Bloody Sunday (1939): Difference between revisions
interwar period is relevant here, rmv pov intro that is terribly one sided regarding the situation in XIX century |
rmv non-existing source, see talk, also removing neonazi website and nazi propaganda books used as source |
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A number of Polish witnesses testified that early in the day, as a contingent of the [[Polish Army]] from [[Pomerania]] was withdrawing through Bydgoszcz, it was attacked by Germans from within the area, reported to be shooting at soldiers and civilians from rooftops and church towers. |
A number of Polish witnesses testified that early in the day, as a contingent of the [[Polish Army]] from [[Pomerania]] was withdrawing through Bydgoszcz, it was attacked by Germans from within the area, reported to be shooting at soldiers and civilians from rooftops and church towers. |
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A German amateur historian, Hugo Rasmus, denies this and attributes the situation to confusion and the disorganized state of the Polish paramilitary forces in the city. A common argument for the lack of German provocation against the Polish army is the contention that no Germans in Poland had been allowed to possess weapons for years. There are no known instructions for the German population in Bydgoszcz to contribute to the German military campaign in such a manner, and no ethnic Germans - even after the Wehrmacht passed through the town - spoke of participation in the event.<ref name=Blanke580-582>Richard Blanke, ''The American Historical Review'', Vol. 97, No. 2. Apr., 1992, pp. 580-582. See also: Włodzimierz Jastrzębski,''Der Bromberger Blutsonntag: Legende und Wirklichkeit.'' and Andrzej Brożek, ''Niemcy zagraniczni w polityce kolonizacji pruskich prowincji wschodnich (1886-1918)''</ref> |
A German amateur historian, Hugo Rasmus, denies this and attributes the situation to confusion and the disorganized state of the Polish paramilitary forces in the city. A common argument for the lack of German provocation against the Polish army is the contention that no Germans in Poland had been allowed to possess weapons for years. There are no known instructions for the German population in Bydgoszcz to contribute to the German military campaign in such a manner, and no ethnic Germans - even after the Wehrmacht passed through the town - spoke of participation in the event.<ref name=Blanke580-582>Richard Blanke, ''The American Historical Review'', Vol. 97, No. 2. Apr., 1992, pp. 580-582. See also: Włodzimierz Jastrzębski,''Der Bromberger Blutsonntag: Legende und Wirklichkeit.'' and Andrzej Brożek, ''Niemcy zagraniczni w polityce kolonizacji pruskich prowincji wschodnich (1886-1918)''</ref> While the German documents confirming the saboteur actions of armed German Poles in other cities contradict the argument of the ban on weapon possession, no such documents are preserved in case of Bydgoszcz, though there is the possibility that German agents and the [[Selbstschutz]] were operating in the area. |
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=== Polish response === |
=== Polish response === |
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After the alleged attacks, Polish soldiers began a search for weapons and events spiralled out of control. With no Polish legal force to protect them, a disputed number of local ethnic Germans were subject to hostilities, abuse, and sometimes murder. |
After the alleged attacks, Polish soldiers began a search for weapons and events spiralled out of control. With no Polish legal force to protect them, a disputed number of local ethnic Germans were subject to hostilities, abuse, and sometimes murder{{fact}}. |
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<blockquote>''Polish soldiers appeared in the home of Robert Kunde in Bromberg, 23...who, following a fruitless search for arms, made entries in the military passports of Kunde and his sons Richard and Wilhelm, marked the passport holders as "Suspects". A note was made on other pages of the military passports to the effect that the bearers were to be shot. The male members of the Kunde family, together with other minority Germans who had been herded together, were handed over to other members of the Polish military by the soldiers who had carried out the search, were driven into a wood where they were to be shot. Richard Kunde, together with another minority German from Bromberg, Grüning, was able to escape, whereas his father was later on found murdered.</blockquote> |
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Although the Polish military authorities were in charge of conducting the searches, there is reason to believe angry mobs were also involved, particularly in the more gruesome of the reported cases.<ref>This refers to the autopsies conducted by medico-legal experts of the Military High Command for Bromberg. All work is under Dr. Panning, the Senior Medical Officer and Superintendent of the Medico-Legal Department of the Army Medical Academy, and the report can be found [http://www.jrbooksonline.com/HTML-docs/Polish_Atrocities_10.htm here], in addition to the accompanying autopsy photos of Bydgoszcz regional victims [http://www.jrbooksonline.com/polish_atrocities_p290-296.htm (warning: very graphic)] |
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</ref> Most of the victims are reported to have been innocent{{Fact|date=February 2007}} civilians. Seen as authority figures and the 'official link' to the German people, pastors were often singled out for brutality. Rounded up from the surrounding area and first concentrated in select cities such as Bydgoszcz, a number of Germans were sent on marches eastward, often being strafed by [[Luftwaffe]] along the way. Nazi documents again: <ref>''The Polish Atrocities Against the German Minority in Poland'' Compiled by Hans Schadewaldt (Berlin: German foreign office, 1940) pp. 35-54, cases 1 - 15. signed testimony of Herbert Matthes, Bromberg furniture maker </ref> |
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<blockquote>''...after that a group of about 100 persons, mostly well-known citizens of the town, were driven out into the street and, under guard, we had to go through the Danzig-Elisabeth Strasse up to the barracks at the station all the time with raised hands. On the way the beasts threatened us with swords, daggers and axes; they spat on us and beat us -the poor boys could hardly go farther....the group had hardly got as far as No. 40 to 60, Kujawier Strasse, when shots were fired at us from the front and the rear. Many of us were murdered in a bestial manner. Driven together, we were now only about 150 and were dragged off further by a convoy. I covered my boys and was stabbed with a bayonet in the right upper thigh. Those who could not run and sat down, were knocked down with the butt, because after about two hours the Lieutenant forbade shooting because of the loud reports. Behind milestone No. 10 we had to go 2 miles to the left into the wood and were penned into a low, miserable, open cow stable; it was 5 o'clock Monday morning.''</blockquote> |
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=== German response === |
=== German response === |
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In what was presented by the Nazi propaganda as an act of retaliation, 2,000 Polish civilians were picked at random and executed by [[Wehrmacht|German military]], with further reprisals soon to follow. According to the book ''Masters of Death'' (published by Richard Rhodes in the [[New York Times]]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/30/books/chapters/0630-1st-rhodes.html?ex=1145419200&en=6bf658d14e1e8efe&ei=5070]), some of these victims |
In what was presented by the Nazi propaganda as an act of retaliation, 2,000 Polish civilians were picked at random and executed by [[Wehrmacht|German military]], with further reprisals soon to follow. According to the book ''Masters of Death'' (published by Richard Rhodes in the [[New York Times]]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/30/books/chapters/0630-1st-rhodes.html?ex=1145419200&en=6bf658d14e1e8efe&ei=5070]), some of these victims |
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==The debate in scholarship== |
==The debate in scholarship== |
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Nazi propaganda announced a death toll of approximately 58,000 as a result of anti-German violence. |
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Nazi propaganda announced a death toll of approximately 58,000 as a result of anti-German violence. Hitler personally raised that number to over 60,000.<ref name=Blanke580-582/> In the 1960s, [[Karol Pospieszalski]] effectively challenged this figure, dropping the estimate to as low as 2,000.<ref name=Blanke580-582/> The research was sponsored by the [[Western Institute]], a publisher considered by some to have an anti-German bias.<ref name=Blanke580-582/> Since then, further studies have been conducted. Controversial author [[Alfred-Maurice de Zayas]] estimates that 5,000 ethnic Germans in Poland were killed in non-combat circumstances. [[Peter Aurich]] gives a range of 4,000 to 5,000 German civilian deaths, including 366 deaths in Bydgoszcz.<ref name=Blanke580-582/> |
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It is hard to say how many Germans died exclusively during marches; a few German historians claim the number as high as 1,700 and attribute it mainly to Polish atrocities, but the Polish argument points out that since these German Poles were marching during actual combat, most of the losses should be attributed to combat conditions, especially since many German witnesses confirm that columns were sometimes attacked by the Luftwaffe (which strafed many civilians on the roads) and artillery.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} Overall, German and Polish historians continue to argue with one another over the validity of their claims. |
It is hard to say how many Germans died exclusively during marches; a few German historians claim the number as high as 1,700 and attribute it mainly to Polish atrocities, but the Polish argument points out that since these German Poles were marching during actual combat, most of the losses should be attributed to combat conditions, especially since many German witnesses confirm that columns were sometimes attacked by the Luftwaffe (which strafed many civilians on the roads) and artillery.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} Overall, German and Polish historians continue to argue with one another over the validity of their claims. |
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Revision as of 23:49, 3 March 2008
 | The neutrality of this article is disputed. |
Bloody Sunday (German: Bromberger Blutsonntag; Polish: Krwawa Niedziela) is the term used to describe an incident that took place at the beginning of World War II. On September 3, 1939, two days after the German invasion of Poland, a highly controversial massacre occurred in and around the town of Bydgoszcz (German: Bromberg) in the Polish Pomeranian Voivodeship. The number of casualties, as well as the extent of involvement by the German agents and the Selbstschutz (which might have been deliberately aiming to produce German civilian casualties to fuel German propaganda) involved is disputed by historians.
Background
Status of Bromberg, after WW I Bydgoszcz
As part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the region was annexed in 1772 by the Kingdom of Prussia in the First Partition of Poland. It belonged to the German Empire from 1871 till the end of World War I. In February 1920, the Treaty of Versailles awarded the region to the Second Polish Republic. The city maintained a German majority (in contrast to the cities of Poznań and Gniezno that had always retained a clear ethnic Polish majority). The German government began to encourage German professionals such as doctors and lawyers, to leave the region, believing that it would result in the "brain drain" and lead to instability in Poland. Other ethnic Germans left the Polish state because they did not want to serve in the Polish army. This resulted in a number of ethnic Germans leaving the region for Germany.
German and Polish relations
During the interwar period, minority rights in both the Second Republic of Poland and Weimar Germany were to be based on amicable relations between the two countries. However, while the rights of ethnic minorities were legally protected in Poland, the Polish minority in Germany did not enjoy such protection. Poland recognized the appendix of the Treaty of Versailles concerning minority rights until 1934, the same year that the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations. In addition, Poland's fragile economic position proved fertile grounds for ethnic divisions to subsist at the expense of national solidarity. This was not only in regards to the Polish Germans; other minorities vocalized their sentiments, whether they were in support of an independent "greater Ukraine", a separate Belarus, or even an autonomous Jewish entity.[1] The result was a rise in Polish patriotism and identity politics and the German minority of western Poland was increasingly unwelcomed as a fifth column. The rise of the Nazi Party only complicated matters. Adolf Hitler revitalized the Völkisch movement, making an appeal to the Germans living outside of Germany's post-World War I borders. Also, it was Hitler's explicit goal to reverse the work of the Treaty of Versailles and create a Greater German State. By March 1939, these ambitions, charges of atrocities on both sides of the border, distrust, and rising nationalist sentiment led to the complete deterioration of Polish-German relations.
Bloody Sunday
Prelude
Before and shortly after armed conflict erupted on September 1, 1939, both sides reported a number of atrocities. The Nazi Reich claimed that the worst persecutions of ethnic Germans took place between August 31 and September 6. However, the most influential event, shrouded in controversy, was that which occurred on September 3, in Bydgoszcz.
A number of Polish witnesses testified that early in the day, as a contingent of the Polish Army from Pomerania was withdrawing through Bydgoszcz, it was attacked by Germans from within the area, reported to be shooting at soldiers and civilians from rooftops and church towers.
A German amateur historian, Hugo Rasmus, denies this and attributes the situation to confusion and the disorganized state of the Polish paramilitary forces in the city. A common argument for the lack of German provocation against the Polish army is the contention that no Germans in Poland had been allowed to possess weapons for years. There are no known instructions for the German population in Bydgoszcz to contribute to the German military campaign in such a manner, and no ethnic Germans - even after the Wehrmacht passed through the town - spoke of participation in the event.[2] While the German documents confirming the saboteur actions of armed German Poles in other cities contradict the argument of the ban on weapon possession, no such documents are preserved in case of Bydgoszcz, though there is the possibility that German agents and the Selbstschutz were operating in the area.
Polish response
After the alleged attacks, Polish soldiers began a search for weapons and events spiralled out of control. With no Polish legal force to protect them, a disputed number of local ethnic Germans were subject to hostilities, abuse, and sometimes murder[citation needed].
German response
In what was presented by the Nazi propaganda as an act of retaliation, 2,000 Polish civilians were picked at random and executed by German military, with further reprisals soon to follow. According to the book Masters of Death (published by Richard Rhodes in the New York Times: [1]), some of these victims
were a number of Boy Scouts, from twelve to sixteen years of age, who were set up in the marketplace against a wall and shot. No reason was given. A devoted priest who rushed to administer the Last Sacrament was shot too. He received five wounds. A Pole said afterwards that the sight of those children lying dead was the most piteous of all the horrors he saw. That week the murders continued. Thirty-four of the leading tradespeople and merchants of the town were shot, and many other leading citizens. The square was surrounded by troops with machine-guns.
The troops then attacked the Jesuits, looting and ransacking the church. The priests were taken to a barn, where the local Jewish population was already imprisoned, and were all subjected to abuse.
The early Polish claims of German atrocities against Poles in Bydgoszcz were cited as evidence given to the War Crimes Tribunals. A document produced by the Polish authorities reads:[3]
- On September 3 1939, at 1015 in the morning, German Fifth Columnists attacked Polish units withdrawing from Bydgoszcz. During the fighting, 238 Polish soldiers and 223 German Fifth Columnists were killed. As a consequence of the entry of German troops into the town, mass executions, arrests, and deportations of Polish citizens to concentration camps took place, which were carried out by German authorities, the SS and Gestapo. 10,500 were murdered, and a further 13,000 died in the camps.
The updated version of Polish claims is to be confirmed by the Institute of National Remembrance.[4]
The debate in scholarship
Nazi propaganda announced a death toll of approximately 58,000 as a result of anti-German violence.
It is hard to say how many Germans died exclusively during marches; a few German historians claim the number as high as 1,700 and attribute it mainly to Polish atrocities, but the Polish argument points out that since these German Poles were marching during actual combat, most of the losses should be attributed to combat conditions, especially since many German witnesses confirm that columns were sometimes attacked by the Luftwaffe (which strafed many civilians on the roads) and artillery.[citation needed] Overall, German and Polish historians continue to argue with one another over the validity of their claims.
Notes
- ^ Piotrowski, Tadeusz (1998). "Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947". London: McFarland & Company. pp. 5–10, 38..
- ^ Richard Blanke, The American Historical Review, Vol. 97, No. 2. Apr., 1992, pp. 580-582. See also: Włodzimierz Jastrzębski,Der Bromberger Blutsonntag: Legende und Wirklichkeit. and Andrzej Brożek, Niemcy zagraniczni w polityce kolonizacji pruskich prowincji wschodnich (1886-1918)
- ^ Nuremberg Trial Proceedings. Vol. 9, day 88, Friday, 22 March 1946.
- ^ Dywersja czy masakra ? Włodzimierz Jastrzębski, Gdańsk 1988.
References
- Template:Pl icon Wojan, Ryszard (1959). "Bydgoszcz Niedziela 3 września 1939". Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie.
- Template:Pl icon Jastrzębski, Włodzimierz (1988). "Dywersja czy masakra. Cywilna obrona Bydgoszczy we wrześniu 1939 r.". Gdańsk: KAW. ISBN 83-03-02193-1.
- Template:De icon Schubert, Günter (1989). "Das Unternehmen „Bromberger Blutsonntag". Köln: Bund-Vlg.