Seventy-five years to the day have passed since World War II began with an early morning attack by Germany against Poland. The Luftwaffe mercilessly bombed both civilian and military targets, including the bombing of the city of Wieluń in the early morning hours of September 1.
Poland’s military strategy was to widely disperse it’s forces around its borders to engage the attacking Germans early, and prove to the British that they were actively fighting the enemy, a condition of the British guarantee to Poland in March of 1939.
Although both Britain and France would declare war on Germany on September 3, they did not take military action against Germany, instead opting to drop millions of anti-Nazi leaflets on Germany, in lieu of bombs. The damage was done and the hopelessly spread out, and increasingly disorganized Polish armies couldn’t effectively regroup to counter the German Blitzkrieg.
The Royal Castle in Warsaw burning after aerial bombardment, September 1939
I just finished watching an episode of a popular history program in Poland, this segment dedicated to the September Campaign. It was heartbreaking to watch film reels of throngs of Poles in Warsaw cheering outside of the British and French embassies when war was declared against Germany. These declarations and other information about mobilizing armies and supplies being shipped to Poland, led most Poles to believe that victory was at hand. Instead it was the beginning of the most terrible episode in human history.
Poland became ground zero for total warfare against soldiers and civilians alike. The Nazis immediately began executing thousands of civilians as part of the AB-Aktion to decapitate Poland’s intelligentsia and leadership class. Within several years the Nazi machinery of death was firmly established with a network of concentration camps, mostly on Polish territory.
Soviet communism would initiate its own reign of terror shortly after the Red Army invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviets deported hundreds of thousands of Poles to Siberia and other remote regions (many of them dying in the process), while arresting and soon murdering tens of thousands of Polish officers in what is known as the Katyń Massacre. This seems to have been the continuation of the Polish Operation of the NKVD, which led to the arrest and execution of over 100,000 Poles living in the Soviet Union in 1937-1938. It is possible that the mass killings of Poland’s elite were timed and coordinated as a result of Gestapo-NKVD conferences held in Poland in late 1939 and early 1940.
The Royal Castle from September 1, 1939, projected onto the Polish Presidential Palace today
Both of my grandfather’s fought in the September campaign. I am alive today because they survived the Nazi invasion and over 5 years of captivity. The six million Poles who were killed between 1939-1945, and their descendants who were never born, weren’t so lucky.
World War II encompasses a broad field of subject matter. The conflict was the definitive event of the Twentieth Century and shaped the modern world that we live in. Though seventy-five years have passed since it began and in 2015 we’ll mark seventy years since its end, the echoes of that global cataclysm can still be heard today.
The Royal Castle in Warsaw burning after aerial bombardment, September 1939
I just finished watching an episode of a popular history program in Poland, this segment dedicated to the September Campaign. It was heartbreaking to watch film reels of throngs of Poles in Warsaw cheering outside of the British and French embassies when war was declared against Germany. These declarations and other information about mobilizing armies and supplies being shipped to Poland, led most Poles to believe that victory was at hand. Instead it was the beginning of the most terrible episode in human history.
Poland became ground zero for total warfare against soldiers and civilians alike. The Nazis immediately began executing thousands of civilians as part of the AB-Aktion to decapitate Poland’s intelligentsia and leadership class. Within several years the Nazi machinery of death was firmly established with a network of concentration camps, mostly on Polish territory.
Soviet communism would initiate its own reign of terror shortly after the Red Army invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviets deported hundreds of thousands of Poles to Siberia and other remote regions (many of them dying in the process), while arresting and soon murdering tens of thousands of Polish officers in what is known as the Katyń Massacre. This seems to have been the continuation of the Polish Operation of the NKVD, which led to the arrest and execution of over 100,000 Poles living in the Soviet Union in 1937-1938. It is possible that the mass killings of Poland’s elite were timed and coordinated as a result of Gestapo-NKVD conferences held in Poland in late 1939 and early 1940.
The Royal Castle from September 1, 1939, projected onto the Polish Presidential Palace today
Both of my grandfather’s fought in the September campaign. I am alive today because they survived the Nazi invasion and over 5 years of captivity. The six million Poles who were killed between 1939-1945, and their descendants who were never born, weren’t so lucky.
World War II encompasses a broad field of subject matter. The conflict was the definitive event of the Twentieth Century and shaped the modern world that we live in. Though seventy-five years have passed since it began and in 2015 we’ll mark seventy years since its end, the echoes of that global cataclysm can still be heard today.
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