1939-2009

Seventy years passed on September 1st, 2009 from the outbreak of World
War II. This greatest military conflict in the history of the world
lasted 6 years and it cost the lives of above 50 million people. The war
began with the invasion by Nazi Germany (supported by allied Slovakia)
of Poland. On September 3rd, France and Great Britain (with their
dominions) declared a state of war with Germany. On September 17th,
Poland was additionally invaded by the Soviet Union. In June 1941, two
totalitarian dictatorships were to meet each other in direct military
conflict. These four years of bloody and wasted struggle ended in the
triumph of Stalin?s regime. The decisions of successive conferences of
?The Big Three? (Tehran 1943, Yalta and Potsdam 1945) secured for Moscow
nearly a 50 year hegemony in Central and South-Eastern Europe.

• author: Piotr Mikietyński