The air offensive destroyed passenger trains, and machine-gunning columns of fleeing civilians. ![]() The Luftwaffe bombed not only the Polish rear-echelon but also cities and towns such as Wieluń, which was leveled on the first day of the war. ![]() The killings at the Danzig post office were far from the day’s only atrocity. But it opened the space of combat for other kinds of violence. But from September 1 st onward, the Polish military was overextended, underequipped, and outmaneuvered-a losing proposition.īlitzkrieg promised quick and decisive victories, avoiding the trench-to-trench slaughters at places like Verdun and the Somme that had defined the Western Front in World War I. The overwhelmed Polish air force was not caught flatfooted on its airfields. The enduring stories of the Polish cavalry charging German tanks en masse were fabrications crafted by Nazi propaganda. The Polish Army did resist nonetheless, bravely and sensibly. Polish light tanks at the start of the 1939 Defensive War. By the time our wits were sufficiently collected even to survey the situation, it was apparent that we were in no position to offer any serious resistance.” The results of the German offensive, a “lightening war” or Blitzkrieg, were devastating.Ī Polish lieutenant observed what remained of his unit after it had been first hit by bombing and then assaulted by tanks and artillery: “The extent of the death, destruction and disorganization this combined fire caused in three short hours was incredible. In a secret annex to the treaty, the two nations agreed to divide Poland. This map highlights the German order of battle with a pink line and the disposition of forces on August 31, 1939.įurther enhancing the Fuehrer’s confidence was the successfully negotiation of a non-aggression agreement, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, between Germany and its ideological arch-nemesis, the Soviet Union, on August 23, 1939. That same month, he ordered preparations for an invasion of Poland. Hitler believed, however, that the two nations were bluffing and would only offer token resistance to a German invasion of Poland, or none at all. Faced with the prospect of unrestrained German aggression, Britain and France offered security guarantees to Poland in March 1939. In early 1939, Hitler annexed the Czechoslovakian provinces of Bohemia and Moravia and forced Lithuania to surrender the Baltic port city of Memel. ![]() The memory of World War II remains potent across Europe, especially for Poles, and conditions the way many there respond to current events. No surprise since the Russian act of aggression came just before the 75 th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland. ![]() In 2014, when Russia forcibly annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine, Poles were among those who protested most loudly. It was the beginning of a war over the future of Poland it was the beginning of the Second World War, a struggle for the fate of the world. The assault on Danzig was the opening act of the full-scale invasion of Poland as some one-and-a-half million men of the German Army moved out of their encampments and into combat. The survivors staggered outside to surrender where the SS men gunned them down. Their attackers then lit the building on fire. The workers in the post office held out until, outgunned, they retreated into the basement. The shooting started in the early morning, 4:45 AM, September 1, 1939, when the obsolete German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire from its berth in the Free City of Danzig.Īs the ship’s big guns hammered Polish fortifications on the Westerplatte peninsula, undercover agents of the Schutzstaffel, the SS, began seizing control of key buildings in the city.
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