Reply To: Poland 1939 – Preparing for 80th Anniversary of World War II

[shingen 13941xp 4]

Great effort guys, thanks.

 

A couple of minor additions from me:

As in the west we consider September 1st as first day of the War, more and more historians argue that considering global character of the conflict, first shots of 2nd World War ware actually fired in Japanese invasion of China a couple of years earlier. That is probably strictly academic polemic and does not have much real importance, but it is somewhat connected to September Campaign. I’ve recently read an article or listened to a podcast which argued that Stalin decided to act upon secret addendum to the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact (the one on war against Poland and partition of its territory, the main body of that legal document doesn’t mention that thing in the slightest), only after he resolved undeclared war against Japan  in Manchuria. That conflict in the Far East ended on September 16Th and allowed Stalin to move west (BTW also without declaring war, which had its importance further down the road).

Couple more minor things to what you’ve written, and is probably worth adding, are that protection of native Germans outside German territory was never an end in itself but rather device used in political battle against Versailles treaty.

Also in March 1939 Poland took part in partition of Czechoslovakia by occupying part of contested Silesian territory. That affected cooperation of exiled governments of both countries during the war.

In September Poland was attacked from 4 direction on almost whole length of its borders, as even Slovakian armies (Slovakia was at the time a puppet state of 3rd Reich) crossed the border and engaged Polish units.

Regarding Gliwitz incident – maybe you can confirm or deny but I remember reading somewhere that the operation was carried out with cooperation from the infamous Brandenburg Unit, an irregular troop consisting of Germans from border areas. The same unit was then involved in disorganization and obstruction of Polish retreat and then in attack on Belgium and Netherlands.

And one last thing, you may want to read a book by by Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud titled “A Question of Honor”. The book covers exploits of Polish pilots during whole war but first chapters cover pre-war situation in Polish air force as well as airborne engagements in September itself which aren’t widely known.