Historical Context - MAUS

1. Which ideas in your novel are connected to its particular setting, and which ideas are still relevant today?

SETTING

At dawn on September 1, 1939, the German army launched a ferocious assault across the Polish border. The Luftwaffe sent its bombers and fighters to attack airfields, rail heads, troop concentrations or anything else considered important to the command and movement of the Polish armed forces. The first Blitzkrieg had begun. One hour later German troops attacked from the north and south intent on encircling the Polish army. The Poles fell back only to find German troops in their rear.

Two days later, honoring their obligations to Poland, France and Britain declared war on Germany. This was of no help to Poland. The final blow came on September 17 when Soviet forces, under terms of a secret agreement with Germany, marched in from the East. Warsaw surrendered on September 27. By October 6, it was all over. Poland ceased to exist as a country. World War II had begun.

Poland was immediately divided between the Soviets and Nazi Germany. The Soviets absorbed the eastern portion including Byelorussia and the West Ukraine. The Germans declared the western portion of Poland a part of Greater Germany. The portion in the middle including Warsaw was declared a German colony ruled from the city of Krakow by Hans Frank.

In June 1941, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and by winter the German army stood before the gates of Moscow. The resilience of the Soviet army and the severity of the Russian winter combined to turn the tide and by the summer of 1943 the German army was retracing its steps back to Poland. The city of Lublin fell to the Soviets in July 1944. Warsaw fell the following January and the Nazis driven out of the remainder of Poland. Unfortunately, the Poles found that their "liberation" did not lead to freedom but meant only the substitution of their Nazi masters by a Soviet regime.



RELEVANT TODAY

In spring 1940 members of the Soviet secret police killed around 4,500 Polish army officers with a bullet to the back of the head and threw the bodies into a mass grave in Katyn Forest on the Soviet side of the border with Belarus. The killings were sanctioned by Stalin, whose wider plan was to eradicate any potential resistance to the Soviet occupation or communist ideology. In total an estimated 22,000 members of Poland’s ‘elite’, officers, doctors, teachers, engineers and students were massacred at various locations in the region. The mass grave in the Katyn Forest was first found by German troops after their invasion of the USSR and the discovery was a propaganda dream for the Nazi regime; Goebbels and his propaganda ministry would use the horror of the graves to depict the Bolsheviks and their Allied puppets as depraved monsters.

The Kremlin denied responsibility, instead accusing the Germans of carrying out the massacre soon after they invaded the USSR in 1941. Keen to maintain the propaganda initiative the Nazis set up an international committee to investigate the massacre. The committee concluded it had taken place in 1940. A separate study by the Polish Red Cross made the same findings, which were sent to London but not published by the British government until 1989. The truth about the atrocity was kept hidden throughout the Cold War and the Soviets waited until 1990 to admit responsibility.

Even today the Katyn Massacre remains forged in the Polish psyche, a symbol of the worst crimes committed against Poland and the attempt to wipe out its most promising sons and daughters.in from the East. Warsaw surrendered on September 27. By October 6, it was all over. Poland ceased to exist as a country. World War II had begun. Poland was immediately divided between the Soviets and Nazi Germany. The Soviets absorbed the eastern portion including Byelorussia and the West Ukraine. The Germans declared the western portion of Poland a part of Greater Germany. The portion in the middle including Warsaw was declared a German colony ruled

from the city of Krakow by Hans Frank. In June 1941, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and by winter the German army stood before the gates of Moscow. The resilience of the Soviet army and the severity of the Russian winter combined to turn the tide and by the summer of 1943 the German army was retracing its steps back to Poland. The city of Lublin fell to the Soviets in July 1944. Warsaw fell the following January and the Nazis driven out of the remainder of Poland. Unfortunately, the Poles found that their "liberation" did not lead to freedom but meant only the substitution of their Nazi masters by a Soviet regime.