Smigly-Rydz, meanwhile, had stopped the main German attack in the south at Lvov and was busy gathering in reserves and retreating units. He drew up a strong defensive position, backed by good artillery and prepared to hold out until the French and British could intervene. He knew that over half the Polish army was already lost to him, though many isolated and surrounded units continued fighting in pockets in western and central Poland. The Polish government had already decided to order the Polish Navy to steam for Britain. Some ships fell victim to the German Kriegsmarine in the Baltic, but most ships reached safety.
On 17 September, the Russians invaded Poland from the east. They gave as an excuse their desire to protect the ethnically Russian and Ukrainian citizens of eastern Poland from the fighting. In fact, the move was part of the deal Stalin had agreed with Hitler to carve up Poland between them. The Russian invasion force consisted of 1.5 million men, 6,000 tanks, 1,600 aircraft and 9,000 guns. The Poles in both north and south fought back, but now facing an enemy on both fronts there was little they could achieve.
In the south Smigly-Rydz ordered his men to march into Romania and throw down their weapons. The few pilots still with aircraft were told to fly to the nearest neutral country. Most of these men were in France or Britain by the end of the year and were rapidly formed into new Polish units to fight the Germans. The pilots were drafted into Britain’s RAF and fought with distinction in the Battle of Britain. The majority of the 120,000 Polish soldiers who escaped preferred to join the French army, and were captured during the German invasion of that country in 1940. Only about 30,000 Poles who had gone to Britain remained as the Free Polish Army by the end of 1940.
The Poles in Warsaw were too isolated to escape to anywhere. They fought on until 28 September, then surrendered to the Germans. The last Polish troops to surrender were those in fortified areas of western Poland who fought on until 5 October.
The German armed forces had lost 16,000 killed and 32,000 wounded, nearly all of them in the army. The Poles had lost over 66,000 men killed, over 100,000 wounded and some 600,000 taken prisoner, with some 30,000 civilians being killed in air raids or cross fire.
The Germans divided Poland into three sections. The eastern provinces went to Russia while those parts which had been German before 1919 were returned to Germany. The rest was put under a German governor who ruled with autocratic powers. The SS went to work. Their first move in Warsaw was to arrest everyone who had a telephone at home, this being a rarity limited to the more prosperous families. They then systematically stripped Poland of its political, religious and business leaders who were put into concentration camps. German-speakers were made into German citizens and moved to that part of Poland which was, post invasion, now part of Germany. Non-German speakers in the newly created German part of Poland were expelled to the Polish areas. Jews were shot out of hand, thousands of civilians murdered and the rest brutalised. In the years of occupation that followed millions of Polish citizens, most of them Jews, were murdered.
Exactly how much the regular Wehrmacht knew of what was going on in the wake of their conquests is unclear. After the eventual German defeat, the soldiers had a strong motive for denying all knowledge of what went on. That the high command knew of the activities of the SS and other death squads is beyond doubt. They protested to Hitler on more than one occasion abut what was going on, but their protests got nowhere. Most generals probably guessed what was afoot, but found it convenient rather than accept the truth, to believe the SS lies that the Jews and others who disappeared were being taken to slave labour camps. For the ordinary soldiers, however, there was little reason to suspect what was happening. By the time the murder squads arrived, most soldiers were far away.
In the aftermath of victory, the German army went about the business of regrouping itself and installing garrisons in key strategic locations. The army commander Brauchitsch ordered the planning staff at OKH, led by Franz Halder, to undertake a thorough appraisal of how the army had performed, with the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine undertaking similar studies. The main lessons the OKH drew related to the use of panzers.
The Panzer I, it was decided, was not fit for front line service. Although the German army had hundreds of them, they were taken out of the front line and turned over for use as ammunition carts, armoured ambulances, training vehicles and the like. The Panzer II had also shown itself to be highly vulnerable to artillery. It was decided to replace them as soon as possible with Panzer III and Panzer IV, a process which was estimated would take a year or so.
The tactical deployment of the panzers was also studied. The majority of tank losses had taken place during street fighting in urban areas, when the enemy were able to get close to the tanks with mines, antitank guns and other weapons. It was decided that, whenever possible, the clearing of towns would be left to infantry and artillery. The fighting at Bzura had also shown the panzers to be vulnerable to anti-tank guns if the latter were well entrenched and the tanks in the open. This problem had been solved by the attacks of Stukas. It was decided to give forward tank commanders the authority to call up Luftwaffe attacks without the delay caused by routing such requests thorough divisional headquarters.
Hitler takes the salute at army march-past, Warsaw, 5 October 1939
The Luftwaffe learnt that bombers, and particularly Stukas, were highly vulnerable to enemy fighters. The Polish air force had been destroyed within a few days, after which the bombers had been able to operate almost at will. Priority would therefore be given to the destruction of enemy airbases and aircraft on the ground. Only then would the bombers be released for close support of the army.
The conflict between army demands for close Stuka support, and the Luftwaffe’s desire to use their bombers to destroy the enemy air force first would come to be a key dispute in the planning of the attack on France. It would be crucial when the time came to fight Britain.
This complex process of studying the military lessons had barely begun when Hitler called the commanders of the armed services to a conference at OKW in Berlin. He announced the invasion of France would begin on 12 November. Brauchitsch and Halder were aghast. The plans that OKH had for invading France were contingency plans some years old. With all the effort that had gone into preparing for the operations in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland there had been no time to update the arrangements for France with new information about roads, bridges and railways. Nor had there been any time to incorporate the lessons of the fighting in Poland into the plans. They begged Hitler for more time to prepare and to get their forces into position.
Hitler said he would think about it, but that the attack in the West must take place as soon as possible.
SCANDINAVIA 1940
In the event, Hitler decided on another move before invading France. Again, Hitler was displaying a grip on strategy that most of his generals lacked. It was to precipitate the first clash between the Wehrmacht and truly modern armed forces. The bold thrust was the German invasion of Denmark and Norway.
Hitler did not originally intend to invade these Scandinavian countries. When, in October 1939, Admiral Raeder had asked the Führer to ‘pressure’ the Norwegians into allowing German warships to use the repair facilities at Trondheim, Hitler had refused. In December he told his staff he wanted Norway to remain neutral. But in January the OKK, the high staff of the Kriegsmarine, began to think that the British Admiralty, under Winston Churchill, was planning to occupy key naval bases in Norway.
Churchill was, in fact, planning exactly this sort of move, but had been overruled by Prime Minister Chamberlain who did not want to see the war extending any further than it already had. On 27 January, Hitler gave in to the pestering from Raeder to the extent that he asked the OKW to draw up plans for an invasion of Norway, but stressed this was only to occur ‘if the Führer deems it necessary to the war aims of the Reich’.
The hands of both sides were forced by circumstances. A German freighter, the Altmark, was bringing the crews of British merchan
t ships sunk at sea back to Germany as prisoners. On 16 February it was sighted by British destroyers and sought the safety of Norwegian neutral waters. The British ships gave chase, capturing the German ship inside Norwegian waters. The Norwegian government protested, but Churchill ignored the message.
To Hitler this incident showed that the British would violate Norwegian neutrality, at least on a limited scale, if they felt the need was strong enough. Hitler’s main cause for worry was the iron ore which came from northern Sweden. Huge supplies of this ore were supplied to Germany and were absolutely vital to the German war effort. During the summer they were shipped down the Baltic, but in winter, when the Baltic froze, they were taken by rail to the Norwegian coast and then shipped along the coast by sea. Egged on by Raeder, Hitler believed the British would breach Norwegian neutrality to cut this essential supply.
On 20 February, Hitler summoned General von Falkenhorst. The 58 year old general had been given an infantry corps to command in the invasion of Poland where he had performed well, but not spectacularly. With the growth of Blitzkrieg and panzer warfare, the old-style infantry soldier had been expecting a staff posting or even to be put on the reserve list. So he was surprised when Hitler told him he was in charge of invading Norway and Denmark. The reason, Hitler said, was that Falkenhorst was the only German general who had lived for some years in Scandinavia. Falkenhorst was even more taken aback when told to come back that evening with outline plans.
Falkenhorst dashed to the nearest bookshop where he bought a Baedecker Guide to Scandinavia. Then he found an empty table at a nearby cafe and sat down to prepare his plans. He was back by 6pm with a draft outline, which Hitler approved. The invasion was codenamed Operation Weser and scheduled for 9 April.
Although old-fashioned in the terms of the Wehrmacht in 1940, Falkenhorst was ideal for this task. Not only did he know Scandinavia, but the operation was to be an old fashioned army landing not a panzerstuka blitzkrieg. Working frantically with the OKH and OKK, Falkenhorst had detailed plans ready by 1 April. They were put before Hitler, who made rather fewer changes than was normal before approving them. This may have been because the plans were largely dominated by use of the Kriegsmarine and Hitler had never been very familiar with naval matters.
On 8 April British ships, acting under orders from Churchill, began laying mines off the Norwegian coast along the route taken by the German iron ore ships. Although the German invasion fleet was already at sea, the move was used by Hitler as a pretext for invasion.
At dawn on 9 April German warships and transports sailed into Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, Kristiansand, Oslo and Copenhagen while army units swarmed over the Danish border. In most places the Norwegian defences were not fully manned, mobilisation had been ordered only the day before. Only at Oslo was there serious resistance. The German cruiser Blücher was sunk by guns and torpedoes from the Oscarborg Fortress and the landing force was halted. Within a few hours, however, the Luftwaffe had pounded the fortress to rubble and the invasion went ahead.
The main British war fleet was actually at sea, off Bergen, when the German invasion began. The commander, Admiral Forbes, wanted to attack the German transports in Bergen and Trondheim, but was ordered to wait until he had located and attacked the German battle-cruisers and pocket battleship which were known to be at sea. In the event he failed to find the main German war fleet before it got back to harbour. In some minor skirmishes, the British did sink the cruisers Karlsruhe and Konigsberg and damaged the pocket battleship Lützow. A spirited action between rival destroyers on 10 April ended with the sinking of two German and three British destroyers. Finally, on 8 June the British aircraft carrier Glorious and two destroyers were surprised and sunk by the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
The Germans could afford such losses less than the British, who had far more ships in reserve, but the few days of naval fighting gave the Royal Navy cause to look on their German adversaries with respect. Hitler, meanwhile, was satisfied that his strategic aims had been secured. He congratulated Falkenhorst and appointed him military governor of Norway with orders to govern with a light hand, leaving administration to the Norwegian civilian government whenever possible.
Then Hitler turned to his next and much larger project: the invasion of France.
CHAPTER EIGHT
France 1940
With the conquest of Poland complete, Hitler could turn to deal with the unwanted war in the West. The declarations of war by Britain and France had provoked the Führer to one of his rages and, for once, he was in complete agreement with his generals about the dangers of a war on two fronts. The speed of victory in Poland and the slow rate of French mobilisation had saved Hitler from such a prospect. The war in the East was over before that in the West got under way.
Hitler now hoped that the fait accompli in Poland would lead to peace with Britain and France, for the Reich was not yet ready for this war. OKH, Army High Command, was wary of attacking France, convinced that even if victory were gained it would only be at enormous cost in bloodshed and material. The Navy was even more dubious of gaining victory in the autumn of 1939. There were only 39 U-boats fit for sea and many of the larger warships, including Bismarck, were incomplete. Navy chief Grand Admiral Erich Raeder believed the Kriegsmarine would not be ready for war until 1943, and would not be able to face the Royal Navy with any confidence until 1946.
Hitler, as usual, was more optimistic than his military professionals though this optimism was based more on political than military considerations. He held the French in utter contempt after they had failed to intervene when Germany had reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936. He believed that the Wehrmacht needed only to achieve one swift victory for the entire French army to collapse. The invasion of France was given the code name Operation Yellow.
The British, he considered, were quite different. Hitler did not expect them to collapse like the French, but he did believe them to be a pragmatic people. His experience of the British government to date had been that it mouthed fine principles, but was willing to accept realities. If France could be crushed, thought Hitler, Britain would accept the generous and honourable peace he would then offer.
Even so, it would be better for Hitler’s long term aim of attacking Russia if war with Britain could be avoided. With this in mind Hitler sent his unofficial envoy Birger Dahlerus to Britain. ‘The British can have peace if they want it,’ Hitler briefed Dahlerus on 26th September, ‘but they will have to hurry.’ On October 5th Hitler followed this clandestine approach with a very public one. At a speech in Berlin, Hitler portrayed himself as a reasonable man seeking only to reach a just and lasting settlement in Europe to replace the unfair and flawed arrangements of Versailles. He went on to offer to meet Britain and France at the conference table ‘before millions of men are uselessly killed and billions of riches destroyed’.
Three days later Hitler issued War Directive No.6 which outlined a plan for invading France and again set the date for implementation as 12 November 1939. The OKH was aghast by the imminent date and even Göring was taken aback. Hitler argued that peace in the East was only temporary and that Stalin remained unpredictable and dangerous. Moreover the French and British were rearming with modern weapons at an alarming speed. Time was on the side of the enemy, said Hitler, so even if the Wehrmacht was not perfectly prepared it was better to strike now than to wait.
Although the timing of the attack caused consternation among the generals, the strategy laid out in War Directive No.6 was welcomed as being sensible and pragmatic.
‘An offensive will be planned on the northern flank of the Western Front, through Luxembourg, Belgium and Holland,’ the Directive read. ‘The purpose of this offensive will be to defeat as much as possible of the French Army and of her allies, and at the same time to win as much territory as possible in Holland, Belgium and northern France to serve as a base for the successful prosecution of the air and sea war against England.’ This was sensible strategic thinking which made no
undue demands on the abilites of the German war machine.
By 5 November Walther von Brauchitsch, Commander in Chief of the army at OKH, was convinced the army could not possibly be ready for a major offensive in time. At that afternoon’s regular meeting with the Führer, Brauchitsch outlined the army’s concerns. The autumn rains in Flanders would bog down the tanks, he said, the mechanical problems with the Mark IV Panzer which had caused difficulty in Poland had not yet been solved, there was not enough ammunition stockpiled to take on France, some of the newly raised units had not fought as well as expected. All this meant, he told Hitler, that more time was needed to prepare for the attack.
Hitler was furious and let rip one of his terrible outbursts of temper. He accused the army in general and Brauchitsch in particular of cowardice, incompetence and much more. It was an early example of the way Hitler was increasingly to treat opposition to his plans from the military professionals. In Hitler’s eyes the generals were there to ensure the army was ready to carry out his plans and ideas. If they failed they were subjected to storms of rage and fury to cow them into submission. As yet, Hitler was not totally inflexible, but this interview was a disturbing sign of what was to come. When Brauchitsch returned to his offices he was grey-faced and his hands trembled.
Two days later heavy rains broke over the Western Front. Göring reported the Luftwaffe could not fly, robbing the panzers of close bomber support. Hitler postponed the attack on France. The bad flying weather had settled in, however, and the attack was repeatedly postponed until mid-December when Hitler granted the armed forces extensive Christmas leave and set a new date for his offensive: 17 January 1940.
The delay gave Hitler time to study the invasion plan drawn up by the General Staff at OKH in more detail – and he became increasingly unhappy as time passed. Operation Yellow was based on a draft plan drawn up by the OKH under Franz Halder in 1938, though it had been updated since to take account of the lessons learned in Poland. It was, effectively, an updated version of the Schlieffen Plan of 1914.
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