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German Blitzkrieg Into Poland

Stuka fodder: a Polish girl weeps over her dead sister after the Ju-87s have swept by.

Hardly thirty feet above the fog-enshrouded ground the Kette of three Junkers 87B Stukas roared through the slumbrous countryside. Their engines resonating through the river valley, they looked like three ugly predatory birds with gaping jawlike radiators, contorted, splayed wings, and taloned undercarriages. Dangerously close to the earth because of the fog, the Kette, led by Oberleutnant Bruno Dilley of Stuka Geschwader 1, sought out its target.

Only minutes before they had taken off from their advance base at Elbing to find the bridges over the Vistula River at Dirschau. They were not, as they had in Spain, to destroy the bridges. Instead they were to keep them open to enable the German Third Army in East Prussia to join with the Fourth Army moving in from the west through the Polish Corridor. The bridges were a crucial supply and transportation link and, it was known, they had been mined by the Poles in the event of a German attack. Once the alarm was given the bridges would be blown and the fine timetable of conquest would be upset.

Dilley's problem was to sever the wires which lay in the left embankment of the Vistula at Dirschau. The fog and the darkness, for it was barely dawn of Friday, September 1, 1939, did not make the mission an easy one. There were trees to skirt and landmarks to seek which disconcertingly slipped past or disappeared in a patch of fog before they could be properly identified. At least the river was in the right place. For an instant Dilley saw the indistinct forms of the bridges emerging from the mist. Snapping his head from left to right, he noted that the others had seen the bridges also. He kicked the rudder and leveled at the left embankment. It would be a low-level attack, not the classic Stuka peel-off and screeching dive, as Dilley, followed by the other two pilots, plunged at the riverbank, released his bombs, and pulled up in as steep a climb as possible. The engine whined in near protest and that sound was coupled with the explosions. The rear gunners in the Stukas watched as the earth shook and erupted in a gush of smoke and dust.

Dilley glanced at his wristwatch: four thirty-four. They had begun the Second World War eleven minutes ahead of schedule. It was a portent of things to come. Further: although they had hit their target and had, indeed, snapped the wires leading to the explosive charges on the bridges, the Poles had succeeded, by six-thirty, in blowing one of the spans which sagged into the Vistula. By then the war had officially begun.

The "incident" which had justified the unleashing of Fall Weiss ("Case White," the code term for the attack on Poland) had already been staged. On August 31 Hitler issued his "Directive No. 1 for the Conduct of War." Classified as "Most Secret," it read (in part):

1. Now that all political possibilities of disposing by peaceful means of a situation on the Eastern Frontier which is intolerable for Germany are exhausted, I have determined on a solution by force.
2. The attack on Poland is to be carried out in accordance with the preparations made for Fall Weiss, with the alterations which result, where the Army is concerned, from the fact that it has, in the meantime, almost completed its dispositions.     Allotment of tasks and the operational target remain unchanged.
       The date of attack: 1 September 1939.
       Time of attack: 04:45 [written in red pencil].
       This time also applies to the operation at Gdynia, Bay of Danzig, and the Dirschau Bridge.
3. In the west it is important that the responsibility for the opening of hostilities should rest unequivocally with England and France. At first, purely local action should be taken against insignificant frontier violations.
   -Adolf Hitler

In his proclamation to the Armed Forces issued on the following day, Hitler stated that "Several acts of frontier violation, which cannot be tolerated by a great power, show that Poland is no longer prepared to respect the Reich's frontiers. To put an end to this madness, I can see no other way but from now on to meet force with force."

He was right about the madness. At the German city of Gleiwitz, for example, Polish troops attacked the radio station in the early evening of August 31. An excited voice interrupted the broadcast and shouted over the air that the time had come for war between Poland and Germany. The sound of shots could be heard also. When the foreign press members were taken to Gleiwitz the next morning they saw about a dozen bodies strewn about the area of the radio station - all in Polish Army uniforms.

They were, of course, dead Germans, condemned criminals who had been promised freedom if they participated in the "incident" and escaped. But even that possibility had been considered: all of the Germans had been fatally injected before the attack on the radio station. The SS leader of the operation, Alfred Naujocks, saw to it that those men who fell unconscious from the lethal drug rather than to gunfire were properly inflicted with gunshot wounds for the visiting newsmen. The entire operation had been planned under the direction of Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS. Polish uniforms and small arms had been supplied through the efforts of General Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Armed Forces, and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German Intelligence. While neither approved, neither did they object to Hitler's plans - which were known to them early in August.

It was not to the professional minds of Keitel and Canaris an honorable means of making war, but all this was overlooked in the spectacular thrust of the German blitzkrieg into Poland. It was a kind of war which neither understood - just as neither understood Hitler. Canaris, however, was not the toady that Keitel was (a subservient sycophancy earned him the nickname among his fellow officers of Lakaitel, "Lackey"). In fact, Canaris was one of the earliest of the German conspirators who hoped to rid the Reich of Hitler. His conspiracies eventually cost him his life; but on the morning of September 1 Canaris visualized an even greater price when, with tears in his eyes, he said, "This means the end of Germany."

It was a characteristic exclamation, for the professional soldiers had little faith in the war that Hitler had unleashed against their better military judgment. But when Hitler ignited "the torch of war in Europe" the stunning advance of the Wehrmacht behind the Panzer divisions and the Luftwaffe's seemingly ubiquitous Stukas heartened the German generals as much as they shocked a breathless world. All along the German-Polish frontier the wheels of the German juggernaut ground into action. Laughing young, blond soldiers snapped the wooden frontier barrier gates - or smashed through in tanks. The Luftwaffe struck at Polish airfields, railroads, and communications lines, crippling aerial defenses from the beginning and rendering troop movements all but impossible.

In Berlin, Hitler watched the blitzkrieg on a massive battle map: the plan, he knew, was foolproof. Two Army Groups were smashing across the Polish plains toward Warsaw. Army Group North, composed of two armies - the Fourth, which flowed eastward from Pomerania across the Polish Corridor and then would turn south for Warsaw; and the Third, which struck westward from East Prussia toward the Polish Corridor, where, it was hoped, on meeting with the Fourth Army, it would race southward to the Polish capital. Attached to Army Group North, under command of General Feder von Bock, was Luftflotte 1, (Air Fleet 1) under Albert Kesselring, who had served as Luftwaffe Chief of Staff immediately after the death of Walther Wever.

Army Group South (Gerd von Rundstedt) was also to push toward Warsaw in a northwesterly direction through Slovakia and Silesia with its three armies, the Eighth, Tenth, and Fourteenth. These units were supported by Luftflotte 4 under Alexander Loehr, former commander of the Austrian Air Force, which had been absorbed into the Luftwaffe via Hitler's infamous Anschluss in 1938. Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe was the youthful - forty years old - able Hans Jeschonnek, "graduate" of the school at Lipesk in Soviet Russia, an ardent admirer of Goring, a devotee of Hitler, and an advocate of the high-speed medium bomber and the Stuka.

The two Air Fleets (Luftflotten) were virtually self-sufficient air forces whose components were made up of assorted aircraft types for various assignments as well as antiaircraft batteries (Flugabwehrkanone=air defense gun, or more simply Flak). The Geschwader, the basic tactical unit of the Luftwaffe, took its name from the type of aircraft which comprised it. The level bombers, mainly Heinkel llls and Dornier 17s, and later Junkers 88s, were designated KampfJiugzeug; the fighters, the Messerschmitt 109 (later the Focke-Wulf 190s), were assigned to Jagdflugzeug Geschwader (JG); the socalled "destroyer" aircraft, the twin-engined Messerschmitt 110 fighter, were termed Zerstorerflugzeug. The Junkers 87, and other dive bombers, which included, in the initial days of the war, the Henschel 123, were assigned to Sturzkampfflugzeug Geschwader (StG).

When the war erupted Kesselring's Air Fleet 1 had roughly 800 aircraft with which to support Army Group North (500 level bombers, 180 dive bombers, and 120 fighters). In the south Loehr's Air Fleet 4 had slightly less than 600 planes (310 bombers, 160 dive bombers, and 120 fighters). The Luftflotten total in the east was about 1390 planes (excluding reconnaissance and transport aircraft), which is considerably less than the number generally given as the Luftwaffe strength at the time. In brief, the Luftwaffe was a good close-support air force for the' short war Hitler had in mind; he was hoping too that the French and English would permit him to settle "the Polish question" as they had all the other demands since the Anschluss, with little interference.

Compared to the less than second-rate Polish Air Force, the Luftwaffe was indeed a powerful Goliath. The total number of planes in the entire Polish Air Force was slightly over five hundred, of which less than half could be called modern. Even that figure tended toward excessive optimism. There were only thirty-six first-rank bombers, the PZL-37, the Los ("Elk"), available to combat squadrons on September 1, 1939. These were used to bomb advancing German armored divisions. The Elk was effective, and the Poles attacked with ferocious courage, but the small band was easily overwhelmed by both numbers and the superior performance of the German fighters.

The backbone of the Polish aerial defense force was the attractive gull-winged PZL-llc - the Jedenastka (the "Eleventh"). A product of the State Aircraft Factory (Panstwowe Zaklady Lotnicze, whence the PZL), the P-11, with its fixed landing gear, high wing, struts, and inferior top speed (about 240 miles per hour as compared with the Me-109's 300), was all but obsolete when the war began. Nor could the little fighters climb to the German bomber altitudes to intercept. In all there were about 158 first-line fighter planes in the Polish Air Force when the Germans struck. Of these there were 128 P-lls and 30 of the more outdated P-7s. Even if the Luftwaffe did not contain multitudes, it did easily outnumber the Polish Air Force around ten to one.

Contrary to the widely held belief, the Polish Air Force was not wiped out on the ground. Long before the tanks began to roll and the Stukas began swooping down on the airfields, the Polish planes were moved to well-camouflaged emergency airstrips. While serious damage was done to the runways, hangars, and the planes left behind, what there was of the Polish Air Force was generally untouched by the strafing attacks and dive-bombing.

The first German plane to fall in the Second World War was a Ju-87 Stuka brought down by Lieutenant W. Gnys (who would later serve in the Royal Air Force's No. 302, "Polish," Squadron in the Battle of Britain) piloting a P-11 of the Second Air Regiment, based at Krakow. Despite the victories it was a hopeless battle and typical of the Polish defense. On the ground Polish horse cavalry charged German tanks and armored cars with sword and lances. The cavalry was decimated from the air also when the Stukas attacked men and horses in the vicinity of Wielun, leaving behind an unreal devastation of dead and dying, smoke, flame, and futility. These were delaying tactics - for the blitzkrieg did not always plunge ahead inexorably - and they were disturbing. Heinz Guderian, commanding a Panzer corps, tells of how a section of his advance was held up by a Polish bicycle company. But these were fugitive and tragic efforts. On Hitler's large-scale map, safe in Berlin, the blitzkrieg moved ahead with breath-taking speed.

As the Poles were pushed back from the frontier they retreated inward toward Warsaw, creating pockets of potential resistance in the vicinity of Posen, Lodz, Krakow, and Przemysl. The roads were choked with retreating soldiers and fleeing refugees. Swarms of Stukas screamed down to bomb and strafe the highways in another Teutonic contribution to "the art of war," Schrecklichkeit (frightfulness). The roads disintegrated into a massive chaos of terror. The great Nazi steam roller crushed all before it, Polish mobilization was stopped before it had really begun, and resistance was dissipated haphazardly along the frontier or in encircled pockets. With no reserves to call upon the Polish Army was overrun by the panzers, motorized infantry, and the booted German Wehrmacht.

All roads led to Warsaw, which was the last stronghold and the prime target. Goring had had to cancel Operation Seaside, the full-scale attack on Warsaw scheduled for September 1, because of the fog which interfered with the aerial operations in the Army Group North area. The Warsaw-Okiecie airfield, home of PZL factories, was bombed by a few He-llls despite the early morning mist. By the late afternoon the weather had cleared enough for more intensive attacks by He-111s and Stukas. Kampfgeschwader 27, named for the World War I hero Oswald Boelcke, flew nearly five hundred miles from northern German bases for the first really heavy bombardment of Warsaw. Escorting the bombers were the Zerstorer, the Messerschmitt 110, the so-called "strategic fighter" or "destroyer." It was during these attacks on Warsaw that the first air battles of any size occurred between the Luftwaffe and the Polish Air Force. The Polish P-lls climbed in vain to reach the bombers; the Me-110s dived to intercept, the Polish fighters darted away. In a matter of minutes five of the P-lls had tumbled to the ground. In the few short weeks of fighting a total of 116 Polish fighters were destroyed in combat (of these 11 fell to antiaircraft fire, German as well as Polish). Some PZLs were lost when their pilots, in desperation, rammed the German aircraft to bring them down.

But nothing held up the German advance. Within a week the panzers of Walther von Reichenau's Tenth Army (of Army Group South) approached the outskirts of Warsaw. By this time the Polish Air Force had been all but completely expended; most of the first-line aircraft had been lost in the savage, one-sided dogfights. Almost as devastating was the supply problem, for without replacement parts and fuel the planes could not fly; communications, too, had been so disrupted that all military command broke down. Only a few of the Elk bombers continued to operate for a few days and then those remaining and the operational PZLs were ordered to Rumania. By September 17, 1939, the air war in Poland was over.

On that day the Soviet Army marched from the east to seal the fate of Poland. The Red Army met even weaker resistance than the Germans had; the Poles that had escaped the German envelopments were pushed back into the Nazi pincers or were captured by the Russians. With neither an army nor an air force, Poland was finished as a fighting power. "The German Luftwaffe," the Wehrmacht report stated, "has won undisputed mastery over the whole of Poland."

But Warsaw remained, crowded with refugees and fleeing soldiers whose officers rallied to a last-ditch defense. The encircled city became a honeycomb of trenches and improvised barricades as civilians and troops alike prepared for the German attack. The government had already fled to Lublin, and then into Rumania - and internment. By September 13 Operation Seaside, the aerial devastation of Warsaw, was reinstated. In the train of the onrushing German troops, the Luftwaffe had set up temporary airstrips within easy striking distance of the capital.

The first sizable air raid occurred on September 13 when Wolfram von Richthofen ordered an attack on military targets - rail centers, public utilities, military establishments - within the city. Later Richthofen was to say that the "chaos over the target was indescribable." The first major aerial attack of the Second World War was not, by German standards, very worthy of those high standards which they had been demonstrating for the past two weeks to a stunned and frightened world. The bombing timetable went awry and various units came in over Warsaw haphazardly. With more than 180 aircraft converging on the target area there were collisions and confusion. But to the terrorized Poles below it was not confusion of command and timing, but a sky filled with aircraft dropping bombs.

Following this attack, Warsaw was given some respite from the air when the bombers were called off to assist the German Eighth and Tenth Armies under pressure of an offensive suddenly launched by the Polish Posen Army, which had been bypassed during the first week of the war. While the Stukas and He-llls and Me-110s were dealing with the Poles in the Bzura River fighting, the dropping of leaflets pleading for the Poles to surrender began fluttering down upon Nazi-encircled Warsaw. Posters soon appeared upon buildings and trees in Warsaw's outskirts promising those who surrendered food and good treatment. But the pleas went unheeded and all attempts by the Germans to propagandize the Poles into surrendering Warsaw "to prevent useless bloodshed and the destruction of the city" failed. The Poles had already witnessed sufficent German frightfulness along their highways, in the villages and towns, and in some Warsaw suburbs to realize the propaganda promises were delusion. They chose to fight to the end. Those who survived had worse than death in store for them. Behind the Wehrmacht into Poland came Dr. Robert Ley, exchemist, alcoholic, and chief of the German Labor Front, who believed that "Germans can never live in the same condition as Poles and Jews." And as he conscripted slaves for German industry, he was as good as his word.

click image to enlarge Poland was again divided among her neighbors when, on September 29, a second Soviet-German agreement was signed.

On the day that the Russians began moving upon Poland, September 17, the first real mass attack on Warsaw was canceled when it appeared that the Poles were willing to negotiate for the evacuation of civilians and foreigners. The Polish representative did not appear to negotiate. With the Russians swarming in from the east, it was even more important to the Germans that Warsaw fall. For the next several days, until September 24, millions of leaflets rained down upon the beleaguered city promising honorable surrender terms - officers would even be permitted to keep their swords!

At eight o'clock in the morning, September 25, Richthofen unleashed the Luftwaffe upon Warsaw. At his disposal were 8 Gruppen (240 aircraft) of the Ju-87 Stukas, some He-llls, and a Gruppe of the clumsy Junkers 52 transports. In all Richthofen had about 400 aircraft to deal with Warsaw (the usual accepted number has been 800), not an impressive number once again. But never before in the world's history had 400 planes attacked a single city. Here was the sequel to Guernica modernized, refined, and revised according to the concept of Schrecklichkeit. Flying two or three sorties through the day, Richthofen's forces were magnified into a massive destructive weapon.

The Stukas began with their familiar shriek, unleashing their bomb loads into the city. Thirty Ju52s flew low over Warsaw to deliver the incendiaries into the churning clouds of flame, debris, mortar dust, and smoke. These clumsy craft were not ideally suited for their assignment; the incendiary bombs were literally shoveled out of their large side entrances (these were specifically for paratrooper use). The lumbering trimotored aircraft were slow and at least two fell to Polish antiaircraft fire. Also, the method of delivering the bombs did not make for accuracy, for thanks to a strong eastern wind, some of the incendiaries fell among German troops. An immediate demand was made by Eighth Army headquarters for the cessation of the bombing, but Hitler, who had flown to the battle zone in his own Ju-52, instructed Richthofen to continue over the protests of Brauchitsch.

By late morning Warsaw lay under a pillar of smoke that coiled up thousands of feet into the air. And still the bombers came, although it was practically impossible to find specific targets because of the smoke and destruction. By nightfall five hundred tons of high-explosive bombs and seventy-two tons of incendiaries had been dropped into Warsaw. To this was added the massed artillery which encircled the city. After the planes had left the artillery continued.

The red glare of Warsaw's flames could be seen for miles around, as German and Pole alike stood in awe of what the bloody glow in the sky signified. On the next day Warsaw agreed to surrender; food had all but run out, the water supply was ruptured, and ammunition had been expended. The defenders of Warsaw officially capitulated on September 27, 1939. In less than a month Hitler's blitzkrieg had erased Poland, with the help of the accommodating Soviet Army, from the map.

Walter Schellenberg, a young SS intelligence officer, entered what remained of Warsaw and "was shocked at what had become of the beautiful city I had known - ruined and burnt-out houses, starving and grieving people. The nights were already unpleasantly chilly and a pall of dust and smoke hung over the city, and everywhere there was the sweetish smell of burnt flesh. There was no running water anywhere. In one or two streets isolated resistance was being continued. Elsewhere everything was quiet. Warsaw was a dead city." Tomorrow the world.

Edward Jablonski. : Luftwaffe's winged assault on Europe and the Battle of Britain. Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York. 1971.

Blitzkrieg in the West: Luftwaffe at War Series Vol. 3 This photo-essay, one of a 21-volume series, covers every aspect of the Luftwaffe in World War II, examining the men and the aircraft they flew as it charts the rise and fall of this mighty force. In the first year of the war the Luftwaffe established itself as a deadly tactical air force, helping the Wehrmacht and its Panzers move from Poland through the Low Countries into France. Its pilots, led by Spanish Civil War veterans who had revolutionized air combat, were far more experienced than the Allies. However, the Luftwaffe's strategic and doctrinal shortcomings were exposed by the Battle of Britain, and eventually Luftwaffe units were withdrawn to Germany and eastern Poland in readiness for the invasion of the Soviet Union. This book explores the aircraft that were used, what equipment they carried and who flew and maintained them during this dramatic period of the war.

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