Tomorrow, Tuesday, September 1, 2009, marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War II.
Appropriately enough, foreign dignitaries are gathering in Gdansk, Poland to commemorate the beginning of hostilities between Poland and Nazi Germany. Most history books record that the shooting started at dawn when the obsolete German battleship Schleswig-Holstein turned its guns on the small Polish military garrison located on the Westerplatte peninsula. That garrison’s brief, but heroic, seven-day resistance in the face of overwhelming odds has, rightly, become a point of Polish national pride.
Some in Poland, however, believe World War II began not with the shelling of a legitimate military target, but rather, with the purposeless bombing of a civilian one. According to residents of Wielun:
On the road into this community of 24,000, a “Welcome to Wielun” sign looms large. Three numbers stick out: “4:40″.
That was the time the Luftwaffe bombs rained down, five minutes before the battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire at a Polish garrison in Danzig (modern-day Gdansk), triggering six years of warfare around the world.
“We want people to remember that the barbarity started here,” Mieczyslaw Majcher, Wielun’s 53-year-old mayor, told AFP.
“But we have the impression people ask: ‘What’s Wielun?’”
Eugeniusz Kolodziejczyk, 82, knows only too well.
“I remember standing right by this tree. That’s when I saw the planes coming in,” he said, gesturing skywards to a flight-path branded into his memory.
He was at the station seeing off his father, who had been called up by the army as war clouds gathered.
“I can still see it clearly. I shouted to him: ‘I can hear a loud noise! I can see planes!’ Then the bombs started falling,” said Kolodziejczyk, one of 42 remaining eyewitnesses.
“They fell on the hospital, the synagogue, the church, the houses. I remember the rubble. The whole place was on fire, stinging our throats. It was like fog, you couldn’t see more than five or ten metres (yards).
“I’ll never forget it until the end of my days. We didn’t stand a chance.”
Further raids hit around 7:00 am, 10:00 am and 2:00 pm.
Three-quarters of Wielun was destroyed. Around 1,200 of its 15,000 inhabitants were killed and many more were injured. Half of the dead were Jews, who made up around a third of the population and mostly lived in the centre.
Regardless of where the shooting commenced, Poland arguably suffered the worst fate of any European nation during the war. Conquered and then divided by Nazi Germany and the USSR, her towns and cities lay in ruins, and over 6,000,000 of her citizens (including at least 3,000,000 Jews) where killed before the shooting in Europe stopped on May 8, 1945. Poland was also the site of some of the Nazi’s worst atrocities, including the death camps of Auschwitz, and Sobibor.
Sadly, liberation from the Nazi’s did not bring liberty for Poland. Sacrificed at Yalta, Poland exchanged one brutal totalitarian despotism- National Socialist occupation, for another- the long night of communist oppression. In many ways, dawn did not break in Wielun or Gdansk until 1989 and the end of communist rule.
Tomorrow, pause and remember the barbarity that began seventy years ago on this day.
Superlative research.
Thanks! Tomorrow, September 2, marks the 64th anniversary of the surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo harbor in 1945 that, formally, brought hostilities to a close. 2191 days passed between the first bombs falling in Wielun and the first salvos off Westerplatte, and the signing of the formal surrender documents by the Japanese.
Historians do not agree on how many people died over that period as a result of the war, both in combat, in the death and work camps, and in the resulting famines and refugee movements, but 70 million is a reasonable estimate. Using that number, 31,948, the majority civilians, died each day of the war. Each and every one of them was someone’s child, and many were spouses, parents… siblings. The enormity of the horror and the loss resonates to this day.
Poland has a unique place in both the history of World War II and in the Cold War. She was the first nation to fight back in the face of Nazi military aggression, and she played a key role in the unraveling of the communist empire- both through Solidarity, and in the moral witness of a certain Polish Pope.
We must never forget that the two totalitarian systems that wrecked such devastation upon the world in the 20th Century, National Socialism and Communism, were both premised on lies about the nature of the human person. Totalitarian systems always are.
It is for this reason that I shall commence a new Polska campaign in the grand WW2 strategy game “Hearts of Iron 3″ (just released).
I’m going to fiercely attempt to keep Poland from falling into Nazi or USSR hands, but I know I can’t depend on the Western European allies to save me unless I can blunt the initial german advance.
My strategy will be to modernize the Polish military equipment and officer Corps as much as possible, while at the same time constructing a series of fortifications that will serve as a redoubt around Warsaw.
I realize I can’t man the whole of the perimeter against German armor…but if I can concentrate my forces in a tight ring around the vital capital, perhaps I can hold out long enough or draw enough German divisions into the fray that France/UK may have an opportunity to launch a counter-offensive of their own.
As for the USSR problem….I’ll have to cross that bridge once the Germans are dealt with. No doubt Stalin will be eyeing my eastern provinces he’s “acquired” through the Molotov-Ribbentrop deal.
Nonetheless – Polska shall exacta hefty toll on the invaders.
Poland’s military was placed in an insoluble strategic dilemma by the German invasion. Historically, given the Russo-Polish war that was part of the broader Russian Civil War, Poland had looked to the USSR as its main military threat in the inter-war period and its defenses were focused eastward. Against Germany, she lacked any strategic depth as her main industries and population centers were located in close proximity to the German frontier. For this reason, organizing the main defense behind the Vistula was not seen as a viable alternative- the army would quickly run out of supplies and could not maintain a prolonged defense there. Also, they were concerned that the Germans would merely occupy key border areas- like Poznan and the Corridor, and then stop. It’s only in hindsight that we know the German’s planned on eradicating Poland’s existence as an independent state. Thus, Poland’s military leaders believed it was necessary to strongly contest the frontier, least the Germans simply grab territory and then present the world with a fate accompli.
Poland had also sought to acquire more modern armaments-however, with Britain and France both rearming, there was little spare equipment for sale. The western powers, in particular France and Holland, also had great difficulty building enough modern aircraft due to, among other factors, chronic shortages of aircraft engines, and British production was consumed by the modernization of the RAF.
Poland’s fundamental problem in the inter-war period was that all her borders were disputed, save only her frontiers with Romania and Latvia (and Hungary after it occupied the Czech province of Ruthenia- also known as Carpatho-Ukraine- after Munich). The inter-war Polish state had contested frontiers with both Czechoslovakia and Lithuania in addition to the more well-known problems in the east with the USSR and in the west with the Germans. A wise government would have sought to shorten the enemies list, but after Pilsudski’s passing, the “Colonels regime” failed to do so.
hmmm when did Japan invade China?