As dockyard sirens blare out across Gdansk today to mark the outbreak of the Second World War, all eyes will be on one, profoundly unpopular visitor.

Will Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, apologise for Stalin’s collaboration with Hitler in carving up Poland? Will he signal a new candour about Russian treatment of the Poles? Or will he simply scratch open old wounds between the two countries?

Seventy years ago the war began with the Germans’ early morning bombardment of the Polish Westerplatte fortress from a training cruiser that had moored off the coast on a “friendship visit”. On the same day the Luftwaffe, commanded by General Wolfram Count von Richthofen, who had previously flattened Guernica, attacked the border town of Wielun, killing more than 1,000 civilians.

Hitler was on the march. Poland held out for as long as possible in the hope that Britain and France would come quickly to its aid. Instead, just over two weeks later, the Red Army attacked from the east, grabbing land and, in effect, partitioning Poland for the fourth time in its history.

Times Archive, 1939: Germany attacks across all frontiers

Before 6 o'clock yesterday morning Germany invaded Poland. The British and French governments promptly decided on a general mobilization

• Archive topic: German invasion of Poland

Multimedia

• Archive blog: Germany invades Poland - don't hold the front page

Related Links

• The great survivor

• Lose the Cold War attitude, Obama tells Putin

• Russia cannot afford to be a bad neighbour

Multimedia

• First to fight: how Poland fought and lost

Germany has said sorry — many times — and Angela Merkel, the Chancellor, will do so again in Poland today. Russia has not.

Mr Putin will have the chance to make amends, as the Polish press has laconically noted, but to judge by the barrage of outright propaganda and dubious historical discoveries coming out of Moscow over the past three weeks, such a gesture seems unlikely.

He has promised, however, to say something “very personal” and he seems ready, in subsequent talks with Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, to discuss the 1940 Katyn massacre of Polish officers and intellectuals. The killing was carried out by Soviet units but Moscow fiercely denied it for many decades and now simply prefers not to talk about the matter.

“Poland wants September 1, 1939, to remain etched in the world’s memory as the beginning of the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, tied to Germany’s, and then Soviet Russia’s, aggression,” said Mr Tusk. He has promised to remind Mr Putin “who had been the executioner and who the victim during World War Two”.

Polish public opinion demands that Mr Tusk state his complaints firmly and publicly. He will be accompanied at the commemorations by President Kaczyncski — who never loses an opportunity to question Russian motives in Eastern Europe — and together, the Polish leadership will present their nation as a victim of Hitler and Stalin.

The Russians have made extraordinary claims against Warsaw. At the weekend Russian intelligence services published an online statement declaring that Józef Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister before the war, was a German agent.

Two Russian television channels screened a documentary recently claiming that Poland had struck a secret deal with Nazi Germany in 1934 that provided for an attack on the Soviet Union.

Fanning the flames, President Medvedev of Russia announced the creation of a “commission against attempts to falsify history to harm Russian interests” and denounced any attempt to equate Nazi Germany with the Soviet Union as a “flat-out lie”. One of the members of the commission, Natalya Narochnitskaya, has published heavily disputed claims that the Poles killed 100,000 Russian prisoners of war in 1920.

At first sight it seems as if the Polish-Russian war wounds are too deep to heal; many decades of official denial have caused them to fester.

It also seems that Moscow is trying to muddy the waters. About 19 leaders, including Ms Merkel, David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, and General James Jones, the US National Security Adviser, will be at Westerplatte today and Russia does not want to be put in the dock of world opinion. As far as it is concerned, the unifying myth of the war remains that the Red Army liberated Eastern Europe from Nazi enslavement.

Polish diplomats believe that the Kremlin wants an easier, more stable relationship with former members of the communist bloc. Poland, in particular, has become a pivotal member of the EU and Nato. As the largest state in the area, with strong links to Ukraine and the Baltic states, it is the key to a new Russian relationship with Europe.

Despite his hard talk, Mr Tusk has said: “I hope for September 1 to become a day that will improve relations in the region, including Polish-Russian relations.”

There are other signs of détente: Mr Putin is bringing with him his energy and transport ministers to do business while in Poland. Mr Tusk is planning to have the Russian Prime Minister sit down with the Ukrainian leadership, with whom relationships are at a post-Soviet low.

Candour about historical guilt was a precondition for West Germany’s ground-breaking Ostpolitik — as displayed when Chancellor Willy Brandt dropped to his knees in front of the Warsaw ghetto memorial in December 1970. Similar candour is now required from Russia if it is to give new vim to its Westpolitik. But no one expects Mr Putin to drop to his knees any time soon.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

— The Nazi Foreign Minister Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop was eventually hanged for war crimes. Vyacheslav Molotov, the Russian Foreign Minister, gave his name to the “Molotov cocktail”

— Their pact was one of non-aggression between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but also included a secret clause that divided up Poland and Lithuania

— Article II of the secret protocol stated that: “In the event of a territorial and political re-arrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state, the spheres of influence of Germany and the USSR shall be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula and San”

— Russians said the agreement was propelled by the Munich Agreement of 1938, when France and Britain agreed that Germany could annex bits of Czechoslovakia

Sources: Reuters, Modern History Sourcebook, Times database

Times Recommends

• No apology for Germany’s own Nazi victims
• Intricate web of fear and hope tying down deal
• Victims remembered a year after Mumbai attacks