Germans invade Poland
At 4:45 a.m., some 1.5 million
German troops invade Poland all along its 1,750-mile border with
German-controlled territory. Simultaneously, the German Luftwaffe bombed Polish
airfields, and German warships and U-boats attacked Polish naval forces in the
Baltic Sea. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler claimed the massive invasion was a
defensive action, but Britain and France were not convinced. On September 3,
they declared war on Germany, initiating World War II.
To Hitler, the conquest of Poland
would bring Lebensraum, or “living space,” for the German people. According to
his plan, the “racially superior” Germans would colonize the territory and the
native Slavs would be enslaved. German expansion had begun in 1938 with the annexation
of Austria and then continued with the occupation of the Sudetenland and then
all of Czechoslovakia in 1939. Both had been accomplished without igniting
hostilities with the major powers, and Hitler hoped that his invasion of Poland
would likewise be tolerated.
To neutralize the possibility
that the USSR would come to Poland’s aid, Germany signed a nonaggression pact
with the Soviet Union on August 23, 1939. In a secret clause of the agreement,
the ideological enemies agreed to divide Poland between them. Hitler gave
orders for the Poland invasion to begin on August 26, but on August 25 he
delayed the attack when he learned that Britain had signed a new treaty with
Poland, promising military support should it be attacked. To forestall a
British intervention, Hitler turned to propaganda and misinformation, alleging
persecution of German-speakers in eastern Poland. Fearing imminent attack,
Poland began to call up its troops, but Britain and France persuaded Poland to
postpone general mobilization until August 31 in a last ditch effort to
dissuade Germany from war.
Shortly after noon on August 31,
Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to begin at 4:45 a.m. the next
morning. At 8 p.m. on August 31, Nazi S.S. troops wearing Polish uniforms
staged a phony invasion of Germany, damaging several minor installations on the
German side of the border. They also left behind a handful of dead
concentration camp prisoners in Polish uniforms to serve as further evidence of
the supposed Polish invasion, which Nazi propagandists publicized as an
unforgivable act of aggression.
At 4:45 a.m. on September 1, the
invasion began. Nazi diplomats and propagandists scrambled to head off
hostilities with the Western powers, but on September 2 Britain and France
demanded that Germany withdraw by September 3 or face war. At 11 p.m. on
September 3, the British ultimatum expired, and 15 minutes later British Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain went on national radio to solemnly announce that
Britain was at war with Germany. Australia, New Zealand, and India followed
suit shortly thereafter. At 5:00 p.m., France declared war on Germany.
In Poland, German forces advanced
at a dizzying rate. Employing a military strategy known as the blitzkrieg, or
“lightning war,” armored divisions smashed through enemy lines and isolated
segments of the enemy, which were encircled and captured by motorized German
infantry while the panzer tanks rushed forward to repeat the pattern.
Meanwhile, the sophisticated German air force–the Luftwaffe–destroyed Polish
air capability, provided air support for the blitzkrieg, and indiscriminately
bombed Polish cities in an effort to further terrorize the enemy.
The Polish army was able to
mobilize one million men but was hopelessly outmatched in every respect. Rather
than take a strong defensive position, troops were rushed to the front to
confront the Germans and were systematically captured or annihilated. By
September 8, German forces had reached the outskirts of Warsaw, having advanced
140 miles in the first week of the invasion.
The Polish armed forces hoped to
hold out long enough so that an offensive could be mounted against Germany in
the west, but on September 17 Soviet forces invaded from the east and all hope
was lost. The next day, Poland’s government and military leaders fled the
country. On September 28, the Warsaw garrison finally surrendered to a
relentless German siege. That day, Germany and the USSR concluded an agreement
outlining their zones of occupation. For the fourth time in its history, Poland
was partitioned by its more powerful neighbors.
Despite their declaration of war
against Germany, Britain and France did little militarily to aid Poland.
Britain bombed German warships on September 4, but Chamberlain resisted bombing
Germany itself. Though Germans kept only 23 divisions in the west during their
campaign in Poland, France did not launch a full-scale attack even though it
had mobilized over four times that number. There were modest assaults by France
on its border with Germany but these actions ceased with the defeat of Poland.
During the subsequent seven months, some observers accused Britain and France
of waging a “phony war,” because, with the exception of a few dramatic
British-German clashes at sea, no major military action was taken. However,
hostilities escalated exponentially in 1940 with Germany’s April invasion of
Norway and May invasion of the Low Countries and France.
Casualties of September-October
1939 Invasion:
Polish Soldiers: 66,000 dead,
133,700 wounded, 660,000–690,000 captured
Polish Civilians: 150,000 to
200,000 Men, Women and Children
German Soldiers: 16,343 killed, 3,500 missing, 30,300 wounded
In June 1941, Hitler attacked the
USSR, breaking his nonaggression with the Soviet Union, and Germany seized all
of Poland. During the German occupation, nearly three million Polish Jews were
killed in the Nazi death camps. The Nazis also severely persecuted the Slavic
majority, deporting and executing Poles in an attempt to destroy the
intelligentsia and Polish culture. A large Polish resistance movement
effectively fought against the occupation with the assistance of the Polish
government-in-exile. Many exiled Poles also fought for the Allied cause. The
Soviets completed the liberation of Poland in 1945 and established a communist
government in the nation that lasted until 1989
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