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

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@yavasa i have finally had the time to drag out my copy of Battles of World War II, volume one,  Poland 1939, Germany’s ”lightening strike’. This is part of a hard bound set published back in 2002. It was the first book I had read that seriously rebuffed the cavalry vs tank myth. It also blames the 1959 Polish film Lotna directed by Andrzej Wajda for taking artistic licence to paint the Polish Army as the doomed hero by including tank vs cavalry scenes in his movie that only increased the myth.

The battle that @torros and I have been talking about that had armoured trains and cavalry giving a panzer division a bloody nose was the Battle of Mokra on September 1st. Here the 4th Panzer Division attacked with the Wolynian Cavalry Brigade supported by the armoured train  53 Smialy. The modernisation of this cavalry brigade did pay dividends. Here they had the Bofors 37mm, better than the German 37mm. On a side note in the Finnish Winter War games I have played,  at this stage of the war it commands the battle space in a similar fashion to the German 88mm did elsewhere.  This is due to the very thin armour of early tank designs of the period and the long range accuracy of the Bofors 37mm. A few of the secret anti- tank rifles and the Polish copy of the US BAR rifle were present in numbers.  What this battle gave us a look at what it may have been like if Poland had of completed its modernisation and the real quality of the Polish soldier.  Again there is a myth about the German soldier being the best in the world.  Again not so just that they vastly outnumbered the real quality troops they encountered.  There was a battle in Holland where their quality troops not only engaged German paratroopers but were pushing them back.  Holland surrendered before this battle was over.  In Finland at any point in the war all Finnish soldiers were much better than any German infantry formation.  From my limited reading the Polish soldier proudly belongs in this group. So to me it was the German doctrine of Blitzkrieg was developing.  Poland was not ready for operational warfare. German tanks and infantry are fighting two separate battles in the same battle space.  It looks like combined arms,  but true combined arms in the German army does not come together until 1941. The speed of the tactical maneuver of German divisions is much faster than any army as this period of the war.  Finally the German mobile radio net is second to none.  The effect is that then Germans have a better vision of the battle space and have the speed to be there ready to strike the enemy as they more blindly fumble around.  Many of the Polish counter attacks were sound.  However even the best tactics are useless when the enemy can see everything you do and have the speed and ability to block and attack anything you do.  It would feel like the Germans have already read the page while you have not finished writing.