324 GOLGOTAthe second week, Warsaw was surrounded. On 17 September, uninvited and
unannounced, the Soviet army crossed the eastern frontier. The Polish ambas-
sador in Moscow was summoned by Molotov, and was curtly told that, 'since
the Polish Republic was no longer in existence, measures were being taken to
protect the inhabitants of western Byelorussia and western Ukraine. In some
places, the Soviet troops were welcomed in the mistaken belief that they were
moving into action against the Germans. In other places, they were fired on. But
the Poles continued to resist. Warsaw, abandoned by the government and the
General Staff and burning out of control, was defended until 27 September. The
peninsula of Hel held out till 2 October. At Lwow, General Sosnkowski impro-
vised a line of defence against the Germans and the Soviets alike. But the inex-
orable effects of Nazi-Soviet collusion were clear for all to see. The Polish forces
were caught in a trap, with no wall against which they could lean their backs
and fight. Their President and Commander-in-Chief both crossed into
Romanian internment. Army formations were ordered to disperse, to bury their
weapons, and to fend for themselves. In the last few hours before the Soviet
forces sealed the southern and eastern frontier, tens of thousands of soldiers and
civilians escaped into Romania and Hungary. The last Polish unit in the field
capitulated at Kock on 5 October.^3 After that, Poles could only fight abroad (see
pp. 000), or in the Underground.
The legends of the September Campaign are better known than the facts. It is
true that the Polish Army was fighting at a disadvantage from the strategic, tech-
nical, and political point of view. The sixty Wehrmacht divisions of von
Brauchitsch were free to launch attacks from four directions at once: from East
Prussia in the north, from Slovakia and Cieszyn in the south, from Pomerania in
the north-west, and from Silesia in the south-west. They could choose the
moment and the location. They were equipped with 2,600 tanks as against the
Poles' 150; and by 2,000 modern war-planes as against 400. Their supply ser-
vices were largely mechanized and motorized. They could wage the first
Blitzkrieg in history at leisure, against an enemy which could not reply in kind.
The Polish Army, commanded by Marshal Smigly-Rydz, possessed some 40
divisions, but was overwhelmed in many sectors before the reserves could be
mobilized. It was hampered by severed communications, by inferior weapons
and organization, and by roads blocked with innumerable panic-stricken
refugees. Even so, it should be remembered that the task of the Poles was not to
defeat the Germans. In accordance with military discussions held in the sum-
mer, the Polish Army was only expected to hold the Wehrmacht for the two
weeks required for its Western Allies to launch a major offensive with seventy
battle-ready French divisions across the Rhine. In the event, the Poles fulfilled
their task; the French and the British did not. What is more the Polish Army sold
itself dearly. In four weeks of fighting, it inflicted over 50,000 casualties on the
Wehrmacht. It was still fighting hard against the odds when the issue was set-
tled by the entry of the Red Army on the German side in the second half of the
month. In this light, its performance can be seen to be more creditable than that