Charles River Editors - The Katyn Forest Massacre: The History of the Notorious Slaughter of Polish Prisoners by the Soviets during World War II

A picture of a memorial commemorating the massacre in Poland

The Katyn Forest Massacre

It has been suggested that the motive for this terrible step was to reassure the Germans as to the reality of Soviet anti-Polish policy. This explanation is completely unconvincing in view of the care with which the Soviet regime kept the massacre secret from the very German government it was supposed to impressA more likely explanation is that [the massacre] should be seen as looking forward to a future in which there might again be a Poland on the Soviet Union's western border. Since he intended to keep the eastern portion of the country in any case, Stalin could be certain that any revived Poland would be unfriendly. Under those circumstances, depriving it of a large proportion of its military and technical elite would make it weaker. Gerhard Weinberg

During the late 1930s the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin and the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler reached a secret alliance, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. By the terms of this agreement, the two dictators divided up Eastern Europe between them, and for a time Stalin even sought Axis membership.

Though the alliance forged between the fascist and communist states could not survive their diametrically opposed views, they cooperated long enough to conquer Poland together in 1939. Of course, as most people now know, the invasion of Poland was merely the preface to the Nazi blitzkrieg of most of Western Europe, which would include Denmark, Belgium, and France by the summer of 1940. The resistance put up by these countries is often portrayed as weak, and the narrative is that the British stood alone in 1940 against the Nazi onslaught, defending the British Isles during the Battle of Britain and preventing a potential German invasion.

In particular, the campaign in Poland is remembered as one in which an antiquated Polish army was quickly pummeled by the worlds most modern army. Polish lancers charging in a valiant yet idiotic attack against German tanks is the only image from the 1939 Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland remaining in the popular imagination today. Originating as a piece of Nazi propaganda, paradoxically adopted by the Poles as a patriotic myth, the fictional charge obscures the actual events of September 1939. Outnumbered, outgunned, and under-equipped, the Polish army nevertheless inflicted heavy losses on the invading Wehrmacht. In fact, only the unexpected advance of Soviet forces from the east put a quick end to the struggle and saw the Polish republic partitioned again after just 20 years of independence. Nonetheless, the campaign that started World War II was a bloody sign of things to come as the conflict engulfed the globe.

While the Germans performed the lions share of military action in defeating Poland and reaped the choicest regions for themselves as a consequence the Soviets showed themselves no laggards in establishing tyrannical control over the Polish zone assigned to them by treaty. NKVD death squads, mass deportations, and systematic repression began almost immediately in the Soviet-controlled part of Poland.

The Gestapo applied their own forms of brutality in the German zone of the conquered nation, but the results proved starkly different. A large-scale, well-organized Polish Resistance movement flourished in the German zone, exhibiting high morale and an activist approach that testified to the relatively amateurish nature of the Gestapo repression random violence for intimidation rather than systematic quashing of all independence and defiance.

The NKVD, on the other hand, managed to virtually eliminate any large-scale resistance in the Russian zone. The Soviet policy proved a dark success, at least until the Wehrmacht surged crushingly across the border into the Soviet Union during the Operation Barbarossa offensive of June 1941. A key element of this policy lay in the elimination of tens of thousands of leading Poles in what became known as the Katyn Massacre or the Katyn Forest Massacre.

The massacre, a series of mass executions that murdered over 20,000 Poles, was one of the most controversial events of the war. The Soviets blamed the Nazis for the slaughter for decades, only admitting its responsibility in 1990 as the USSR was on the verge of dissolution, and even then they refused to officially find any Soviet individuals liable or responsible.

The Katyn Forest Massacre: The History of the Notorious Slaughter of Polish Prisoners by the Soviets during World War II chronicles one of the most notorious massacres of the war. Along with pictures of important people and places, you will learn about the Katyn Forest Massacre like never before.