ABSTRACT
War in Europe broke out on 1 September 1939. In a lighting strike the Nazis drove into the western side of Poland. England and France declared war on Germany two days after the Germans attacked Poland, but did no appreciable fighting. In both parts of occupied Poland the Church was brutalized. In Soviet-occupied Poland persecution also ensued. As in the case with the Nazi persecution of the Church, Pope Pius XII did not publicly denounce the Communist persecution. If Hitler had played the card of national and religious liberation, Stalin would have never survived. Stalin decided to deport the German Catholics and Protestants, whom Catherine the Great had attracted to southern Russia, to Central Asia during World War II, because he did not trust them. In 1944 and 1945 the Soviet authorities also launched a propaganda campaign against the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
