Historical story

The Horrifying Beginning of World War II

75 years ago, on September 1, 1939, the German Wehrmacht . fell Poland in. It was the start of the Second World War. Shortly before that, Hitler and Stalin had agreed to conquer and destroy Poland together. In September 1939, Poland would be crushed and beheaded. The episode was a gruesome start to five long European war years.

In the early morning of September 1, 1939, thousands of German soldiers were hiding at a forest edge near the German-Polish border. Tank drivers kept their hands on the contact, waiting for the order to start the engines and roll into Poland. "The dark forest, the full moon and a light ground fog presented a fantastic scene," one Panzer commander wrote in his logbook. Operation Fall Weiss, the German plan to quickly conquer neighboring Poland, was about to begin. England and later France had promised to come to the aid of Poland in the event of a German invasion. As soon as the first soldiers crossed the border, the Second World War would be a fact.

'Finally' war

Chancellor Adolf Hitler was brimming with self-confidence at that moment. On March 8 of the same year, shortly before German troops were to occupy Prague and the rest of Czechoslovakia, Hitler had first told his generals that he wanted to "crush" Poland. Germany would then be able to take advantage of Polish raw materials and have the whole of central Europe at its feet. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain hesitated for a long time to agree with Moscow to defend Poland together. The anti-communist Chamberlain seemed more fearful of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union than of further German expansion. Once the communists were in Eastern Europe, they would never leave there, he reasoned.

Chamberlain had plenty of reasons to distrust Stalin. While Stalin was Hitler's nemesis, he also had his own semi-hidden agenda to push the borders of the Soviet Union further west. He had in mind, among others, Finland, the Baltic States and the eastern regions of Poland. It was not until the end of May 1939 that the British and the French realized that Hitler would soon overrun Poland. It was one of the few certainties the Allies still had at that time.

The demands that Stalin made of the Allied delegation, free passage of the Red Army through Poland and Romania, were impossible to comply with. In addition, both the British and French negotiators harbored a deep aversion to communists in general and to Stalin in particular. The French, eager to reach an agreement, made another attempt to convince the Poles to allow Soviet troops into their territory. It turned out to be in vain. Polish Commander-in-Chief Rydz-Smigly, perhaps already realizing that his country was hopelessly lost, said:"With the Germans we lose our freedom, but with the Russians we lose our souls."

In that moment of weakness in the British and French, Hitler seized his chance and took a previously unthinkable step:allying himself with his ideological nemesis:the Communists. “From the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, there is not a single problem that we cannot solve together,” Nazi minister Joachim von Ribbentrop said when he met his Russian counterpart Vyacheslav Molotov. Both Stalin and Hitler were willing to put aside their ideological disgust at each other for a while and sign a non-aggression pact. In it, they also secretly agreed to conquer Poland together and divide it among themselves. With this Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in his pocket, Hitler could 'finally' start waging his great war with confidence. First against Poland and then against France and Great Britain. For now, without having to fear a second front with the Soviet Union.

'Not a real country'

For the soldiers waiting to be ordered to spring into action and enter Poland, save for a few World War I veterans, Operation Fall Weiss would be their first combat experience. It would immediately turn violent. Within weeks, the German Blitzkrieg would almost literally wipe Poland and much of its population off the map. The Poles had little chance from the start against the German Wehrmacht. Still hoping for a diplomatic breakthrough, the Allies had urged Warsaw not to fully mobilize their army. As a result, only a third of the Polish army was combat ready by September 1.

The German terror began in the air. The German Luftwaffe conducted a military experiment over the central Polish city of Wieluń:They wanted to know what psychic effect a modern air force could achieve by massive bombardment of civilian targets. The German High Command was pleased to see the death, confusion and fear of the population and decided to do the same with Warsaw. On September 10, the skies over Warsaw were black with aircraft. “Our boys,” the residents thought hopefully. But the bombers turned out to be German, and seventeen bombings were carried out that day alone. Thousands of terrified civilians did not survive that day.

The German soldiers had been told that "Poland was not a real country, and its army not a real army." That gave a license to treat prisoners of war brutally, without regard for the Geneva Conventions. "These are not people. Close your heart to pity," Hitler instructed the German officers. In the village of Śladów, for example, prisoners of war were used as human shields to repel a Polish cavalry attack. After the attackers were killed – they refused to shoot at their compatriots – they forced the prisoners to bury the bodies. Then all the POWs were put against a wall and shot one by one. Their bodies were thrown into a river. Polish field hospitals with a red cross flag were deliberately fired upon or run over by tanks.

Poland beheaded

The promise of the Allies to come to Poland's aid soon proved worthless. Although British and French declared war, there was no military action in the west. The Poles were on their own in September. Despite the brutality with which the German war machine rolled over the country, they held their ground. The entire Polish army was deployed against the Germans in the west, north and south in mid-September.

They had ignored the Red Army, which had been congregating on Poland's eastern border for weeks. Nor was anyone aware of the secret clause in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which the partition of Poland was agreed. When half a million Soviet soldiers crossed the border on September 17, many Poles hoped they would come to chase the Germans away.

That soon turned out to be a thin hope. The Polish state had been destroyed, the Russians argued. And the large Belarusian and Ukrainian minority needed protection. Both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army were approaching cities like Lviv, and the only choice was to whom the Poles would surrender. An impossible choice, as both armies would rage with their captives like beasts.

On September 28, Warsaw fell to the Wehrmacht and Poland was defeated and literally destroyed. Tens of thousands of Polish men were immediately deported to the Gulag labor camps. On the German side they were simply shot or taken to concentration camps. Everything to "behead" Polish society and make it impossible for Poland to ever function as an independent state again. The Nazis and Communists drew a line of demarcation and divided the spoils as agreed. The Nazis could indulge in the Jews in their area, the Communists on 'class enemies'. Historian Timothy Snyder describes all the atrocities in detail in his 2011 book 'Bloedlanden'.

The crimes of the Germans and the Soviets in Eastern Europe remained unknown in Western Europe for a long time. It was officially war, but there was no fighting on the western front. In the Netherlands, the army mobilized, but for the time being the government relied on Hitler's promises not to violate Dutch neutrality. This strange state of "twilight war" continued until April 1940, when Hitler invaded Norway. But in the east, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Operation Fall Weiss set the horrific tone for the five long war years to come.