The Invasion of Poland, known in Poland as the September Campaign (Kampania wrześniowa) or the 1939 Defensive War (Wojna obronna 1939 roku), and in Germany as the Poland Campaign (Polenfeldzug), was an invasion of Poland by Germany that marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union. The Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September following the Molotov–Tōgō agreement that terminated the Soviet and Japanese Battles of Khalkhin Gol in the east on 16 September.[15]
The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union
dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty.
German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident.
Slovak forces advanced alongside the Germans in northern Slovakia. As
the Wehrmacht advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases
of operation close to the Polish–German border to more established lines
of defence to the east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the Battle of the Bzura, the Germans gained an undisputed advantage. Polish forces then withdrew to the southeast where they prepared for a long defence of the Romanian Bridgehead and awaited expected support and relief from France and the United Kingdom.[16]
While those two countries had pacts with Poland and had declared war on
Germany on 3 September, in the end their aid to Poland was very
limited.
On 17 September, the Soviet Red Army invaded Eastern Poland,
the territory that felt into the Soviet "sphere of influence" according
to the secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact; this rendered
the Polish plan of defence obsolete.[17]
Facing a second front, the Polish government concluded the defence of
the Romanian Bridgehead was no longer feasible and ordered an emergency
evacuation of all troops to neutral Romania.[18] On 6 October, following the Polish defeat at the Battle of Kock, German and Soviet forces gained full control over Poland. The success of the invasion marked the end of the Second Polish Republic, though Poland never formally surrendered.
On 8 October, after an initial period of military administration, Germany directly annexed
western Poland and the former Free City of Danzig and placed the
remaining block of territory under the administration of the newly
established General Government. The Soviet Union incorporated its newly acquired areas into its constituent Belarusian and Ukrainian republics, and immediately started a campaign of Sovietization. In the aftermath of the invasion, a collective of underground resistance organizations formed the Polish Underground State
within the territory of the former Polish state. Many of the military
exiles that managed to escape Poland subsequently joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West, an armed force loyal to the Polish government-in-exile.
