News
The map of the partition of Poland from the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, signed on Sep. 28, 1939
Germany and Ukraine reminded Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the treaties concluded between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939. The history lesson came in response to Moscow’s claims that the Red Army invaded eastern Poland in 1939 to “prevent genocide.” The argument between the three foreign ministries unfolded on Twitter, after the Russian diplomatic agency posted the following:
“On September 17, 1939, the Red Army launched a military operation in Poland’s eastern regions, preventing the genocide of the population of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine.”
“Seriously?” the German foreign ministry retorted, adding the map of the partition of Poland from the secret protocol to the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, signed after both Soviet and Nazi German troops invaded the country. The Ukrainian foreign ministry supported modern-day Germany by posting an angry goose meme captioned “Who made a deal with the Nazis to partition Poland? Who did this?”
Germany’s Federal Foreign Office signed the map with the hashtags #MolotovRibbentropPact and #HitlerStalinPact, but in reality, this map was part of the Boundary and Friendship Treaty, which was signed a little later, on Sep. 28, 1939 — after the Soviet invasion of Poland and its double defeat by the Nazis and the USSR. This lesser-known treaty fixed the situation on the ground and resulted in the USSR getting control over much less Polish territory than had been outlined under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In compensation, Nazi Germany gave up its claims to Lithuania, releasing it into the USSR’s sphere of influence.
The Boundary and Friendship Treaty’s additional protocol provided for the transfer of populations from the occupied territories between the two countries. Germany accepted persons of German origin, while the USSR accepted ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Ruthenians. The USSR refused to accept refugees of other ethnicities, most notably Jews, and returned them to the German zone of occupation, where most of them became victims of the Holocaust. After Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union on Jun. 22, 1941, the Boundary and Friendship Treaty, like all other Soviet-German arrangements, lost its force.
Soviet invasion of Poland on Sep. 17, 1939
On Sep. 1, 1939, Nazi Germany began its invasion of Poland from the west, and on Sep. 17, 1939, Soviet troops followed suit from the east. It is this invasion that the Russian foreign ministry calls “preventing the genocide of the population.” In reality, however, Stalin’s USSR and Hitler's Germany divided Poland between themselves.
Nazi Germany's Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, outlined the Third Reich's plans in telegrams to Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov on Sep. 3, 1939, after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Germany's invasion of Poland:
“We definitely expect to have beaten the Polish Army decisively in a few weeks. We would then keep under military occupation the area that was established at Moscow as the German sphere of interest. We would naturally, however, for military reasons, also have to proceed further against such Polish military forces as are at that time located in the Polish area belonging to the Russian sphere of interest.
“Please discuss this at once with Molotov and see if the Soviet Union does not consider it desirable for Russian forces to move at the proper time against Polish forces in the Russian sphere of interest and, for their part, to occupy this territory. In our estimation, this would be not only a relief for us, but also, in the sense of the Moscow agreements, in the Soviet interest as well.”
The Soviet Union indeed justified the invasion of Poland by reference to the implausible claim that, if they did not intervene, “the consanguine Ukrainians and White Russians living on the territory of Poland who have been left to the whim of fate should be left defenseless.” For that, the Soviet leadership blamed the supposed “internal instability” of the Polish state, which was revealed by the Polish-German War. The Sep. 17 note by Vyacheslav Molotov for the Polish Ambassador Waclaw Grzybowski reads:
“During 10 days of military operations Poland has lost all its industrial regions and cultural centers. Warsaw as the capital of Poland no longer exists. The Polish Government has scattered and gives no signs of life. This means that the Polish State and its Government factually have ceased to exist. By this fact in itself treaties concluded between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Poland have lost their validity. Left to shift for itself and left without leadership Poland has become a convenient field for all kinds of eventualities and unforeseen contingencies which may constitute a threat to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Therefore, having been heretofore neutral, the Soviet Government can no longer adopt a neutral attitude to these facts.”
Ambassador Grzybowski resolutely refused to accept the document and rejected Molotov’s claims:
“None of the arguments used to justify the transformation of Polish-Soviet agreements into useless pieces of paper withstand reasonable criticism. According to my information, the head of the Polish state and the government of Poland are on the Polish territory. ...The sovereignty of any state exists as long as soldiers of its regular army are fighting. ...What the note claims about the situation of national minorities in Poland is nonsense. All of the minorities are actively demonstrating their full solidarity with Poland in its fight against the German invasion. ...Napoleon Bonaparte captured Moscow, but as long as Kutuzov's armies existed, Russia was also believed to exist.”