In September 1939, as a result of German and Soviet invasion of Poland the city was annexed to Soviet Ukraine when the territory of the interwar Poland was divided between the Nazi Germany and the USSR according to the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement. In Soviet Ukraine, Drohobych became the center of the Drohobych Oblast (region). Its local Polish boy scouts created the White Couriers organization, which in late 1939 and early 1940 smuggled hundreds of people from the Soviet Union to Hungary, across the Soviet-Hungarian border in the Carpathians. In early July 1941, during the first weeks of the Nazi invasion of the USSR, the city was occupied by the Nazi Germany.