The Polish response to the uprising was swift. With Wehrmacht forces still some 20 kilometres distant, a counter-attack was organised, utilising the army and reservists, and coordinated from the town’s police headquarters, where some forty pages of addresses at which shooting had been reported were compiled. Armed with those addresses, small groups of police, gendarmes and boy scouts set out across the city to search the suspect properties and engage the insurgents. In many cases, the city’s German inhabitants were simply rounded up, and those found with weapons were usually shot out of hand. In one case, a German who had fired into the flat of a local priest was apprehended by Polish soldiers, dragged out of his apartment and executed.50
Those Volksdeutsche who could not explain their presence in the city – many had arrived from neighbouring towns and villages – were arrested and taken to the barracks of the 61st Regiment on Pomorska Street for interrogation, often hurried along with kicks and blows from rifle butts. By early evening, the German revolt had been quelled. The death toll is disputed. Contemporary eye-witnesses speak of some 150 Germans dead, with a dozen or so more executed the following day after a court martial.51 Later scholarship has raised the total figure – including some sixteen Polish soldiers killed in the insurgency – to as high as 400.52
Bydgoszcz had witnessed a brief, bloody skirmish, in which the German element of its population – in anticipation of the imminent arrival of the Wehrmacht – had risen against their former neighbours and had been ruthlessly crushed. Ordinarily, perhaps, that would have been the end of the episode; but these were not ordinary times. The needs of Germany’s propaganda machine and its racist ideology had to be fed – and the events in Bydgoszcz would have to be avenged.
Just as at Bydgoszcz to the north, the province of Upper Silesia in the south-west also saw diversionary activity from an ethnic German ‘fifth column’. That province, which had been subjected to an uneasy partition in 1921 between Germans and Poles, contained unhappy minorities on both sides of the frontier. With the outbreak of war, some of the ethnic Germans on the Polish side of the line saw the opportunity to avenge themselves on their Polish neighbours, and engage Polish forces to aid the German invasion. The result, in some cases, was running battles and bitter inter-ethnic violence.
Jan Karski, an officer in the Kraków Cavalry Brigade, described how his unit’s orderly withdrawal from Oświęcim was attacked by insurgents: ‘As we marched through the streets … towards the railroad, to our complete astonishment and dismay, the inhabitants began firing at us from the windows. They were Polish citizens of German descent … who were, in this fashion, announcing their new allegiance.’53 Such violence often peaked after regular Polish forces had been withdrawn. In Katowice, the retreat prompted clashes between Polish and German irregulars that ‘resembled a civil war’, with neighbours, friends, even family members facing off against one another.54 In one instance, a skirmish close to the Deutsche Bank building supposedly saw a 150-strong Polish ‘self-defence force’ defeat a large group of German militants.55 The British journalist Clare Hollingworth witnessed the aftermath, as captured Nazi sympathisers were brought to the main square:
Thirty or forty young men, the oldest not above twenty, were marched by under double guard. All wore swastika armbands. Hearing the guns and alarm, they had assumed that the German forces were through [and] had catapulted onto the streets yelling ‘Heil Hitler!’ Instead of a popular rising, they had found [Polish] troops to surround and disarm them.
A short while later, Hollingworth heard the volley of gunfire as the group were executed.56
Of course, once Polish forces had left Katowice, the Germans were not slow to avenge themselves. One of their reprisal actions, on 4 September, was recorded by a young eye-witness, Rafał Kieslowski, a boy scout who had participated in the defence of the city, before changing out of his uniform and attempting to pose as a non-combatant. Caught in a German round-up, Kieslowski was taken to a walled courtyard where he was held with a large group of soldiers and civilians, including women and children, and subjected to a rudimentary interrogation. Soon after, he and a group of around forty others were separated out and marched – under the insults and blows of their guards – to another courtyard. Arriving there, the gate was bolted behind them and an execution squad opened fire on the group. Kieslowski was lucky to survive, feigning death among the bodies of his fellows. He listened as the German executioners delivered the coup de grâce to the wounded, before a second group of prisoners was brought in and despatched in the same manner. Wriggling free of the corpses some time later, he estimated that there were some 100 civilian dead, including old men, women and children, as well as around forty Polish soldiers. He was the only survivor.57
On that same day, some of Katowice’s defenders were still bravely holding out. In the south of the city, in Kościuszko Park, a 50-metre-high steel tower was being used as a look-out post by a small group of boy scouts, who – though abandoned by the Polish withdrawal – had vowed to continue the fight, armed only with a machine gun. That morning, it is said, they fired on arriving units of the German 239th Infantry Division, and were duly shelled by artillery and killed. Their story – embellished in the post-war novel The Parachute Tower by Kazimierz Gołba – would become one of Poland’s most enduring heroic myths of 1939.58
After the fall of Katowice, Kraków was threatened. The ancient Polish capital, the former seat of Polish kings and the cultural heart of the nation, Kraków faced the prospect of war on its doorstep with profound unease. Air raids over the previous few days had damaged the airfield at Rakowice as well as the train station and St Florian’s Church, just beyond the last remaining city gate. ‘The explosions were so terrifying’, one eye-witness recalled, ‘that after a few hours the long howl of sirens sent people instantly to their cellars.’ Already on 3 September, Kraków’s iconic hejnał – the interrupted trumpet melody, played every hour from the tower of St Mary’s Cathedral – was suspended. There were even rumours that the Germans would enter the city the very next day.59
Despite the imminent danger, at the local military headquarters, Clare Hollingworth heard a strangely optimistic assessment from a Polish officer. ‘You will understand, Mademoiselle,’ he explained, ‘that we must yield ground in order to straighten our line. Our real defence must lie along the rivers San and Vistula.’ Hollingworth asked if they were willing to sacrifice the entire Kraków region. ‘We are prepared for that,’ the officer replied, ‘it’s for the ultimate victory. Poland will lose territory during the war, but she will gain more, much more, afterwards.’ At once Hollingworth saw the fundamental flaw in Polish strategy: ‘They do not realise that they would never be able to fall back fast enough, never unify their front on the Vistula or anywhere else.’ She concluded, more presciently perhaps than many of the military men around her, that ‘the war was moving too fast for the Poles’.60 That afternoon, Kraków’s mayor was evacuated eastward, alongside government officials and the military command. Hollingworth, too, soon followed – with a gnawing sense of guilt that neither Britain nor France would be able to prevent what was to come.
With the departure of its civil and military authorities, Kraków was left defenceless, but the deputy mayor, Dr Stanisław Klimecki, stepped into the breach, telling the residents: ‘The most important commandment at the present time is to maintain courage and remain calm. Cold blood, self-control, and physical and spiritual endurance are indispensable to maintaining security and order among civilians. Work and life should go on as before.’61 On the afternoon of 5 September, the remaining city fathers declared Kraków an open city, in the hope that that might save it from destruction. The following morning, Klimecki set off to the suburbs by car to oversee the placing of huge white sheets on the city’s two prominent tumuli: the 16-metre-high Krakus Mound and the 34-metre-high Kościuszko Mound. They were to symbolise Kraków’s surrender.
However, when he approached the Piłsudski Bridge over the Vistula, he was halted by a pistol s
hot. Waving a white handkerchief at his assailants, he was approached by a German soldier who asked his business. ‘I’m the city mayor,’ Klimecki replied. He assured the soldier that there were no military units left in the city and that Kraków would not be defended. The soldier then instructed him to return to the city hall and await a German delegation at 9.00 a.m. Soon after, a green flare was shot into the sky to tell the invaders that their attack had been cancelled.62
Later that morning, German troops entered the city. ‘Enemy units make their way through the streets,’ one resident wrote, ‘mighty tanks, motorised units, huge guns pulled by splendid horses and proud, ramrod-stiff German soldiers – victors! Karmelicka Street now reverberates with a dull, terrifying thud, while groups of people silently watch these “invincible” Germans in mute horror. Our hearts are heavy, we feel so small, so meaningless, so despondent.’63
*
As Kraków fell on 6 September, the Polish defence of the Westerplatte, far to the north, was also nearing its end. The fortified customs post outside Danzig had witnessed the opening shots of the war and in the days that followed it had become synonymous with Poland’s brave resistance – so much so that, every day, Polish radio had proudly declared that ‘Westerplatte broni się nadal!’ (‘Westerplatte still fights on!’)
That fight, however, was a very unequal one. The 200-strong Westerplatte garrison had fought off three German assaults, and endured the Schleswig-Holstein’s spectacular but sporadic shelling, yet it was the Stuka dive-bombers that made life for the defenders most difficult. On 2 September, an evening attack by two Stuka squadrons had delivered over 250 high-explosive bombs on the defenders, destroying barracks, guardhouses and ammunition stores. A direct hit on one building – Guardhouse No. 5 – killed at least seven soldiers. Observing the action from the safety of the Schleswig-Holstein, marine bandmaster Willi Aurich believed he was witnessing the final act of the battle. ‘The heavens darken with rising smoke,’ he wrote. ‘On board, everyone is full of confidence that this must be the end for the Westerplatte.’64
Such was the havoc caused among the defenders, indeed, that the garrison commander, Major Henryk Sucharski, ordered the codes and classified documents destroyed, in anticipation of an imminent ground assault. What happened next is the subject of some controversy. According to some accounts, Sucharski ordered that a white flag be raised above the command post, prompting a heated argument with his deputy, Captain Franciszek Dąbrowski, during which Sucharski collapsed, either with exhaustion or in a fit of epilepsy.65 Others suggest that the two men briefly fought with each other.66 Whatever the circumstances, the result was that Dąbrowski effectively took command and – after having Sucharski sedated and isolated from the rest of the garrison – countermanded the order to surrender.67
In the days that followed, as the Germans girded themselves for a renewed land assault along the spit, the Westerplatte’s defenders, though buoyed by news of the Anglo-French declaration of war, were aware of Poland’s difficult situation, and constantly discussed whether they should surrender, with Sucharski in favour and Dąbrowski against. Meanwhile the Germans continued their attacks. A renewed artillery assault on the morning of 5 September was followed the next day by a less conventional approach – the detonation of train tanker wagons, filled with fuel, close to the depot’s perimeter, to try to destroy Polish defences. Yet the Poles held firm. Though only a dozen or so of the defenders had been killed, there were many wounded languishing in the stale air of the mess cellar, and the garrison’s only doctor, lacking adequate medical supplies, struggled to provide even the most basic care. In one instance, he was forced to use his own nail scissors to clamp a stomach wound, leaving them inside the patient.68 The destruction wreaked on the ground, meanwhile, was considerable. ‘Enemy artillery fire literally ploughed the land,’ one Polish officer recalled, uprooting trees and smashing the concrete outposts to rubble.69 It was little wonder that many of the defenders – like Major Sucharski – showed symptoms of nervous collapse.
When the tanker assault failed, the Germans planned a new attack for the morning of 7 September. It mirrored exactly that of the opening day of the war, with the guns of the Schleswig-Holstein softening up Polish positions with a pre-dawn artillery assault, followed by an infantry attack. This time, however, the Germans were rather better apprised of what they were up against and, crucially, Polish morale was failing. After their ground assault made good progress, destroying a number of guardhouses and outposts, German troops withdrew once again to regroup, leaving another tanker of fuel to detonate as they left.70 For the Polish garrison, the lull gave them time to consider their position once more. They knew that they could expect no relief, and there was every reason to assume that the next ground assault would end with desperate hand-to-hand fighting in the heart of the depot complex. In such circumstances, the decision was made to surrender. Around 9.30 a.m., a white flag was raised from a shattered window on the first floor of the barrack block. Sucharski thanked his men for their service and honoured the fallen with a prayer. The garrison then sang ‘Śpij, kolego’ (‘Sleep, my friend’), the traditional hymn for military funerals, and were ordered to stand down.71
With that, Sucharski led his men towards the German line, officers in the vanguard and wounded to the rear. At first, they were treated brusquely by the SA and SS men present, who searched them and stripped them of their possessions. But their treatment improved when, at around 11 a.m., Sucharski met with Captain Kleikamp of the Schleswig-Holstein and offered the surrender of the Westerplatte. While Sucharski waited for the operation’s commander, Major-General Friedrich Eberhardt, to formally accept the surrender, both sides had pause for thought. Sucharski was photographed by a German propaganda unit, in his full dress uniform, his Virtuti Militari medal hanging at his breast, a scowl of resignation on his face. Contrary to his own instincts, he and his men had held out against German air and ground attacks for seven days, and in the process had become synonymous with Poland’s brave defiance. Indeed, within weeks, the Westerplatte story would be entwined with its own mythology, as in the famous poem by Konstanty Gałczyński that describes the men of the garrison ascending to the ‘heavenly fields’ of immortality:
When their days came to an end
and it was time to die in the summer,
They marched in fours straight to heaven
the soldiers of Westerplatte.72
For the Germans, meanwhile, there was consternation. Not only had they expected many more defenders to emerge from the ruins of the Westerplatte complex, they also searched the site in vain for the bunkers and fortifications that they imagined were there. After a brief interrogation, Eberhardt granted Sucharski the honour of keeping his officer’s sabre on his person, as a mark of his respect. With that, the officers and men of the garrison were marched into captivity, past the jeers and curses of a civilian mob whipped into a righteous fury by German propaganda.73
*
Though the loss of Kraków and the fall of the Westerplatte dealt a heavy blow to Poland’s prestige, it was not there that the decisive campaigns were being fought. In Poland’s south-west, close to the frontier with Silesia, the German 10th Army was aiming unerringly towards Warsaw, with the instruction – from Hitler himself – to ‘look neither left nor right, but only forwards towards its goal’.74
Despite the mauling that it had received at Mokra on the opening day of the war, the 10th Army had expected the first organised Polish resistance to focus on the river Warta, the most serious natural obstacle to its advance on the capital. In some places, the Polish defence was indeed determined. One Wehrmacht lieutenant recalled that over the first two days of combat on the south-west frontier,
the fighting had been hard, at times damned hard. In some locations, the enemy did not want to give way. Constantly, our progress was impeded by forests, swamps and rivers, which gave the enemy the opportunity to defend himself with skill, guile and deviousness. Constantly, our infantry was forced to the gr
ound by intense fire.75
When encountering such obdurate defence, however, German forces had what one diarist called a ‘special recipe’ to deal with their opponents: ‘we simply stay so hot on the heels of the enemy, that they cannot entrench themselves and give us any resistance’.76 Lieutenant Heinz-Günther Guderian, son of the illustrious father, would have concurred. In September 1939, he was commanding a tank in the 35th Panzer Regiment, part of the 10th Army, and in his account of the campaign, he described the doctrine in simple terms: ‘The enemy must be allowed no rest, we must go on fighting, pushing on with all possible speed.’77 It was the essence of Blitzkrieg.
Contrary to later German propaganda, Blitzkrieg was a tactic that, at this time, was being only imperfectly applied. Of course, the swift advance had the beneficial effect of disrupting the formation of a coherent Polish defence, but it could also leave attacking units isolated. Guderian fils recalled how he and his unit found themselves some 10 kilometres ahead of the remainder of the regiment. Feeling ‘uncomfortable’, they were obliged to adopt a defensive posture ‘with hulls touching’ until they were relieved the following morning.78 Another officer recalled that, while racing for the Warta bridges, he was alarmed to discover that he was dangerously exposed, with neighbouring units still bogged down in combat some 25 kilometres to his rear.79 Driving eastward towards Lublin, Clare Hollingworth stopped to ask for directions, and wondered aloud if the Germans had already passed by. ‘No Germans, only the machines,’ a Polish peasant replied. ‘You mean the tanks?’ asked Hollingworth. The man replied in the affirmative, quickly adding: ‘But we’ve seen no Germans.’80 Despite such shortcomings, the tactic was nonetheless successful. As one Polish staff officer ruefully admitted, Polish planning had been ‘based on a speedy retreat, but German divisions – Panzer, light, motorised and infantry – proved to be faster’.81
First to Fight Page 14