Right after the successful invasion of Poland and division of the country with the allied Soviet Union, the Third Reich annexed outright some territories and set up the rest as the temporary reservoir of forced labor, which in the span of no more then 20 years would be open to German colonization. Unlike the plans for the Russian, Ukrainian and Belorusian population, which were considered more playable, the Poles were destined to be completely exterminated. The Germans, knowing well their independent spirit, didn't want to have any troubles with them and envisioned the world without them, right after the elimination of the Jews and Roms.

After conquering Poland, the Nazis created the temporary General Government in the middle Poland, but annexed the large portions of the Western and Northern Poland inti the Third Reich. Warthegau was set up on, mostly, the territory of the former Prussian province of Posen (Poznan). From 1939 to 1940 it was called Reichsgau Posen, the name was changed to Warheland, derived from the main river - Warthe (Warta).

Before the war, the German population of the region constituted 16% of the total, but soon after takeover 3/4 of the million of the Poles and Jews were expelled to the General Government and the massive immigration of the volksdeuche from the Baltic countries and the Balkans was encourage in the campaign of the intensive Germanization of the territory.

It was created out of the former Free City of Danzig and the annexed territory of the so-called "Polish Corridor" (Greater Pomeranian Voivodship). Some parts of East Prussia were also attached to it. In contrast to the Gau administrative system of the Third Reich, the name "Reichsgau" indicated the annexed territory. The other Reichsgaue were Reichsgdau Warheland and Reischsgau Sudetenland.

After treacherous invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Soviets conducted a phony referendum on the freshly conquered territories of Eastern Poland. According to the official Soviet tally, the people living in the area agreed to the incorporation of their lands into the Byelorussian SSR.

Once again, after treacherous invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Soviets conducted a phony referendum on the freshly conquered territories of Eastern Poland. According to this "referendum" everybody agreed to the incorporation of their lands into the Ukrainian SSR, this according to the their official tallies.

In September 1939, the Soviet Union, while invading Poland, once again gave Wilno (Vilnius) to Lithuania, a move which was cynically meaningless, as the Soviets soon annexed it, together with the whole country, as the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR.

The Government-in-Exile of the Republic of Poland was the official government of Poland after the country had been occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union at the start of World War II (September 1939). Thereafter, for the remainder of the war, it commanded Polish armed forces operating outside Poland.

While Dr. Hans Frank was ruling the General Government from the Royal Castle atop the Wawel Hill in Cracow (Kraków - Krakau), there was another government ruling in the hearts of the people as the continuation of the pre-war Second Republic. This government was the delegation of the Polish Government-in-Exile located in London, and recognized by the Allied Powers as the only legal government of Poland.

This was the official standard of the Polish President-in-Exile in London after 1956. Notice the cross placed on top of the eagle´s crown.

The Polish Government-in-Exile (first in Paris, later in London) maintained a formidable administrative apparatus within the country through its Delagature, including the courts of justice, which meted appropriate punishments on the collaborators, mostly death sentences, which were then carried out by the resistance forces.

In the first two years of World War II, Polish intelligence officers operated right in the middle of Berlin protected by the flag of Manchukuo. It happened thanks to the curious co-operation between Polish and Japanese intelligence services. Even before the war, the chief of the Japanese Intelligence for Europe, General Onodera Makato, stationed in Stockholm, cultivated very good relations with the Polish agents in the Baltic countries. When the war began, Onodera persuaded his superiors in Tokyo to enter into close co-operation with the Polish Intelligence Services, which could provide a highly valuable information on the Soviets in exchange for the Japanese protection while operating in Germany.

The fourth largest force among the Allied Powers, the Polish Armies, Navy, Air Force and Special Forces fought at Narvik, in France, at Tobruk, then conquered the mighty fortress at Monte Casino, and took Ancona and Bologna. In Normandy, they took Falaise and Caen, and then Breda, and the occupation of Germany.

Under this ensign, the Polish Navy, which comprised a total of 27 ships (2 cruisers, 9 destroyers, 5 submarines and 11 torpedo boats, sailed a total of 1.2 million nautical miles, escorted 787 convoys, conducted 1,162 patrols and combat operations, sank 12 enemy ships (including 5 submarines) and 41 merchant vessels, damaged 24 more (including 8 submarines)) and shot down 20 aircraft. Four Hundred and fifty seamen out of the over 4,000 who served with the Navy lost their lives in action in World War II.

The Polish Air Forces (Polskie Sily Powietrzne) was a name of Polish Air Forces formed in France and the United Kingdom during World War II. The core of the Polish air units fighting alongside the allies were experienced veterans of Invasion of Poland of 1939 and they contributed to Allied victory in the Battle of Britain and most World War II air operations.

The first Polish Army in the USSR was organized in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan out of the Polish POW's in Soviet custody and the deportees from the Polish territories annexed in 1939. It was supposed to join the Soviet Red Army in the fighting on the Eastern Front, but it was withdrawn to Iran and the Middle East under the pretext the Soviets were unable to feed them, but really, because the British needed them desperately to guard the Kirkuk oil fields. While that Army was in Palestine, most of the Jewish soldiers were allowed to desert there. Almost all of them joined the Haganah afterwards. Corporal Menahem Begin (Mieczyslaw Biegun) waited to be released from the military oath and, when granted that by General Anders, left the Polish Army to lead Irgun Zvai Leumi, a military organization, quintessential in the Israel's war of independence, and blamed later for the several terrorist actions such as the massacre at Dar Yasin and assassination of Count Bernadotte.

The Górale were mountain people of Tatra region (Podhale) located in southern Poland on the Slovak border. Some German historians, led by von Ribbentrop, claimed that the Górale had Aryan Links and nominated them to be potential members of the "Great Germanic Race," although others suspected it was because of the good beer the region was famous for. After the Germans completed occupation of Tatra region in October 1939, a small group of Górale leaders concocted the crazy idea of the formation of the mini-state for Highlanders under the protection of Grossdeutschland. Talks got under way between the group of "want-to-be" Germans and the occupation leadership. Both groups were delighted to discover the similarities of Nazi and Goralen swastikas used as grave markings used in long-forgotten times.

Of all the Nazi Death Concentration Death Camps, one place stands out among the others, due to the sheer numbers and the scope of operation. It was the concentration camp at Auschwitz, built near the town of Oswiecim in Poland. Originally it was a camp for the Polish political prisoners set up in 1940, but in 1942 it became a gigantic killing place for the European Jews. Methodically transported from all over the occupied Europe, the Jews, after undergoing the selection process to save, for a while, those deemed fit to work, were gassed, and then burned in the ovens.

One of the most infamous events of the Holocaust was the desperate Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Soon after occupying Warsaw, the Nazis herded the Jews into walled section of the city. Almost half a million people were imprisoned and isolated in the small part of Warsaw, in inhumane conditions, starved, exploited and destined for extermination. The Germans' love of order prompted them to set up the imitation Jewish government in the Ghetto, the Judentat (Jewish Council), which was to assist the Nazis in exploiting the slave labor and helping to maintain the order.

In every Polish city and town there was the Ghetto to imprison the Jews. One of the larger ones was in the city of Lodz, which the Germans "re-christened" Litzmannstadt. It was in Central Poland, important center of the textile industry, populated by the significant Jewish and German minorities before the war. In this Ghetto, the Nazis allowed certain degree of real authority to the chairman of the Judenrat, one Mordechaj Chaim Rumkowski. He lived the life of luxury in the starving and dilapidated ghetto, loved to be addressed as the King or Emperor, had the postage stamps printed with his likeness and minted own coins out of aluminum and magnesium for the circulation in the Ghetto. Corrupt and mean man, served the Nazis well persecuting his own brothers and sisters.

These were the flag and armbands used by the Home Army (AK) soldiers during the Warsaw Uprising of August-October 1944. At this time, on the Eastern Front, the German armies were in full retreat from the Red Army which was fast approaching Warsaw's eastern suburbs. The liberation of Poland's capital seems assured. The commander of the Polish Underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) ordered an armed uprising in Warsaw against the occupying Germans to force them to abandon the city. The insurgents, however, are unaware that the Germans have decided to defend "fortress Warsaw" and to counter-attack the Red Army forces to the east of the city.

With the sky free of Soviet planes, the Germans were free to begin a relentless aerial bombardment of the city daily. The insurgents had no anti-aircraft weapons to defend the city from the attack.

After 63 days of vicious fighting, with the Soviets as spectators, 250,000 people would ultimately pay the price for the attempt to free themselves from the cruel occupation. German troops conducted mass executions of approximately 65,000 civilians in the captured districts. Poles, without regard for age or gender, are rounded up house by house and shot. More than 1,360 patients and staff of Polish hospitals are murdered. Female civilians are used as shields in front of tanks that attacked insurgents' positions, eventually, all civilians were either forced to leave the city, or sent to work camps. Approximately 55,000 civilians will end up in the concentration camps as dangerous elements, and an additional 150,000 were transported into forced labor camps in Germany.

On May 2, 1945, as Polish troops advanced into Berlin, a Polish platoon of the Kosciuszko Division of 1st Polish Army first reached the Reichstag and hoisted a Polish flag on its dome, only to have it mowed down by the fire of the incoming Soviet troops. Apparently, the Polish soldier who raised the flag was killed by the Soviets racing to have their flag hoisted on the building which, for unknown and unclear reasons, they decided had the most important symbolic value in Berlin.

In the Northern Communal Cemetery [Cmentarz Komunalny Pónocny] in Warsaw today there is a light blue flag with five white Latin crosses that flies over the memorial of German soldiers fallen during World War II. It is a flag of the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge) placed there to honor the 446,000 German soldiers who died in Poland in World War II.