Editing Great Patriotic War (section)

==== Nazi invasion of Poland (September 1939) ====
The Nazis invaded and destroyed the Second Polish Republic. The Polish leaders put up no serious resistance, fleeing to Romania - thereby saying "it's over".

Britain declared war on Nazi Germany. Poland and Britain repeatedly refused Soviet troops on Polish territory.<ref name=":0" />

After the Polish state was effectively destroyed, two weeks after the Nazi invasion, the USSR sent troops to claim its side of the Curzon Line, per the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Nazi troops had already crossed the line, seeking expansion, and had to be escorted out under the barrel of a gun. (This has been falsely reported as a "joint Soviet-Nazi military parade.")

The USSR sending its troops to push back the Nazis is called the "Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland" in Western revisionism.

Under international law, the USSR never invaded Poland.

The territory taken by the USSR was ethnically majority Belarusian and Ukrainian, and therefore split between the Belarusian SSR and Ukrainian SSR. The Russian SFSR played no role.