70 years have passed since the beginning of the World War II . The start of the war is generally held to be September 1st, 1939, when Nazi German invaded Poland from the west. From the first day of the war Ukrainians suffered because German bombs killed many Ukrainian civilians in Poland and there were Ukrainians serving in the Polish armed forces. On September17th, 1939 the Red Army invaded Poland from the east. The Soviet government announced that it was acting to protect the Ukrainians and Belarusians who lived in the eastern part of Poland, because the Polish state had collapsed in the face of the German attack and could no longer guarantee the security of its own citizens. The common Soviet-German military parade took place on Common parade of Wehrmacht and Red Army in Brest Litovsk at the end of the Invasion of Poland took place on September 22nd 1939. The most devastating war in history was over only in 1945, almost six years later of German-Soviet invasion of Poland. Ukraine was the greatest victim of World War II, suffering the greatest material damage and the greatest human losses (8,000 which represented 19.1 percent of the total population). The country suffered twice from a "scorched earth" policy conducted by the two greatest powers of this century, Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
General Semen Krivoshein (photo 1) and General Heinz Wilhelm Guderian (photo 2) during the common Soviet - German military parade in Brest Litovsk (photos 3,4). For the first time they met each other in 1929, when Guderian was on the inspection of the tank school near Kazan for the German officers.