POLAND IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR 351in their American jeeps, the NKGB.* These Special Forces were of a size and
nature unseen on the Western Front. Their task was to control the Soviet
Army and to impose the Soviet order on the occupied territories without fear
or favour. According to Article 9 of the Treaty signed on 2.6 July 1944 by the
PKWN, the Soviet authorities were granted full control over civilian security
in-the Soviet army's rear. This gave them an open licence to subject the pop-
ulation to the political exercise so bitterly remembered from 1939-40. All
existing local officials, from the mayor to the municipal caretaker, were
unceremoniously replaced, often under the threat of charges of having collab-
orated with the Nazis. Peasants were invited at gunpoint to surrender their
livestock and their foodstores. Tens of thousands were deported without
explanation. Members of the Polish Resistance were given the choice between
instant arrest, and service in one of the Soviet-sponsored formations. Anyone
who showed the slightest disinclination to obey immediately was written off
as a war casualty. Once a liberated area had been processed in this manner, it
was highly unlikely that anyone would be left who might undertake political
enterprises of an independent character.
The political situation was extremely unpleasant. On the one hand, the Soviet
leaders openly declared themselves to be the loyal allies of the Western Powers,
and subscribed in theory to the principles of the common, democratic, and anti-
Nazi alliance. On the other hand, they had denounced the Polish Government-
in-Exile, which was the accepted authority on Polish matters in everyone else's
eyes, and they classed the Home Army and its associates as 'bandits'. They
confined their dealings in Poland to persons and institutions appointed by them-
selves in their own image. They began by attacking all non-communist
Resistance groups, especially those who had assisted the Soviet advance, and by
appointing local administrators subservient to themselves, in every town and
village throughout Poland. Figures of course, are not available; but the victims
must certainly be counted in tens of thousands. Perhaps the saddest scene of the
entire Liberation occurred at Majdanek near Lublin in the late summer of 1944,
when the Soviet authorities made use of the former Nazi extermination camp to
house detainees of the Polish Home Army. The culmination of the process came
in March 1945 when the remaining leaders of the Resistance were arrested and
deported for trial. Sixteen such leaders, were sentenced in Moscow in June 1945
as 'saboteurs and subversionist bandits', at the very time when their ostensible
patrons, the Western Powers, were pressing Poles of all persuasions to settle
their differences.^37 (See p. 415). Nor did the Soviet Army depart once the
Liberation was complete. On the grounds that Soviet lines of communication to
* The National Commissariat of State Security (NKGB), which grew out of the National
Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) in 1943, had special responsibility for all areas
liberated from German Occupation. It was superseded in 1946 by agencies of the Ministry
of State Security (MGB), the forerunner of the Commissariat of State Security (KGB) which
lasted to the end.