Armed Underground Activity in the Lwów District, 1939–1941

Abstract

On 22 September 1939 the city of Lwów capitulated to the Red Army. That same day officers of the Polish Army who had taken part in the defence of the city were summoned to a briefing and the majority led off under guard in an easterly direction. Despite this, in the days that followed several hundred officers gathered in the city. They had made their way thence following the break-up or disbanding of Polish units in the south of the country as the military campaign against the Germans drew to a close. Many of them refused to accept that the period of Soviet occupation, which was just beginning, would last. They were confident that the situation in Poland and her eastern borderlands would eventually return to normal, although the invasion of the Red Army was the most tragic event of those September days.