Polish September Campaign
The
Polish September Campaign or the "Polish-German War of 1939" (also known in Poland as the "1939 Defensive War" (
Wojna obronna 1939 roku), in Germany as the "Poland Campaign" (
Polenfeldzug), and codenamed
Fall Weiss ("Case White") by the German General Staff), was the
World War II invasion of
Poland by
Nazi Germany, the
Soviet Union and a small German-allied
Slovak contingent. The invasion of Poland marked the start of
World War II in Europe as Poland's western allies, the
United Kingdom and
France,
declared war on Germany on
September 3. The campaign began on
September 1 1939, one week after the signing of the secret
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and ended on
October 6 1939, with Germany and the Soviet Union occupying the entirety of Poland.
Following a spurious,
German-staged "Polish attack" on
31 August 1939, the following day German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west. Spread thin defending their long borders, the Polish armies were soon forced to withdraw east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the
Battle of the Bzura, the Germans gained an undisputed advantage. Polish forces then began a withdrawal southeast, following a plan that called for a long defence in the
Romanian bridgehead area where the Polish forces were to await an expected
Allied counter-attack and relief
[Baliszewski Dariusz Most honoru, Tygodnik "Wprost", Nr 1138 (19 September 2004)]].
On
September 17 1939, the
Soviet Red Army invaded the
eastern regions of Poland in cooperation with Germany. The Soviets were carrying out their part of the secret appendix of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which divided Eastern Europe into Nazi and Soviet
spheres of influence. With the unexpected Soviet invasion, the Polish government decided the defence of the Romanian bridgehead was no longer feasible and ordered the
evacuation of all troops to neutral
Romania. By
1 October, Germany and the Soviet Union had completely overrun Poland, although the Polish government never surrendered. In addition, Poland's remaining land and air forces were evacuated to neighboring
Romania and
Hungary. Many of the exiles subsequently joined the recreated
Polish Army in allied
France,
French-mandated Syria and the
United Kingdom.
In the aftermath of the September Campaign, a
resistance movement was formed.
Poland's fighting forces continued to contribute to Allied military operations, and did so throughout the duration of World War II. Germany captured the Soviet-occupied areas of Poland when it invaded the Soviet Union on
June 22 1941 and lost the territory in 1944 to an advancing Red Army. Over the course of the war, Poland lost over 20% of its pre-war population under an occupation that marked the end of the
Second Polish Republic.
Germany
Germany had a significant numerical advantage over the Polish, and had developed a significant military prior to the conflict. The
Heer (Army) had some 2,400
tanks organized into six
panzer divisions, utilizing new
operational doctrine. It held that these divisions should act in coordination with other elements of the military, punching holes in the enemy line and isolating selected enemy units which would be
encircled and destroyed. This would be repeated and followed up by less mobile mechanized infantry and foot soldiers. The
Luftwaffe (Air Force) provided both tactical and strategic
air power, particularly
dive bombers that attacked and disrupted the enemy's supply and communications lines. Together the new operational methods were nicknamed
blitzkrieg (lightning war), but
historians generally hold that German operations during the campaign were conservative, owing more to traditional methods. The strategy of the
Wehrmacht (Armed Forces) was more in line with
Vernichtungsgedanken, or a focus on envelopment to create pockets in broad-front annihilation.
Aircraft played a major role in the campaign.
Bomber aircraft also attacked cities, causing huge losses amongst the civilian population through
terror bombing. The
Luftwaffe forces consisted of 1,180 fighter aircraft: 290
Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers, 290 conventional bombers (mainly of the
He 111 type), and an assortment of 240 naval aircraft. In total, Germany had close to 3,000 aircraft, with nearly two thirds of them up to modern standards. Half of these were deployed on the Polish front. The
Luftwaffe was among the best trained and equipped air forces in 1939.
Poland
Between 1936 and 1939, Poland invested heavily in
industrialization in the Central Industrial Region (
Centralny Okręg Przemysłowy). Preparations for a defensive war with Germany were ongoing for many years, but most plans assumed fighting would not begin before 1942. To raise funds for industrial development, Poland was selling much of the modern equipment it produced. The
Polish Army had about a million soldiers but less than half were mobilised by the
1 September. Latecomers sustained significant casualties when public transport became targets of the
Luftwaffe. The Polish military had fewer armoured forces than the Germans and, being dispersed within the infantry, were unable to effectively engage the enemy.
Experiences in the
Polish-Soviet War shaped Polish Army organisational and operational doctrine. Unlike the
trench warfare of the
First World War, the
Polish-Soviet War was a conflict in which the
cavalry's mobility played a decisive role. Poland acknowledged the benefits of mobility but was unwilling to invest heavily in many of the expensive and unproven new inventions since then and make these additions to its armed forces. In spite of this,
Polish Cavalry brigades were used as a mobile
mounted infantry and had some successes against both German infantry and German cavalry.
The
Polish Air Force was at a severe disadvantage against the German
Luftwaffe although, contrary to popular belief, it was
not destroyed on the ground. Although the
Polish Air Force lacked modern
fighter aircraft, its pilots were also among the world's best-trained.
[Michael Alfred Peszke, Polish Underground Army, the Western Allies, and the Failure of Strategic Unity in World War II, McFarland & Company, 2004, ISBN 078642009X, Google Print, p.2]Overall, the Germans enjoyed numerical and qualitative aircraft superiority. Poland had only about 400 aircraft, including 169
fighters and some obsolete transport,
reconnaissance and training aircraft. Only 36 Polish aircraft could be considered modern, such as the
PZL.37 Łoś bomber. The other Polish craft were far older than their German counterparts. The Polish
PZL P.11 fighter, produced in the early 1930s, was capable of only 350 km/h (about 210 mi/hr), far less than German bombers.
The
Polish Navy was a small fleet comprising
destroyers,
submarines and smaller support vessels. Most Polish surface units followed
Operation Peking, leaving Polish ports on
August 20 and escaping to the
North Sea to join with the British
Royal Navy. Submarine forces participated in
Operation Worek, with the goal of engaging and damaging German shipping in the Baltic Sea, but with much less success. In addition, many
Polish Merchant Marine ships joined the British merchant fleet and took part in wartime
convoys.
Soviet Union
:
Order of battle of Poland:
*
Polish army order of battle in 1939*
Polish Air Force order of battle in 1939*
Polish Navy order of battle in 1939*
Polish armaments 1939-1945Order of battle of invading forces:
*
German order of battle for Operation Fall Weiss*
Soviet order of battle for invasion of Poland in 1939The
Nazi Party, led by
Adolf Hitler, took power in Germany in 1933. Hitler at first pursued a
policy of
rapprochement with Poland, culminating in the
German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934. Despite Hitler's efforts to get Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, the Poles feared that they would be made a satellite state of the Third Reich and refused. [
1]
Hitler was also concerned that the German exclave of
East Prussia was separated from Germany by the "
Polish Corridor", land acquired by Poland after the
Treaty of Versailles. In addition, many Germans were interested in seeing the incorporation of the
Free City of Danzig, as both Danzig and the Polish Corridor constituted territories lost by Germany after
World War I. Hitler made an appeal to German
nationalism by promising to "liberate" the Germans living in both of these regions.
In 1938, Germany began to increase its demands for Danzig, also proposing that aroadway be built in order to connect East Prussia with Germany proper.[
2] This would run through the
Polish Corridor. Poland, distrusting Hitler and concerned that Poland would increasingly be subject to the will of the Axis and Anti-Comintern Bloc, refused to negotiate.[
3] Additionally, Poland was now backed by a
March 30 guarantee from
Britain and
France. At the same time, British
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his
Foreign Secretary,
Lord Halifax, still hoped to strike a deal with Hitler regarding the Free City of Danzig (and possibly the Polish Corridor), resorting to
appeasement in exchange for Hitler's promise to leave the rest of Poland alone.
With tensions mounting, Germany turned to aggressive diplomacy, unilaterally withdrawing from both the
German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934 and the
London Naval Agreement of 1935 on
April 28, 1939. In early 1939, Hitler had already issued orders to prepare for a possible "solution of the Polish problem by military means." Another crucial step towards war was the surprise signing of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on
August 22, the denouement of secret
Nazi-
Soviet talks held in
Moscow which capitalized on France and Britain's own failure to secure an alliance with the Soviet Union. As a result, Germany neutralized the possibility of Soviet opposition in a potential campaign against Poland, the Soviet Union's western neighbor. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed to divide Eastern Europe, including Poland, into two spheres of influence; the western third of the country was to go to Germany and the eastern two-thirds to the Soviet Union. Although Western Allies'
intelligence had uncovered the secret appendix concerning Poland, this information was not shared with the Polish government.
The German assault was originally scheduled to begin at 0400 on
26 August. However, when on
August 25 the
Polish-British Common Defence Pact was signed as an annex to the
Franco-Polish Military Alliance, committing Britain to the defence of Polish independence, and Britain announced that its guarantee of Polish independence had been formalized by an alliance between the two countries, Hitler wavered and postponed his attack until
1 September, trying on 26th of August to dissuade the British and the French from interfering in the conflict. The
negotiations convinced Hitler that there was little chance the Western Allies would declare war on Germany, and even if they did, due to the lack of territorial guarantees to Poland, they would be willing to negotiate a compromise favourable to Germany after its conquest of Poland. Meanwhile, the number of cross-border raids and sabotages by German
Abwehr units, border skirmishes and increased overflights by high-altitude
reconnaissance aircraft, signalled that war was imminent.
On
29 August, Germany issued Poland a final
ultimatum, now demanding the Polish Corridor in its entirety. When Poland refused to hand over the territory, German Foreign Minister
Joachim von Ribbentrop declared negotiations with Poland to be at an end. On
30 August, the
Polish Navy sent its destroyer
flotilla to Britain as advised. Meanwhile, Poland braced for war. On the same day, Polish
Marshal Rydz-Śmigly announced
mobilization of Polish troops. However, he was pressured into revoking the order by the French, who apparently still hoped for a
diplomatic settlement, failing to realize that the Germans were fully mobilized and concentrated at the Polish border. On
31 August 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. Due to the prior discontinuation, Poland managed to mobilise only 70% of its planned forces, and many units were still forming or moving to their designated frontline positions.
Plans
German plan
The German plan
Fall Weiss, for what became known as the September campaign, was created by General
Franz Halder,
chief of the general staff, and directed by General
Walther von Brauchitsch, the
commander in chief of the upcoming campaign. The plan called for the start of hostilities before the
declaration of war, which pursued a traditional doctrine of mass encirclement and the destruction of enemy forces. Germany's material advantages, including the use of modern airpower and tanks, were to be of great advantage. The infantry - far from completely mechanized but fitted with fast moving artillery and logistic support - was to be supported by German tanks (
panzers) and small numbers of truck-mounted infantry (the Schützen regiments, forerunners of the
panzergrenadiers) to assist the rapid movement of troops andconcentrate on
localized parts of the enemy
front, eventually isolating segments of the enemy, surrounding, and destroying them. The pre-war
armored idea (which an American journalist in 1939 would dub
Blitzkrieg), which was advocated by some generals including
Guderian, would have had the armor blasting holes in the enemy's front and ranging deep into the enemy's rear areas, but in actuality, the campaign in Poland would be fought along more traditional lines. This was due to conservatism on the part of the German high command, who mainly restricted the role of armor and mechanized forces to supporting the conventional infantry divisions.
Poland was a country well suited for mobile operations when the weather cooperated - a country of flat
plains with long frontiers totalling almost 3,500 miles, Poland had long borders with Germany on the west and north (facing
East Prussia) of 1,250 miles. Those had been extended by another 500 miles on the southern side in the aftermath of the Munich Agreement of 1938; the German incorporation of
Bohemia and Moravia and creation of the German
puppet state of
Slovakia meant that Poland's southern flank was exposed to invasion.
German planners intended to fully utilise their advantageously long border with the great enveloping manoeuvre of Fall Weiss. German units were to invade Poland from three directions:
* A main attack from the German mainland through the western Polish border. This was to be carried out by Army Group South commanded by General
Gerd von Rundstedt, attacking from German
Silesia and from the
Moravian and Slovakian border: General
Johannes Blaskowitz's 8th Army was to drive eastward against
Łódź; General
Wilhelm List's 14th Army was to push on toward
Kraków and to turn the Poles'
Carpathian flank; and General
Walter von Reichenau's 10th Army, in the centre with Army Group South's armour, was to deliver the decisive blow with a northwestward thrust into the heart of Poland.
* A second route of attack from the northern
Prussian area. General
Fedor von Bock commanded Army Group North comprising General
Georg von Küchler's 3rd Army, which struck southward from East Prussia, and General
Günther von Kluge's 4th Army, which struck eastward across the base of the
Polish Corridor.
* A tertiary attack by part of Army Group South's allied
Slovak units from the territory of Slovakia.
* From within Poland the German
minority would assist in the assault on Poland by engaging in diversion and sabotage operations through
Selbstschutz units prepared before the war.
All three assaults were to converge on
Warsaw, while the main Polish army was to be
encircled and destroyed west of the
Vistula. Fall Weiss was initiated on
1 September 1939 and was the first operation of the Second World War in Europe.
|
Dispositions of opposing forces, August 31, 1939, and the German plan. |
Polish plan
The Polish defense plan,
Zachód (
West), was shaped by political determination to deploy forces directly at the German-Polish border, based upon
London's promise to come to
Warsaw's military aid in the event of invasion. Moreover, with the nation's most valuable
natural resources,
industry and highly populated regions near the western border (
Silesia region), Polish policy centered on the protection of such regions, especially as many
politicians feared that if Poland should retreat from the regions disputed by Germany (like the
Polish Corridor, cause of the famous "Danzig or War"
ultimatum), Britain and France would sign a separate peace treaty with Germany similar to the
Munich Agreement of 1938. In addition, none of those countries specifically guaranteed Polish borders or
territorial integrity. On those grounds, Poland disregarded French advice to deploy the bulk of their forces behind the natural barriers of the wide
Vistula and
San rivers, even though some Polish generals supported it as a better strategy. The
Zachód plan did allow the Polish armies to retreat inside the country, but it was supposed to be a slow retreat behind prepared positions near rivers (
Narew, Vistula and San), giving the country time to finish its mobilisation, and was to be turned into a general
counteroffensive when the
Western Allies would launch their own promised offensive.
|
Polish infantry during Campaign. |
The Polish Army's most pessimistic fall-back plan involved retreat behind the river San to the southeastern
voivodships and their lengthy defence (the
Romanian bridgehead plan). The British and French estimated that Poland should be able to defend that region for two to three months, while Poland estimated it could hold it for at least six months. This Polish plan was based around the expectation that the Western Allies would keep their end of the signed alliance treaty and quickly start an offensive of their own. However, neither the French nor the British government made plans to attack Germany while the Polish campaign was fought. In addition, they expected the war to develop into
trench warfare much like World War I had, forcing the Germans to sign a peace treaty restoring Poland's borders. The Polish government, however, was not notified of this strategy and based all of its defence plans on the expectation of a quick relief action by their Western Allies.
The plan to defend the borders contributed vastly to the Polish defeat. Polish forces were stretched thin on the very long border and, lacking compact defence lines and good defence positions along unadvantegeous terrain,
mechanized German forces often were able to encircle them. In addition,
supply lines, were often poorly protected. Approximately one-third of Poland's forces were concentrated in or near the Polish Corridor (in northwestern Poland), where they were perilously exposed to a
double envelopment — from East Prussia and the west combined and isolated in a pocket. In the south, facing the main avenues of a German advance, the Polish forces were thinly spread. At the same time, nearly another one-third of Poland's troops were massed in reserve in the north-central part of the country, between the major cities of
Łódź and
Warsaw, under commander in chief Marshal
Edward Rydz-Śmigły. The Poles' forward concentration in general forfeited their chance of fighting a series of delaying actions, since their army, unlike some of Germany's, traveled largely on foot and was unable to retreat to their defensive positions in the rear or to staff them before they were overrun by German mechanized columns.
The political decision to defend the border was not the Polish high command's only strategic mistake. Polish pre-war
propaganda stated that any German invasion would be easily repelled, so that the eventual Polish defeats in the September Campaign came as a shock to many civilians, who, unprepared for such news and with no training for such an event, panicked and retreated east, spreading chaos, lowering troop
morale and making road transportation for Polish troops very difficult. The propaganda also had some negative consequences for the Polish troops themselves, whose communications, disrupted by German mobile units operating in the rear and civilians blocking roads, were further thrown into chaos by bizarre reports from Polish radio stations and newspapers, which often reported imaginary victories and other military operations. This led to some Polish troops being encircled or taking a stand against overwhelming odds, when they thought they were actually counterattacking or would soon receive reinforcements from other victorious areas
[Wojna sukcesów, Tygodnik "Wprost", Nr 1141 (10 October 2004)].
Phase 1: German invasion
|
Motto painted on a German Ju-52 transport plane: "Whether figures, gasoline, bombs or bread, we bring Poland death." |
Following a number of German-staged incidents (
Operation Himmler), which gave German
propaganda an excuse to claim that German forces were acting in
self-defense, the first regular act of war took place on
September 1 1939, at 04:40 hours, when the German Air Force (
Luftwaffe) attacked the Polish town of
Wieluń, destroying 75% of the city and killing close to 1,200 people, most of them civilians. Five minutes later, at 04:45 hours, the old German
battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish military transit depot at
Westerplatte, in the
Free City of Danzig on the
Baltic Sea. At 08:00 hours, German troops, still without a formal declaration of war issued,
attacked near the Polish town of Mokra. Later that day, the Germans opened fronts along Poland's western, southern and northern borders, while German aircraft began raids on Polish cities. Main routes of attack led eastwards from the Germany proper through the western Polish border. A second route carried supporting attacks from
East Prussia in the north, and a co-operative German-
Slovak tertiary attack by units (Army "Bernolak") from the territory of German-allied
Slovakia in the south. All three assaults converged on the Polish capital of Warsaw.
The Allied governments declared war on Germany on
September 3; however, they
failed to provide Poland with any meaningful support. The German-French border had a few minor skirmishes, although the majority of German forces, including eighty-five percent of their armoured forces, were engaged in Poland. Despite some Polish successes in minor border battles, German technical, operational and numerical superiority forced the Polish armies to withdraw from the borders towards
Warsaw and
Lwów. The
Luftwaffe gained
air superiority early in the campaign. By
3 September, when Kluge in the north had reached the Vistula (some 10 kilometres from the German border at that time) river and Küchler was approaching the
Narew River, Reichenau's armour was already beyond the
Warta river; two days later his left wing was well to the rear of
Łódź and his right wing at the town of
Kielce; and by
8 September one of his armoured corps was on the outskirts of Warsaw, having advanced 140 miles in the first week of war. Light divisions on Reichenau's right were on the
Vistula between Warsaw and the town of
Sandomierz by
9 September, while List, in the south, was on the river
San above and below the town of
Przemyśl. At the same time, Guderian led his 3rd Army tanks across the Narew, attacking the line of the
Bug River already encircling Warsaw. All the German armies had made progress in fulfilling their parts of the Fall Weiss plan. The Polish armies were splitting up into uncoordinated fragments, some of which were retreating while others were delivering disjointed attacks on the nearest German columns.
Polish forces abandoned regions of
Pomerania,
Greater Poland and
Silesia in the first week of the campaign, after a series of battles known as the
Battle of the Border. Thus the Polish plan for border defence was proven a dismal failure. The German advance, as a whole, was not slowed down and the Germans moved quickly, overwhelming secondary positions. On
10 September, the Polish commander in chief, Marshal
Edward Rydz-Śmigły, ordered a
general retreat to the southeast, towards the so-called
Romanian bridgehead.Meanwhile, the Germans were tightening their encirclement of the Polish forces west of the Vistula (in the Łódź area and, still farther west, around
Poznań) and also penetrating deeply into eastern Poland.
Warsaw, under heavy aerial bombardment since the first hours of the war, was attacked on
9 September and was
put under siege on
September 13. Around that time, advanced German forces had also reached the city of
Lwów, a major
metropolis of eastern Poland. 1150 German aircraft bombed
Warsaw on
September 24.
The largest battle during this campaign, the
Battle of Bzura, took place near the
Bzura river west of Warsaw and lasted from
9 September to
18 September. Polish armies
Poznań and
Pomorze, retreating from the border area of the Polish Corridor, attacked the flank of the advancing German 8th army, but the counterattack failed after initial success. After the defeat, Poland lost its ability to take the initiative and counterattack on a large scale.
The Polish government (of president
Ignacy Mościcki) and the high command (of
Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły) left Warsaw in the first days of the campaign and headed southeast, arriving in
Brześć on
6 September. General Rydz-Śmigły ordered the Polish forces to retreat in the same direction, behind the
Vistula and
San rivers, beginning the preparations for the long defence of the
Romanian bridgehead area.
Phase 2: Soviet aggression
|
Creation of east front - The Soviet Union violating international treaties. |
From the beginning of the Polish campaign the German government repeatedly asked Stalin and Molotov to act upon the August agreement and attack Poland from the east. Worried by an unexpectedly rapid German advance and eager to grab their allotted share of the country, the Soviet Union attacked Poland on
September 17. It was agreed that the USSR relinquishes its interest in the territories between the new border and Warsaw in exchange for inclusion of Lithuania in the Soviet "zone of interest."By 17 September 1939 the Polish defense was already broken and their only hope was to retreat and reorganize along the
Romanian Bridgehead. However, these plans were rendered obsolete nearly overnight, when the over 800,000 strong Soviet Union
Red Army attacked and created the
Belarusian and
Ukrainian fronts after invading the
eastern regions of Poland. This was in violation of the
Riga Peace Treaty, the
Soviet-Polish Non-Aggression Pact and other international treaties, both bilateral and multilateral
[Apart from the two pacts mentioned, the treaties violated by the Soviet Union were: the 1919 Covenant of the League of Nations (to which the USSR adhered in 1934), the Briand-Kellog Pact of 1928 and the 1933 London Convention on the Definition of Aggression; see for instance: ]. Soviet
diplomacy - and later, Soviet propaganda - claimed that they were "protecting the
Ukrainian and
Belarusian minorities inhabiting Poland in view of Polish imminent collapse." However, in reality, the Soviets were acting in co-operation with the
Nazis, [
4] [
5], carving Europe into Nazi and Soviet
spheres of influence as specified in the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Polish border defence forces in the east, known as the
Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza, consisted of about 25 battalions. Edward Rydz-Śmigły ordered them to fall back and not engage the Soviets. This, however, did not prevent some clashes and small battles, like the
Battle of Grodno, as soldiers and local population attempted to defend the city. The Soviets murdered a number of Poles, including
prisoners-of-war like General
Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński.
Ukrainians rose against the Poles, and communist partisans organised local revolts, e.g. in
Skidel, robbing and murdering Poles. Those movements were quickly disciplined by the
NKVD.The Soviet invasion was one of the decisive factors that convinced the Polish government that the war in Poland was lost. Prior to the Soviet attack from the East, the Polish military's fall-back plan had called for long-term defence against Germany in the southern-eastern part of Poland, while awaiting relief from a
Western Allies attack on Germany's western border. However, the Polish government refused to surrender or negotiate a peace with Germany and ordered all units to evacuate Poland and reorganize in France.
Meanwhile, Polish forces tried to move towards the Romanian bridgehead area, still actively resisting the German invasion. From
17 September to
20 September, the Polish Armies
Kraków and
Lublin were crippled at the
Battle of Tomaszów Lubelski, the second largest battle of the campaign. The city of Lwów capitulated on
22 September in a turn of events illustrative of the bizarre turn due to Soviet intervention; the city had been attacked by the Germans over a week earlier and in the middle of the siege, the German troops handed operations over to their Soviet allies. Despite a series of intensifying German attacks, Warsaw, defended by quickly reorganised retreating units, civilian volunteers and
militia, held out until its capitulation on
28 September. The
Modlin Fortress north of Warsaw capitulated on
29 September after
an intense 16-day battle. Some isolated Polish
garrisons managed to hold their positions long after being surrounded by German forces.
Westerplatte enclave's tiny garrison capitulated on
7 September, and
Oksywie garrison held until
19 September. Despite a Polish victory at the
battle of Szack, after which the Soviets executed all the
NCOs and officers they had managed to capture, the Red Army reached the line of rivers
Narew,
Western Bug,
Vistula and
San by
September 28, in many cases meeting German units advancing from the other side. Polish defenders on the
Hel peninsula on the shore of the
Baltic Sea held out until
2 October. The last operational unit of the Polish Army, General
Franciszek Kleeberg's
Samodzielna Grupa Operacyjna "Polesie", capitulated after the 4-day
Battle of Kock near
Lublin on
6 October, marking the end of the September Campaign.
Civilian losses
|
Execution of some 300 Polish POWs at Ciepielów by the German 15th Motorized Regiment. |
The Polish September Campaign was an instance of
total war that would be repeated continuously throughout World War II. Consequently, civilian casualties were high during and after combat. From the start of the campaign, the
Luftwaffe attacked civilian targets and columns of refugees along the roads to wreak havoc, disrupt communications and target Polish morale. The first such attack occurred at 4 AM on
September 1 during the
Bombing of Wieluń, in which nearly 1200 civilians were killed by a
Luftwaffe air raid on Wieluń. Finally, apart from the victims of the battles, the German forces (both
SS and the regular
Wehrmacht) are credited with the
mass murder of several thousands of Polish
POWs and civilians. Also, during a pre-planned
Operation Tannenberg, nearly 20,000 Poles were shot in 760 mass execution sites by special units, the
Einsatzgruppen, in addition to regular
Wehrmacht, SS and
Selbstschutz.
In a particular instance on
September 3,
1939, known as "
Bromberg Bloody Sunday,"
Polish Army units withdrawing through the city of
Bromberg heard shots, supposedly from German
fifth columnists believed to be firing atop churches and rooftops at soldiers and civilians. The Polish soldiers and civilians
lynched many of the alleged German saboteurs. Between 223 and 358 ethnic Germans were killed in Bromberg alone and more were killed in the surrounding villages. The exact number of the victims is still subject to dispute. In reprisal, German forces executed some 3,000 Poles and by the year's end sent an additional 13,000 to the
Stutthof concentration camp.
Altogether, the civilian losses of Polish population amounted to 150,000 while German civilian losses amounted to roughly 5,000.
Aftermath
At the end of the September Campaign, Poland was divided among
Nazi Germany, the
Soviet Union,
Lithuania and
Slovakia. Nazi Germany
annexed parts of Poland, while the rest was governed by the so-called
General Government. On
September 28, another secret German-Soviet
protocol modified the arrangements of August: all
Lithuania was to be a Soviet
sphere of influence, not a German one; but the dividing line in Poland was moved in Germany's favor, to the Bug River.At
Brest-Litovsk, Soviet and German commanders held a joint
victory parade before German forces withdrew westward behind a new
demarcation line
[Fischer, Benjamin B., "[https://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/winter99-00/art6.html The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field]", Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999-2000.].
About 65,000 Polish troops were killed in the fighting, with 420,000 others being captured by the Germans and 240,000 more by the Soviets (grand total 680,000 prisoner). Up to 120,000 Polish troops escaped to
neutral Romania (through the
Romanian Bridgehead) and
Hungary, and another 20,000 escaped to
Latvia and
Lithuania, with the majority eventually making their way to France or Britain. Most of the
Polish Navy succeeded in evacuating to Britain as well. German personnel losses were less then their enemies (~16,000
KIA), but the loss of approximately 30% of armored vehicles during the campaign was one of the reasons the plans for an immediate attack west were discarded.
|
Soviet (left) and German officers meet after the Soviets' invasion of Poland. |
Neither side—Germany, the Western Allies or the Soviet Union—expected that the German invasion of Poland would lead to the war that would surpass World War I in its scale and cost. It would be months before Hitler would see the futility of his peace negotiation attempts with Great Britain and France, but the culmination of combined European and Pacific conflicts would result in what was truly a "world war". Thus, what was not visible to most politicians and generals in 1939 is clear from the historical perspective: The Polish September Campaign marked the beginning of the
Second World War in Europe, which combined with the
Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and the
Pacific War in 1941 would form the conflict known as
World War II.
The invasion of Poland led to Britain and France
declaring war on Germany on
September 3; however, they did little to affect the outcome of the September Campaign. This lack of direct help during September 1939 led many Poles to believe that they had been
betrayed by their Western allies.
On May 23 1939 Adolf Hitler explained to his officers that the object of the aggression was not Danzig, but the need to obtain German
Lebensraum and details of this concept would be later formulated in the infamous
Generalplan Ost. [
6] [
7] The
blitzkrieg decimated
urban residential areas, civilians soon became indistinguishable from combatants and the forthcoming
German occupation (
General Government,
Reichsgau Wartheland) was one of the most brutal episodes of World War II, resulting in over 6 million Polish deaths (over 20% of the country's total population), including the mass murder of 3 million Polish
Jews in
extermination camps like
Auschwitz. Red Army occupied the polish territories with mostly Ukrainian and Belorussian population. Soviets, met at the beginning as liberators by local people, shortly after started to introduce communist ideology in the area. Badly adapted by the population, this led to a powerful anti-soviet resistance in the West Ukraine.
Soviet occupation between 1939 and 1941 resulted in the death or
deportation of least 1.8 million former Polish citizens, when all who were deemed dangerous to the
communist regime were subject to
sovietization, forced resettlement, imprisonment in
labour camps (the
Gulags) or simply murdered, like the Polish officers in the
Katyn massacre. Part of these casualties were due to the attacks of the Ukrainian nationalists on the Polish villages in the West Ukraine, where vengeful feeling was particularly strong. Soviet atrocities commenced again after Poland was "liberated" by the Red Army in 1944, with events like the persecution of the
Home Army soldiers and execution of its leaders (
Trial of the Sixteen).
Myths
There are several common misconceptions regarding the Polish September Campaign:
The Polish military was so backward they fought tanks with cavalry: Although Poland had 11
cavalry brigades and its
doctrine emphasized cavalry units as
elite units, other armies of that time (including German and Soviet) also fielded and extensively used horse cavalry units.
Polish cavalry (equipped with modern small arms and light artillery like the highly effective Bofors 37 mm antitank gun) never charged German tanks or entrenched infantry or artillery directly but usually acted as
mobile infantry (like
dragoons) and
reconnaissance units and executed cavalry charges only in rare situations, against enemy infantry. The article about the
Battle of Krojanty (when Polish cavalry were fired on by hidden tanks, rather than charging them) describes how this myth originated.
The Polish air force was destroyed on the ground in the first days of the war: The
Polish Air Force, though numerically inferior, was not destroyed on the ground because combat units had been moved from air bases to small camouflaged airfields shortly before the war. Only a number of
trainers and auxiliary aircraft were destroyed on the ground on airfields. The Polish Air Force remained active in the first two weeks of the campaign, causing serious damage to the
Luftwaffe. Many skilled Polish
pilots escaped afterwards to the United Kingdom and were deployed by the
RAF during the
Battle of Britain. Fighting from British bases, Polish pilots were also, on average, the most successful in shooting down German planes
[No. 303 "Kościuszko" Polish Fighter Squadron formed from Polish pilots in the United Kingdom almost 2 months after the Battle of Britain begun is famous for achieving the highest number of enemy kills during the Battle of Britain of all fighter squadrons then in operation.].
Poland offered little resistance and surrendered quickly: Germany sustained relatively heavy losses, especially in vehicles and planes: Poland cost Germans approximately the equipment of an entire armored division and 40% of its air strength.[
8] As for duration, it should be noted that the September Campaign lasted only about one week less than the
Battle of France in 1940, even though the Anglo-French allied forces were much closer to parity with the Germans in numerical strength and equipment
[Blitzkrieg has been dispelled by some authors, notably Matthew Cooper. Cooper writes (in The German Army 1939"1945: Its Political and Military Failure): "Throughout the Polish Campaign, the employment of the mechanised units revealed the idea that they were intended solely to ease the advance and to support the activities of the infantry…. Thus, any strategic exploitation of the armoured idea was still-born. The paralysis of command and the breakdown of morale were not made the ultimate aim of the … German ground and air forces, and were only incidental by-products of the traditional manoeuvers of rapid encirclement and of the supporting activities of the flying artillery of the Luftwaffe, both of which had has their purpose the physical destruction of the enemy troops. Such was the Vernichtungsgedanke of the Polish campaign." Vernichtungsgedanke was a strategy dating back to Frederick the Great, and was applied in the Polish Campaign little changed from the French campaigns in 1870 or 1914. The use of tanks "left much to be desired...Fear of enemy action against the flanks of the advance, fear which was to prove so disastrous to German prospects in the west in 1940 and in the Soviet Union in 1941, was present from the beginning of the war." Many early postwar histories, such as Barrie Pitt's in The Second World War (BPC Publishing 1966), incorrectly attribute German victory to "enormous development in military technique which occurred between 1918 and 1940", incorrectly citing that "Germany, who translated (British inter-war) theories into action… called the result Blitzkrieg." John Ellis, writing in Brute Force (Viking Penguin, 1990) asserted that "…there is considerable justice in Matthew Cooper's assertion that the panzer divisions were not given the kind of strategic (emphasis in original) mission that was to characterise authentic armoured blitzkrieg, and were almost always closely subordinated to the various mass infantry armies." Zaloga and Madej, in The Polish Campaign 1939 (Hippocrene Books, 1985), also address the subject of mythical interpretations of Blitzkrieg and the importance of other arms in the campaign. "Whilst Western accounts of the September campaign have stressed the shock value of the panzers and Stuka attacks, they have tended to underestimate the punishing effect of German artillery (emphasis added) on Polish units. Mobile and available in significant quantity, artillery shattered as many units as any other branch of the Wehrmacht."]
* Armenian quote
* History of Poland (1939"1945)
* Oder-Neisse line
* Polish cavalry brigade order of battle
* Polish contribution to World War II
* Timeline of the Polish September Campaign
* Western betrayal
* Blitzkrieg
* Vernichtungsgedanke
* War crimes of the Wehrmacht
* Treatment of the Polish citizens by the occupants
General
* Cooper, Matthew The German Army 1939-1945: Its Political and Military Failure. Stein and Day, Briarcliff Manor, NY, 19781 (ISBN 0812824687)
* Baliszewski Dariusz, Wojna sukcesów, Tygodnik "Wprost", Nr 1141 (10 October 2004), Polish, retrieved on 24 March 2005
* Dariusz Baliszewski Most honoru, Tygodnik "Wprost", Nr 1138 (19 September 2004)], Polish, retrieved on 24 March 2005
* Chodakiewicz, Marek Jan. Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939-1947. Lexington Books, 2004 (ISBN 0739104845).
* Ellis, John. Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War. Viking Adult, 1st American ed edition, 1999. (ISBN 0670807737)
* Fischer, Benjamin B., "[https://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/winter99-00/art6.html The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field]", Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999-2000, last accessed on 10 December, 2005
* Gross, Jan T. Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002 (ISBN 0691096031).
* Kennedy, Robert M. The German Campaign in Poland (1939). Zenger Pub Co, 1980 (ISBN 0892010649).
* Lukas, Richard C. Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944. Hippocrene Books, Inc, 2001 (ISBN 0781809010).
* Majer, Diemut et al. Non-Germans under the Third Reich: The Nazi Judicial and Administrative System in Germany and Occupied Eastern Europe, with Special Regard to Occupied Poland, 1939-1945. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003 (ISBN 0801864933)
* Prazmowska, Anita J. Britain and Poland 1939-1943 : The Betrayed Ally. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995 (ISBN 0521483859).
* Rossino, Alexander B. Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology and Atrocity. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003 (ISBN 0700612343).
* Smith, Peter C. Stuka Spearhead: The Lightning War from Poland to Dunkirk 1939-1940. Greenhill Books, 1998 (ISBN 1853673293).
* Sword, Keith The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern Provinces, 1939-41. Palgrave Macmillan, 1991, (ISBN 0312055706).
* Zaloga, Steve, and Howard Gerrard. Poland 1939: The Birth of Blitzkrieg. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002 (ISBN 1841764086).
* Zaloga, Steve. The Polish Army 1939-1945. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1982 (ISBN 0850454174).
* Encyklopedia PWN 'KAMPANIA WRZEŚNIOWA 1939', last retrieved on 10 December 2005, Polish language*World War 2 Online Newspaper Archives - The Invasion of Poland, 1939
*The Campaign in Poland at WorldWar2 Database
*The Campaign in Poland at Achtung! Panzer
*German Statistics including September Campaign losses
*Brief Campaign losses and more statistics
*Fall Weiß - The Fall of Poland
*Agreement of Mutual Assistance Between the United Kingdom and Poland.-London, 25 August 1939.
*Poland's Defence War, a fairly detailed account of the Polish defense in 1939
*Radio reports on the German invasion of Poland and Nazi broadcast claiming that Germany's action is an act of defense
*German reply to British Government's ultimatum of 3 September 1939
*Headline story on BBC: Germany invades Poland 1 September 1939.
*BBC portal dedicated to the start of WW II in Europe
*September 17, 1939 - Soviet aggression on Poland
*Halford Mackinder's Necessary War An essay describing the Polish Campaign in a larger strategic context of the war
*Polish Defensive War
