17 September in military history: the Soviet invasion of Poland, 1939, and the Battle of Antietam, 1862

In the night of 16 to 17 September the Polish ambassador, Wacław Grzybowski, was summoned to the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in Moscow and given a note. The IPN and the Museum of Polish History put the hour at 3 a.m., the historian Andrzej Chojnowski at two in the morning. Wysocki gives 3 a.m., "1.00 a.m. Central European Time" in his words, and writes that Grzybowski told Molotov's deputy, Vladimir Potemkin, that this would mean the fourth partition of Poland. Bullitt, the American ambassador in Paris, cabled what the Polish ambassador there had told him: "last night Molotov summoned the Polish Ambassador in Moscow and handed him a note".¹

In the translation that the US embassy in Moscow sent to Washington, the note declared that "the Polish State and its Government factually have ceased to exist" and that the Red Army would "cross the Polish frontier and take under their protection the life and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western White Russia". Grzybowski refused to accept it.²

Across the frontier

Poland was still fighting Germany: the US Holocaust Memorial Museum writes that the invasion left it fighting on two fronts, and Grzelak that most Polish forces were already engaged against the Germans. Wysocki writes that Soviet border guards and regular Red Army units crossed between 1 and 2 in the morning. The IPN dates the first attacks, on Border Protection Corps (KOP) watchtowers, to about 4.40 in the morning. The US ambassador in Moscow, Steinhardt, was told that Soviet troops had entered along the whole frontier "this morning at dawn".³

The IPN counts more than 600,000 Soviet soldiers, 4,700 tanks and 3,300 combat aircraft. Czesław Grzelak says that the plan called for 700,000 to 800,000 men in the first echelon, but that only about 462,000 to 465,000 actually invaded. Wysocki gives the two attacking fronts over 460,000 soldiers and adds that with the second line "it was a million soldiers as well as border troops and the NKVD". He counts about 300,000 Polish troops in the east, only 100,000 of them able to fight effectively, and Grzelak puts the KOP at about 12,500 men.⁴

"Do not fight the Bolsheviks"

The Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz, was at Kuty, Wysocki writes, and Wysocki and Grzelak both say that news of the invasion first reached the Marshal at about 6 in the morning. In the evening, at about 10 p.m. by Wysocki's account, the Marshal issued a directive that the Museum of Polish History quotes: "Sowiety wkroczyły. Nakazuję ogólne wycofanie na Rumunię i Węgry najkrótszymi drogami. Z bolszewikami nie walczyć, chyba w razie natarcia z ich strony lub próby rozbrojenia oddziałów" ("The Soviets have entered. I order a general withdrawal to Romania and Hungary by the shortest routes. Do not fight the Bolsheviks except in the event of an attack on their part or an attempt to disarm units"; our translation). Chojnowski notes that the directive did not rule out resistance, and Wysocki that it reached many formations too late or not at all.⁵

Wilno, Grodno and the KOP

The IPN dates the defense of Wilno to 18 and 19 September and of Grodno to 20 and 21 September; Grzelak describes Wilno holding out for a few hours and Grodno for three days. The KOP under Gen. Wilhelm Orlik-Rückemann fought at Szack, on 28 and 29 September by the IPN's dating, and again at Wytyczno.⁶

Gen. Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński, commander of Corps District III at Grodno, and his adjutant, Capt. Mieczysław Strzemeski, were executed. Chojnowski says that the general and his staff had been taken prisoner, and Grzelak dates the killing to 22 September, near Sopoćkinie. The IPN adds that about 300 defenders of Grodno and 150 sailors of the Pinsk Flotilla were shot.⁷

Over the Czeremosz

According to the Polish Biographical Dictionary, the Marshal crossed the bridge over the Czeremosz into Romania at midnight of 17 to 18 September and was interned there. The Museum of Polish History writes that the government and the Marshal crossed the border at Kuty, and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum that the Polish government fled the country the same day. The Museum adds that historians still dispute the departure of the supreme commander while the army fought on.⁸

Partition and the count

On 28 September Germany and the Soviet Union signed a treaty on borders and friendship in Moscow, by the IPN's account, and a Polish protest of 30 September quoted by Wysocki condemns "the September 28 agreement". The US Holocaust Memorial Museum dates the partition of Poland to 29 September, with the demarcation line along the Bug River.⁹

Wysocki writes that the fighting with the Soviets in September 1939 cost the lives of 3,000 to 3,500 Polish soldiers and civilians, or 6,000 to 7,000 "fallen and murdered" by other data, with about 20,000 wounded and missing and 240,000 to 250,000 soldiers, KOP men and policemen taken prisoner; for the Soviets he gives 2,500 to 3,000 killed and 6,000 to 7,000 wounded. Grzelak puts Polish soldiers' losses against the Red Army at about 6,000 to 7,000 dead, in combat or by execution, and about 10,000 wounded. The IPN cites estimates that in September 1939 alone Soviet soldiers and security men murdered 2,500 prisoners and several hundred civilians, and counts at least 800,000 Polish citizens sent deep into the USSR during the two years of occupation, a figure that, it says, includes prisoners of war, gulag prisoners, deportees, men mobilized into the Red Army, people who went to work in the USSR and evacuees. A report in the Polish government's 1939 files put the Soviet army in the country at "plus minus 400.000". Our article on the Soviet invasion of Poland tells the whole campaign.¹⁰