, Poland
Early years Soviet forces entered
Poland for the first time on
17 September 1939, and then again as they were advancing towards
Nazi Germany in the course of the
Red Army's
Operation Bagration in the summer of 1944. Following the
Vistula-Oder Offensive in early 1945, all of Poland was liberated from Nazi occupation by Soviet forces. While formal Polish sovereignty was almost immediately restored, the territory of Poland fell under
de facto Soviet control as the Soviet military and security forces acted to ensure that Poland would be ruled by the Soviet-installed
communist puppet government of Poland. As the war ended, the structure of the Soviet military was reorganized from a war-time to a peace-time mode. Directive No. 11097 of 10 June 1945 created several new formations, known as
Groups of Forces, equivalent to
military districts, but used for command and administration of Soviet forces outside the Soviet Union itself. One of those new formations, at that time 300,000-400,000 strong, was to be stationed in Poland. It was mostly based on the
2nd Belorussian Front of General
Konstantin Rokossovsky (formerly stationed around
Mecklenburg and
Brandenburg). With the exception of
Szczecin (Stettin), which fell under the operational territory of the
Western Group of Forces, the Northern Group of Forces was located entirely within the territory of Poland. The
Polish communist government, which largely owed its existence to the Soviets (see
Polish Committee of National Liberation,
1946 Polish people's referendum,
1947 Polish legislative election), These actions, often involving the complete stripping down of industrial facilities, sometimes also took place in traditionally Polish territories. This caused tensions between the Soviets and the Polish government, which intended to use the resources of those territories to rebuild Poland. The Soviets also installed nuclear weapons in Poland, without informing the Polish government of that fact. Until the 1956 agreement, the Soviet troops stationed in Poland were seen by some Poles as occupying Polish territory; Soviet forces were mobilized and actually advanced on
Warsaw during
Polish October in 1956, and there were threats that they could be similarly used before the
martial law in Poland was introduced to stem the progress of the
Solidarity movement in 1980. Contemporary archives contained many reports of mugging, burglary, rape and murder attributed to Soviet soldiers in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War; even
Polish Communists were uneasy, as in 1945 the future Chairman of the
Polish Council of State,
Aleksander Zawadzki, worried that "raping and looting of the Soviet army would provoke a civil war". In the early years, the Red Army appropriated any resources it needed from the Polish government with no thought of compensation, or treating Poles as their allies. For example, when the Northern Group commander,
Konstantin Rokossovsky, decided that it should be headquartered in
Legnica, he ordered all Poles, including communist officials who were organizing the city and provincial government, to vacate one third of the city within 24 hours, later requisitioning any of their private belongings (like furniture) left behind. This incident was perceived by contemporaries as a particularly brutal action, and rumors circulated exaggerating its severity. Later, Polish settlements in which Soviet garrisons were placed were inconvenienced in other ways, for example by being removed from all official maps Symbolically,
Polish President Lech Wałęsa saw them off on 17 September, the anniversary of the
Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. ==Structure==