Mobilisation plans had called for two army group headquarters to be formed, one to operate in the West and the other the East. Case White now demanded that two army group headquarters be created for the projected attack on Poland, one to operate from Pomerania and East Prussia and the other from Silesia. The army group headquarters themselves were formed from two of the six Heeresgruppen which now existed, the other four, together with a number of the Wehrkreis HQs, creating Army HQs. The Army Group responsible for defence of the West was based on Heeresgruppe 2, which had its headquarters at Frankfurt-am-Main and was commanded by Erwin von Witzleben. Since the concept was to remain strictly on the defensive in the West while Case White was being implemented, OKH appears to have considered that the commander needed to be well versed in defence. Recognised as the expert was Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, who had written a widely acclaimed book on the subject2 but had been retired in 1938 during the von Fritsch affair. Perhaps because he had a good relationship with Keitel,3 he was earmarked to be recalled to the colours. With regard to Poland, Fedor von Bock’s Heeresgruppe 1 in Berlin was nominated under the mobilisation plans to become the army group headquarters in the East and in Case White this became Army Group North. Creation of the second army group headquarters was more problematical. To earmark another Heeresgruppe for it would mean recasting the complete mobilisation plan and time was limited. OKH thus decided to create the headquarters afresh. To command it they appointed, doubtless with Hitler’s approval, von Rundstedt. For security reasons, however, the headquarters was not to be officially formed before war with Poland became inevitable, but much planning needed to be done in the meantime. Hence, at the beginning of May Arbeitstab von Rundstedt (Working Staff von Rundstedt) came into existence. Apart from von Rundstedt, there were just two members. The first was Erich von Manstein, who was nominated as von Rundstedt’s chief of staff. At the time, as we have seen, he was commanding 18th Infantry Division at Liegnitz, having been posted there from OKH in February 1938 because of his close involvement with Beck and von Fritsch. He had, however, served as chief of staff to von Leeb during the Munich crisis. Von Manstein was pleased to serve under von Rundstedt:
‘Every one of us knew him. As an exponent of grand tactics he was brilliant – a talented soldier who grasped the essentials of any problem in an instant. Indeed, he would concern himself with nothing else, being supremely indifferent to minor detail. He was a gentleman of the old school – a type, I fear, which is now dying out, but which once added a delightful variant to life.’4
In other words, he saw von Rundstedt as the ideal chief of staff’s commander, who would give broad directives and then allow his staff to organise the detail with minimum interference. The other member was Colonel Günther Blumentritt, who was appointed 1a (Chief of Operations) of the Working Party. He echoed von Manstein’s comments, noting that von Rundstedt liked ‘an operational map to be 1:1,000,000, but not on the scale of 1:300,000 and still less 1:100,000’.5 At the time, Blumentritt headed the training branch in OKH and both he and von Manstein had to work on Case White in addition to their normal duties. Von Rundstedt, on the other hand, worked from home at Kassel and was not formally recalled to the active list until the beginning of June. Their staff, when it was formed, was to come from VII Corps at Munich, which was, according to the mobilisation plan, to have become Twelth Army.
Army Group South had been given three armies. The Eighth was to be created from Johannes Blaskowitz’s Heeresgruppe 3 at Dresden, the Tenth from Walther von Reichenau’s Heeresgruppe 4 at Leipzig, and the Fourteenth from Siegmund List’s Heeresgruppe 5 at Vienna. The geographic distance that separated them cannot have made von Rundstedt’s task any easier. Nevertheless, his working group quickly buckled down to the task. The original OKH plan called for Army Group North to cut the Polish Corridor between Germany proper and East Prussia and to thrust towards Warsaw from East Prussia. Von Rundstedt was also to advance on Warsaw on a broad front, whilst providing a strong flank guard on his southern flank to ward off Polish counterattacks from Galicia and south-east Poland. His initial planning task was to obtain the comments of his prospective army commanders. These were duly received and von Rundstedt then forwarded them to OKH at the end of May.
The original OKH plan envisaged Tenth Army in the centre making the main thrust on Warsaw and for this reason it was the strongest, being allocated two Panzer, three light, two motorised and six infantry divisions. Eighth Army’s (four infantry divisions) initial primary task was to secure Tenth Army’s northern flank against the Polish forces in the Poznan area. To this end its initial objective was Lodz. Meanwhile Fourteenth Army (two Panzer, one Light, five infantry divisions) was to seize Cracow and guard Tenth Army from a southern counterattack. Von Rundstedt’s main concern was that Eighth Army was ill equipped to perform its flank guard function since it lacked cavalry. This was accepted and Hitler’s own bodyguard, the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, a motorised regiment, was allocated to Blaskowitz.
The final OKH operation order was issued on 15 June. The main task now to be tackled was the deployment of the necessary forces to the Polish border without alerting Poland, and, for that matter, Britain and France, to the degree that they would mobilise. This was to be done in three stages. First, under the cloak of manoeuvres, and here Blumentritt was ideally placed, a number of infantry divisions and supporting units would be moved close to the border, while the mechanised elements were concentrated in Central Germany. These manoeuvres also provided an excuse for calling up reservists on the grounds that these would constitute their annual training. A further cloak was an announced German intention to strengthen the Eastern borders. The second phase was to be built round the 25th anniversary celebrations in East Prussia of the victory at Tannenberg, which had thrown back the Russian invasion of East Prussia in 1914. This provided a convenient cover, especially for the deployment of Third Army. The deployment timetable was issued by OKW on 14 July and all preparations were to be completed by 20 August.
On 12 August Arbeitsstab von Rundstedt assembled at a training centre at Neuhammer in Silesia. Two days later von Rundstedt took the salute at a parade of 18th Infantry Division, which was on manoeuvres and was now saying farewell to its commander.6 On the 18th, the staff of HQ Army Group South gathered in Munich. The bulk, according to Blumentritt, were reserve officers and it took them a little time to get used to working in a higher formation field headquarters, another symptom of the German Army’s very rapid expansion.7 Next day, von Rundstedt received the first preparatory codeword from OKH. This told him that 19 August was to be the day for the first of the final deployment measures, which meant primarily the deployment of formation headquarters. In HQ Army Group South’s case this meant moving to Neisse, which it did on the 21st, taking up residence at the Monastery of the Holy Cross. Neisse, happened also to be Ditha’s birthplace.
Von Rundstedt and von Manstein left the setting up of the headquarters to Blumentritt, for they had been summoned to Obersalzberg, Hitler’s Alpine retreat, together with the other army group and army commanders and their chiefs of staff. They went by car, stopping overnight at von Manstein’s brother-in-law’s estate at Linz, and arrived at Obersalzberg next morning, the 22nd.8 Apparently, probably for security reasons, the generals were ordered to attend in civilian clothes,9 perhaps the last time some of them would wear them for some years. Von Rundstedt always preferred wearing uniform and never felt comfortable when otherwise dressed, calling plain clothes a ‘funny disguise’.10 The conference itself began at midday. Hitler began by reviewing the political situation. While he would have preferred to deal with the West first, this would merely invite the Poles to attack Germany. They must therefore tackle Poland. In any event, conditions were favourable for settling the Eastern question. The Fascist leaders – himself, Mussolini and Franco – had the toughness and nerve to face the decisions that needed to be made, while their democratic counterparts did not. Britain was too wrapped up in tension with Italy, Japan and in the Middle
East; France was a shadow of her former self. These were the only two nations which might be obligated to go to Poland’s aid and German-Polish relations could not go on as they were. Furthermore, and this came as a bombshell to his audience, the Soviet Union had expressed its willingness to sign a non-aggression pact with Germany. Poland was thus isolated, with her only allies too far away in the west to give her any direct help. All they could do was to establish a blockade, which would not work, since Germany had control of the Danube, or assault the West Wall, which would be difficult both militarily and psychologically. Hence ‘Poland has been manoeuvred into a position where our military victory is assured’. Hitler exhorted his military commanders to be hard and remorseless in achieving their aim of annihilating the Poles. He gave some particulars of how the campaign was to be conducted and stated that the attack on Poland would probably be launched on the following Saturday morning, 26 August.
What did the Generals make of all this? Von Manstein stated that they did not believe that war was inevitable. The non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and Poland’s resultant isolation made it unlikely that she would be prepared to fight. Furthermore, even with the concealment of Germany’s mobilisation on her Eastern borders, this gathering of miliary commanders at Berchtesgaden could not have gone unnoticed by the Poles, and the build up of forces itself could not be totally hidden from them. This must be ‘the climax of deliberate bluff’.11 Von Rundstedt himself stated to the International Military Tribunal (IMT) Commission at Nuremberg after the war that the news of the non-aggression pact much pleased ‘us soldiers of the von Seeckt school, I even almost want to say it made us happy. There was a tradition in the Reichswehr of good relations with Russia.’ He did not believe that Poland would dare resort to arms and ‘left Berghof with the feeling that it would be a flower war as in 1938 in the Sudetenland’.12 Yet, K J Müller in his book Das Heer und Hitler cites von Rundstedt saying to von Manstein: ‘That crackpot wants war.’ He also stated that both Erwin von Witzleben and von Sodenstern, who would succeed von Manstein as von Rundstedt’s chief of staff, both believed that war with the Western democracies was now inevitable. Von Reichenau, apparently, went even further, declaring: ‘The man [Hitler] is in the greatest error if he thinks the war will be over in six weeks; it will last six years.’13 If von Rundstedt and von Manstein really came away with the idea that Hitler was bluffing, then they must have realised that he was bluffing his generals as well. Halder’s notes on his speech certainly reveal no indication that Hitler was hoping that the Poles would see sense and accede to his demands; rather the opposite. Hitler’s tone seems to have been bellicose throughout and it is difficult to accept that anyone in the audience came away believing that he did not want war with Poland. Yet, his posture had been the same during the Sudetenland crisis. Even so, von Rundstedt and von Manstein in their postwar recollections possibly voiced what they hoped would happen as against what they thought Hitler wanted to occur.
At the end of the session, the generals left for their headquarters. Von Rundstedt and von Manstein travelled back separately, von Rundstedt direct to Neisse, while von Manstein stayed overnight with his family at Liegnitz, ‘a measure of my inner disbelief in the likelihood of an imminent outbreak of war’.14 This stay could, of course, be interpreted in an entirely different way, namely that von Manstein thought that there was a good chance that he might not have the opportunity to see them for some time. On the 24th, von Rundstedt received the order Befehlsübernahme (assume command), which meant that Army Group South was now formally brought into existence. He was also given confirmation of a matter that had been raised at Hitler’s conference, namely that the standing forces on the Slovakian border with Poland were to be strengthened immediately.15 On 25 August came the cryptic OHK order ‘Fall Weiss 1. Y-Tag 26.8. Uhrzeit 4.30’. This meant that the following day was confirmed for the attack on Poland and that H-hour was to be 0430 hours. This was received at 1525 hours and it seemed that war, whether it was wanted or not, was inevitable. The troops began to move that evening from their assembly areas to their jump-off positions. But, at 2030 hours there was a telephone call to Army Group from OKH ordering all forward movement to be halted and for the attacking divisions to return to their assembly areas.
The reason for this was twofold. Firstly, on the same day Britain had signed a formal alliance with Poland, thus indicating a resolve for which Hitler had not calculated. At the same time, Mussolini, on whom Hitler was relying to give active support, complained that he was not ready. The order created an urgent problem for von Rundstedt’s staff. The deployment was, for obvious reasons, being conducted under radio silence, hence all that could be done in many cases was to send out liaison officers. Most units received the halt order around midnight, although, in one case, a motorised infantry regiment was only halted when the officer carrying the message to it landed in a Feiseler Storch light aircraft in the dark in front of the head of its column. In one case, though, the order did not get through. A highly secret unit, ‘Construction Battalion 800’, had been formed by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, from ethnic Germans and other anti-Polish elements living outside the borders of the Third Reich. Their task was to cross the Polish border ahead of the Army, seize vital points and carry out other sabotage tasks. One group in Slovakia, and led by a Reserve Lieutenant, had as its mission the capture of the Jablunka Pass in order to prevent the railway tunnels running underneath it being blown up by the Poles. They successfuly achieved this and it was only when the commander spoke on the telephone at the nearby station to a staff officer from 7th Infantry Division, which was to relieve the group in the Pass, and who had been anxiously hanging on to the telephone at the nearest Slovak railway station, that he realised that he had been premature. He managed to get back across the border, after some firefights with the Poles. Some of his men were captured, though, and it was only after interrogation and submitting to a demand that a German general personally go the the border to negotiate their release that they were returned. It would have been expected that the Poles would increase their alert measures as a result, but there had been so many border incidents during recent months and, in any event, mobilisation was already taking place.16
Von Rundstedt’s and von Manstein’s reaction to the halt order was to believe that the Russo-German non-aggression pact and the concentration of German force on the border had persuaded the Poles to negotiate. Von Rundstedt told the IMT Commission that it merely reinforced his assumption that there would be no war. ‘Such halts had occurred before the occupation of the Sudetenland. Therefore, we thought: “Aha, there is a new peace effort going on”.’17 The next few days enabled the Germans to complete the mobilisation of second, third and fourth line units and to deploy the newly formed 10th Panzer Division to the Fourth Army. For those already deployed it was a period of limbo and not a few units spent it helping with the local harvest. The Anglo-French efforts to persuade Germany and Poland to negotiate and Mussolini’s offer to mediate need not be gone into here. Suffice it to say that, although OKH was abreast of the diplomatic flurry,18 von Manstein said that he and his commander were kept entirely in the dark. When at 1600 hours on the 31st they received another cryptic OKH signal stating that Case White was to be executed on the following day at 0445 hours they ‘were sceptical, particularly as no mention had been made of negotiations having failed.’ They waited until midnight for another cancellation and only then accepted that the die was now cast.19
As the German armies crossed the Polish borders next morning at dawn, the Luftwaffe attacked airfields and key points, knocking out aircraft on the ground and impeding the movement of Polish reserves. In Army Group North’s area there was thick mist, but von Rundstedt was luckier. The day was clear, which enabled him to obtain valuable information from air reconnaissance. Initial progress was good. By 0600 hours the advance was up to four miles and this had increased to 15 miles by early afternoon. It was only now that Polish resistance stiffened. The attacking troo
ps began to come across an increasing number of demolitions and there were local counter-attacks. Significantly, there were several reports of civilians shooting at German soldiers.20 It was the reaction of von Rundstedt’s troops to these franc-tireurs, usually summary execution, which helped to make him a major war criminal in post-war Polish eyes.
By the end of the second day of the war, Tenth Army had reached the River Warthe, but the Poles resisted fiercely around the towns of Czestochowa and, across the inter-army boundary to the south, Katowice and Nikotow. Von Rundstedt and von Manstein concluded that the Poles were intending to stand firm on the Warthe. Next day, however, Czestochowa fell and the left wing of Fourteenth Army managed to get through the resistance around Katowice and Nikotow. Furthermore, several bridgeheads were secured over the Warthe. The bag of Polish prisoners began to rise rapidly and it was clear that the moment for break-out in the north had arrived. It was also noticeable that the Polish forces in Galicia were beginning to withdraw in order to avoid being cut off.
On 4 September, Tenth Army broke out of its bridgeheads over the Warthe with Reinhardt’s 4th Panzer Division in the van. Next day von Reichenau’s forces crossed the River Pilica. His increasingly rapid advance, however, stretched Blaskowitz’s flank guard to his north. This began to cause von Rundstedt and von Manstein increasing concern, especially since the Poznan Army lay virtually unengaged to the north. In the extreme south, the bulk of the Polish forces were withdrawing towards Cracow, but OKH now ordered Fourteenth Army to destroy the Polish forces withdrawing east across the Vistula. To this end, List was to thrust across the River San to Lublin in order to get in behind them. Cracow fell to List on the 6th and he now began to advance along the line of the upper Vistula.
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