Polish September Campaign: Encyclopedia II - Polish September Campaign - Details of the campaign

Polish September Campaign - Details of the campaign

Polish September Campaign - Plans

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 and to pursue a traditional doctrine of mass encirclement and destruction of enemy forces, assisted by the Germans' material advantages, including the use of modern airpower and tanks. The infantry - far from completely mechanized but 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 the invaders, concentrating on localized parts of the enemy front, eventually isolating segments of the enemy, surrounding, and destroying them. The prewar armored idea (which journalists 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 actual fact the campaign in Poland would be fought along more conservative lines. This was due to timidity 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, being a country of flat plains with long frontiers totalling almost 3,500 miles. Those frontiers included 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 occupation of Bohemia and Moravia and creation of the German puppet state of Slovakia meant that Poland's southern flank became 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.

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 was centered on protection of those 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, especially as none of those countries specifically guaranteed Polish borders and 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 Britsh 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 had made plans to attack Germany while the Polish campaign was fought. Their plans were based on the experiences of the Great War, and they expected to wear down the Germans in trench warfare, eventually forcing them to sign a peace treaty and restore Polish independence. 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.

The plan to defend the borders contributed vastly to the Polish defeat. As during the September Campaign, Polish forces were stretched thin on the very long border and, lacking compact defence lines and good defence positions, having poorly secured supply lines, were often encircled by mechanized German forces. 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 who, unlike Germany's, still traveled largely on foot and was unable to retreat to their defensive positions in the rear or to staff them before being overrun by the invader's 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.^[8]

Polish September Campaign - Phase 1: German aggression

Following a number of German-staged incidents (Operation Himmler), which gave German propaganda reason to claim they 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.

The Allied governments declared war on Germany on September 3; however, they failed to provide Poland with any meaningful support. The German-French border was calm, although the majority of German forces, including eighty-five percent of their armed forces, were engaged in Poland. This marked the beginning of the Sitzkrieg, Phony War.

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 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. 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.

Meanwhile, the Germans were tightening their net around encircled Polish forces west of the Vistula (in the Łódź area and, still farther west, around Poznań) but also penetrating deeply into eastern Poland. Warsaw, under heavy aerial bombardment from the first hours of the war, was first attacked on 9 September and was put under siege from 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 (Battle of Bzura) took place near the Bzura river west of Warsaw from 9 September to 18 September, when Polish armies Poznań and Pomorze, retreating from the border area of the Polish Corridor, attacked the flank of the advancing German 8th army. This attempted Polish counterattack failed after initial success. Defeat in this battle effectively marked the end of Polish ability to take the initiative and counterattack on a large scale.

The Polish government (of president Ignacy Mościcki) and the high command (of General Edward Rydz-Śmigły had left Warsaw in the first days of the campaign and headed south-east, 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.

Polish September Campaign - Phase 2: Soviet aggression

The Polish defense was already broken, with their only hope being retreat and reorganisation in the south-eastern region (the Romanian Bridgehead), when on September 17, 1939, it was rendered obsolete overnight. The 800,000 strong Soviet Union Red Army, divided into the Belarusian and Ukrainian fronts, invaded the eastern regions of Poland that had not yet been involved in military operations, in violation of the Soviet-Polish Non-Aggression Pact. Soviet diplomacy claimed that they were "protecting the Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities inhabiting Poland in view of Polish imminent collapse". Historians generally believe that in fact they were acting in co-operation with Nazi Germany, carrying out their part of a secret deal (the division of Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence, as specified in the secret appendix of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact).

Polish border defence forces (Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza) in the east (about 25 battalions) were unable to defend the border, and Edward Rydz-Śmigły further ordered them to fall back and not engage the Soviets. This, however, did not prevent some clashes and small battles, like the defence of Grodno was defended by soldiers and local population. 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 (near the Romanian border), while awaiting relief from a Western Allies attack on Germany's western border. Facing two powerful enemies, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the Polish government decided that it was impossible to carry out the defence on Polish territories. However, it refused to surrender or negotiate for peace with Germany and ordered all units to evacuate Poland and reorganize in France.

Meanwhile, Polish forces tried to move towards the Romanian bridgehead area, still actively resisting the German invasion. From 17 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, and in a turn of events illustrating well this bizarre campaign, it capitulated to the Soviets, even though it had been attacked by Germans over a week earlier, in the middle of the siege, German troops handed 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 the 19th 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.

Polish September Campaign - Civilian losses

The Polish Defensive War was one of the first total wars fought in Europe. The German aviation from the very first hours of the conflict targeted civilian targets and columns of refugees on the road to wreck havoc and disrupt the communications behind the Polish lines. The first such attack occurred at 4 AM on September 1 during the Bombing of Wieluń, in which ca. 1200 civilians were killed by a Luftwaffe air raid on an undefended town. Also, the Wehrmacht frequently used civilians as human shields or as hostages. Finally, apart from the victims of the fights, the German forces (both SS and the regular Wehrmacht) are credited with mass murder of several thousands of Polish POWs and civilians behind the front. Finally, during a pre-planned Operation Tannenberg, circa 20.000 Poles were shot in 760 mass execution sites by special units, the Einsatzgruppen, in addition to regular Wehrmacht, SS and Selbschutz.

Also, on September 3, 1939, "Bromberg Bloody Sunday," Polish Army units withdrawing through the city of Bydgoszcz heard shots, apparently from German fifth columnists firing at soldiers and civilians from rooftops and church towers. The Polish soldiers and civilians fired back and there ensued lynchings of real or alleged German saboteurs. Between 223 and 358 ethnic Germans were killed in Bydgoszcz 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 circa 500.

Polish September Campaign - Aftermath

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.

Poland was thus conquered and divided between Germany and the Soviet Union, the forces of which met and greeted each other on Polish soil. 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 changed in Germany's favour, being moved eastward 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.^[9]

About 65,000 Polish troops were killed and 680,000 were captured by the Germans (420,000) or the Soviets (240,000). Up to 120,000 Polish troops withdrew to neutral Romania (through the Romanian Bridgehead) and Hungary and 20,000 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 smaller (~16,000 KIA), but the loss of over ~30% of armored vehicles during the campaign was one of the reasons the plans for an immediate attack west were discarded.

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. In 1939 Hitler didn't want to attack the west as the German war machine was not yet ready. It would be months before Hitler would see the futility of his peace negotiation attempts with Great Britain and France, and years before the war would be joined by Japan, the Soviet Union, and the United States, becoming truly a "world war". Nonetheless, 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. In the meantime, Poland, fulfilling her alliance obligations, did not surrender in 1939, but rather set up a government-in-exile (see Polish Government in Exile) in France (later in the United Kingdom), which was connected to an extensive underground civil and military organisation (Polish Secret State) as legal successors to their pre-1939 government. During the German occupation, the Poles continued their struggle as one of the most restive and organised populations under Nazi rule. Until the United States and the Soviet Union entered the war, Poland, even with its territories occupied, had the third largest army at the Western Allies' disposal.

The Polish campaign was important as the first step in Hitler's drive for "living space" (Lebensraum) for Germans in Eastern Europe (Generalplan Ost), and as the blitzkrieg decimated urban residential areas, civilians soon became indistinguishable from combatants. The forthcoming Nazi 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 persecutions of the Home Army soldiers and executions of their leaders (Trial of the Sixteen).

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 37mm antitank gun) never charged German tanks or entrenched infantry or artillery directly but usually acted as mobile infantry 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 and lacking modern fighters, 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 serious harm to the Luftwaffe as the average Polish pilot was much better trained than his German opponent. 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 ^[10].

• 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 French forces were much closer to parity with the Germans in numerical strength and equipment ^[11]. 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."

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Details of the campaign", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki