American Reacts Life in German-Occupied Poland (Uncensored Version)

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Yeah, I'll react to that, sure.

[00:00:04]Okay. Hey guys.

[00:00:06]Hope everyone's doing well. My name's Connor if you're new. And I like to learn things usually with with your help. And I'm to learn about German-occupied Poland.

[00:00:19]Let's go. Let's do it. Preemptive like.

[00:00:23]Let's go.

[00:00:25]There was a time when all we had was our faith.

[00:00:29]Faith that our nation would one day be freed from our enemy.

[00:00:34]In 1939, our young republic was crushed beneath the treads of the German war machine. Our government fled going into exile in England.

[00:00:44]But the Polish people remained. We remained and we hoped. We adopted a refrain. Yes to Polska nie zginęła.

[00:00:53]We repeated it when the Nazis [music] began forcing us to work in their factories. Yes to Polska nie zginęła. We repeated [music] it when the typhus took our loved ones. Yes to Polska nie zginęła. And we repeated it when the home army called for us to rise up to fight against the Nazis in the streets to show the world that we would liberate ourselves.

[00:01:17]Yes to Polska [music] nie zginęła.

[00:01:30]Hi, I'm Griffin Johnson, the Armchair Historian.

[00:01:32]>> Hello. In a previous video, we discussed the invasion of Poland from the Polish perspective. Today, we will examine its aftermath.

[00:01:41]The Poles were forced to endure a determined and persistent effort to eradicate their culture and turn their nation into a country of slaves to the Third Reich, while Polish Jews in particular faced the prospect of outright extermination. Yet even in the face of nightmarish oppression, the spirit of the Polish people was never broken and they continued to resist the occupation until the bitter end.

[00:02:15]On September 1st, 1939, the recently mobilized armies of Germany invaded the Republic of Poland. The defenders were rapidly pushed back by the speed and ferocity of the Germans' combined arms assault, but continued to fight bravely until the Soviet Union attacked from the east, sealing Poland's fate. On October 6th, the invasion came to a close with only a tiny fraction of the Polish army managing to escape through Romania along with most of the country's top government officials. These men formed a government in exile and maintained that Poland had not surrendered despite the total occupation of their country.

[00:02:56]Unfortunately, the defiance of these men did nothing to prevent the Germans and Soviets from carving up the lands of Poland between them in accordance with a secret clause of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviet Union seized the eastern half of the country, incorporating the territory into the Byelorussian and Ukrainian SSRs. The Nazis directly annexed half of the remaining territory into Germany, granting a small slice to Slovakia, their client state. The rest was placed under an administration known as the General Government, staffed exclusively by German officials.

[00:03:36]Guys, quit uh Do you think that Germany formed a pact with the Soviets to take control of Poland so that they could get help in a way and ensure the quick defeat or the quick occupation?

[00:03:56]Or do you think it was not for the Germans not to scare the the Soviets yet?

[00:04:06]And keep their guard down that, you know, Germany never intended to invade them. You know you know what I mean?

[00:04:15]Does that make sense?

[00:04:17]Almost immediately, the General Government began to terrorize the Polish people, establishing five SS units known as the Einsatzgruppen to hunt down and execute potential threats to the occupation government. Armed with a list of 61,000 names, including doctors, intellectuals, political activists, and First World War veterans, the Einsatzgruppen rounded up and murdered over 16,000 people in the first few months after the invasion. And by mid-1940, over 100,000 Polish intellectuals had been massacred.

[00:05:00]Those who were not executed faced eviction. Over 2 million Poles, mostly landowners, businessmen, and other wealthy individuals were forced from their homes and relocated into slums and ghettos.

[00:05:15]Their homes were soon occupied by German settlers encouraged by the Reich to resettle in the newly conquered Lebensraum or living space in the east.

[00:05:26]Tens of thousands of Polish refugees fled the country seeking asylum in Romania to the south, while many more were left displaced within Poland having lost everything but their lives.

[00:05:41]When the dust of relocation and displacement had settled, the General Government began to institute policies designed to eradicate Polish culture.

[00:05:50]All cultural institutions, from schools and museums to theaters, libraries, and newspapers [music] were shut down. Radio receivers were confiscated, books were burned, all Polish music was banned, and every monument or piece of Polish art the SS could get their hands on was stolen or destroyed. The Germans intended to strip away any sense of national or cultural identity from the Polish people in hopes of breaking their will to resist. Following the attack on Polish culture as a whole, the occupiers honed in on the Jewish people. In April of 1940, the Jewish citizens of Warsaw were forced to begin construction of a walled ghetto within the ruined city where they would be forced to live. The Jewish community in Warsaw made up over 30% of its total population, but the area covered by the ghetto comprised only about 5% of the city.

[00:06:47]As a result, conditions in the ghetto were desperately cramped and unsanitary, leading to outbreaks of typhus and other diseases. The same was true of other ghettos, of which more than 300 were built over the course of the occupation. Millions of Jews, Romani, Slavs, and disabled people were forced to live in these dismal slums before being shipped off to concentration camps.

[00:07:16]Some of the ghettos were built specifically to house children. One of the most horrible examples was the camp on Przemysłowa Street, a subsection of the ghetto in Łódź. The camp housed orphans, accused criminals, and children of resistance members under the age of 16.

[00:07:35]The General Government described the camp as a facility for education and rehabilitation of children whose criminal activity made them a dangerous element for the German children. In reality, the Przemysłowa camp was a concentration camp where prisoners were assigned numbers instead of names, forced to work day and night on starvation rations, and routinely beaten and tortured by the guards.

[00:08:03]It is estimated that 1,600 children were imprisoned [music] at this camp over the course of the occupation. According to official records, 136 children died in the camp, although by the end of the war, only 900 of the 1,600 prisoners remained.

[00:08:20]While conditions in ghettos were especially horrid, the Poles living outside of them were not much better off.

[00:08:26]Food was strictly rationed, leading to mass starvation in urban areas. People often had to wander for days at a time in search of somewhere they could buy food, and the portions they managed to scrounge up were barely enough to get by.

[00:08:42]But starvation was not the only threat they faced. There was also the danger of being pressed into the General Government's forced labor service, known as the Baudienst.

[00:08:53]Initially, all Poles over the age of 18 were eligible for forced labor and could be pressed into service at any time. The minimum age was soon lowered to 14, and for Jews, it was 12.

[00:09:07]Of those recruited into the Baudienst, many were sent to work in factories, farms, and construction sites within Poland. Some of the less fortunate were deported to work in Germany or other occupied territories, never to return home.

[00:09:23]As the war went on, German demands for labor increased dramatically, and the punishments for evading forced labor conscription became more severe. By 1943, failing to turn up for forced labor became a crime punishable by death.

[00:09:40]In the countryside, especially, brutal retaliations were carried out against entire communities for attempting to evade the labor draft. If a community failed to provide enough workers to satisfy the government's quota, German soldiers would surround the village and burn it to the ground, massacring everyone and leaving the charred ruins as a message to surrounding villages. In the face of such brutality, resistance was inevitable. Underground First resistance organization of the secret Polish Army founded in 1939 November organization steadily grew to over 8,000 members in 1941 and merged with the Home Army.

[00:10:28]Guerrilla armies formed almost as soon as the invasion ceased and thousands of Poles flocked to their banners.

[00:10:38]These ragtag forces eventually coalesced into a unified organization known as the Polish Underground State which attempted to maintain some continuity of the Polish nation beneath the shadow of the General Government. Through their military branch known as the Home Army, the Underground State carried out guerrilla attacks on occupying forces, disrupted German supply lines, and assassinated Nazi officers. Meanwhile, the Underground's civilian arm coordinated clandestine education for children, distributed aid wherever possible, and disseminated anti-German publications.

[00:11:15]By 1943, the Underground State had grown to over 300,000 members and was powerful enough to operate its own secret criminal courts.

[00:11:27]In these underground courts, thousands of Poles suspected of supporting So, I I know underground resistance doesn't literally mean they were in tunnels, right? It just means under the radar.

[00:11:47]But how could they find places in in occupied Poland where they were able to carry out even their own like judicial system?

[00:12:03]I'm just I'm I'm just curious how how they made that happen and how how that was possible.

[00:12:10]or collaborating with Nazi occupiers were arrested and brought to trial. They included Poles who served as police officers, acted in German films, wrote for German-produced newspapers, or worked for the General Government administration.

[00:12:27]Those found guilty of such crimes against their countrymen were often flogged or beaten. Women who were accused of having sexual relations with Germans often had their heads shaved, sometimes with acid. In some of the most extreme cases, the courts handed out the death penalty.

[00:12:46]Ironically, these trials often made life harder for the Polish civilians they were meant to avenge. Poles who were removed from positions of authority within the police and administration were replaced by German officials with even less sympathy for the Polish people.

[00:13:03]Access to food became even more scarce and police brutality became worse and worse in spite of the Underground's courts' intentions. The General Government fought hard to suppress the Underground State responding to every major action with brutal reprisals against the Polish people.

[00:13:23]Frequently, in cities like Warsaw, the Nazis would respond to Home Army attacks by rounding up and executing up to 100 random civilians, leaving their bodies hanging in the streets as a grisly warning to their former neighbors.

[00:13:40]However, horrific violence inflicted by the Nazis only stiffened the resolve of the resistance movement even among the most downtrodden of the Polish people.

[00:13:50]In the spring of 1943, when the Germans entered the Warsaw Ghetto to organize another round of deportation to the death camps, a few hundred members of the Jewish resistance fought back. Armed with grenades and small arms provided by the Home Army, the fighters killed dozens of Nazi soldiers and forced them to withdraw from the ghetto.

[00:14:11]In retaliation, the SS invaded the ghetto and razed it, killing 13,000 people. Afterwards, the Warsaw concentration camp was established in the ruins of the ghetto to exterminate everyone who had remained. [music] The aftermath of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising left the Home Army outraged and by that [music] time they were large and organized enough to begin preparing for revenge. As the Soviets drove back the German Army in the east, the Polish Underground planned a massive uprising across the entire country code-named Tempest.

[00:14:46]The operation began in early January 1944 when the Red Army crossed the pre-war Polish border. Over 6,500 soldiers rose up across Poland and began fighting against the German Army alongside Soviet troops.

[00:15:03]Their efforts to disrupt German defenses were largely successful, but as soon as the fighting stopped, the Poles' worst fears about their new allies were confirmed. The Soviets forcibly disarmed and arrested all Home Army soldiers they had fought beside, treating them as enemy prisoners of war.

[00:15:23]By the summer, when it had become abundantly clear that the Soviets were Poland is the biggest The fate of Poland during and after World War II is just infuriating. You you get invaded by the Germans and the Soviets.

[00:15:52]Well, you know and then the Germans obviously launch Operation Barbarossa, push through, that fails, the Soviets push back.

[00:16:01]But So, at the end of the day, you're still occupied by one of the original invaders for decades.

[00:16:16]Uh infuriating. Not their allies, the Home Army decided that the only way to ensure Poland's independence would be to liberate the capital and have the government in exile return. To this end, on August 1st, the Polish resistance in Warsaw rose up against the German occupiers beginning the Warsaw Uprising.

[00:16:39]Somewhere [music] between 20 and 50,000 people fought in the uprising, the vast majority of them civilians who had been pushed past the breaking point by years of brutal Nazi rule. At first, they experienced great success, seizing control of central Warsaw and sending the German garrison into retreat. The leaders of the uprising expected the rapidly advancing Red Army to take advantage of the chaos and occupy the city, but they stopped Sorry, I was reading the little griff thing there. I don't Okay.

[00:17:09]>> who had been pushed past the breaking point by years of brutal Nazi rule. At first, they experienced great success, seizing control of central Warsaw and sending the German garrison into retreat. The leaders of the uprising expected the rapidly advancing Red Army to take advantage of the chaos and occupy the city, but they stopped on the opposite bank of the Vistula River, barely 6 miles from the city center.

[00:17:35]There, the Soviet forces sat back and watched as German reinforcements arrived and began to suppress the uprising.

[00:17:43]Fighting in the streets was horrific and much of the city was destroyed [music] as the Poles fought tooth and nail for every inch of terrain. In an effort to demoralize the uprisers, the Germans began to massacre Polish civilians en masse. SS squads were deployed into captured neighborhoods where they proceeded house by house, murdering [music] everyone inside and burning the bodies. Men, women, and children alike were slaughtered and by the end of the uprising over 150,000 Polish civilians had been killed.

[00:18:19]had been killed. The end of the uprising over 150,000 Polish civilians had been killed.

[00:18:32]The Home Army fought hard, but by October, they were forced to surrender.

[00:18:39]The Germans systematically leveled much of what remained of the city in retaliation for the uprising, leaving almost the entirety of Warsaw in ruins.

[00:18:49]Almost all of those remaining Combined with the damage from the invasion and the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, this left around 85% of the buildings in Warsaw destroyed. the entirety of Warsaw in ruins.

[00:19:01]Almost all of those remaining in the city, more than 700,000 people, were expelled, forced to become refugees and the Nazis destroyed their homes out of spite.

[00:19:13]Only a few hundred Poles remained in the city when all was said and done, hiding out among the rubble of their capital.

[00:19:24]The uprising of the Home Army and the collapse of the Eastern Front sealed the fate of the Jews remaining in the Polish ghettos. Throughout 1944, the inhabitants of the ghettos were rapidly shipped off to death camps [music] like Auschwitz and Treblinka.

[00:19:39]When the camps reached capacity, the SS resorted to simply shooting Jewish families in their homes. While some made valiant efforts to resist, the exhausted, malnourished, and largely unarmed prisoners could do little to prevent their fate.

[00:19:57]The most successful of these efforts was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but for all their courage and tenacity, their fight ended in defeat.

[00:20:05]Most other attempts at Jewish resistance ended similarly, and by the time the war ended, 3 million Polish Jews had been killed out of a pre-war population of 3.5 million.

[00:20:26]The German occupation took a horrible toll on the people of Poland. Over 5.6 million Polish citizens were killed, amounting to over 20% of the country's population.

[00:20:38]Those who survived were left with a largely ruined nation now under the control of the Soviets, who wasted no time establishing a puppet communist government. Many felt betrayed by their allies in the West, who had not only failed to help them withstand the invasion in 1939, but had then left the Polish people at the mercy of the Germans and Soviets even as the tides of war turned. These feelings of resentment and other very real scars of foreign occupation remain visible in Poland even today.

[00:21:10]How did we let the Soviets keep Poland?

[00:21:21]They were one of the ones to start the war on Poland. They agreed with Germany.

[00:21:27]Yes, the Soviets lost millions, tens of millions of lives in World War II.

[00:21:33]Okay?

[00:21:34]And they were crucial in in the end defeating Germany, right? But they also you you you you also when when other countries were saying, "If you attack Poland, it's we're starting the war. Like you we're we're at war with you, Germany." The Soviets said, "Uh it's okay, Germany. Actually, you know, we're not going to start war with you if you if you invade Poland." No, they didn't even do that. They said, "Yeah, we're in.

[00:22:04]We're in. Let's do it." And committed horrific atrocities against them, not on the scale of the Germans, of course, in Poland.

[00:22:13]And then in the end when the Soviets came back, then they still controlled Poland.

[00:22:19]It is the most upsetting part of the outcome the geopolitical outcome of World War II, hands down, is the occupation of Poland continued by the Soviets.

[00:22:32]And I would love to know if there were any a- anything at all to to like tell Stalin, like, "Hey, you can't you can't keep Poland."

[00:22:44]And then the Soviets were like, "No, that that we're keeping Poland." Or was there not even conversation about it?

[00:22:52]I don't get it.

[00:22:54]Polish uh people, I know watching, you you have you have some of the the history to be most proud of. Your resilience is insane.

[00:23:05]And uh you know, not just here, but with um the Austrians and uh Russians and Prussians before and um I know that you guys are a proud people and deservedly so. So, interesting video.

[00:23:25]Um I'd appreciate any comments down below.

[00:23:28]Love you all. Hope you're all doing well, and I hope to see you guys next time we can keep on learning together.

[00:23:33]Bye, guys.