The Invasion of Poland, 1939, Nazi Blitzkrieg Tactics Introduced, Air Support and Armor Maneuver Warfare Doctrines Entrenched

The Nazi onslaught against Poland ignited the flames of World War II, unleashing the terrifying force of blitzkrieg and shattering the entrenched defensive tactics of World War I. This world war marked the dawn of a brutal, fast-paced era in which speed and shock would reign supreme on the battlefield, leaving the trench warfare of the past in the dust.

Poland. 1st September - 5th October, 1939.
Nazi Forces: 1,250,000 Soldiers.
Polish Forces: 800,000 Soldiers.

Additional Reading and Research:

• Evans, Richard. The Third Reich at War
• Liddel-Hart, Basil. History of the second World War.
• Zaloga, Steve. The Polish Campaign.
• Mason, Herbert. the Rise of the Luftwaffe, 1918 - 1940.
• Obersalzberg Speech (Hitler's quote at the beginning of the episode).

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Transcript

Thanks for listening to this episode of History's Greatest Battles. If you've enjoyed this podcast, any previous episodes or this one? Please both share it with a friend and subscribe.  According to Richard J. Evans in his book, the third Reich at war. He states that in August of 1939, just prior to the invasion of Poland that Hitler spoke with his generals about the coming of war. "Our strength lies and our speed and our brutality. Genghis Khan hunted millions of women and children to their deaths consciously and with a joyous heart. History seasoned him only the great founder of a state. I have issued a command and I will have everyone who utters even a single word of criticism shot. That the aim of the war lies, not in reaching particular lines, but in the physical annihilation of the enemy.  Thus so far only in the east. I have put my death's head formations at the ready with the command to send every man, woman and child of Polish descent and language to their deaths, pitilessly and remorselessly. Poland will be depopulated and settled with Germans." And now we experience the invasion of Poland...

Welcome to History's Greatest battles; Season 01, Episode 37: The Battle of Poland, from the 1st of September to the 5th of october, 1939.

German Forces: 1.25 million soldiers.

Polish Forces: 800,000 soldiers. 

The Nazi onslaught against Poland ignited the flames of World War II, unleashing the terrifying force of blitzkrieg and shattering the entrenched defensive tactics of World War I. This world war marked the dawn of a brutal, fast-paced era in which speed and shock would reign supreme on the battlefield, leaving the trench warfare of the past in the dust.

In the spring of 1933, Adolf Hitler, newly appointed Chancellor of Germany, launched a direct assault on the Treaty of Versailles—the very accord that had drawn a bitter line under the Great War, and burdened Germany with crippling reparations.

When Hitler defied the mandate to pay reparations for the First World War, and the Western powers faltered, unable to enforce their demands, the treaty was rendered a hollow document, discarded in the trash heap of history.

Spitting on the Versailles Treaty, Hitler set to work rebuilding Germany’s military might, driven by a fervent mission to restore the nation’s former grandeur through the acquisition of territories inhabited by German-speaking peoples and the pursuit of lebensraum—the "living space" he deemed essential for the Reich’s expansion.

Unstoppable in his resolve, Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, annexed Austria by March of 1938, and tore the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia’s grip that September. By March 1939, the remainder of Czechoslovakia fell under his iron fist.

Britain and France, paralyzed by indecision and fear, watched from the sidelines, unwilling to uphold their solemn pledges to defend Czechoslovakia, as Hitler marched forward unchecked.

To British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French President Edouard Daladier, Hitler had sworn that once he had united the German-speaking peoples of Czechoslovakia under his "Greater Reich," his ambitions for European conquest were at an end.

Save for reclaiming the city of Memel from Lithuania, securing for Germany a foothold on the Baltic, Hitler’s aggression appeared to momentarily pause.

Yet there remained German-speaking enclaves in Poland, severed from the Reich, and few doubted that Hitler’s gaze would soon fall upon them, eager to complete his vision.

In April 1939, Britain and France renewed their vows to defend Poland, though both knew that true protection required the might of the Soviet Union—a bitter prospect for Poland, whose enmity with Russia stretched back generations.

Desperate, Chamberlain turned to Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, seeking a public pledge that the Soviet Union would stand with Poland and uphold its sovereignty.

But Stalin was no mere pawn in this game—he demanded an alliance of mutual defense with both Britain and France. In London, officials hesitated, fearing such a pact might provoke Hitler, leaving Stalin to believe that the West saw him as little more than an afterthought.

When the West pressed Stalin for a guarantee of Romanian sovereignty, it reeked of Western encroachment into Eastern Europe, at the Soviet Union's expense, further straining relations.

Frustrated by the indecision in London and Paris, Stalin turned to Berlin in secret, setting in motion a shadowy alliance that would stun the world.

In the early 1920s, Germany and the Soviet Union, both pariahs in Europe, had briefly found common ground through clandestine military cooperation. But with Hitler’s rise in 1933, that alliance shattered, for Der Führer’s hatred of Communism burned fiercely.

Yet with Hitler’s fury aimed squarely at Western Europe, Stalin calculated that the Führer might be willing to grant him dominion over Eastern Europe, so long as it served his grand design.

Haunted by the specter of Germany’s ruinous two-front war in World War I, Hitler saw the advantage of an agreement with the USSR, a pact that could shield him from a repeat of that fatal error.

Hitler dispatched his Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, to negotiate with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, and through the hot summer of 1939, their discussions laid the groundwork for a fateful deal.

While the secret talks unfolded, Hitler prepared his ultimatum to Poland. His ambitions centered on Danzig (Gdansk), a strategic port awarded to Poland by the Versailles Treaty, but which he coveted as Germany’s vital outlet to the Baltic.

By August, Hitler’s demands were clear—he called for the return of Danzig’s German-speaking inhabitants and the strip of land, the Polish Corridor, that split Germany from East Prussia, a division he was determined to erase.

And with his characteristic deceit, Hitler assured anyone willing to listen that, once these demands were met, he sought nothing more in Europe.

Britain and France, sensing the impending storm, reaffirmed their guarantees to Poland, though their continued pleas to Stalin fell short of the iron pact he craved.

Stalin turned his back on Britain and France, sealing his alliance with Hitler in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact, signed on 23 August—a pact that stunned the world and redrew the map of Eastern Europe.

The world reeled in shock, but none were more astonished than the Poles, who could scarcely fathom that Stalin would stand by as a Nazi army loomed at the very gates of the Soviet Union.

German Commander-in-Chief Walther von Brauchitsch masterminded the assault on Poland, commanding two massive army groups for the strike. In the north, the Fourth Army stood poised in Pomerania, with orders to storm eastward, seize Danzig, and unite with the Third Army advancing from East Prussia. The objective: ensnare one-third of the Polish forces in a deadly pincer movement within the vulnerable Danzig Corridor.

To the south, German troops were massed in Silesia and Slovakia, prepared for an overwhelming assault. The Fourteenth Army surged eastward along Poland’s southern border, tasked with taking Cracow and crossing the San River at Przemysl. Meanwhile, the Tenth Army, stationed on the Fourteenth’s left flank, advanced with brutal precision, smashing through the Polish lines, obliterating everything in its path.

To the left of the Tenth, the Eighth Army unleashed its power, barreling straight into the heart of Poland with one unrelenting goal: Warsaw, the capital straddling the Vistula River, the nerve center of the Polish nation.

The German war machine was largely composed of conventional infantry divisions, yet the Eighth Army possessed a fearsome cutting edge—Germany’s newest mechanized and armored divisions, designed to crush and penetrate with ruthless speed. Though these modern units constituted merely 10 percent of the German forces, their ability to strike deep was unmatched. The rest of the army still plodded forward on foot, supplied by horse-drawn transport, but the mechanized vanguard was destined to change the face of war.

The Polish army, vast in number but utterly unmechanized, had rejected defensive tactics in favor of a bold, counterattack-heavy strategy. But one-third of their forces were crammed into the narrow confines of the Danzig Corridor, a bottleneck that left them with scant room to maneuver as the German war machine closed in.

Another third of Poland’s forces lay in reserve, awaiting the order to counterattack, while the last third stood hopelessly spread across the vast, exposed plains of the German-Polish frontier—stretched too thin to withstand the storm that was about to strike.

Devoid of tanks, anti-tank weaponry, or trucks for swift mobility, the Polish defense plan was fatally flawed. By positioning the bulk of their forces at the German border, they clung to vital coalfields but stood on terrain devoid of natural defenses—leaving them perilously exposed.

Had the Poles retreated eastward behind the natural barriers of the Warta and Vistula Rivers, they might have fortified a stronger defense—but doing so would have meant surrendering vast swaths of western Poland without a single shot fired.

On the night of August 31st, as the hours bled into September 1st, Hitler orchestrated a staged provocation along the border—his manufactured pretext for unleashing the full fury of his invasion.

The Polish army was woefully unprepared for the onslaught of blitzkrieg—the “lightning war” that Germany unleashed, a storm of steel and fire that tore through their defenses before they could even react.

Armored columns and mechanized battalions ripped through the gaps between Polish formations, while close air support from the Luftwaffe pounded every stronghold, turning defenses into rubble.

Simultaneously, the Luftwaffe hunted down the Polish air force, catching much of it helpless on the ground. Within three days, Polish air power had been utterly annihilated, vanishing as if it had never existed.

With the skies now theirs, Luftwaffe bombers rained destruction on Poland’s cities, military installations, and troop concentrations, leaving devastation in their wake wherever they struck.

German land forces advanced with such relentless speed that Polish divisions found themselves surrounded and severed—not only from each other but from all communication with their headquarters.

The threadbare Polish defenses crumbled under the ferocity of the assault, offering scant resistance. By September 8th, the vanguard of the German army stood at the very gates of Warsaw.

The Eighth Army, slicing through the heart of Poland, swung north to block the retreating Polish forces at the Vistula River, where they pounded them relentlessly, cutting off any hope of escape.

Elsewhere, Polish forces were surrounded and obliterated as the five German armies surged forward, their momentum increasing as Polish resistance disintegrated.

By September 17th, the Fourteenth Army, advancing from the south, had hooked north to join forces with the Third Army at Brest-Litovsk, a hundred miles east of Warsaw, sealing Poland’s fate from both ends.

Nearly all that remained of Poland’s shattered army was drawn back to defend Warsaw, now besieged under relentless aerial bombardment. But as if the situation could sink no lower, it did.

On September 17th, Soviet forces surged across Poland’s eastern borders. The world had been unaware of the secret clause in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact—one that would see Poland carved in two between the Nazis and the Soviets.

The Soviet advance encountered almost no resistance, swiftly occupying southeastern Poland—the last bastion to which the Poles had hoped to retreat if Warsaw fell. That hope now lay shattered.

Isolated pockets of Polish resistance fought on, clinging to life until their food, water, and ammunition ran dry, but Poland’s fate had been sealed from the moment the first German tank crossed its border.

Beset by an outbreak of typhoid and a starvation-level food supply, Warsaw capitulated on September 27th. The naval base at Hel held out until October 1st, and the last remnants of Polish forces—17,000 men at Kock—laid down their arms on October 5th.

The Polish army was annihilated—66,000 dead, 200,000 wounded, and nearly 700,000 taken as prisoners. With them, Poland itself was erased from the map as an independent nation, condemned to 50 years of darkness under foreign rule.

The Nazi-Soviet occupation that strangled Poland in 1939 gave way to full Nazi control by 1941, only for Soviet domination to descend upon the nation once again in 1945, marking the beginning of a new tyranny.

The Poland that emerged in 1919, full of hope and promise, was brutally extinguished before it even reached its 21st year. Not until the defiant labor movement known as Solidarity rose in the 1980s did Poland begin to claw its way out from behind the Iron Curtain.

Poland’s cries for help fell on deaf ears in Britain and France—nations that had pledged to defend her, but did nothing. Though they declared war on Germany, not a single British or French soldier set foot on Polish soil. No tanks rolled, no planes took flight, no artillery roared in Poland’s defense.

Any chance of aid arriving was slim from the start, with the only route passing through the Skagerrak strait between Denmark and Sweden. Even this was a deadly gauntlet that German aircraft would have obliterated long before reinforcements reached Poland’s shores.

A strike against Germany’s western frontier—something that might have forced the Nazis to reconsider—never came. France’s mobilization dragged on too slowly, and by the time their reserves were called up, Poland’s fate had already been sealed.

Germany’s brutal invasion of Poland unveiled a new era of warfare for the world to witness—a grim preview of the bloodshed and devastation that lay ahead.

In a mere five weeks, the trench warfare that much of Europe had expected was rendered obsolete. Offensive warfare was ascendant once more, and the age of armor and mechanized infantry had arrived in full force, as the savage tools of blitzkrieg took center stage.

In Poland, the Germans perfected the art of close air support, a deadly innovation they had tested during their involvement in the Spanish Civil War alongside General Francisco Franco from 1936 to 1939.

While air support for ground troops had been seen in World War I, the dive bomber took this tactic to unprecedented heights, transforming the battlefield into a killing ground from above.

In the opening days of the Polish campaign, the Germans demonstrated that air superiority was the key to modern warfare, heralding the true dawn of air power as an indispensable arm of any military force.

Astute observers had seen the writing on the wall during the Spanish Civil War, but the corridors of power in the 1930s were filled with the blind and the hesitant, incapable of grasping what was to come.

For much of Europe, the brutal lesson of Poland’s fall would not be learned until the spring and summer of 1940. Many dismissed Poland’s swift defeat as a failure of its readiness, not a signal of the terrifying strength that Germany had unleashed.

It was only when Nazi forces crushed Scandinavia and France beneath their heel that Europe could no longer ignore the overwhelming power of Germany’s armies and the deadly precision of its air forces.

Since that fateful invasion, the doctrine of maneuver warfare, driven by the unstoppable force of armored divisions, has dominated military strategy in the developed world.

In the Korean War’s first year, the battle lines surged back and forth as armies clashed in furious motion. Though the conflict eventually bogged down in trench warfare, the critical need for air superiority emerged once again, shaping the battlefield from above.

The Arab-Israeli wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973 showcased tanks and aircraft as the dominant instruments of war, their power deciding the fate of battles and borders alike.

In 1991, the Desert Storm campaign unleashed the full might of modern mobile warfare, smashing through Iraq’s static defenses and proving that speed and mobility could break even the most fortified lines.

Though the theory behind such warfare had its roots in Great Britain between the World Wars, it was only in Germany—through the vision of men like Heinz Guderian—that this lethal doctrine of blitzkrieg took shape, as they persuaded their commanders to unleash its devastating potential.