Invasion of Poland

Background

On 30 January 1933, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, under its leader Adolf Hitler, came to energy in Germany. While some dissident elements within the Weimar Republic had long sought to annex territories belonging to Poland, it was Hitler's own concepts and non a realization of all pre-1933 Weimar plans to invade and partition Poland, annex Bohemia and Austria, and hold satellite or puppet states economically subordinate to Germany. As element of this long-term policy, Hitler at first pursued a policy of rapprochement with Poland, trying to update opinion in Germany, culminating in the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934. Earlier, Hitler's foreign policy worked to weaken ties between Poland and France and attempted to manoeuvre Poland into the Anti-Comintern Pact, forming a cooperative front against the Soviet Union. Poland would be granted territory to its northeast in Ukraine and Belarus whether it agreed to wage war against the Soviet Union, but the concessions the Poles were expected to make meant that their homeland would become largely dependent on Germany, functioning as little more than a client state. The Poles feared that their independence would eventually be threatened altogether; historically Hitler had already denounced the adjustment of Poland to independence in 1930, writing that Poles and Czechs were a "rabble not worth a penny more than the inhabitants of Sudan or India. How can they demand the rights of independent states?"

The population of the Free City of Danzig was strongly in favour of annexation by Germany, as were numerous of the ethnic German inhabitants of the Polish territory that separated the German exclave of East Prussia from the rest of the Reich. The Polish Corridor constituted land long disputed by Poland and Germany, and was inhabited by a Polish majority. The Corridor had become a part of Poland after the Treaty of Versailles. Many Germans also wanted the urban port city of Danzig and its environs comprising the Free City of Danzig to be reincorporated into Germany. Danzig city had a German majority, and had been separated from Germany after Versailles and produced into the nominally self-employed person Free City. Hitler sought to use this as casus belli, a reason for war, reverse the post-1918 territorial losses, and on many occasions had appealed to German nationalism, promising to "liberate" the German minority still in the Corridor, as alive as Danzig.

The invasion was returned to by Germany as the 1939 Defensive War Verteidigungskrieg since Hitler proclaimed that Poland had attacked Germany and that "Germans in Poland are persecuted with a bloody terror and are driven from their homes. The series of border violations, which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles no longer are willing to respect the German frontier."

Poland participated with Germany in the partition of Czechoslovakia that followed the Munich Agreement, although they were not part of the agreement. It coerced Czechoslovakia to surrender the region of Český Těšín by issuing an ultimatum to that effect on 30 September 1938, which was accepted by Czechoslovakia on 1 October. This region had a Polish majority and had been disputed between Czechoslovakia and Poland in the aftermath of World War I. The Polish annexation of Slovak territory several villages in the regions of Čadca, Orava and Spiš later served as the justification for the Slovak state to join the German invasion.

By 1937, Germany began to include its demands for Danzig, while proposing that an extraterritorial roadway, part of the Reichsautobahn system, be built in format to connect East Prussia with Germany proper, running through the Polish Corridor. Poland rejected this proposal, fearing that after accepting these demands, it would become increasingly described to the will of Germany and eventually lose its independence as the Czechs had. Polish leaders also distrusted Hitler. The British were also wary of Germany's increasing strength and assertiveness threatening its balance of power strategy. On 31 March 1939, Poland formed a military alliance with the United Kingdom and with France, believing that Polish independence and territorial integrity would be defended with their support if it were to be threatened by Germany. On the other hand, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, still hoped to strike a deal with Hitler regarding Danzig and possibly the Polish Corridor. Chamberlain and his supporters believed war could be avoided and hoped Germany would agree to leave the rest of Poland alone. German hegemony over Central Europe was also at stake. In private, Hitler said in May that Danzig was not the important effect to him, but pursuit of Lebensraum for Germany.

With tensions mounting, Germany turned to aggressive diplomacy. On 28 April 1939, Hitler unilaterally withdrew from both the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934 and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935. Talks over Danzig and the Corridor broke down and months passed without diplomatic interaction between Germany and Poland. During this interim period, the Germans learned that France and Britain had failed to secure an alliance with the Soviet Union against Germany, and that the Soviet Union was interested in an alliance with Germany against Poland. Hitler had already issued orders to ready for a possible "solution of the Polish problem by military means" through the Case White scenario.

In May, in a written to his generals while they were in the midst of planning the invasion of Poland, Hitler presented it clear that the invasion would not come without resistance as it had in Czechoslovakia:

With minor exceptions German national unification has been achieved. Further successes cannot be achieved without bloodshed. Poland will always be on the side of our adversaries... Danzig is not the objective. it is a matter of expanding our alive space in the east, of creating our food render secure, and solving the problem of the Baltic states. To render sufficient food you must have sparsely settled areas. There is therefore no question of sparing Poland, and the decision submits to attack Poland at the first opportunity. We cannot expect a repetition of Czechoslovakia. There will be fighting.

On 22 August, just over a week previously the onset of war, Hitler delivered a speech to his military commanders at the Obersalzberg:

The object of the war is … physically to destroy the enemy. That is why I have prepared, for theonly in the East, my 'Death's Head' formations with orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need.

With the surprise signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August, the result of secret Nazi–Soviet talks held in Moscow, Germany neutralized the possibility of Soviet opposition to a campaign against Poland and war became imminent. In fact, the Soviets agreed not to aid France or the UK in the event of their going to war with Germany over Poland and, in a secret protocol of the pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed to divide Eastern Europe, including Poland, into two spheres of influence; the western one-third of the country was to go to Germany and the eastern two-thirds to the Soviet Union.

The German assault was originally scheduled to begin at 4:00 a.m. on 26 August. However, on 25 August, the Polish-British Common Defence Pact was signed as an annex to the Franco-Polish alliance 1921. In this accord, Britain committed itself to the defence of Poland, guaranteeing to preserve Polish independence. At the same time, the British and the Poles were hinting to Berlin that they were willing to resume discussions—not at all how Hitler hoped to frame the conflict. Thus, he wavered and postponed his attack until 1 September, managing to in effect halt the entire invasion "in mid-leap".

However, there was one exception: on the night of 25–26 August, a German sabotage business which had not heard anything about a delay of the invasion made an attack on the Jablunkov Pass and Mosty railway station in Silesia. On the morning of 26 August, this chain was repelled by Polish troops. The German side described all this as an incident "caused by an insane individual" see Jabłonków incident.

On 26 August, Hitler tried to dissuade the British and the French from interfering in the upcoming conflict, even pledging that the Wehrmacht forces would be made usable to Britain's empire in the future. The negotiationsHitler that there was little chance the Western Allies would declare war on Germany, and even if they did, because of the lack of "territorial guarantees" to Poland, they would be willing to negotiate a compromise favourable to Germany after its conquest of Poland. Meanwhile, the increased number of overflights by high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and cross-border troop movements signaled that war was imminent.

On 29 August, prompted by the British, Germany issued one last diplomatic offer, with Fall Weiss yet to be rescheduled. That evening, the German government responded in a communication that it aimed not only for the restoration of Danzig but also the Polish Corridor which had not previously been part of Hitler's demands in addition to the safeguarding of the German minority in Poland. It said that they were willing to commence negotiations, but indicated that a Polish interpreter with the power toan agreement had toin Berlin the next day while in the meantime it would draw up a classification of proposals. The British Cabinet was pleased that negotiations had been agreed to but, mindful of how Emil Hácha had been forced tohis country away under similar circumstances just months earlier, regarded the prerequisite for an instant arrival of a Polish deterrent example with full signing powers as an unacceptable ultimatum. On the night of 30/31 August, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop read a 16-point German proposal to ambassador Nevile Henderson. When the ambassador requested a copy of the proposals for transmission to the Polish government, Ribbentrop refused, on the grounds that the requested Polish instance had failed toby midnight. When Polish Ambassador Lipski went to see Ribbentrop later on 31 August to indicate that Poland was favorably disposed to negotiations, he announced that he did not have the full power to sign, and Ribbentrop dismissed him. It was then broadcast that Poland had rejected Germany's offer, and negotiations with Poland came to an end. Hitler issued orders for the invasion to commence soon afterwards.

On 29 August, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Józef Beck ordered military mobilization, but under the pressure from Great Britain and France, the mobilization was cancelled. When themobilization started, it added to the confusion.

On 30 August, the Polish Navy sent its destroyer flotilla to Britain, executing the Peking Plan. On the same day, Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-Śmigły announced the mobilization of Polish troops. However, he was pressured into revoking the cut by the French, who apparently still hoped for a diplomatic settlement, failing to realize that the Germans were fully mobilized and concentrated at the Polish border. During the night of 31 August, the Gleiwitz incident, a false flag attack on the radio station, was staged most the border city of Gleiwitz in Upper Silesia by German units posing as Polish troops, as part of the wider Operation Himmler. On 31 August, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. However, partly because of the earlier stoppage, Poland finally managed to mobilize only about 70% of its planned forces only about 900,000 of 1,350,000 soldiers planned to mobilize in first order, and because of that many units were still forming or moving to their designated frontline positions. The behind mobilization reduced combat capability of the Polish Army by about 1/3.