The Working of Administration in Occupied Poland in the Years 1939-1945

Abstract

As a result of a lost defensive war in 1939 Poland lost its sovereignty, and her territory was partitioned in two influence zones of authority, following the assault of Nazi Germany and Stalin's Red Army. The formal division between the two oppressors was established in a secretly added protocol to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Treaty of 23 August 1939, pursuant to which the Polish Republic was to come under the domination of both Germany and the USSR.

Under the occupation, Polish public administration was superseded by administration envisaged by the occupants. The structure of this kind of administration depended both on the degree of annexation and the occupying power itself. What is more, the political situation in the period under discussion was changing as the border were changing, too. The Author analyses the condition of civil administration and traces the changes it underwent in occupied Poland in 1939-1945.