bombs (This was done in order to first get rid of the roofs of houses and then set the houses on fire. Incindiary bombs alone would often glide off the rooftops and do minimal damage). Third: Mixed with the incindiary bombs were high explosive bombs with timed fuses. These were meant to kill - or scare off - the fire fighters who would arrive after the air raid. These timed bombs sometimes didn't explode (the fuses were not very accurate). So there are still some live bombs buried in German cities. (For instance, in 2012 a huge 250kg bomb was found in a very densely populated part of Munich. That bomb was still live. So much so that the bomb squad did not dare to move it and had to blow it up on site in a controlled explosion. More than 100,000 residents had to be evacuated before that).
The bombs dropped on London, for instance, had different fuse mechanisms. Some were made to go off 'before' impact, some 'on' impact and others were set to explode several hours later' This series is hard to watch, but I'm grateful to have the chance to do so through your Channel. Thank you Connor. How quickly and easily human beings are able to discard the Rules of 'Civilised' Society and become unrecognisable in their cruelty. Love from the UK. Take care Connor.
Right, so, there are a couple of things: A few days before the start of WW2, Germany and the Soviet Union made a non-agression pact, the so-called Molotov-Ribentropp Pact. The non-agression part of the pact was public knowledge. However, there was a secret part of the pact where Germany and the USSR agreed to invade Poland and split it between them. So, no, the USSR were not surprised and reactive to Germany's invasion of Poland, they knew exactly what was coming, but they didn't know the exact timing and they weren't as prepared as Germany was to invade immediately, thus the 17 day delay between one invasion and the other. However, to everyone else other than Germany and USSR, the Soviet attack on Poland was completely unexpected, as no one knew about the secret part of the pact, and nazism and communism were ideologically enemies, so the idea of them cooperating to attack another country seemed far-fetched. And, well, Germany and the soviets definately didn't trust each other, but were willing to cooperate until they felt ready to deal with each other. I think Germany benefited way more from that cooperation, since it needed a lot of the resources from the Soviet Union to survive, such as grain and oil, but Stalin felt the USSR was not ready to take on Germany, so he was willing to play nice until he felt in a strong enough position. I've seen people overanalyse the wording of the Molotov-Ribentrop Pact to argue that the USSR didn't plan to invade Poland, that it was a theoretical provision should Poland fall to prevent it from fully falling into Germany's hands, but you'd have to be extremely generous with the interpretation of the wording of the pact to conclude that the Soviets didn't want to invade Poland together with Germany. Stalin had a fixation and a hatred for Poland because in 1920 Poland stopped the USSR from expanding west and part of the strategic blame was on Stalin who was back then one of the commanders of part of the soviet army fighting against Poland. So, no, I don't think most of the poles felt very safe surrendering to the soviets, I'd say it was pretty much as bad as surrendering to the Germans. And the Soviets behaved almost as bad with the polish people as the germans did. Stalin's regime was as brutal as Hitler's, just in a different flavour. Also, I am sure it will come up in future episodes, but guess how those "security pacts" that the USSR "offered" to the baltic states ended up? Yeah, once the red army was in those countries, they were coerced into fully joining the Soviet Union. Sounds familiar? "Referendums" at gunpoint in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine? Some things don't change... Anyway, about ethnic Germans in Poland, I think they were more widely spread throughout western Poland than you think. At the very end of the 18th century, Poland stopped to exist as an independent country and was split between Prussia, Austria and Russia, and for more than 100 years, western Poland was part of Prussia and then Germany. So, that's the reason for the sizeable German minority in Poland. When Poland regained its independence in 1918 after WW1, and some Germans left then, but some stayed. Actually, for most of the 1920s and the first hald of the 1930s Poland was under an autocratic rule by a left-leaning (but definately not communist) leader called Piłsudski, who had a policy of integrating the ethnic minorities within the Polish state. His successors, however, were a little more hostile towards ethnic minorities, but of course, not as bad as the Nazi Germans or other totalitarian powers. Also, yeah, Poland suffered a lot and suffered the longest during WW2, but also had one of the largest and best organized resistence movements (the only one that was comparable was in Yugoslavia). Also, a lot of Polish soldiers who escaped from the 1939 invasion, made their way, first to France and then to the UK and continued fighting with the allies from exile under their own flag. The British promised them the chance to go back to Poland and free it when the right time came, however, they were betrayed in order to keep Stalin happy and the allies did let Stalin turn Poland into a communist puppet state, while most of the soldiers who fought along the western allies were not allowed to come back because they didn't believe in communism.
Polish officers taken prisoner by the Russians in September and October 1939 were murdered by the NKVD in the spring and summer of 1940. About 22,000 top officers died. In other operations, both Russians and Germans murdered the Polish elite, professors, teachers, scientists, doctors and more. Both nations used similar methods - they invited, for example, university employees for consultations, promised security, and then carried out arrests and executions. Russians and Germans have a similar mentality, which is why they often cooperated with each other. Recently, they built Nord Streams together, even though the Baltic nations and Poles protested.
The difference between the Germans and the Soviets was that the Germans murdered selectively, while the Soviets were 'equal opportunity' killers-they didn’t discriminate. In addition to killing enemies and civilians, they sent their own troops on suicidal attacks, with the NKVD waiting behind to shoot anyone who disobeyed. That, by the way, is exactly the same method Russia is using in Ukraine today. Russians place no value on human life and that is a major factor explaining the huge losses they suffered.
good thing, things have changed since those dark days. I remmeber how upset russians were aboutthe opening mission in COH2. Where you play a special forces team taking out enemy spots and you just buy time and distractions by burning a few thousand conscripts for every target. But every historian i heard about it was more like "yeah that is about right".
tbf i only realised that from Oversimplified. Who mentions it very clearly though. That is how much this fact was pushed under the historical carpet. I assume Poland remembers. Especially these days.
Regarding who is better to surrender to: the Germans or the Russians at this time? The answer is clear to me. Germany. You could end up badly here and here. But... My grandfather was sent to a German prisoner of war camp (Oflag) and survived (generally, officers were treated quite well by the Germans, who generally respected international law regarding prisoners of war). When the Russians "liberated" Poland, my grandfather and other prisoners of war (when they were returning to Poznań from the war camp) were followed by the Russian army. He said that they were terrified then. They absolutely did not want to fall into the hands of the barbarian army. When the Russians "liberated" (they were then "Allies") they murdered, burned, destroyed everything, raped and stole. Let's not forget about Katyń. This is the best example that explains the difference. If my grandfather had been captured by the Russians then, I might not have been born.
Memoirs are the source that can be used but you can't build your whole point of view based on just that. Do we have facts, like approximate number of rapes, burned villages and other by the Soviets? The Germans treated the Slavs awfully in their camps, because they considered them subhumans. Do we have statistics of deaths in Nazi and Soviet camps?
Those 22 million casualties were not exclusively Russian but Soviet, encompassing all the constituent nations, including Ukrainians and many other ethnic groups.
You must have to watch this document about ww2, 6 episodes at all and they are on RUclips: APOCALYPSE: HE SECOND WORLD WAR Best documentary about it I have ever see ! Like a Epic History TV thing but in "extra edition"
Here is a simplified but true statement about the causes of World War II: two imperial powers took advantage of the weakness of the West and began to divide the world between themselves. The first victim of this imperial war was Poland. Today we have a situation similar to that just before World War II. Two imperial powers (Russia and China) have already begun to pursue their own interests by fighting their own wars with the West (Russia in Ukraine), and China through a trade war. World War III is inevitable because empires must be defeated.
As pole i cant truly say who was worse germans or soviets. In my opinion they were two sides of the same coin.
Soviets tricked the governments of Baltic countries, invited them to Moscow to discuss business relations, but instead demanded bases in the Baltics. Bear in mind, The Soviets were allied with the Nazis at the time. Next summer, in 1940, while having received military bases with personnel outnumbering the local defense forces in the Baltics, Soviets orchestrated coups under ultimatums of military action against the Baltic countries, who had declared impartiality (like Switzerland). We were occupied three times during WW2 - 1940-1941 by the Soviets, 1941-1944 by the Nazis and 1944-1991 by the Soviets. 1945 did not mean liberation for Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, unlike in the Western Europe. We were sold out by the Allies.
Well... From a Polish perspective, the USSR started WWII as an ally of the Third Reich and together with it. And then they simply fell out.
That's why we hate Russia - we know how agressive it is.
The arrangement between the USSR and Germany was definitely not defensive. The secret clauses of the Ribentrop-Molotov Pact clearly stated that not if, but when one side attacked, the other would help it. Stalin did not believe that the Germans would attack the USSR, he believed that they would go west, start fighting there and then he could take advantage of it. Hitler did not believe that Stalin would attack Germany, so he counted on surprise. So both sides came to an agreement with the idea that Poland had no right to exist, and we would attack the other side when it was not expected. Once there was a fight between them, as evidenced by documents shown by Russia under Jelcyn and then hidden again by Putin, the USSR was preparing to attack Germany. But not as a liberator and ally of the Allies, but as the "fire of the revolution", the plan was to attack Germany by surprise and occupy it and all the conquered countries, incorporating it into the USSR. Poland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands were all supposed to be part of the great Soviet empire.
Hi Connor, yes there were many types of fuse, some detonated on impact, some were designed to detonate after impact, some airburst, it was dependant on the target, sometimes the fuse failed to detonate we are still digging them today, there is a great tv series from the early 80's called "Danger UXB" it about the bomb disposal teams dealing with these UneXploded Bombs during the war (there are episodes on youtube if you fancy watching)
..some of this unexploded are found occasionally til today..
The Katyn massacre[a] was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD (the Soviet secret police), at Stalin's order in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv NKVD prisons and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered by Nazi German forces in 1943.[2]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
6:00:
There exised different bombs for aerial bombing.
Allied air strikes on German cities were quite sophisticated and would typically have 3 types:
First: High explosive bombs (detonating on impact).
Second: incindiary bombs
(This was done in order to first get rid of the roofs of houses and then set the houses on fire.
Incindiary bombs alone would often glide off the rooftops and do minimal damage).
Third: Mixed with the incindiary bombs were high explosive bombs with timed fuses.
These were meant to kill - or scare off - the fire fighters who would arrive after the air raid.
These timed bombs sometimes didn't explode (the fuses were not very accurate).
So there are still some live bombs buried in German cities.
(For instance, in 2012 a huge 250kg bomb was found in a very densely populated part of Munich. That bomb was still live. So much so that the bomb squad did not dare to move it and had to blow it up on site in a controlled explosion. More than 100,000 residents had to be evacuated before that).
The bombs dropped on London, for instance, had different fuse mechanisms. Some were made to go off 'before' impact, some 'on' impact and others were set to explode several hours later' This series is hard to watch, but I'm grateful to have the chance to do so through your Channel. Thank you Connor. How quickly and easily human beings are able to discard the Rules of 'Civilised' Society and become unrecognisable in their cruelty. Love from the UK. Take care Connor.
Right, so, there are a couple of things: A few days before the start of WW2, Germany and the Soviet Union made a non-agression pact, the so-called Molotov-Ribentropp Pact. The non-agression part of the pact was public knowledge. However, there was a secret part of the pact where Germany and the USSR agreed to invade Poland and split it between them. So, no, the USSR were not surprised and reactive to Germany's invasion of Poland, they knew exactly what was coming, but they didn't know the exact timing and they weren't as prepared as Germany was to invade immediately, thus the 17 day delay between one invasion and the other. However, to everyone else other than Germany and USSR, the Soviet attack on Poland was completely unexpected, as no one knew about the secret part of the pact, and nazism and communism were ideologically enemies, so the idea of them cooperating to attack another country seemed far-fetched. And, well, Germany and the soviets definately didn't trust each other, but were willing to cooperate until they felt ready to deal with each other. I think Germany benefited way more from that cooperation, since it needed a lot of the resources from the Soviet Union to survive, such as grain and oil, but Stalin felt the USSR was not ready to take on Germany, so he was willing to play nice until he felt in a strong enough position. I've seen people overanalyse the wording of the Molotov-Ribentrop Pact to argue that the USSR didn't plan to invade Poland, that it was a theoretical provision should Poland fall to prevent it from fully falling into Germany's hands, but you'd have to be extremely generous with the interpretation of the wording of the pact to conclude that the Soviets didn't want to invade Poland together with Germany. Stalin had a fixation and a hatred for Poland because in 1920 Poland stopped the USSR from expanding west and part of the strategic blame was on Stalin who was back then one of the commanders of part of the soviet army fighting against Poland. So, no, I don't think most of the poles felt very safe surrendering to the soviets, I'd say it was pretty much as bad as surrendering to the Germans. And the Soviets behaved almost as bad with the polish people as the germans did. Stalin's regime was as brutal as Hitler's, just in a different flavour. Also, I am sure it will come up in future episodes, but guess how those "security pacts" that the USSR "offered" to the baltic states ended up? Yeah, once the red army was in those countries, they were coerced into fully joining the Soviet Union. Sounds familiar? "Referendums" at gunpoint in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine? Some things don't change...
Anyway, about ethnic Germans in Poland, I think they were more widely spread throughout western Poland than you think. At the very end of the 18th century, Poland stopped to exist as an independent country and was split between Prussia, Austria and Russia, and for more than 100 years, western Poland was part of Prussia and then Germany. So, that's the reason for the sizeable German minority in Poland. When Poland regained its independence in 1918 after WW1, and some Germans left then, but some stayed. Actually, for most of the 1920s and the first hald of the 1930s Poland was under an autocratic rule by a left-leaning (but definately not communist) leader called Piłsudski, who had a policy of integrating the ethnic minorities within the Polish state. His successors, however, were a little more hostile towards ethnic minorities, but of course, not as bad as the Nazi Germans or other totalitarian powers.
Also, yeah, Poland suffered a lot and suffered the longest during WW2, but also had one of the largest and best organized resistence movements (the only one that was comparable was in Yugoslavia). Also, a lot of Polish soldiers who escaped from the 1939 invasion, made their way, first to France and then to the UK and continued fighting with the allies from exile under their own flag. The British promised them the chance to go back to Poland and free it when the right time came, however, they were betrayed in order to keep Stalin happy and the allies did let Stalin turn Poland into a communist puppet state, while most of the soldiers who fought along the western allies were not allowed to come back because they didn't believe in communism.
Polish officers taken prisoner by the Russians in September and October 1939 were murdered by the NKVD in the spring and summer of 1940. About 22,000 top officers died. In other operations, both Russians and Germans murdered the Polish elite, professors, teachers, scientists, doctors and more. Both nations used similar methods - they invited, for example, university employees for consultations, promised security, and then carried out arrests and executions.
Russians and Germans have a similar mentality, which is why they often cooperated with each other. Recently, they built Nord Streams together, even though the Baltic nations and Poles protested.
The difference between the Germans and the Soviets was that the Germans murdered selectively, while the Soviets were 'equal opportunity' killers-they didn’t discriminate. In addition to killing enemies and civilians, they sent their own troops on suicidal attacks, with the NKVD waiting behind to shoot anyone who disobeyed. That, by the way, is exactly the same method Russia is using in Ukraine today. Russians place no value on human life and that is a major factor explaining the huge losses they suffered.
good thing, things have changed since those dark days.
I remmeber how upset russians were aboutthe opening mission in COH2. Where you play a special forces team taking out enemy spots and you just buy time and distractions by burning a few thousand conscripts for every target.
But every historian i heard about it was more like "yeah that is about right".
And remember the Poles had a larger military than the US in 1939 (16th v 17th) at the time
tbf i only realised that from Oversimplified. Who mentions it very clearly though.
That is how much this fact was pushed under the historical carpet. I assume Poland remembers. Especially these days.
Soviets also trained with Germans before the war eg. Kama tank school and Lipetsk fighter-pilot school
Regarding who is better to surrender to: the Germans or the Russians at this time? The answer is clear to me. Germany. You could end up badly here and here. But... My grandfather was sent to a German prisoner of war camp (Oflag) and survived (generally, officers were treated quite well by the Germans, who generally respected international law regarding prisoners of war). When the Russians "liberated" Poland, my grandfather and other prisoners of war (when they were returning to Poznań from the war camp) were followed by the Russian army. He said that they were terrified then. They absolutely did not want to fall into the hands of the barbarian army. When the Russians "liberated" (they were then "Allies") they murdered, burned, destroyed everything, raped and stole. Let's not forget about Katyń. This is the best example that explains the difference. If my grandfather had been captured by the Russians then, I might not have been born.
Memoirs are the source that can be used but you can't build your whole point of view based on just that. Do we have facts, like approximate number of rapes, burned villages and other by the Soviets? The Germans treated the Slavs awfully in their camps, because they considered them subhumans. Do we have statistics of deaths in Nazi and Soviet camps?
Those 22 million casualties were not exclusively Russian but Soviet, encompassing all the constituent nations, including Ukrainians and many other ethnic groups.
On the 10 May 1940, the UK attacked Iceland, a sovereign nation!
2:49 How is that shocking for you?😅 You said you know more than less about WW2, but you didn’t heard about Ribbentrop-Molotov pact?
2:01 Why you say as if Russia only invaded Poland? They also took land from Finland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Persia
Poland was positioned so bad on map when u have two totally evil nations on both sides, and not really any escape routes.
10:22 reäly ...yess säd cruälity
You must have to watch this document about ww2, 6 episodes at all and they are on RUclips: APOCALYPSE: HE SECOND WORLD WAR
Best documentary about it I have ever see ! Like a Epic History TV thing but in "extra edition"
Here is a simplified but true statement about the causes of World War II: two imperial powers took advantage of the weakness of the West and began to divide the world between themselves. The first victim of this imperial war was Poland. Today we have a situation similar to that just before World War II. Two imperial powers (Russia and China) have already begun to pursue their own interests by fighting their own wars with the West (Russia in Ukraine), and China through a trade war. World War III is inevitable because empires must be defeated.
In Poland they call Russia the big bully and Germany the little bully
And who sponsored them? Not US?
Im from Lublin. Bug river is still border, Ukrainie Belarus and Poland... Like 1939
Have you ever watched "Europa The Last Battle"? It's an a very interesting documentary.
Russia did not give parts of Poland back, its currently part of ukraine
🤷♂️sometimes a russian annexe goes in your favour sometimes not i guess 😂😂😂
Germans were a side of Hague Convention, Soviets weren't (as POW) - your choice wasn't wise..