Orzeł incident
The flight of the Polish submarine ORP Orzeł from the port of Tallinn on September 18, 1939, interned by neutral Estonia , is referred to as the Orzeł incident . The Soviet Union used the provoked incident as a pretext for the stationing of naval and air force units in Estonia.
prehistory
As a result of the First World War and the October Revolution , the five new cordon sanitaire nation states Estonia , Finland , Latvia , Lithuania and Poland , as well as those under supervision , emerged in the Baltic Sea region on former areas of the German Empire and the Russian Tsarist Empire, in addition to the Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union the League of nations standing Free city of Danzig .
In the 1930s, the two resurgent regional great powers began to prepare a revision of these developments. The first change in the border in the Baltic region took place on March 22, 1939, when the Memelland was reconnected to the German Reich . The common strategic goals of the ideological antagonists from the National Socialist German Reich and the Communist Soviet Union led to an alliance of convenience when, on August 24, 1939, the world public was surprised with the German-Soviet non-aggression pact . In a secret additional protocol to the treaty, the states and areas between the Soviet and German borders were assigned to respective spheres of interest .
On September 1, 1939, the Second World War began with the German attack on the Polish Westerplatte in the Free City of Danzig . France and Great Britain could no longer accept the German attack against Poland and had to give up their appeasement policy . They fulfilled their alliance obligations by declaring war on Germany on September 3rd. The declaration of war was not followed by effective military measures in support of Poland, but the so-called seat war . On September 17, the Soviet Union occupied its sphere of interest in Poland . In this situation the three Baltic states were in a critical position. So far they have been able to maintain their independence because they could hope for French protection and their main opponents were first weakened and later became enemies with one another. After the German-Soviet unification and the insufficient Anglo-French support for Poland, the Baltic states had to cooperate with both aggressors.
The incident
On September 14, 1939, the Polish submarine ORP Orzeł entered the port of the Estonian capital Tallinn. The warship was completely clear to sea, had no technical or supply problems and only called at the neutral port to drop the commandant Henryk Kłoczkowski , who he said was sick, and another crew member on neutral ground. The Polish side could therefore assume that according to the Hague Peace Conferences (1899–1907), the submarine could or even had to leave the port again within the next 24 hours. However, the submarine was prevented from leaving on the morning of September 15 because the German merchant ship Thalassa was in the port and, according to maritime law, the Polish submarine was not allowed to leave the port until 24 hours after its departure. The decision corresponded to Article 16 of the Hague Peace Conference " Agreement on the rights and obligations of neutrals in the event of a sea war ". In the afternoon of the same day, the submarine and its crew were officially interned. The illegal decision is certainly due to Soviet and German pressure. The Estonians immediately began disarming the Polish warship and confiscating important items of equipment.
When the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland on September 17th, Orzeł Jan Grudziński was able to convince his crew to flee, which they succeeded in the night of September 18th. The Estonian coastal defense tried to prevent the departing submarine from continuing, fired at it with handguns and artillery, but was unsuccessful. The ORP Orzeł was able to break away and later break through to Great Britain. The Soviet and German propaganda described the escape as the " Orzeł incident ".
The Soviet news agency TASS later claimed that the Soviet tanker Metallist was sunk by the Orzeł , in which five Soviet seamen were killed. In addition, the freighter Pioneer was attacked. After interrogating Soviet officers captured in the Winter War , Finland claimed that the Soviet ships had been torpedoed by the Soviet submarine SC-303 to provoke an incident as a result of a direct order from Leningrad party leader Andrei Zhdanov .
consequences
The Orzeł incident served the Soviet Union as one of the pretexts for the long-planned invasion of the Baltic States. The Soviet Union assumed that Estonia had failed to fulfill its obligations as a neutral state, had let the submarine escape on purpose and that the Estonian Navy was not in a position to effectively control the Estonian territorial waters in accordance with international maritime law. The first units of the Soviet Navy arrived in Tallinn in September 1939 to take over the " protection " of the Estonian sea area. On September 28, 1939, Estonia and the Soviet Union signed a " mutual assistance pact " that allowed the Soviet Union to maintain naval and air bases on Estonian territory. This initiated the first steps for the military occupation of Estonia that followed on June 17, 1940. The first Soviet governor in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic formed on August 16, 1940 was the Leningrad Area and City Secretary Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov . Estonia was occupied by Germany between 1941 and 1944. The country remained a union republic of the Soviet Union until August 20, 1991 .
Web links
- The blackmailed annexation . In: Der Standard (print edition of September 28/29, 2002)
- Association of the "ORZEŁ" submarine search group ( English )
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Rights and obligations of neutral states in the event of a sea war ( Memento from October 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ The sources are contradictory: wlb-stuttgart.de , seekrieg.de ( Memento from July 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), crolick.website.pl and It began ten years ago . In: Die Zeit , No. 41/1949. The fact is that the Soviet Union staged an incident. It remains unclear whether the Metallist was actually sunk or whether it was merely claimed that it was sunk.
- ↑ Assistance Pact between the USSR and Estonia of September 28, 1939 ( PDF ; 13 kB)