All events · The World Wars

The German-Soviet Partition of Poland

1939–1941 · Europe & Northern Eurasia

Territory Seized Mass Killing

Displaced

1.5 million

About 35 million people lived in the Polish Republic in 1939; roughly 22 million came under German control and about 13 million under Soviet control. Within the German zone hundreds of thousands were expelled from the annexed western provinces into the General Government, and around 300,000 people fled eastward across the demarcation line in the autumn of 1939, many of them Jews. The Soviet zone produced its own deportations of about 320,000 people to the interior of the USSR in 1940-41. Population figures come from the Polish census of 1931 projected forward; the movement figures from German resettlement records, Soviet NKVD registers and refugee registration.

Share of the population affected

4.3%

of the population of the Second Polish Republic, 1939

Killed

150,000–250,000

conflict deaths incl. combatants

Territory

389,000 km²

Germany annexed about 92,000 square kilometres of western and northern Poland outright as Danzig-West Prussia, the Wartheland, Upper Silesia and the Ciechanow district, and administered a further 95,000 square kilometres as the General Government from 26 October 1939. The Soviet Union took about 200,000 square kilometres east of the Bug and San, incorporating them into the Ukrainian and Belorussian republics after staged elections in October 1939; Vilnius was handed to Lithuania. The Polish state ceased to exist as a territorial entity until 1945.

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What happened

The German invasion of 1 September 1939 and the Soviet invasion of 17 September divided Poland along a line fixed by the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and revised by the boundary and friendship treaty of 28 September. Germany annexed the western provinces directly to the Reich and placed the rest under a colonial administration, the General Government, seated in Krakow. The Soviet Union annexed the eastern half to the Ukrainian and Belorussian republics after elections conducted under military occupation, imposed Soviet citizenship, and deported categories of the population it judged hostile. Both occupiers moved at once against Polish elites: German forces shot thousands of teachers, priests, officials and landowners in the Intelligenzaktion of late 1939, while the NKVD shot about 21,857 Polish officers and officials in the spring of 1940. The partition lasted until the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, after which the whole territory came under German rule.

Parties

Germany and the Soviet Union invaded and divided the Polish state between them under the secret protocol of the pact of 23 August 1939

Disputed

Russia's official presentation of the Soviet entry of 17 September 1939 as a protective measure for Ukrainians and Belorussians, rather than as an act of aggression carried out in agreement with Germany, is rejected by Poland, the Baltic states and most Western historians.

The denominator

The 1931 census counted 32.1 million; the Polish government's estimate for mid-1939 was about 35.1 million, of whom roughly 69% Poles, 14% Ukrainians, 9% Jews and 3% Belarusians. The 1939 census returns were largely destroyed in the invasion.

The 1.5 million figure is usually the count of those deported into the Soviet interior in 1940-41; German expulsions from the annexed western provinces and the wider wartime mortality are additional and counted elsewhere.

Where the baseline comes from

Second Polish Republicopen-edited
Invasion of Polandopen-edited

On the death toll

The September campaign itself killed roughly 66,000 Polish soldiers and some 16,000 German soldiers, with civilian deaths from bombing and reprisals in the tens of thousands. Between October 1939 and mid-1940 German units shot at least 50,000 members of the Polish intelligentsia and other civilians in the annexed territories, and the NKVD shot 21,857 Polish prisoners in 1940. The figures are drawn from campaign records, German security-police reports and Soviet files; they exclude the far larger toll of the occupation that followed.

Documented forms of violence

Mass KillingSummary ExecutionDestruction of PropertyDenationalizationArbitrary Detention

The shooting of Polish elites by German Einsatzgruppen and Selbstschutz units, the destruction of towns during and after the campaign, and the imposition of German and Soviet citizenship regimes on Polish citizens are documented in German security-police reports and Soviet decrees cited at Nuremberg and by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Formal findings

International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg (1946) — Found the invasion of Poland to be a war of aggression and the German occupation policy in Poland to constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity — source

Movements mapped

Annexed Wartheland and Pomerania -> General Government500,000
German-occupied Poland -> Soviet zone (refugees, autumn 1939)300,000

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Poland, Ukraine

Related entries

Overlaps with: Expulsions from Annexed Poland and the 'Heim ins Reich' Resettlement
The expulsion of Poles and Jews from the annexed western provinces into the General Government in 1939-41 is counted both in the partition entry and in the Heim ins Reich expulsions entry. 500,000 people are counted in both entries.
Includes: Soviet Deportations from Occupied Eastern Poland
The Soviet deportations from eastern Poland in 1940-41 took place within the German-Soviet partition of Poland. 320,000 people are counted in both entries.