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

[jamesevans140Participant 2055xp 0]

@yavasa I have had time to put on my histirical analyst cap on and I do see that Poland had a doctrine act the time and for the most part it was sound.

It was one based on operational warfare to which blitzkrieg and airland are just flavors.

It extends from the 1920 war with Russia where they adopt a war of movement very effectively against the Russians.

One issue faced by Poland was it had been divided up between 3 powers all of whom used the Prussian field manual of 1888 that was updated by lessons learned by WW1. As there was much talk about Polish independence Polish officers serving in three powers forces were not trusted and so were never sent to their general staff schools.  The first officers to do so had to be sent to France for this.  After their return they formed Poland’s first staff colleges in the modern time.  However French doctrine of the time belonged to the school of the defence. This was rejected as by nature the Polish character belongs to the school of the attack. But they did bring a seed of doom picked up from the French lessons from the Spanish Civil War.  It was concluded that tanks and aircraft add nothing to the speed of the advance.  The Spanish Civil War was an infantry based war and so everything else was in support of the infantry,  so it was a dangerous conclusion.

The boarder wars with Germany as Poland had to establish its new boarders by force as the Germans considered the given up territory as heart lands.  German training at the time included lessons learned from WW1 and was on its way towards what would become the infantry component of Blitzkrieg.  So Poland was who able to advance their doctrine from lessens learned from the Germans. However the common sense of doctrine is often overturned by politics and strategy.

Sadly this is what happened in Poland. The politicians felt that in order to continue French support they had to prove that they intended to defend their boarders and were not another country that let the Germans walk in and take over.

The Polish military command was correct in its operational warfare doctrine.  Lightly defend the boarders and trade space for time allowing Poland to fully mobilise.  Sound operational thinking.  The Polish government were afraid the France would interpret this as another walk in. So they demanded that the boarder be fully contested. Unfortunately the forces available could only realistically support the first option while there was not enough available to execute the second.  This politics decision has major impact.  On paper at least the Germans outnumber Poland by roughly 2.5 to one, however this would mean that encounters would be fought at odds of 4 to one or higher.

The greatest thing for the Polish to address was simple economies.  During the modernisation program of the 1930s that Poland had undertook over the same period Germany spent more than 30 times this on its modernisation.  The Germans did not hold back on spending on expensive high tech such as their mobile communications network.  This more than anything else allowed the Germans to get entirely inside the Polish decision making loop.  On the Polish side they were trying to centrally control about 9 army sized formations without it being radio based.  It was the German general staff the first coined the phrase “In real time”.

So that is my take on Polish doctrine so far.  When I have more time on my hands I will try to dig a little deeper for the detail.