Occupation of Poland Made Shoah Inevitable

The Holocaust (initially as “Holocaust by Bullets”) was obviously triggered by German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. However, it would have almost certainly happened anyway – and it was made inevitable by German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 (and subsequent occupation of the latter).

It was made inevitable because it brought 3,350,000 more Jews under German control increasing the total number of Jews in German-controlled territories to totally unmanageable 3,800,000 or so.

Totally unmanageable because the Nazi leaders deeply, sincerely, passionately (and incorrectly) believed – especially after idiotic “declaration of war” made by Jewish leader Chaim Weizmann on August 29, 1939 – that ALL Jews under German control were the “fifth column” of external “enemies of the Reich”.

And thus, the existential threat to Germany. As almost four million Jews simply could not be securely kept in ghettos and/or concentration camps – or so the Nazi leaders believe – the only realistic solution to now existential (for Germany) Jewish question was total extermination of the Jews under German control.

Hence, German occupation of Poland, indeed, made Holocaust inevitable (its most murderous stage – “Holocaust by Gas” – happened on Polish territory). Thus, it became a giant step on the Road to Holocaust – and a colossal slab in the “slab stack” that less than two years later triggered the “Holocaust Avalanche”. Killing four million European Jews.

The invasion of Poland was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic, and the Soviet Union.  The German invasion began on September 1, 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had approved the pact giving Hitler green light.

The Red Army invaded Poland on September 17. The Polish campaign ended on October 6, with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty.

For both Nazi Germany and Bolshevist Soviet Union, it was a brutal colonial war – far more so for the Third Reich. Leaders of the latter ultimately wanted to acquire all Polish territory as their Lebensraum and to enslave all Poles (ruthlessly murdering anyone who might even think of resistance).

However, the whole thing was not as simple as it might seem at the first glance. For starters, the Versailles criminals robbed Germany at gunpoint (let’s call a spade a spade) of 51,000 square kilometers and gave it to Poland.

Austria (in 1939 part of Greater Germany) was forced by the same criminals – this time in Saint-Germain-en-Laye – to cede Austrian Galicia (almost 80,000 square kilometers) to Poland. 

Hence, Hitler could justifiably claim that Germany had the moral right to get these territories back – using any and all means available (including the military force). Just as almost a year prior he got back Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia – and no one in the West objected.

Another little-known issue was the persecution of German ethnic minority by the Polish government and radical nationalists in the general public during interwar years (1919-39).

While claims made by Nazi propaganda regarding these persecutions are totally outlandish, the sad truth is that racial (ethnic) policies of supposedly democratic Polish government in reality were not that much different from the Nazis.

The officially stated objective of Polish government and ruling elites was that Poland must become a mono-ethnic, mono-cultural and mono-religious country. Comprised only of Catholics with only Polish blood in their veins.

Everyone else had to leave the country – Germans (mostly Lutheran) to Germany; Ukrainians (mostly Orthodox) to the Soviet Union… actually, that’s exactly what happened after the Second Great War.

To make it happen, the Polish government instituted the policy of (not exactly) “soft” ethnic cleansing both in the West (of Germans) and in the East (Ukrainians). Not exactly because it involved harassment, arsons, assaults… and, yes, murder.

While the actual death toll among Germans in Poland was nowhere near the 58,000 claimed by Nazi Propaganda (it was in the hundreds at most for all interwar years), it still was a casus belli for any nation (the USA would have invaded Mexico over such crimes against Americans in a heartbeat).

It is also worth noting that the first war crime of the Second Great War (it happened on the very day it started – on September 3) was committed… by Poles. During the so-called Bloody Sunday in then Bromberg (now Bydgoszcz) Polish soldiers and civilians brutally murdered around 300 German civilians for no other reason than being German. Which was a local genocide – plain and simple.