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The Polish Campaign - A first glance at modern warfare

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The balance of power

In 1939, the Third Reich has developped into a quite extraordinay war machine. Just before the invasion of Poland at 0430 on September 1st, the Wehrmacht had at its disposal 53 front line divisions with modern arm and equipment. But the biggest contrast of all was in the motorized and amoured units. The Polish Army and its allies, the French and the British, had nothing to match with the six German Panzer divisions at the beginning of hostilities. The Germans also had four motorised divisions with a fifth made up of the 23,000 men of the Waffen-SS.

The Luftwaffe was supreme in the air. On the first day of the war, its order of battle totalled some 4,700 combat aircraft (including 552 three-engine Ju 52 transport). But the trump card of the Luftwaffe in the Polish campaign was its nine dive-bomber units flying the Ju 87 Stuka (Sturzkampfflugzeug or dive-bombing aircraft). They gave the Wehrmacht a first taste of modern warefare. By working in close collaboration with the armored and motorized units, the Stuka gave the latter every opportunity to use their manoeuvrability and speed to the full.

On the allies's side, general mobilisation in Poland had been proclaimed only until 1100 the day before, while in France, it did not get under way until September 2nd. All facts indicated that the French and the British had no time to intervene if Poland could not resist a German invasion for at least a month. This was impossible task with the manpower and obsolete weapons available at that time for the Polish Army. In the air, the Polish can only put up some 842 aircraft, mostly weak and obsolescent. France had virtually no modern bombers which can pitted against the German fighters and AA defense. The RAF totalled 3,600 aircraft, of which a large portion was totally obsolete and it also had to reserve many aircraft for duties outside Europe.

Blitzkrieg unleashed

Operation "Case White", drawn up by Col. General Brauchitsch, Chief of Staff to O.K.H. (Army High Command), had as objective the desctruction of the Polish armed forces: to disrupt, by a rapid invasion of Polish territory, the mobilization and concentration of the Polish Army, and to destroy the bulk of troops stationed to the west of the Vistula-Narew line. The invsion force totalled 55 divisions on "Y-Day" including reserves. The front line divisions were divided into two large army groups with the following strength and objectives:
East Prussia and Pomerania: Army Group North (Col. General Fedor von Bock)
Left flank: 3rd Army (General Georg von K�chler), with eight infantry divisions, was to assist in the destruction of the Polish forces in the Danzig Corridor and drive south towards the Vistula and Warsaw.
Right flank: 4th Army (General G�nther Hans von Kluge), with six infantry, two motorised and one Panzer divisions, was to attack from Pomerania and destroy the main body of Polish troops defending the Corridor, cutting off the Poznan-Kutno group from the north
Silesia and Slovakia: Army Group South (Col. General Gerd von Rundstedt)
Left flank: 8th Army (General Johannes Blaskowitz), with four infantry divisions and the SS motorized regiment "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler", was to engage the Polish forces in the Poznan-Kutno region and keep them from counter-attacking the central army of the group.
Centre: 10th Army (General Walter von Reichenau), with six infantry, two motorised, three light and two Panzer divisions, was to drive north-east, straight for Wielun, Lodz and Warsaw
Right flank: 14th Army (General Sigmund Wilhelm List), with one mountain, six infantry, one light and two Panzer divisions and the S.S. motorised regiment "Germania", was to strike across the Carpathians from Slovakia and pin down the Polish forces around Kralow and Przemysl.
In the West, 43 German divisions of Army Group C (Col. General Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb), held the front between Basle and Aix-la-Chapelle against a possible Franco-British intervention.

Facing the outslaught of these formidable German forces, the Polish High Command had only 17 infantry divisions, three infantry brigades and six cavalry brigades. Thirteen divisions mobilized by the time of the German attack were still moving to their concentration areas, while another nine divisions were still mustering in barracks. Morever, the front -line divisions were defending a line 1,025 miles long, for that the Polish had refused to give up the Danzig Corridor and pulled in its forces behind the line formed by the rivers Niemen, Bobr, Narew, Vistula and San, as the French has suggested, which offered a sound defensive strategy as it disposes the every possibility of encirclement and places strong river barriers in the path of German armoured formations and shortens the line to just over 450 miles. Poland's fate was doomed on September 1st, 1939.

Blitzkrieg triumphant

The first stage of the campaign saw the Polish cavalry of the "Pomorse Army", under General Bortnowski, charged the tanks of Guderian's XIX Panzer Corps as they thrust across the Corridor towards the Vistula, which they crossed at Chelmno on September 6, making contact with the 3rd Army on the far bank. As late as September 15-18, the "Sosnkowski Group" (11th adn 38th Divisions), marching by night and fighting by day, managed three times to break through the ring which the German 14th Army was trying to close behind it. Fighting across the San river, Sosnkowski divisions managed to capture 20 guns and 180 vehicules from the 14th Army.

All this was achieved under non-stop bombing raids by the Luftwaffe. ALthough the Polish Air Force managed to keep up sporadic air attack up to September 17, the Luftwaffe dominated the sky. Luftflotten I and IV, commanded by Generals Albert Kesselring and Alexander L�hr, concentrated their attacks on communication centres, pockets of resistance and Polish forces on the move. Between them, they have 897 bombers and 219 Stukas serving Bock's Army Group North and Rundstedt's Army Group South.

The advantage of unchallenge air power helped the German 10th Army to win rapid sucesses in its advance on Warsaw. It is true that on September 8 its 4th Panzer Division failed to take Warsaw by surprise but two days later, 10th Army reached the Vistula at Gora Kalwaria and tore the Polish "Lodz Army" to shreds. At the same time, the Polish "Prussian Army" had also been cut off, broken up and destroyed in a battle against heavy odds. Marshal Rydz-Smigly's order for the Polish armies to withdraw eastwards had gone out on September 6, but it was too late. This withdrawal led to one of the most dramatic episodes in the Polish campaign. Falling back on Warsaw, the "Pomorze" and the " Poznan" Armies were challenged by the German 8th Army coming up from Lodz. The result was the hard fought "Battle of the Bzura" which began on September 10. The Polish troops succeeded in capturing bridgeheads across the Bzura river near Lowicz and drove the German 30th Infantry Division back. Thanks to Hitler`s order to swtich the advance east of Warsaw, Army Group North was unable to intervene fast enough to cover the flank of Army Group South. But Rundstedt rose to the crisis. While Stukas attacked the Bzura bridgeheads, the motorised and Panzer divisions of the 10th Army wheeled north and caught the Polish forces in flank. There was visious fighting around Lowicz and Sochaczew before the Poles pulled back, but at last, completely cut off and hemmed in about Kutno, General Bortnowski was forced to surrender his 170,000 men on September 19.

While 8th Army closed the inner pincers of the German forces by investing Warsaw and Modlin, the plan imposed by Hitler aimed at a wider sweep to trap the remaining Polish fragments retreating East of the Vistula. This was achieved by a deep penetration by Guderian. His XIX Panzer Coprs had been transferred across East Prussia after its initial succes in the Corridor, and on September 9, it forced the Nerew upstream of Lomza. Six days later it had driven as far south as Brest Litovsk, and its 3rd Panzer, pressing south towards Wlodawa, made contact with the advanced units of the 10th and 14th Armies, which had advanced as far as Lvov. On September 17, Soviet Russia proclaimed that the fact is that the Polish State and its Goverment had cease to exist. Moscow decided to intervened to ensure of the territories (east of the line formed by the Narew, Vistula and San rivers) conceded to the Soviet Union by the secret protocol attached to the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. The intervention of the Red Army ended the last vain hope of the Polish High Command for prolonging resistance in a last ditch campaign in eastern Galicia. On September 18, Poland's formal resistance was over. However, Warsaw only surrendered on September 28, after 14 days of heroic resistance. The last shots of the campaign were fired in the Polwysep Hel penisula, north of Danzig, where Admiral Unruh surrendered with 4,500 men.

By the 17th day after France's proclaimation of general mobilisation, Poland's existence as an independant state had been destroyed for the next five and a half years. There had been no precedent for such a catastrophe since Napoleon's destruction of Prussia at Jena in 1806. It was the result of not so much of Poland's military weakness at the crucial moment as of mat�riel, numerical and strategic superiority of the German Army and of the Luftwaffe, helped by the fatal mistakes of the Polish High Command. On September 30, the Germans announced the capture of 694,000 prisoners, compared with German losses of 10,572 killed, 3,400 missing and presumed dead, and 30,322 wounded.