Germany was in full retreat by 1944, and the Red Army hot on their trail, across the Western border of the USSR where Hitler started his advance three years earlier and into Poland, on their way to the German capital. Not satisfied with just regaining lost territory, Russia saw an opportunity to further their territorial ambitions and take full control of Poland, a country they split with Germany in a pact signed in 1939.

On this day, July 13, in 1944, after the Russians under General Ivan Konev surrounded and defeated a large German army group near the city of Lvov, in Poland, Russian troops occupied the area, effectively creating a new western border.

Joseph Stalin similarly intended to control the Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, as part of his territory-expansion scheme. Post-WW II the states would become part of the greater Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. During the Cold War, the U.S. and allies would simply refer to the territories as the “Eastern Bloc.”