As commander-in-chief of the Polish forces, Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz had the all-but-impossible task of countering the German invasion with outdated and largely static defense forces. Poland's borders, set in 1920, were generally indefinsible because of the lack of rivers and mountains. With such constraints, as well as a dispersed force deployment, Poland's demise was inevitable. All hopes of holding out through winter in the woods and marshes of eastern Poland were destroyed by the Soviet invasion in mid-September.
