Invasion of Poland

Polish September Campaign
Part of World War II
German soldiers destroying Polish border checkpoint on 1 September. World War II begins. German troops dismantle a Polish border checkpoint, September 1, 1939, as World War II begins.
Date 1 September – 6 October 1939 Location Poland Result Decisive Axis and Soviet victory
Belligerents
Poland	Germany Soviet Union Slovakia
Commanders and leaders
Edward Rydz-Śmigły	Fedor von Bock (Army Group North) Gerd von Rundstedt (Army Group South) Ferdinand Čatloš (Field Army Bernolak)
Strength
39 divisions, 16 brigades, 4,300 guns 880 tanks 400 aircraft Total: 1,000,000	56 German divisions, 33+ Soviet divisions, 3 Slovak divisions, 4 German brigades, 11+ Soviet brigades, 10,000 guns 2,700 tanks 1,300 aircraft Total: 1,800,000 Germans, 800,000+ Soviets, 50,000 Slovaks
Casualties and losses
66,000 dead 133,700 wounded 694,000 captured	16,343 dead 27,280 wounded 320 missing

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 1 September 1939, 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 Polish forces awaited an expected Western Allies counterattack and relief.

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.

Opposing forces

Main article: Opposing forces in the Polish September Campaign

Germany

German Me 110 fighter plane.

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.

File:Junkers Ju87.jpg

German Junkers Ju 87 dive bombers.

Soviet Union

to be written

(refer to Soviet order of battle for invasion of Poland in 1939)

Poland

Polish 7TP light tank.

File:PZL P.11c.jpg

Polish PZL P.11 fighter plane.

Polish PZL-37 Los medium bomber plane.

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.

Overall, the Germans enjoyed numerical and qualitiative 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.

Order of battle

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 1939-1945

Order of battle of invading forces:

• German order of battle for Operation Fall Weiss
• Soviet order of battle for invasion of Poland in 1939

Prelude to the campaign

File:Ac.corridor.jpg

Polish map showing the "Polish Corridor" in northern Poland.

Main article: Causes of World War II

The 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. However, in 1938, Germany annexed Austria and the Sudentenland and became interested in consolidating Europe under its power. In the aftermath of the Munich agreement, Poland also took advantage of the situation, seizing the Czechoslovakian town of Cieszyn (Český Těšín). Germany attempted to entice Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact but the Polish government believed this would make the country a subordinate to Germany.[1], At the same time, Germany began to increase its demands for the incorporation of the Free State of Danzig, which was to be returned to Germany according to the protocols of the Versailles Treaty. Also of special concern was the fact that the German exclave of East Prussia was separated from mainland Germany by the Polish Corridor, a narrow strip of land granted to a reformed Poland after Versailles. Both Danzig and the Polish Corridor constituted territories lost by Germany after World War I and Hitler roused German nationalism by promising to "liberate" the Germans still living in these regions.

In early 1939, Hitler had already issued secret orders to prepare for the "solution of the Polish problem by military means". However, Hitler and most of his advisors expected the Polish government to still accept his demands: Danzig was to become property of the Reich and a bridge was to be built connecting East Prussia with Germany proper. Poland, however, feared for its sovereignty and questioned Germany's motivations.[2] Additionally, the Poles were backed by a March 30 guarantee from Britain and France. The alleged goal of British foreign policy between 1919 and 1939 had been to prevent another world war by a mixture of "carrot and stick", a strategy of appeasement. The "stick" in this case was the Polish-British Common Defense Pact, intended to discourage "German aggression". At the same time, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax hoped to offer Hitler a "carrot" in the form of another deal similar to the Munich Agreement, which would see the Free City of Danzig and possibly the Polish Corridor returned to Germany in exchange for a promise to leave the rest of Poland alone.

With Poland refusing its demands, Germany withdrew from both the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934 and the London Naval Agreement of 1935 on April 28, 1939. 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.

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Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signs the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Behind him stand (left) German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and (right) Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin.

Meanwhile, secret German-Soviet talks were held in Moscow, which resulted in signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on August 22, which capitalized on France and Britain's failure to isolate Germany and solidify an alliance with the Soviet Union. With the surprise pact, Hitler neutralize the possibility of Soviet resistance in a campaign against Poland, the Soviet Union's western neighbor. Also, in a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed to divide Eastern Europe, including Poland, into two influential spheres; 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, on 25 August, 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, while trying on 26th of August to dissuade the British and the French from interfering in the eventual 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 entirety. When Poland refused to hand over its territory, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop declared negotiations with Poland to be at an end. Poland braced for war. On 30 August, the Polish Navy sent its destroyer flotilla to Britain. On the same day, Polish Marshal Rydz-Śmigly announced the war mobilization of Polish troops, but was pressured into revoking the order by the French, who still hoped for a diplomatic settlement, and failed 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. Poland managed to mobilise only 70% of its planned forces, and many units were still forming or moving to their designated frontline positions.

Details of the campaign

Deployment of German and Polish divisions, September 1 1939.

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 and concentrate 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, 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.

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.

Polish infantry in action.

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.

Phase 1: German invasion

File:Schleswig Holstein ostrzeliwuje Westerplatte 39 09 01 b.jpg

German battleship Schleswig-Holstein shells Poland's Westerplatte.

File:Warsaw siege4.jpg

German forces during failed assault on Warsaw's Wola district, September 9, 1939.

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 enclave of Westerplatte at 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 German mainland through the western Polish border. A second route carried supporting attacks from East Prussia in the north, and a German and allied 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.

Polish Bofors 40 mm antiaircraft gun and a bombed Polish Army column during the Battle of the Bzura.

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.

File:Ger Ju52 Sept.jpg

Motto painted on a German Ju-52 transport plane: "Whether figures, gasoline, bombs or bread, we bring Poland death."

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

Situation after September 14, 1939.

File:Cios w Plecy Dziennik Chicagoski 19 Wrzesien 1939.jpg

"The stab in the back": Dziennik Chicagowski [Chicago Daily] – The Polish Daily News, September 19, 1939.

From the beginning of the Polish campaign 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 exchage 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. 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, [3] [4], 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.

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German bombers over Warsaw.

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Near the end: TIME magazine, September 25, 1939.

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

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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

File:German Troops In Warsaw.jpg

October 5, 1939: Wehrmacht parade down Warsaw's Aleje Ujazdowskie, watched by Adolf Hitler and other German officials. During the parade, the city's population were ordered to stay home and keep their windows shut. To deter assassination attempts, the Germans held 412 civilians hostage. These included Warsaw University's most prominent professors as well as civilian city authorities, including Mayor Stefan Starzyński.

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.

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.

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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.

File:Warsaw siege3.jpg

Survivor of bombing of Warsaw.

On May 23 1939 Adolf Hitler explained to his officers that the object of the agression was not Danzig, but the need to obtain German Lebensraum[5] [6]and details of this concept would be later formulated in the infamous Generalplan Ost. Already as the 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. 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. 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

Graves of Polish soldiers at Powązki Cemetery, Warsaw.

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 harm to the Luftwaffe as the average Polish pilot was much better trained than his German opponent{{citation needed}}. 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 .

• Poland offered little resistance and surrendered quickly: 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. Poland also never officially surrendered to the Germans.

• The German Army used astonishing new concepts of warfare and used new technology daringly: The myth of 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."

See also

• 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
• Yalta Conference
• Blitzkrieg
• Vernichtungsgedanke
• War crimes of the Wehrmacht
• Treatment of the Polish citizens by the occupants

Notes and references

In-line:

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., "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).
• Wacław Stachiewicz (1998). Wierności dochować żołnierskiej. OW RYTM. ISBN 83-86678-71-2.
• 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

External links

• 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