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One week prior to the invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler gathered his generals together at his home high in the Bavarian Alps. There he gave them a chilling speech in which he gave forewarning of his ambitions in the upcoming invasion of Poland.
"Our strength is our quickness and our brutality. Genghis Khan had millions of women and children hunted down and killed, deliberately and with a gay heart. History sees in him only the great founder of States. What the weak Western European civilization alleges about me, does not matter. I have given the order—and will have everyone shot who utters but one word of criticism—that the aim of this war does not consist in reaching certain geographical lines, but in the enemies' physical elimination. Thus, for the time being only in the east, I put ready my Death's Head units, with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language. Only thus will we gain the living space that we need. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?"
Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov signs the German-Soviet nonaggression pact; Joachim von Ribbentrop and Josef Stalin stand behind him. Moscow, August 23. 1939
The signing of the German-Soviet nonaggression pact
The very next day, Germany's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, signed the German-Soviet non-aggression pact that contained a secret protocol dividing Poland and other Eastern European regions between the two countries. Once again Poland's future had been decided by the stroke of a foreigner's pen. Few nations have ever suffered the fate that awaited Poland over the next five and a half years.
That next Friday, one a half million German soldiers in 56 divisions crossed the Polish border. With the first shots fired at 4:45 a.m. on September 1st, the next world war was underway. The German attack was divided into two large army groups with a third army crossing from Slovakia in the south. Their goal was to converge on Warsaw from three directions while cutting off the majority of the Polish forces already amassed in the west. In what would become commonplace over the next 3 years, the German forces rapidly executed wide sweeping maneuvers designed to encircle and entrap the opposing army and disrupt communication lines. Aiding this goal was the fact that Germany and Slovakia already bordered Poland on three sides making the encirclement almost complete from the outset. The Polish defenses had been deployed along the German border instead of behind the Vistula river in preparation of any hostilities. They were fearful that Hitler would simply occupy the region's rich natural resources and industrial zones that abutted Germany and then make peace with the British and French. There was a precedent as just one year prior the Allies had failed to come to the aid of Czechoslovakia and allowed the occupation of the Sudetenland under the Munich agreement. A similar agreement with the West and Germany would acquire prime parts of Poland almost effortlessly. Unfortunately, this defensive plan was only possible under the slow moving conditions and static lines of previous conflicts and would require rapid Allied support to buttress its forward positions. What transpired instead caught them totally unprepared, not yet fully mobilised, and without Allied support. The Poles were unable to fall back to previously prepared positions in an orderly fashion due to the speed of the German advance. Large formations, finding themselves quickly surrounded, either surrendered outright or were destroyed before they could retreat. The German Luftwaffe had established air superiority over the skies very early into the campaign and was able to provide close air support to the rapidly advancing columns. Also, it had also engaged in an indiscriminate and large scale bombing campaign of Polish cities creating huge numbers of fleeing civilians which further slowed Polish troop movements. Almost 400,000 soldiers surrendered during this first phase of the invasion.
Survivor of German aerial bombardment of Warsaw - Ryszard Pajewski was a study in dejection. Only nine, he had suddenly been made the family breadwinner - and there was no bread to be had.
A survivor of the German aerial bombardment of Warsaw
The Polish forces were finally able to organize their only meaningful counterattack on September 9th. This resulted in the Battle of Bzura, the largest engagement of the conflict. The Polish army, supported by horse mounted cavalry, managed to drive back German forces headed for Warsaw. However, the Germans were eventually able to regain the initiative and destroyed the bridges crossing the Bzura river. Subsequently, the Luftwaffe inflicted horrendous casualties on the entrapped Polish forces, including dropping incendiary bombs on forested areas into which the Poles had retreated. Once the Polish counterattack had failed at Bzura, the Polish army was forced to retreated rapidly and Warsaw was quickly encircled.
It was at this time, with Warsaw surrounded and the remains of the Polish forces fleeing towards their redoubt near Romania that the Stalin decided to act. On September 17th, over half a million Soviet soldiers swept into Poland through the undermanned eastern border and quickly overwhelmed the opposing Polish formations. With Soviet forces now in place in Poland, Stalin could ensure that the Soviet half of the German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact would be enacted as agreed. However, by delaying the invasion the Soviet Union was able to win their territorial concessions from Poland without the intense fighting of the prior two weeks and without risking worldwide opinion since they were just "protecting" ethnic minorities from the vicious Nazi onslaught.
The Polish government fled the country the same day of the Soviet invasion by crossing the Dniester River into Romania. The Polish government in exile reassembled in Paris and then spent most of the war in London commanding the 140,000 remaining Polish soldiers that managed to escape. These forces served in numerous Allied campaigns throughout the rest of the war and, in particular, the pilots of the defunct Polish airforce were vital in supplying manpower and expertise in the forthcoming Battle of Britain.
The last major resistance faltered by the end of September. The garrison in Warsaw held out under siege until September 28th, when approximately 100,000 additional soldiers surrendered and were taken into captivity. By October 1st, German troops were parading in downtown Warsaw despite the fact that there hadn't been a formal surrender by the Polish armed forces. In fact, Poland never officially surrendered to Germany during World War 2, but continued the fight outside the borders of their occupied nation. There was also a robust resistance movement inside Poland for the remainder of the war which engaged in an extensive campaign of sabotage and intelligence gathering that greatly hampered the German army. The story of Witold Pilecki as a young officer in the Polish army is particularly moving. Witold Pilecki is the only person to voluntarily become incarcerated in Auschwitz, the notorious German concentration camp in southeastern Poland, which he did solely for the purpose of organizing resistance inside the camp and to report on its activities to the Allies. While his efforts were heroic, they did little to motivate the Allies to raid the camp. He eventually escaped and reported directly to London. Unfortunately, they considered his stories of mass killings too fantastical to be believed. Witold Pilecki eventually returned to participate in the Warsaw uprising and was eventually arrested and executed after the war by the Polish communist government.
The collapse of Poland came as a shock to the rest of the world. Despite the promises of the Allies to come to Poland's aid in the event of invasion, little was actually done besides declaring war to help this nation trapped between two tyrants. France did manage a token invasion into western Germany but retreated back behind their Maginot Line by the next month. Their lack of spirit and initiative foreshadowed their own fate that would come nine months later when Germany turned and invaded France and the Low Countries.
Following the invasion by Germany and the Soviet Union, Poland was divided into three parts. The northernmost and western parts of Poland were directly annexed to Germany while the approximate eastern third of Poland was attached to the Soviet Union. The remaining remnants of central Poland were incorporated into the General Government, an autonomous region with a German administration and governed by Hans Frank. These new territories witnessed the most intense and brutal aspects of Hitler's racial plan to Germanize eastern Europe and to rid these areas of Jews and other undesirables.
The number of military and civilian deaths resulting from this invasion and subsequent occupation is truly staggering. While the actual invasion of Poland resulted in less than 100,000 Polish military deaths, the vast majority of deaths would be civilian and would follow at the hands of the German and Soviet occupiers during the rest of the war and even beyond. This brutal occupation at the hands of the Nazis in the annexed territories and the General Government resulted in three to four million deaths by starvation, disease, and mass deportations to extermination camps. Of special note is Operation Tannenberg which occurred early in the occupation. Over 20,000 members of the Polish intelligentsia were rounded up and summarily executed by Einsatzgruppen units at over 700 sites throughout Poland in an event that augured even bigger mass murders that would follow the invasion of the Soviet Union two years later. The Soviets were less odious in their occupation of Poland only in regards to the magnitude of suffering and death caused. Between 1939 and 1941 almost two million Poles and a quarter of a million prisoners of war were forcibly resettled or murdered by Stalin's regime. The Soviets also had their own notorious massacre in March 1940 when over 20,000 former Polish officers were shot and buried in the Katyn forest just west of Smolensk, Russia.
Despite a war that had been going on between Japan and China for 2 years prior, the invasion of Poland is generally considered the opening act of World War 2. While military opposition was brief and only a month in duration, the suffering the nation endured under Hitler's vision of Germanizing Eastern Europe continued unabated for the entire war. If one undertakes any serious study of World War 2 then Poland stands as the preeminent lesson where one learns of the costs of appeasement and inaction in the face of such unadulterated evil as was the case of 1930's Nazi Germany and the rise of Adolf Hitler.
From:
Treatment of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1918 in Germany throughout the 20th century
A thesis by Yevgenia Arutyunyan
Tags: Thesis, Poland, Polish, Invasion, Hitler, Declara...