In 1943, the defeat at Stalingrad led to a serious Anti-Bolshevist campaign in view of the possibility of defeat. The Katyn massacre was exploited in 1943 to drive a wedge between Poland, Western Allies, and the Soviet Union, and reinforce the Nazi propaganda line about the horrors of Bolshevism and American and British subservience to it. Pamphlets were released to whip up fear of Communism. The negative impact of Soviet policies implemented in the 1930s were still fresh in the memory of Ukrainians. These included the Holodomor of 1933, the Great Terror, the persecution of intellectuals during the Great Purge of 1937-38, the massacre of Ukrainian intellectuals after the annexation of Western Ukraine from Poland in 1939, the introduction and implementation of Collectivisation. As a result, the population of whole towns, cities and villages, greeted the Germans as liberators which helps explain the unprecedented rapid progress of the German forces in the occupation of Ukraine. The Ukrainians at first had been told it was being freed from Communism; this had quickly given way to exploitation, where even celebrating Kiev's "liberation" was forbidden, but the failure at Stalingrad brought propaganda into play.