75 years ago, on September 1, 1939, the Wehrmacht troops crossed the German-Polish border. This is how the Second World War began. On September 17, units of the Red Army moved across the Soviet-Polish border.
The armies of the two powers were moving towards each other, to the demarcation line drawn on August 23 by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and secret agreements to it.
THEY FATTED FOR THE HOMELAND
Already on September 2, the Polish Brest Fortress was first bombarded by Hitler's Luftwaffe, a week later Heinz Guderian's tanks moved to storm it. The defense of the citadel was led by the commander of the "Brest" task force, Brigadier General Konstantin Plisovsky. At his disposal were four battalions (three infantry and an engineer) supported by several batteries, two armored trains and several Renault FT-17 tanks from the First World War. The defenders of the fortress did not have anti-tank weapons.
The Germans outnumbered the Poles in the number of infantry 2 times, in the number of tanks - 4 times, artillery - 6 times. On September 14, 1939, 77 Wehrmacht tanks tried to take the city and the fortress on the move, but were repulsed by Polish infantry with the support of a dozen tanks. At the same time, German artillery and aircraft began bombing the fortress. The next morning, after fierce street fighting, the Nazis captured most of Brest. The defenders retreated to the fortress, replenishing its garrison.
On September 15, a motorized and two tank divisions attacked the citadel from different directions.
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From the memoirs of the corporal of the Polish Army Michal Semenyuk: “I was the commander of a machine-gun platoon. The first time a German struck at night. Tanks and infantry came from the city. They threw ours from the outer ramparts of the fortress. But they could not advance further. In the morning, the artillery began to nail - it was a sheer nightmare. Landmines simply plowed the citadel. Then the attacks of the Germans. First, second, third … Our machine guns stood advantageously in equipped positions, cut the German infantry with dagger fire. But shells exploded in the fortress, many of our people died from the shelling … We held the Terespolsky bridge to the last. And Guderian's assault teams rolled back.
At dawn on the 16th, bombers hummed over the fortress. Only five artillery barrels remained in the citadel. The casemates and cellars were overflowing with wounded. Around ten in the morning - a new assault. Two German battalions and an armored corps marched towards the bleeding fortress and the city of Brest. In the morning of the same day, the panzer and motorized divisions of the Wehrmacht began an assault on the fortress, and again unsuccessfully. Guderian, planning to take the fortress and the city from the march, was forced to admit that his units suffered significant losses.
In total, seven German attacks were repulsed from September 14 to 17. By this time, the Poles had lost almost half of the garrison personnel. Plisovsky was seriously wounded. At night, under heavy fire, the surviving defenders of the fortress moved to the bank of the Bug along the only bridge not captured by the Germans. By 17 September the citadel and Brest were occupied by the Nazis. The fighting subsided, but the remote Fifth Fort of the fortress, where the Polish infantry battalion headed by Captain Wenceslas Radziszewski was located, continued to defend itself until September 22.
LARGE STUDY FEES
Preparations for the campaign of the Red Army across the Soviet-Polish border and the upcoming hostilities began on September 4, 1939.
On this day, by order of the USSR People's Commissar for Defense, the dismissal of conscripts in the Belarusian and Kiev special, Leningrad, Moscow, Kalinin and Kharkov military districts was delayed for a month. The military councils of these districts received a directive from the People's Commissar of Defense demanding to raise all military units and institutions of the district from September 7 to large training camps. These fees de facto meant a hidden mobilization of the Red Army, the decision on which was made the day before. A symptomatic detail: the headquarters of the Belarusian and Kiev special districts were renamed the headquarters of the Belarusian and Ukrainian fronts.
The Reich Ambassador in Moscow, Werner von Schulenburg, reported to the German Foreign Ministry: "Molotov … asks to be informed as accurately as possible when one can count on the capture of Warsaw." Berlin provided information on the progress of the Wehrmacht flawlessly. Already on September 9, the USSR People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov sent the head of the German Foreign Ministry Joachim von Ribbentrop a telephone message: “I received your message that German troops entered Warsaw. Please convey my congratulations and greetings to the government of the German Empire. " In turn, Moscow soon warned that German planes "should not fly east of the Bialystok-Brest-Litovsk-Lemberg (Lvov) line," since "Soviet planes would begin … bombarding areas east of Lemberg."
On September 14, the People's Commissar of Defense Kliment Voroshilov and the Chief of the General Staff Boris Shaposhnikov signed a directive "On the start of an offensive against Poland." Berlin was eagerly awaiting this document, or rather the subsequent hostilities. On the same day, Molotov received a message from Ribbentrop: “The government of the USSR is now ready for a military action and is taking action. We welcome this. By this, the USSR Government frees us from the need to destroy the remnants of the Polish army by pursuing them to the Soviet border."
By this time, the flow of refugees from the Nazi-occupied western regions of Poland to Eastern Poland (in Soviet terminology - Western Belarus and Western Ukraine) was already in the thousands. On the morning of September 17, the Polish ambassador in Moscow, Vaclav Grzybowski, was handed a note from the Soviet government stating that “The Polish state and its government have virtually ceased to exist … In view of this situation, the Soviet government ordered the Red Army High Command to order troops protection of life and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus”. The Polish ambassador refused to accept the note, "for it is incompatible with the dignity of the Polish government."
At five o'clock in the morning on September 17, units of the Red Army and the border troops of the NKVD crossed the state border with Poland. Together with them, the NKVD operational groups crossed the border. On September 19, the Office for Prisoners of War Affairs of the NKVD of the USSR was organized, and reception centers for prisoners of war appeared on the territory of the BSSR and the Ukrainian SSR. By the way, the very term "prisoners of war" in this case is very conditional - and not only because, according to the official Soviet interpretation, the USSR did not wage war with Poland. In addition, most of those who fell into the camps were by no means captured on the battlefield: the Polish Army received an order "not to resist the Reds." The category of "prisoners of war" also includes Polish government officials, prosecutors, members of "counter-revolutionary" parties, etc. All of them were "detained", as evidenced by archival documents,on the territory of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine - that is, where they were born, lived and worked.
On the territory of the RSFSR, the BSSR and the Ukrainian SSR, new camps were opened, including Ostashkovsky, Kozelsky, Starobelsky. It was they who received Polish citizens who were subsequently shot at Katyn near Smolensk, Medny near Tver, Pyatikhatki near Kharkov and Kurapaty near Minsk. Among the thousands of prisoners were the defenders of the Brest Fortress. The commander of the garrison, General Plisovsky, was killed in Pyatikhatki, and the commander of the Fifth Fort, which continued to defend itself after the occupation of the citadel, Captain Radzishevsky, was killed in Katyn. There are still no steles or memorial plaques in memory of the tragedy and feat of the Polish defenders either on the territory of the fortress or in Brest itself.
In total, according to the published documents of the domestic special services, from September 1939 to June 1941, more than 389 thousand Polish citizens were sent to prisons, camps and exile. Half of them are Poles by nationality, the rest are mainly representatives of those peoples that the USSR "took under protection": Ukrainians and Belarusians.
A handshake on a common border
The troops of the Red Army still occupied the East Pole settlements, and in Brest they were preparing for a symbolic action: here on September 22 the city was to be transferred from the German command to the Soviet.
A month earlier, after the signing of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, Hitler said: "Stalin and I are the only ones who see the future … In a few weeks I will extend my hand to Stalin on the common German-Russian border." The handshake promised by the Fuhrer on August 23 was "delegated" to the military - brigade commander Semyon Krivoshein, under whose leadership units of the Red Army marched to Brest from the east, from the Soviet-Polish border, and the Wehrmacht General Heinz Guderian, who commanded the storming of the fortress and city.
Guderian and Krivoshein discussed the procedure on September 21, clarifying all the details (they talked, by the way, without an interpreter - the common language was French, which both were fluent in). “On the day when Brest was handed over to the Russians, brigade commander Krivoshein arrived in the city. All issues that remained unresolved in the provisions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were resolved satisfactorily for both sides directly with the Russians. Our stay in Brest ended with a farewell parade and a ceremony of changing flags in the presence of the brigade commander Krivoshein,”Guderian recalled.
We agreed on the following: at 16 o'clock on September 22, units of Guderian's corps in a marching column, with standards in front, leave the city, and Krivoshein's units, also in a marching column, enter the city, stop on the streets where German regiments pass, and salute those passing by with their banners parts. Orchestras perform military marches. The procedure ends with the solemn descent of the German (under the Nazi anthem) and raising of the Soviet (under the "Internationale") flags.
Everything went smoothly and unexpectedly. “At 4 pm I and General Guderian went up to the low rostrum.
The infantry was followed by motorized artillery, then tanks. On low level flight, a dozen planes flew over the tribune … Then the infantry went again in cars … Finally, the parade ended, "Krivoshein wrote in his memoirs. In German documents, the event is named more than frankly: "Deutsch-sowjetische Siegesparade in Brest-Litowsk" - the German-Soviet victory parade in Brest-Litovsk.
By September 28, the Red Army occupied the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, allotted to the Soviet Union under a secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Thus, the Soviet border was pushed to the west by 250-350 km. On the same day, the USSR and the Third Reich in Moscow signed an agreement "On Friendship and Border." Friendship was not long: the next "meeting" in Brest, on the common Soviet-German border, took place on June 22, 1941.