September 17th, 1939 is a date tragic not only for Poles, but that day was the beginning of the end of the whole of Central Europe and how it existed and functioned up to that moment.
It was then, when the process of the final destruction of the great, centuries-old culture of the lands between the Bug river and the Dnieper river had begun (the Bolsheviks started the devastations soon after the October revolution.) To achieve that, it was necessary to destroy the Second Polish Republic and conduct ethnic purges throughout the Eastern borderlands.
Poland’s allies betrayed her when the USSR attacked. Not only France and Great Britain, but also the Baltic States and even Finland possessed intelligence concerning the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. What is more important, is what Polish state services knew about it and what was the government aware of?
If Polish intelligence held information about the Nazi-Soviet pact, then why did they not inform the government and who was responsible? If the government and the military knew, why did they not act accordingly?
It was then, when the process of the final destruction of the great, centuries-old culture of the lands between the Bug river and the Dnieper river had begun. To achieve that, it was necessary to destroy the Second Polish Republic
Unfortunately, answers to these questions will not be found in documents available to the general public. Finding any concrete information is difficult due to the censorship during the Communist regime in Poland. The II RP was despised by the communists and many historians avoided the subject altogether. The period after the fall of communism in 1989 was deemed not the right time for such debates.
The anniversary of September 17th is an opportunity to discuss to ask ourselves another question – are we mature enough to incisively and with cool heads analyze the situation before and during September 1939? To look for answers, it is somewhere in-between the indiscriminate approach to the policies of the II RP and anti-Polish Soviet propaganda.
