Invasion of Poland (1939)
There are several common misconceptions regarding the Polish September Campaign:
- Myth: The Polish military 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 armored vehicles, rather than charging them) describes how this myth originated. - Myth: The Polish air force was destroyed on the ground in the first days of the war.
The Polish Air Force, though numerically inferior, had been moved from air bases to small camouflaged airfields shortly before the war. Only some trainers and auxiliary aircraft were destroyed on the ground. The Polish Air Force remained active in the first two weeks of the campaign, inflicting damage on the Luftwaffe. 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 on average the most successful in shooting down German aircraft.[37] - Myth: Poland offered little resistance and surrendered quickly.
Germany sustained relatively heavy losses, especially in vehicles and planes: Poland cost the Germans approximately the equipment of an entire armored division and 25% of its air strength[38]. As for duration, the September Campaign lasted only about one week less than the Battle of France in 1940, even though the Anglo-French forces were much closer to parity with the Germans in numerical strength and equipment.[39] Furthermore, Polish Army was preparing Romanian Bridgehead, which would have prolonged Polish defence, but this plan was cancelled due to Soviet invasion on Poland on September 17, 1939. Poland also never officially surrendered to the Germans. Under German occupation, the Polish army continued to fight underground, as Armia Krajowa and forest partisans - Leśni. The Polish resistance movement in World War II in German-occupied Poland was one the largest resistance movements in all of occupied Europe. - Myth: The German Army used new concepts of warfare strategically.
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 as 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), attribute German victory to "enormous development in military technique which occurred between 1918 and 1940", 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."
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Notes
- ^ a b c Переслегин. Вторая мировая: война между реальностями.- М.:Яуза, Эксмо, 2006, с.22; Р. Э. Дюпюи, Т. Н. Дюпюи. Всемирная история войн. — С-П,М: АСТ, кн.4, с.93
- ^ a b c d Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The 1939 Campaign Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2005
- ^ a b Various sources contradict each other so the figures quoted above should only be taken as a rough indication of the strength estimate. The most common range differences and their brackets are: German personnel 1,500,000 (thats the official figure of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs) - or 1,800,000. Polish tanks: 100–880, 100 is the number of modern tanks, 880 number includes older IWWs tanks and tankettes. For all numbers, primary source is Encyklopedia PWN, article on 'Kampania Wrześniowa 1939' or the website of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs - the Poles on the Front Lines.
- ^ E.R Hooton, p85
- ^ a b Various sources contradict each other so the figures quoted above should only be taken as a rough indication of losses. The most common range brackets for casualties are: Polish casualties—63,000 to 66,300 KIA, 134,000 WIA; German KIA—8,082 to 16,343, with MIA from 320 to 5,029, total KIA and WIA given at 45,000. The discrepancy in German casualties can be attributed to the fact that some German statistics still listed soldiers as missing decades after the war. Today the most common and accepted number for German KIA casualties is 16,343. Soviet official losses are estimated at 737–1,475 killed or missing, and 1,859–2,383 wounded. The often cited figure of 420,000 Polish prisoners of war represents only those captured by the Germans, as Soviets captured about 250,000 Polish POWs themselves, making the total number of Polish POWs about 660,000–690,000. Equipment losses are given as 236 German tanks and approximately 1,000 other vehicles to 132 Polish tanks and 300 other vehicles, 107–141 German planes to 327 Polish planes (118 fighters) (Polish PWN Encyclopedia gives number of 700 planes lost), 1 German small minelayer to 1 Polish destroyer (ORP Wicher), 1 minelayer (ORP Gryf) and several support craft. Soviets lost approximately 42 tanks in combat while hundreds more suffered technical failures.
- ^ History Group of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Wellington, New Zealand (2005). Overview - New Zealand and the Second World War (English). New Zealand's History online. Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Wellington, New Zealand. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
- ^ Baliszewski, Most honoru
- ^ a b Fischer 1999–2000
- ^ Cienciala, Anna M. (2004). The Coming of the War and Eastern Europe in World War II. University of Kansas. Retrieved on 2006-03-15.
- ^ a b c (Sanford 2005, pp. 20–24)
- ^ B.H.Hart & A.J.P Taylor, p41
- ^ Bombers of the Luftwaffe, Joachim Dressel and Manfred Griehl, Arms and Armour, 1994
- ^ The Flying pencil, Heinz J. Nowarra, Schiffer Publishing,1990,p25
- ^ A History of World War Two, A.J.P Taylor, Octopus, 1974, p35
- ^ Michael Alfred Peszke, Polish Underground Army, the Western Allies, and the Failure of Strategic Unity in World War II, McFarland & Company, 2004, ISBN 0-7864-2009-X, Google Print, p.2
- ^ Adam Kurowski 'Lotnictwo Polskie 1939' 129 P-11c (+43 reserve), 30 P-7 (+85 reserve), 118 P-23 Karaś light bombers, 36 P-37 Łoś bombers (armed in line, additionally a few of the total number produced were used in combat), 84 reconneisance RXIII Lublin, RWD14 Czapla (+115 reserve)
- ^ Nowa Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN 1997, vol. VI, 981.
- ^ http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box31/t295s04.html see also the original [1]
- ^ Documents Concerning the Last Phase of the German-Polish Crisis, Proposal for a settlement of the Danzig and the Polish Corridor Problem as well as of the question concerning the German and Polish Minorities (New York: German Library of Information), p 33–35...see also: Documents Concerning German-Polish Relations and the Outbreak of Hostilities Between Great Britain and Germany on September 3, 1939 (Miscellaneous No. 9) Message which was communicated to H.M. Ambassador in Berlin by the State Secretary on August 31, 1939 at 9:15 p.m. (London: His Majesty's (HM) Stationary Office) p. 149–153.
- ^ see: Documents Concerning German-Polish Relations, 149–153.
- ^ see: Documents Concerning German-Polish Relations, 149–153.
- ^ Final Report By the Right Honourable Sir Nevile Henderson (G.C.M.G) on the circumstances leading to the termination of his mission to Berlin September 20, 1939. (London: His Majesty's Stationary Office), p. 24
- ^ see: Final Report By the Right Honourable Sir Nevile Henderson, p. 16–18
- ^ (Polish) Henryk Piątkowski (1943). Kampania wrześniowa 1939 roku w Polsce. Jerusalem: Sekcja Wydawnicza APW, 39.
- ^ (English) Count Edward Raczyński (1948). The British-Polish Alliance; Its Origin and Meaning. London: Mellville Press.
- ^ Dariusz Baliszewski, Wojna sukcesów, Tygodnik "Wprost", Nr 1141 (10 October 2004)
- ^ (Polish) Marek Wierzbicki, Stosunki polsko-białoruskie pod okupacją sowiecką (1939–1941). „Białoruskie Zeszyty Historyczne” (НА СТАРОНКАХ КАМУНІКАТУ, Biełaruski histaryczny zbornik) 20 (2003), p. 186–188. Retrieved 16 July 2007. see also Jan T. Gross "Revolution from abroad : the Soviet conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia" Princeton, N. J. : Princeton University Press, 1988 ISBN 0691094330
- ^ a b E.R Hooton, p87
- ^ a b E.R Hooton, p91
- ^ Telegram: The German Ambassador in the Soviet Union, (Schulenburg) to the German Foreign Office. Moscow, September 10, 1939-9:40 p. m. and Telegram 2: he German Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Schulenburg) to the German Foreign Office. Moscow, September 16, 1939. Source: The Avalon Project at Yale Law School. Last accessed on 14 November 2006
- ^ Molotov's report on March 29, 1940 http://www.histdoc.net/history/molotov.html
- ^ Other treaties violated by the Soviet Union were: the 1919 Covenant of the League of Nations (to which the USSR adhered in 1934), the Briand-Kellog Pact of 1928 and the 1933 London Convention on the Definition of Aggression; see for instance: (English) Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide.... McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3.
- ^ EVENTS 1939
- ^ Sanford, p. 23; (Polish) Olszyna-Wilczyński Józef Konstanty, Encyklopedia PWN. Retrieved 14 November 2006.
- ^ (Polish) Śledztwo w sprawie zabójstwa w dniu 22 września 1939 r. w okolicach miejscowości Sopoćkinie generała brygady Wojska Polskiego Józefa Olszyny-Wilczyńskiego i jego adiutanta kapitana Mieczysława Strzemskiego przez żołnierzy b. Związku Radzieckiego. (S 6/02/Zk) Polish Institute of National Remembrance. Internet Archive, 16.10.03. Retrieved 16 July 2007.
- ^ Кривошеин С.М. Междубурье. Воспоминания. Воронеж, 1964. (Krivoshein S. M. Between the Storms. Memoirs. Voronezh, 1964. in Russian); Guderian H. Erinnerungen eines Soldaten Heidelberg, 1951 (in German — Memoirs of a Soldier in English)
- ^ No. 303 "Kościuszko" Polish Fighter Squadron, formed from Polish pilots in the United Kingdom almost 2 months after the Battle of Britain begun, is famous for achieving the highest number of enemy kills during the battle of all fighter squadrons then in operation.
- ^ Bekker, Cajus (1964): Angriffshohe - 285 aircraft destroyed, 279 damaged of initial force
- ^ Polish to Germany forces in the September Campaign: 1,000,000 soldiers 4,300 guns, 880 tanks, 435 aircraft (Poland) to 1,800,000 soldiers, 10,000 guns, 2,800 tanks, 3,000 aircraft (Germany). French and participating Allies to German forces in the Battle of France: 2,862,000 soldiers, 13,974 guns, 3,384 tanks, 3,099 aircraft 2 (Allies) to 3,350,000 soldiers, 7,378 guns, 2,445 tanks, 5,446 aircraft (Germany).
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See also
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
- Battle of the Bzura
- Siege of Warsaw
- Westerplatte
- Opposing forces in the Polish September Campaign
- List of Polish divisions in World War II
- 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
- Blitzkrieg
- Vernichtungsgedanke
- War crimes of the Wehrmacht
- Treatment of the Polish citizens by the occupiers
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References
- Cooper, Matthew (1978). The German Army 1939–1945: Its Political and Military Failure. New York: Stein and Day. ISBN 0-8128-2468-7.
- Baliszewski, Dariusz (2004-10-10). "Wojna sukcesów" (in Polish). Wprost (1141).
- Baliszewski, Dariusz (2004-09-19). "Most honoru" (in Polish). Wprost (1138).
- Chodakiewicz, Marek Jan (2004). Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939–1947. Lexington Books. ISBN 0-7391-0484-5.
- Ellis, John (1999). Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War, 1st American ed., Viking Adult. ISBN 0-670-80773-7.
- Fischer, Benjamin B. (Winter 1999–2000). "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field". Studies in Intelligence.
- Gross, Jan T. (2002). Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09603-1.
- Hooton, E. R. (2007). Luftwaffe at War: Gathering Storm 1933–1939 Volume 1. London: Chervron/Ian Allen. ISBN 978-1-903223-71-7.
- Kennedy, Robert M. (1980). The German Campaign in Poland (1939). Zenger. ISBN 0-89201-064-9.
- Lukas, Richard C. (2001). Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939–1944. Hippocrene Books. ISBN 0-7818-0901-0.
- Majer, Diemut; et al. (2003). 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. ISBN 0-8018-6493-3.
- Prazmowska, Anita J. (1995). Britain and Poland 1939–1943: The Betrayed Ally. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-48385-9.
- Rossino, Alexander B. (2003). Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology and Atrocity. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-1234-3.
- Sanford, George (2005). Katyn and the Soviet Massacre Of 1940: Truth, Justice And Memory. London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415338735.
- Smith, Peter Charles (1998). Stuka Spearhead: The Lightning War from Poland to Dunkirk 1939–1940. Greenhill Books. ISBN 1-85367-329-3.
- Sword, Keith (1991). The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern Provinces, 1939–41. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-05570-6.
- Stachiewicz, Wacław (1998). Wierności dochować żołnierskiej (in Polish). OW RYTM. ISBN 83-86678-71-2.
- Taylor, A. J. P.; Mayer, S. L. (eds.) (1974). A History Of World War Two. London: Octopus Books. ISBN 0-70640-399-1.
- Zaloga, Steve; Gerrard, Howard (2002). Poland 1939: The Birth of Blitzkrieg. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1-84176-408-6.
- Zaloga, Steve (1982). The Polish Army 1939–1945. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 0-85045-417-4.
- "KAMPANIA WRZEŚNIOWA 1939". Internetowa encyklopedia PWN. Retrieved on 2005-12-10.
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Further reading
- Böhler, Jochen (2006). Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg; Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939 (Preface to the War of Annihilation: Wehrmacht in Poland) (in German). Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. ISBN 3-596-16307-2.
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External links
- detailed outline of campaign, mainly from German documents
- 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 but possibly one sided 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
- Invasion of Poland (Serbian)
- Detailed Polish Army organization schemas by Dr. Leo Niehorster
- Detailed German Army organization schemas by Dr. Leo Niehorster
- Polish Armoured Units 1939
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