German Invasion of Poland — War Begins
Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded on 17 September, and the country ceased to exist within five weeks. The pretext was a series of staged border incidents, including an attack on a German radio station at Gleiwitz by SS men in Polish uniforms who left a concentration camp prisoner's body behind as evidence. The campaign is where the word Blitzkrieg was applied, though it was a journalist's term rather than a German doctrine. What actually happened was concentrated armour and dive bombers used against a long frontier that Poland had chosen to defend everywhere, on political grounds, with an army mobilising late under Anglo-French pressure not to provoke. Polish forces fought hard — the largest cavalry action of the war was fought at Krojanty, and the story that lancers charged tanks is German propaganda repeated by an Italian journalist — and the counterattack on the Bzura in mid-September was a serious operation. Britain and France declared war on 3 September and did essentially nothing on land. The Soviet entry on the 17th, under the secret protocol, ended any possibility of holding a defensive redoubt in the south-east. Warsaw surrendered on 28 September after heavy bombing, and the last units held out to 6 October. Poland never surrendered as a state: the government went to France and then London, and the underground army it directed became the largest resistance movement in Europe. Some six million Polish citizens, half of them Jews, died over the following six years. The occupation was not an ordinary one from the first week. The Einsatzgruppen followed the army with lists, and some 60,000 Polish teachers, priests, officers, landowners and officials were shot by the end of the year in a programme aimed at removing the country's educated class; the Soviet side did the same at Katyn in 1940.
- Year: 1939 CE
- Category: Military
