page_title: History of Poland (1939–1945)
section_title: After Operation Barbarossa
hierarchical_section_title: History of Poland (1939–1945) / Resistance in Poland / After Operation Barbarossa
caption_attribution_description: English: German announcement, death penalty for 50 polish citizens, issued by nazi so called "summary court": (de: Standgericht) in 1944 in German-occupied Poland during II world war. Reason: killing of one german policeman. Announcement is signed by Commandant of SD and Sicherheitspolizei in Warsaw – SS-Standartenführer Ludwig Hahn. Polski: Niemieckie ogłoszenie, kara śmieci dla 50 obywateli polskich, orzeczona przez nazistowski sąd doraźny (niem. Standgericht) w 1944 w okupowanej przez Niemcy Polsce w czasie II wojny światowej. Powód: zabicie jednego policjanta niemieckiego. Podpisane przez komendanta SD i policji bezpieczeństwa w Warszawie, SS-Standartenführera Ludwiga Hahna.
context_page_description: The history of Poland from 1939 to 1945 encompasses primarily the period from the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to the end of World War II. Following the German-Soviet non-aggression pact, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939 and by the Soviet Union on 17 September. The campaigns ended in early October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland. After the Axis attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the entirety of Poland was occupied by Germany, which proceeded to advance its racial and genocidal policies across Poland. Under the two occupations, Polish citizens suffered enormous human and material losses. According to the Institute of National Remembrance estimates, about 5.6 million Polish citizens died as a result of the German occupation and about 150,000 died as a result of the Soviet occupation. The Jews were singled out by the Germans for a quick and total annihilation and about 90% of Polish Jews were murdered as part of the Holocaust.
context_section_description: Leopold Trepper, a Polish-Jewish communist, worked as a master spy and was the chief of the Red Orchestra network in Western Europe. He became aware and informed Stalin of the Nazi-planned Operation Barbarossa, but the Soviet leader did not take his — nor the similar alerts from his top intelligence officer in Japan, Richard Sorge — advance warnings seriously regarding the imminent Nazi invasion.
  In Poland, the communists, more active after the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and the right wing extremists, neither joined the broad coalition nor recognized the Government Delegate. The situation of the Polish armed resistance was made more difficult by the fact that the Allies now assigned Poland to the Soviet sphere of operations, and Britain refrained from or limited direct support of resistance movements in central-eastern Europe.
  After Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet partisans also developed and became militarily active in the General Government. They were generally aligned with the Polish leftist Gwardia Ludowa and posed a significant threat to the authority of the AK, which had not adopted a policy of more direct and widespread confrontations with the Nazis until 1943. The Soviet partisans were especially prevalent in Belarus and elsewhere in Kresy. The presence of the various partisan formations, who often represented irreconcilable political orientations, followed contradictory military strategies and were mutually hostile, including also the Jewish, National Armed Forces, Bataliony Chłopskie (some right-, some left-wing), and of criminal armed bands preying on local populations, led to armed clashes, assassinations, murder, and a climate of chaos and uncertainty, as the Soviet armies, having established their superiority on the Eastern Front, approached Poland's prewar eastern boundaries.
  With Stalin's encouragement, Polish communist institutions rival to the Government-in-Exile and the Underground State were established. They included the Polish Workers' Party (from January 1942) and the State National Council in occupied Poland, as well as the Union of Polish Patriots in the Soviet Union.
  The Jewish Combat Organization groups undertook armed resistance activities in 1943. In April, the Germans began deporting the remaining Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, provoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (19 April–16 May). The Polish-Jewish leaders knew that the rising would be crushed but they preferred to die fighting than wait to be deported to their deaths in the death camps.
  In August 1943 and March 1944, the Underground State announced its long-term plan, partially designed to counter the attractiveness of some of the communist proposals. It promised parliamentary democracy, land reform, nationalization of the industrial base, more powerful trade unions, demands for territorial compensation from Germany, and re-establishment of the pre-1939 eastern border. Thus, the main difference between the Underground State and the communists, in terms of politics, amounted not to radical economic and social reforms, which were advocated by both sides, but to their attitudes towards national sovereignty, borders, and Polish-Soviet relations.
caption: An announcement of fifty Poles tried and sentenced to death by a Standgericht in retaliation for the assassination of one German policeman, 1944
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