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[Music] one really important aspect of the start of world war ii is often overlooked in the retelling everyone knows that germany invaded poland on the 1st of september 1939 setting in motion the outbreak of a much bigger world war when on the 3rd of september britain and france after demanding that hitler hold his military action declared war on germany as per an agreement they had with poland that's the narrative of the beginning of world war ii in europe but a fifth player is often left out of the story the soviet union poland and the ussr had no love for one another in fact in 1919 to 21 the polls had fought the soviets over western ukraine and defeated the red army at warsaw the poles possessed a massive and well-trained army in 1939 this amounted to one and three-quarter million regular troops plus a further half a million in reserve but the polish military also had some terrible weaknesses that the germans would exploit during their invasion notably an over-reliance on horse cavalry and too few modern tanks and out-of-date artillery and fire control equipment its air force was also third class in comparison to the german luftwaffe but the poles were very tough and determined fighters and the germans knew that they would have a serious fight on their hands hitler had a secret weapon to undermine the polls stalin in a breathtaking piece of diplomatic intrigue hitler concluded a non-aggression pact with the soviet union a few days before the invasion of poland given all that hitler had said about the soviet union and communism over the past 20 years most germans were as surprised as the polish british and french by this apparent double standard the pact included a secret clause whereby working in cooperation with the german forces invading from the west stalin would unleash an invasion of poland from the east by the 17th of september 1939 the polish forces had been pushed back by the german blitzkrieg and started massing their remaining forces south and west of the capital warsaw they also moved into a tongue of polish territory that stuck out between romania and hungary both friendly nations the plan was to hold out until britain and france somehow came to poland's aid the french as i have covered in another video link in the end screen launched a rather dissolvery sar offensive into a part of western germany which did nothing to ease the pressure on poland and the british conducted some limited aerial bombing in the rhineland but then the hammer fell on the 17th of september the soviets summoned the polish ambassador in moscow and informed him that because the polish government had ceased to exist which was a lie and in order to protect polish citizens of ukrainian and belarusian descent living in eastern poland soviet troops would enter the country to restore order 35 red army divisions invaded dooming the remaining parts of the polish army resisting in what was called the romanian bridgehead against the germans plenty of fighting remained but assailed from east and west simultaneously the conclusion was never in doubt the very last polish unit surrendered on the 6th of october 1939 poland having suffered over 750 000 casualties sections of eastern poland were now under soviet occupation the soviets captured some 400 000 polish troops some escaped and 42 000 of ukrainian or belarusian ethnicity were released some 125 000 were sent to camps run by stalin's feared secret police the nkvd repression began at once polish law had mandated that every non-exempt university graduate had to serve as a reserve officer in the military the nkvd used this as an excuse to round up and imprison huge numbers of educated people claiming they were military prisoners of war seen by the soviets as the key to polish national identity and what they termed the intelligencia about 320 000 such people including graduates military officers aristocrats lawyers doctors police officers and clergymen were deported to the ussr and placed into camps the driving force behind this persecution was the head of the nkvd beria who had already conducted years of terror and murder against soviet citizens the polls ended up in a series of camps in the western ussr in the meantime the germans and their sector of poland had also unleashed great repression on the polish people the soviets demanded that the imprisoned polls become pro-soviet most of whom refused not unreasonably to do so those who exhibited patriotic sentiments were labeled as enemies of the soviet union a decision was now taken to start liquidasing the worst of the enemies identified by barriers nkvd stalin and six members of the governing politburo in moscow signed an order on the 5th of march 1940 to execute 25 700 polish nationalists and counter-revolutionaries as the polish prisoners were termed why the reasoning was to wipe out the core people who created and maintain polish culture to eradicate the people who would resist stalin the hardest the killings began after the third of april 1940 21 857 polish prisoners including 14 552 military pows being shot at various locations including catin near smolensk in russia at catin huge numbers of military officers from generals to captains were killed including 14 generals as well as 200 pilots 20 professors 300 doctors and surgeons and hundreds of teachers lawyers engineers writers and journalists up to 12 000 people the bodies were buried in pits in the forest and interestingly the majority of the firearms used by the nkvd were german voter model 2 pistols supplied to the soviets by the nazis and that was the end of the matter as far as beria and stalin were concerned the dead at catin were just another tragedy to add to all the bloodshed of state murder the witness millions of soviet citizens put to death and the evidence hidden in mass graves all over the country that was until hitler tore up his non-aggression pact with stalin and invaded the soviet union on the 22nd of june 1941. stalin now became an ally of britain transformed into kindly uncle joe stalin another victim of hitler's insatiable lustful empire and with the entry of the united states in the war in december 1941 the soviet union became the vital factor in eventual allied victory over germany for the titanic struggle on the eastern front was tying down at any one time a good 70 percent of germany's military power it is no exaggeration to state that without the ussr's enormous sacrifice britain its empire and dominions and the united states could not have defeated germany in europe and simultaneously dealt with japan in the far east so for the duration of the war at least stalin was one of the good guys meaning that the western liberal democracies would turn a blind eye to stalin's rule even though it resembled and often surpassed hitler's germany for oppression and murder on a grand scale the exigencies of war created some strange bedfellows indeed anyway the polish government in exile in london naturally wanted to know what had become of its missing citizens remembering now that the free polish forces raised in the united kingdom were fighting on the same side as uncle joe interestingly the soviets had even signed an agreement with the polish government in exile to create a polish army from pows the soviets had taken in 1939 and held now in camps in order to help the red army on the eastern front stalin had a face-to-face meeting with general sikorsky poland's prime minister in exile and basically explained the missing soviet citizens as having become lost in the bureaucracy of his huge country a sort of accounting error but assuring sikorsky that all was well by now the area of smolensk was under german occupation the polish home army the enormous resistance organization within occupied poland received reports from polish railway workers who were performing forced labour for the nazis of secret mass graves in the cuttin forest the germans also got wind of this story in march or april 1943 not long after the surrender of the sixth army at stalingrad germany's greatest eastern front calamity the germans decided to investigate what the germans uncovered was astounding almost 12 000 decomposing corpses dressed in winter uniforms with their identity documents and personal effects still present german propaganda ministry director dr joseph goebbels realized the potential of the story at once soviet barbarism for all the world to see he knew that such a heinous crime would shock public opinion in britain and america and perhaps cause a rift in the alliance with the soviet union to germany's obvious advantage you have to remember that curtin was investigated so thoroughly by the germans not out of any sympathy for the poles the germans had already killed hundreds of thousands of polish citizens by this time carrying out massive shootings herding hundreds of thousands of jews in the ghettos and then shipping them east to special camps german outrage was simply a manufactured move to sow dissension in the allied camp the germans created the catin commission in collaboration with the international red cross the germans wanted to make the investigation completely transparent so that they couldn't be blamed for perpetrating a cover-up of a crime that many suspected they had in fact committed forensic surgeons from germany belgium bulgaria croatia denmark finland france hungary italy the netherlands romania switzerland and slovakia formed the catin committee the germans even bringing in allied pow doctors and surgeons as witnesses to the exhumations including british american and polish officers the german press naturally had a field day the soviet reaction was a blanket denial it was german propaganda they had killed these poles after the invasion of the ussr in 1941 general sikorski was not dissuaded from trying to uncover the truth sikorsky's probing caused stalin to break off diplomatic ties with the polish government in exile in london further damage to allied relations were averted by sikorsky's extremely convenient death in a plane crash at gibraltar on the 4th of july 1943. when the soviets recaptured smolensk and the catian forest area in october 1943 the nkvd began a massive cover-up operation physical evidence was destroyed witnesses intimidated and a soviet commission decided that the polls had been shot by the germans in the late summer of 1941 while the polls were being used for forced labor american and british journalists generally reported that they believed the soviet story but some had misgivings from the evidence of meetings between polish leaders and churchill it was clear that the british prime minister believed the soviets were responsible for catin but the maintenance of the alliance with the ussr in the prosecution of the war against hitler trumped the dead poles in the forest british intelligence agents who tried to warn the british government about what actually happened was sidelined or removed doctors who had been present at the exhumation of the corpses at catin reported to the state department that the soviets had been responsible they cited the following evidence the corpses were all dressed in winter clothing but the soviets insisted the men had been shot in the high summer of 1941 by the germans no records identification papers or letters were found on the corpses dated later than spring 1940. the good condition of their clothes and boots indicated that they had not been prisoners for very long these reports were suppressed and made top secret again america needed the soviets in the fight against hitler the catian forest massacre was placed on the indictment against german war crime suspects at the nurenberg trials the soviets pushed hard for this but u.s and british judges dismissed the charges through lack of evidence from the 1950s to the 1980s various attempts were made in poland to establish the truth but the communist regime there always quashed such attempts for obvious reasons it was only in 1989 the soviet academics finally admitted that stalin had indeed ordered the catin massacre in 1990 soviet premier mikhail gorbachev named the nkvd as a responsible organization for the massacres in 1990 president boris yeltsin ordered the transfer of many documents pertinent to catin from russia to poland a huge russian investigation eventually clarified exactly what had happened but many volumes of documents still remain classified no one has ever stood trial for catin and by now everyone involved must be dead and it was only in 2010 that the russian parliament officially admitted that stalin and beria were responsible for the massacres it was the same year that the polish president and 95 polish politicians high-ranking army officers and their staff were killed in a plane crash on their way to a ceremony in russia marking the 70th anniversary of the catin massacre fueling conspiracy theories that echoed those that still surround the death of prime minister sikorski in a plane crash in 1943. thanks for watching please subscribe and share and also visit my audiobook channel war stories with mark felton you can also help to support both of my channels at paypal and patreon details in the description box below