Roger Moorhouse On The 1939 Battle For Poland

Roger Moorhouse On The 1939 Battle For Poland | History Extra Podcast - History Extra

"Britain and France declare war on Germany, on the third of September. Britain and France have not been attacked themselves, they are going to war effectively, in defense of Polish sovereignty of Polish integrity of Polish national independence, all of that stuff. And crucial, I think, for the idea of small states standing up against tyranny. And that I think, is something that we should remember. So that's a fundamentally quite an honorable thing to do.

What's much less honorable, of course, is what follows, which is essentially not very much. There are a lot of warm words from the British and the French statesmen, and journalists and so on, in defense of Poland and saying wow what a brave fight Poland is putting up against tyranny and all that sort of thing. But actually, there's very, very little in the way of material aid that's given to Poland.

The French invade, invade, in inverted commas, one should add, have an excursion, we might say, into the Saarland, from I think about the eighth of September, which lasts about five days. They get something like eight kilometers into Western Germany, which is barely beyond the limits of the Siegfried Line defenses, they again, I mean, half hearted doesn't begin to describe it, they, you know, entire divisions are stopped by a couple of machine gun shots, the Germans basically sort of back off, because their tactic is obviously to avoid a confrontation, because they don't want to necessarily provoke any sort of more robust action. So they essentially back off, and the French just do not have the political will to actually prosecute the Saar campaign with any sort of vigor at all.

And the same thing for the British in the air. I mean, the British could have undertaken the bombing of German cities already, at this point. It would have been morally questionable, because that was something we associate with later in the war. After, you know, some other rather odious precedents have been set. But you know, they're bombing German military targets, particularly naval targets, in the first days of the war. They also dropped leaflets over German cities, so they can, they've got the ability to get the planes into the air above places like Cologne, and Hamburg and so on...

[The Polish] put troops very close to the borders, to effectively to serve as a tripwire. So that if the Germans did invade, the argument could never be raised by the British and the French that well you didn't fight. Why did you cede all of that territory without fighting. And on the back of that London and Paris might have said, well, if you're not going to fight for yourself, then we're not going to fight for you either. So they essentially put their troops up against the border to act as a tripwire to make sure that any German incursion would be met with force, and that that would then trigger this Anglo-French action in the West. So they have actually thought this out.

It's not like these sort of, you know, antediluvian peasants on horseback, which I think is of-, you know, again, it's going back to German propaganda image of the war time to portray all the Poles as being on horseback and sort of attacking German tanks with their sabers, which is nonsense. It's actually, comparative, on a world scale, the Polish army is actually a very well equipped and a numerous and well supplied body of men. And they have a good plan in 1939. Problem is their allies desert them, and they're facing the most advanced technologically numerically and in terms of military doctrine, military force on the planet in the Germans. That's the fundamental problem...

The Poles did have tanks. The cover of the British edition of First to Fight has some lovely Polish tanks on it, just to make the point that the Poles did have tanks. And not all of German soldiers were riding on vehicles and and riding in tanks. The Germans actually go into Poland with more cavalry than the Poles had cavalry in 1939. So this, this sort of image of Germans in tanks versus Poles on horseback is fundamentally mendacious. It's really not true. I mean, that said, it does happen in a couple of occasions that, you know, the Polish cavalry attack German infantry, and are then sort of counter attacked by armor with predictable results.

But the Polish cavalry doesn't fight generally in 1939 with cavalry charges. I mean, that was something that, again, is a complete misconception. They fought dismounted, they had artillery in tow they had, they used their horses effectively for mobility purposes. They had anti tank rifles and so on. They were actually remarkably to a large extent effective against the Germans.

So this blitzkrieg myth is something I think that the Germans created during the war as part of their own mythology and their own propaganda. Would be foolish, as I say, to deny it entirely, because they are technologically, materially superior to the Poles. But just to explain Poland's defeat, as solely the effect of blitzkrieg is to miss all the other factors that are involved, which are, as I said, geography for one thing.

Little things like you know, the fact that that summer was very dry in 1939, Poland's waterways… part of the Polish plan was that they would be able to withdraw in but in after this initial engagement triggers the Western Alliance, they'd be able to withdraw… and to hold those two great waterways as to hold off the Germans... So even the weather is conspiring against Poland, in 1939.

And there are other shortcomings. I mean, the Poles themselves, they have this culture of secrecy in the military, when even neighboring units at the front are not allowed to communicate directly with one another. So all communication has to go via the High Command. And you can see how how that would work out in a combat situation...

The blitzkrieg is still itself actually, in the process of developing. It's not yet been sort of fully rolled out, fully adopted. It's still, you know, some units are doing it very well. *Something*, who is the great grandfather of blitzkrieg was very effective at doing it, sort of pushing his forces along at every turn. But other units are being much more cautious and much more sedate. So it's certainly not yet been rolled out. And it's I don't think we can describe it as the zenith of blitzkrieg tactics, you probably have to apply that particular name to, I would say, probably the Babarossa campaign against the Soviet Union. By that time, the Germans kind of know what they're doing there. They practice this blitzkrieg from, a couple of times, they've got it down pat. And they're doing it in the most effective manner possible in 41. It's not yet fully in operation in 39...

The world view of the Soviet Union in 1939, going into Poland, and of the ordinary Red Army soldier. The Red Army has, when it comes in invading eastern Poland on the 17th of September, the narrative that it gives itself was that the Red Army is going in to save native Belorussian and Ukrainian minorities in Poland who live in those Eastern areas, from this sort of impending collapse of the Polish state. So there is a sort of concern for you know, those Belorussian, Ukrainian populations, and they are welcomed in many cases by those same populations.

By definition, there is a sort of a sort of, racist is the wrong word, but there's a prejudice against Poles. If you are Polish, and you're in those areas, then almost by definition, you're a landowner, you're an aristocrat, you're a merchant, you're all those things, actually, that that the Soviet Union doesn't like, anyway, you're probably on a list. Right? You're an oppressor of the Ukrainian or Belorussian peasantry who are present. So there is this prejudice already against Poles.

But what's more interesting, I think, is that, and it's kind of rather neater sort of description, just as I said that now the Germans are carrying out race war in the West, is pretty clear that what the Red Army is doing and what its rear echelon troops certainly are doing is importing class war into eastern Poland. And what they do, for example, with with captured Polish units is is very interesting, because very often the Poles realize that they're going, the officers are going to be separated out. And the chances are, then they're going to be taken away for enhanced interrogation in inverted commas, if not execution.

So everyone you know, they take off all of their signs of rank and medals and the rest of it, so that they just look like ordinary soldiers. And then of course, the Red Army gets wise to this. And it starts checking soldiers’ hands, so it checks the hands of its prisoners. And those whose hands are too white… you've either been working in an office or you're a bourgeois or you're an officer of some sort, you know, you're not a horny handed son of toil who's been called up for the Polish Army. So you're obviously not a peasant, basically. And those were the people, they separate them out on the basis of having soft white hands. And those were taken off for further interrogation. And very, you know, very often those form the core of the Polish officer class that were taken off and, and executed in the Katyn massacres of the following year...

Poland is destroyed by the by the Germans and the Soviets in 39. It is subjected to a German-Soviet occupation, so it’s split down the middle, effectively. Germans take the western half, the Soviets take the eastern half and effectively life in the two halves is not dissimilar. They're, both populations are, you know, sifted and sorted and deported to various places that we don't know how many Poles are deported to Siberia by the Soviets in 1940, could be as many as a million. And the same thing the Germans in the west - either deporting people out of the areas that they directly annex, or they’re deporting them into Germany as forced labor.

So now that's all before the German attack on the Soviet Union in 41, at which point, Poland is completely occupied by the Germans, that's when the Holocaust properly gets going really in 41. Gets going it takes place on Polish soil, that's where half of the Holocaust victims already are, because they're Polish Jews… at the end of all, their reward at the end of all that is to end up in the communist sphere and have communism imposed upon them, which is only only removed in 1989, as we know, so it's an absolutely hideous narrative. And you can understand why some Poles say that, you know, World War Two for them finished in 89. Because in a very real sense, it did."