Question by mariah: To what extent was the Katyn Massacre significant to the Soviet Union’s overall goals during WW2?
So I’m doing my historical investigation for my IB History class and need help. I need to know what the Soviet’s goals were during WW2 and please list your sources, no wikianswers, or any other sites like that. Reliable sources please! I just can’t find anything.
Answers and Views:
Answer by Janos
In my knowledge the main goal of the Katyn massacre was to annihilate Poland’s well educated, upper class military officials, making impossible for Polish to recreate it’s Army in short term. In official Soviet views they were upper class anyway, who would have been naturally against Communist rule. It was one of the first steps to make Poland (only East Poland at that time) a Soviet state.
If you look at the maps, after WWII the Soviets have kept themselves the Polish territories occupied first in 1939. (These are parts of today’s Belarus and Ukraine, including Katyn region.) However to keep Polish mouths shut, Poland was compensated by East German territories (Silesia, Pomerania, Gdansk). The Polish population from the east was formally transported to the west in 1945-46.
However the Katyn massacre remains one of the basics of the Polish-Russian conflicts.
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