Blitzkrieg 01 Poland and via 1939-1940

8/2/2019 Blitzkrieg 01 Poland and via 1939-1940

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/blitzkrieg-01-poland-and-via-1939-1940 1/98





against a defended chateau in France in 1940.The German victories in the first four years of

World War II were the result of concentratingtanks onto narrow fronts where they could punchthrough the crust of enemy defences and roamdeep into the rear.



POLANDAND SCANDINAVIA1939 - 1940

WILL FOWLER



First published 2002

ISBN 0 7110 2943 1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic or mechanical, including photo

copying, recording or by any information storage

and retrieval system, without permission from the

Publisher in writing.

© Will Fowler 2002

Published by Ian Allan Publishing

an imprint of Ian Allan Publishing Ltd, Hersham,

Surrey KT12 4RG.

Printed by Ian Allan Printing Ltd, Hersham,

Surrey KT1 2 4RG.

Code: 0210/A2

Designed by Casebourne Rose DesignAssociates Ltd

Illustrations by Mike Rose

Maps by Monty Black

Picture Credits

All photographs are from Bugle Archives.

Page 70 I W M .

COVER PICTURE:The commander of a PzKpfw IVin the distinctive black Panzer uniform.

CONTEXTS

BLITZKRIEG6-7

THE OPENING MOVES8-35

T he origins of the tactics of Blitzkriegand its European advocates. The rise

of Hitler and the Nazis and the rearmamentof Germany after 1933. The German

expansion into Austria and Czechoslovakialeading up to war. Enigma and new

weapons and organisations.



FALL WEISS36-51

T he German attack on Poland and use of tanks and dive bombers. The Polish air

force destroyed and army trapped inpockets. Guderian comes under "friendlyfire" as he advances. Junkers Ju 87 Stuka.Fighting in the Warsaw suburbs and heavy

air attacks.

W E E K T W O52-57

Poles attack in the Battle of Kutno. PolishPoznan Army smashes the 30th Infantry

Division. Tanks of the 4th Panzer Divisionmeet tough resistance in Warsaw.

September 11 cohesive Polish resistance

begins to collapse. Pressure on Warsawwith heavy air raids.

THE STAB IN THE BACK58-65

S oviet Union invades Poland. SurvivingPolish aircraft fly into Romania. The

Army of Poznan breaks out of the Bzurapocket to Warsaw. Hitler enters Danzig.

General Sikorski sets up a government inexile in Paris. Polish warships escape to

Great Britain.

FALL WESERUBUNG66-94

Russo Finnish war of 1939-40. TheGerman invasion of Denmark and

Norway. Norwegian resistance and Frenchand British landings. Battles of Narvik andland battle that nearly produces the first

defeat for German forces in World War II.The first use of paratroops.

I N D E X 95-96



BLITZKRIEG

Until the autumn of 1959 wars inEurope could last for years. Leaders

would attempt to find a tactical orstrategic advantage - by manoeuvring to findopen flanks, routes through swamps orforests or by making surprise river crossings.

In World War I the open flanks disappearedas trenches were dug that stretched fromSwitzerland to the North Sea. The advantagenow seemed to lie with the defender. Newtactics would be needed to break throughthese linear defences. Military theorists in

Europe and America looked at deep penetration tactics using the weapons that hadgrown out of World War I - tanks andbombers.

At the outset of operations the enemy wouldbe confused by a series of spoiling attacksalong the length of the front while fightersdominated the skies. They would be putunder pressure and have no clear idea of where the real threat lay.

Then at a few selected points the full

weight of fire from tanks, artillery andbombers would be concentrated on narrow

fronts. The intense weight of this bombardmentshattered the defences. Reconnaissance unitswould probe forward and then tanks pourthrough the hole and into the rear areas likean expanding torrent. The enemy's defencewould lose cohesion as communications linkswere severed, headquarters bombed, paratroops seized key points and tanks roamedunrestricted deep behind the front line.Suddenly a war between nations could be

fought and won in weeks.To describe these dramatic tactics in 1940

the journalist Eugene Hadamovsky coined anew word. He called German operations inPoland a Blitzmarsch nach Warschau(Lightning March to Warsaw) and from thiscame Blitzkrieg - Lightning War.

Dr Joseph Goebbels Reichsminister fur Volkserklarung und Propaganda (ReichMinister for Public Enlightenment and

Propaganda) and the Nazi propagandists





THE OPENING MOVESThe hour of trial has come. When all other means have been exhausted,

weapons must decide. We enter the fight knowing the justice of our cause and for a clear goal: the permanent security of the German people and German

living space from foreign trespass and presumptions to power...We believe in

the Fuhrer. Forward, with God for Germany!

Order of the Day Oberkommando des Heeres September 1, 1939

At 04.45 hours on Friday September 11939 the still of the autumn morningon the Baltic seashore was ripped

apart by the concussion of exploding shells.The air was thick with brick dust and thestench of cordite. The first salvos of WorldWar II had crashed into the Polish fort of

Westerplatte on a mile long strip of land atthe mouth of the Vistula on the DanzigCorridor.

They were fired by the 13,000 ton Germannaval cadet training ship RMS Schleswig-

Holstein that had opened fire at point blank range with her four 280mm (11in) guns. The



BLITZKRIEG

big 300kg (6701b) shells from the main armament crashed into the fort. The warship wasin position because she was on a "goodwillvisit" to the Polish base.

Within hours the world reeled under theshock of a new and frightening way of waras it watched the violent energy of the first

Blitzkrieg campaign of World War II begin tooverwhelm Poland.In Berlin in an early example of "media

spin" the Reich Press Chief Otto Dietrich toldGerman journalists, "The term 'war' is to beavoided at all costs in German press reports

LEFT:Reichswehr becomes Wehrmacht asfollowing the introduction of conscription inMarch 1935 German soldiers in training leap a

trench. Some are still wearing the old patternModel 1915 steel helmet.

ABOVE:Towing 15cm guns SdKfz 7 half-tracksroar past the saluting base at Nuremberg on aParty Congress. The big half-track went intoproduction in 1934 and by 1945 six companieshad combined to build nearly 8,000.

and headlines. You can describe the present

situation, for example, to the effect that weare merely responding to Polish attacks".The operation was code named Fall Weiss

- Case White - and involved five GermanArmies. The speed of their advance and theease with which they defeated the Polisharmies shocked the French and British whoassumed this new conflict would be anupdated re-run of the trench warfare of World War I but now with modern tanks and

aircraft.Tank designs had developed, since their



BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE:French General Charles de Gaulle one of

the inter-war European tank theorists whose ideas

were vindicated by the success of the German

Army in its Blitzkrieg attacks.

introduction in World War I, and new tacticsto exploit armour had been devised by Britishand French theoreticians like General PercyHobart, Colonel J. F. C. Fuller and Charles deGaulle in the 1920s and 50s. The Germanswith no tanks had watched these experiments with considerable interest.

In essence a tank has three great strengths- protection, firepower and mobility. Only onetank in World War II managed to combine allthree equally - the Soviet T-54. Most designscould only bring two together, some only oneand a few disasters none.

British tanks in the 1920s were poor onmobility but had adequate fire power andprotection. In 1927 on the Salisbury Plaintraining area the British Army put their tanks

together in the first all arms armoured force.It was composed of:

A mixed battalion of armoured cars andCarden-Loyd tankettes.

A battalion of Vickers Medium tanks.A truck mounted machine-gun battalion.A motorised artillery regiment, plus a

battery of howitzers.A motorised engineer company.RAF Sqdns including reconnais san ce,

fighter and bomber aircraft.

ABOVE:Highland soldiers man a Lewis gun

covering a footbridge in the early 1930s.

10



BLITZKRIEG

TOP: A British Carden-Loyd wheel and track

tankette drives down a country lane in Wiltshire.

ABOVE:Lorried infantry in their heavily

camouflaged vehicle during exercises on

Salisbury Plain in the 1930s.

LEFT:The shape of things to come - a Medium

Tank Mk II fitted with radios.

11



BLITZKRIEG

Four years later the first full-scale exercisecontrolled entirely by radio was conducted onSalisbury Plain. Under Brigadier CharlesBroad a force of 85 medium and 95 mixedlight tanks deployed on the training area.Communications were by radio, or if therewas a malfunction by flag signals.

These exercises were watched with considerable interest in Germany where the tinydefence force had no armour and wastraining using civilian cars like the 3/15-Ps-Dixi modified with cardboard "armour" tolook like tanks. Among the officers whoconducted these experiments was HeinzGuderian - a man who would have a majorimpact on armoured warfare.

Born in Kulm, now Chelmno in Poland, onJune 17, 1888 Guderian was the son of aPrussian general. He combined in his naturethe discipline and conformity of thePrussians, with an innovative mind that couldfind conservative officers maddening. Hiscritics said that he was determined to provethe effectiveness of the tank arm at any price.

Educated in cadet school and commissioned into the elite Light Infantry the 10th(Hanoverian) Jager Regiment in 1908, heattended the War Academy - Kriegsakademie- in 1913. He served as a staff officer in WorldWar I rising through divisional, corps andfinally army HQs on the Western Front.

After the war he served briefly in the volunteer armies in the Baltic states fighting toretain the territory wrested from the Russiansin the Treaty of Brest Litovsk. He was selectedfrom 32,000 wartime officers to be one of the4,000 who would serve in the Reichswehr.During the 1920s and 30s, as Germanyembarked on a programme of secret rearmament, he developed new armoured tacticsand formed the nucleus of a mechanisedforce. When Hitler came to power in 1933 herecognised the potential of armoured forcesand three (Panzer) divisions were formed.

ABOVE:Tough and professional, General Heinz

Guder ian the brilliant German Blitzkrieg theorist

and practitioner. He wears the

Panzerkampfabzeichen - the Tank Battle Bad ge -

next to his Iron Cross First Class.

Guderian was given command of the 2ndPanzer Division and was promoted to Major-General in 1936. In 1937 he published hisseminal book Achtung-Panzer! spelling outhis ideas about armoured warfare and in1938 was promoted to Lieutenant-General,making General by the end of the year.

He commanded the new XVI Corps duringthe critical days of the Anschluss with Austria



BLITZKRIEG

REICHSWEHR

G ermany's military forces from 191 9 -1935 were known as the Reichswehr.

Following the Treaty of Versailles Germanywas limited to an army of 100,000 men anda navy of 15,000 while an air force wasforbidden. The Reichswehr may have beensmall, but it was composed of experiencedand dedicated soldiers who were keen toexplore new ideas and tactics using tanksand aircraft. Disarmament of the old ImperialArmy after 1918 was actually an advantagesince the new force was not cluttered withweapons and equipment that was becomingobsolete, it could start with a clean slate.Even before the Nazis came to power theReichswehr had established secret links with

the Red Army and from 1924 tank crewswere training in the USSR near the KarmaRiver and from 1930 aircrews joined them.New secret armaments programmes werealso under way using production facilities inneutral countries like Sweden andSwitzerland as cover. When Hitler came topower in a speech to generals on February3, 1933 he promised to institute arearmament programme. In Mar ch 16, 193 5conscription was introduced and the forcewas renamed die Wehrmacht.

TOP LEFT: German infantry witha Maschinengewehr MG 13light machine gun.

ABOVE: New conscripts swearthe Eid - the oath ofallegiance - at a parade.

LEFT: The crew of a 750ccSchweres Kraftrad BMW R75ford a shallow stream duringan exercise.



B LITZKRIEG

TOP: The trauma of defeat - German PoWs are

collected in a temporary prison camp at the end

of World War I.

ABOVELEFT:A British screw picket on the dead soil

of the Western Front. The cost in lives and

exchequer of Wo rl d War I begg ared Germany .

ABOVERIGHT:Dense barbed wire obstacles that

stopped infantry, but could be crushed by tanks.

in 1938. Leading his tanks in a motoriseddash for Vienna he was horrified to learn thatat least a third had broken down. It was auseful lesson learned before fighting inPoland and later operations in more challenging theatres.

For the German public, and a disbelievingworld, the pretext for the attack on Polandhad been aggressive Polish border incursions. These were in reality faked incidentsthat included the notorious Gleiwitz Raid, the



fabricated attack on a radio station close tothe German Polish border by "Polish troops".The raid at 19.30 on August 31, 1939, wasundertaken by Schutzstaffel (SS) men dressedin mock up Polish uniforms and commandedby an SD officer, Alfred Helmut Naujocks.They beat up the radio station staff, made abrief broadcast urging Poland to attack Germany and fled leaving behind as evidencethe body of one of their group. This corpse

was in fact that of an inmate of a concentration camp selected as part of an operationcalled "Canned Goods" and shot on site by theraiders. There were other border provocations in August including an attack on thegamekeeper's house at Pitschen and thecustoms post at Hochinden.

For the Germans there was a feeling thatthey needed no justification for the attacks inthe east. At the Versailles Settlement of 1919,

that followed defeat in World War I, they losttheir Imperial colonial empire and the

BLITZKRIEG

LEFT: Hitler speaks - his violent rhetoric had

appealed to many Germans who resented the

Armistice provisions and French occupation and

suffered from a low sense of self esteem. Building

programmes and rearmament as well as full

employment made the Nazis popular.

borders within Europe were redrawn.Territory went to Denmark, Poland andBelgium, while the coalfields of AlsaceLorraine, won by Prussia from France in1871, were returned to France.

Article 251 of the Treaty of Versailles wasparticularly irksome to all Germans since itplaced the responsibility on them for all thelosses and damage of World War I. Nazis andnationalists called this the Kriegsschuldluge- War Guilt Lie. They pointed out that thetreaty had deprived Germany of all of itscolonies in Africa - Togo, Kameroon,Southwest Africa and German East Africapassed under British control - along with theislands of the South West Pacific known as theGerman Pacific Territories. Germany lost itsrubber and oil supplies, all its investmentsabroad, 15.5 per cent of its arable land, and12 per cent of its livestock. Gone too wasnearly ten per cent of its manufacturingplants, two-fifths of its coal reserves, almosttwo-thirds of its iron ore, and more than half of its lead. The Imperial Navy had beensurrendered and scrapped and the merchant

marine tonnage reduced from 5.7 million to500,000. Feeding the anger and paranoia of post war Germany nationalist politiciansasserted that the Kriegsschuldluge was partof a plan to destroy the German people.

The master of this manipulation was adark haired Austrian man of medium buildwho after an undistinguished youth hadserved with modest distinction on theWestern Front in World War I. From an

impoverished aspiring art student in Viennaand Munich Adolf Hitler had risen to become

5



BLITZKRIEG

SS - SCHUTZSTAFFEL

Aveteran Nazi party member HeinrichHimmler formed the Schutzstaffel, SS or

Protection Unit, in the summer of 1925 toguard Hitler. By 1929 it had a strength of280 men. In November 1930 it was anindependent force of 400 men. The majorchanges happened after 1933 when the SSVerfungstruppe (SS VT) were formed (theywould be the basis of the Waffen-SS) the

Armed SS while the rest of the SS becamethe Allgemeine-SS, the General SS. ByOctober 1944 the Waffen-SS would becomposed of 38 division with a strength of910,000 men. In March 1936 the SS

concentration camp guards were formed asthe Totenkopfverbande. The Waffen-SS wasformed in 1940 and by this time the SSDivisions Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler, Das Reich and Totenkopf were in existence. Bythe close of the war the SS had become ahuge organisation that ran the concentrationand extermination camps, race and ethnicityand Reich and overseas intelligence and

security. The Sicherheitsdienst or SD was thesinister Security Service of the SS. At theNuremberg trial all members of the SS, withthe exception of the Waffen-SS, weredeclared to be war criminals.

ABOVE: A guard of honour from the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler awaits a VIP.



BLITZKRIEG

the Fuhrer - Leader of a new vibrantGermany that was being reconstructed fromthe wreckage of World War I. He was 50 whenhe committed his adopted country to themost destructive war of the 20th Century.

Like many men of his generation WorldWar I had shaped his outlook at an impressionable age. As an infantryman he hadfought in the Bavarian List Regiment that

took its name from its first commandingofficer Colonel von List. Its ranks containedmany students and intellectuals who hadvolunteered. Hitler had reached the rank of Corporal and been decorated with the IronCross 1st and 2nd Class and the WoundBadge. In World War II, behind his back,senior officers referring to his war servicenicknamed Hitler "the Bavarian Corporal".

To the veterans World War I had been a just

cause that had bonded men together regardless of their status or origins. This frontline

ABOVE:Stagecraft at Nuremberg - SA chiefs Lutze

and Himmler flank Hitler as they salute the tomb

of the unknown warri or in the spectacular 19 34

Reich Party Congress. The congress was filmed

by a team directed by Leni Riefenstahl and

became "Triumph of the Wi l l " .

comradeship and military prowess had beendestroyed in 1918 by the Dolchstosstheorie -Stab in the Back Theory - which asserted thatGermany had not lost the war but beendestroyed from within by "Jews, traitors andSocial Democrats".

For Hitler and the Nazis it was an article of faith to bring under German administrationterritory lost after Versailles and thoseVolksdeutsche - Ethnic Germans - trappedwithin it under foreign control. In EastPrussia the League of Nations had estab

lished the free city of Danzig on June 28,1919.Historically it was one of the Germanic Free



BLITZKRIEG

SCHE DEUTS

N SDAP, the National SocialistGerman Worker's Party, was

created in April 1920 by Hitler tosucceed the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.Its full legal name was theNationolsoziolistischer Deutscher Arbeiterverein NSDAV or NationalSocialist German Worker'sAssociation but in the Germany of

abbreviated names it became theNazi Party. By 1933 when Hitlercame to power it was a monolithicorganisation that had Hitler at the topas the Fuhrer or Leader reachingdown through eight layers of administration and control to the humbleParteigenosse or Party Comrade.Propagandists in the Union of SovietSocialist Republics were always trou

bled by the word "Socialist" in theNazi title and normally referred totheir enemies as "Fascists".

ABOVE:The seizure of power in 1933. Hitler poses withkey Party members including Goring, Himmler,Goebbels and Rohm.BELOW LEFT:Hitler Jugend and Bund Deutscher Model -the Party controlled the population at all ages.BELOW:The Volkswagen - the car that could be boughtby saving five marks a week.

5



BLITZKRIEG

Ports of the Hanseatic League, but subject tothe old Kingdom of Poland. At the Treaty of Versailles it was divided from Germany by theDanzig or Polish Corridor, a strip of land15,500 sq. km (6,000 sq. miles) that gave thenewly re-created state of Poland access to theBaltic Sea. In Polish eyes the corridor wasoriginally the province of Royal (West)Prussia seized by the Hohenzollerns in 1772.

In the summer of 1959, before Italy enteredthe war on the side of Germany, photographswere published in Tempo, the Milan picturemagazine, showing persecuted Germansliving in the Corridor escaping to Germany.Two featured mothers with small children,one wading through marshland holding herbaby, while in the other a black uniformedSS border guard assisted the pair across abarbed wire fence. The pictures were reprinted in Britain under the headline "PuerilePropaganda of the Nazi Peace-Breakers".

Before and after 1935 Nazi leaders hadspoken guardedly of the Polnische Wirtschaft

L E B E N S R A U M

F o r the Nazi ideologues the existenceof an independent Poland was a block

for Lebensraum - Living Space. In Hitler'sgeopolitics the East would provide theLebensraum for the expanding ThirdReich. Lebensraum had originally beenthe slogan of German expansionism inthe late 19th Century as Germanyworked to create a colonial empire overseas. In 1924 following the failure of theBeer Hall putsch, an armed attempt toseize power in Munich, Hitler haddictated his political testament Mein Kampf while in Landsberg prison andhijacked the concept. He linked it withthe racial theory of Aryan (NordicGerman) superiority over Slavs and thispointed to Poland and Russia as theobvious place where a new Lebensraum for the new Germany could be created.



- the Polish Business - when discussing theareas of Prussia that had been ceded toPoland after 1918. In the dramatic languageof nationalist propagandists these were called

the "bleeding frontiers of the east".In the west France was not seen as an area

for expansion but for many ordinary non-politicised Germans the oppressive enemy

L E G lO N KONDOR

The Spanish Civil War had begun in July1936 and the Germans initially deployed

Ju52 transports to lift Franco's 15 ,00 0Spanish Legion troops from Morocco toSpain. As the war expanded so did theGerman commitment, so by its close in1 939 the 6,000 air and tank crew andlogistic personnel that had been rotatedthrough the theatre had suffered 420casualties killed in action. The Germanforce known as the Legion Kondor - CondorLegion - wore a distinctive brown uniform.When they returned aboard a cruise liner toGermany in the summer of 1939 a paradewas organised in Berlin on June 6 in which

they carried gold coloured tablets bearingthe names of the Legion dead. For theLuftwaffe the Spanish Civil war was anexcellent proving ground for Ju87 Stuka divebombing tactics and also gave the Bf 109pilots their first experience combat. On theground German anti-aircraft gun crewsdiscovered that the high velocity 8.8cm Flakwas a highly effective anti-tank gun - itwould remain so throughout World War II.

BELOW:JU52 transports prepare to lift Spanishtroops from Morocco. Their arrival shifted thestrategic balance in favour of Franco in theCivil War.



BLITZKRIEG

that must be defeated and taught a lesson.In July 1936 war had broken out in Spain

between the Republicans who looked toEurope and the USSR for assistance and theNationalists under General Franco who weresupported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.For the Germans, Italians and Soviet Unionthe conflict gave the opportunity to test some

of their theories about armoured warfareand air power. The USSR provided about 750Vickers-type T26s along with some early BTtanks with the distinctive American Christiesuspension to support the Republicans. TheGermans shipped in PanzerKampfwagen(PzKpfw) I tanks and the Italians the little FiatAnsaldo C33 to back up the Nationalists.

On October 29, 1936 the Russian GeneralPavlov working with the Republicans

attempted a deep armoured raid with 50tanks at Esquivas and again in March 1937

near Guadalajara. Both attacks falteredthrough lack of support and logistic back upand many commentators drew the conclusion that the tank should work at the pace of the infantry and not be used for deep raids.

However in the USSR preliminary work wasunder way to design a medium tank toreplace the BT series. It would use theChristie suspension, have broad tracks,angled armour and a powerful 76mm gun. Itwould be called the T-34 and would changetank design forever.

The Germans grouped in a force called the Legion Kondor were learning valuablelessons about the limitations and effective-ness of air power. The most brutaldemonstration was the attack on the undefended Basque town of Guernica on April 26,1937. To the world it appeared a wanton act.Nine aircraft dropped 7,950 kg (7.8 tons) of bombs that were in fact intended for militarytargets outside the town. Casualty figures are

disputed, some sources state 100 and others

TOP LEFT:Massed drummers and trumpeters of the

Hi t l e r j ugend at Nuremberg.

ABOVE:The distinctive lines of the M1915 with the

Wehrmachtadler eagle and Swastika decal thatwas phased out on all helmets from 1940.

21



BLITZKRIEG

1,600 were killed, but what was not disputedwas the destruction of 71% of the town. Withthe benefit of hindsight Guernica showed thattactical and later strategic bombing was adouble-edged weapon, sometimes failing tohit the target and often producing adversepropaganda.

Hitler had chosen August 26, 1959 as thedate for the attack on Poland, however on theday he ordered a postponement. It was notthe first example of the behaviour that woulddog his conduct of operations throughout thewar - mixing of high-risk options and indecision. Some units only received thecancellation orders a mere hour or twobefore H Hour. It actually failed to reach onesmall group tasked with the capture of aPolish railway station and tunnel in the southwest. They went into action, opened fire and

ABOVE:Tea with the Fuhrer. British Prime Minister

Nevil le Chamberlain at one of several meetings

he held as he attempted to influence Hitler. On

the right is Sir Nevile Henderson the British

Ambassador. Though Chamberlain was accused

of appeasement he launched a rearmament

programme after 1938.

caused casualties and so fired the first shotsof World War II. A truce was agreed the nextday and they returned to Germany. The Poleswere not alerted by this action because in therecent months there had been numerousincidents on the border.

Then six days later the first salvos crashedinto the fort at Westerplatte, held only by acompany of Polish soldiers, and now the warwas on in earnest. Following the bombardment the tiny garrison repelled a landing by

22



BLITZKRIEG

German naval forces, inflicted casualties andheld out until September 7.

As with so many of Hitler's moves in WorldWar II the attack was a gamble. The GermanArmy had completed autumn manoeuvresand so was still in the field. However theF u h r e r and th e staff of th e OKW,Oberkommando des Wehrmacht (HighCommand of the Armed Forces) knew thattwo thirds of the German strength on landand in the air would have to be committed tothe attack. It was vital that Poland should be

defeated before France and Great Britainhad time to declare war, mobilise and attack in the west.

For France and Great Britain the attack onPoland was the final fatal move. Committed

to defending Poland in a treaty signed onAugust 25, 1959, Great Britain declared war

on Nazi Germany at 11.00 on September 5,1959 and France followed at 17.00. In Britainthe public had tuned their radios into theHome Service and heard the Prime MinisterNeville Chamberlain explain quietly that theBritish government had requested thatGermany should withdraw her troops fromPoland.

He ended the broadcast with the resigned

BELOW:Hitler ascends to the podium past massed

SA banners at a rally at Buckeberg in 1934.

These vast stage-managed events helped to

establish Hitler's position as Fuhrer - leader -

and his popularity with ordinary Germans.



BLITZKRIEG

PZKPFWI AUSFB

Built by Daimler-Benz, Henschel, Krupp,

MAN and Wegmann before and duringthe war the Panzerkampfwagen (PzKpfw) Iwas an interim vehicle intended fortraining. In different marks it wouldhowever serve in Poland, France and eventhe opening moves of the campaign in theUSSR. The Ausf B entered service in 19 35 .

SPECIFICATIONSArmament:

Armour:Crew:Weight:Hull length:Width:Height:Engine:

Road speed:Range:

2 x 7.92mm (0.31 in) SAG

(2,250 rounds)13mm (0.51 in)25,800 kg (5.71 tons)4.42m (14ft 6in)2.06m (6ft 9in)1.72m (5ft 8in)Maybach NL38TR 6-cylinder, petrol,l00bhp at 3,000rpm.40km/h (25mph)170km (105miles)

24



BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE:The November 8 Parade in Munich in

which the names of the men killed in the Putsch

were read out. Nazi ideologists created a myth

of the death and rebirth of the Party.

RIGHT:Hitler returns to Austria as he begins his

territorial expansion in 1938 following the

Anschluss.

words "No reply has been received from theGerman government and consequently astate of war now exists between Great Britainand Germany".

On the evening of that day the Germansubmarine U-30 sank the British liner SS

Athenia. It was an error, but Americanpassengers were among the dead.

The indicators of Hitler's voracious territorial ambitions and the inevitability of warhad culminated in the Munich Agreementsigned in September 29 - 30, 1938 betweenGermany, Italy, France and Britain.

25





BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE:Rhinelanders greet German troops as

they march into the demilitarised zone in the

Rheinlandbesetzung of March 1936. Hitler's

generals were fearful that the French would

attack following this breach of the Armistice

agreements, but the French did nothing.

against the government in Vienna.On March 12, 1958 in an operation code

named Otto, German troops entered Austriaon the "invitation" of the Chancellor KurtSchuschnigg. The code name had beenselected because Otto of Hapsburg, the youngpretender to the throne, was alive and livingin exile in Belgium and moves to prevent his

restoration were part of the cover story forarmed intervention. The German troops hadbeen called in to "protect" Austria.

On March 15 in front of huge crowds atVienna's Heldenplatz Hitler announced amidthunderous jubilation "the entry of my homeland into the German Reich".

The centuries old name of Osterreich wasabolished and replaced with the archaicOstmark - the Eastern Marches - and Austriawas absorbed into a country that was fastbecoming Greater Germany.

In September that year the MunichAgreement ceded the German speakingSudetenland of western Czechoslovakia toGermany. In August 1938 Hitler hadmobilised his army and threatened to attack the Czechs. The British and French PrimeMinisters Chamberlain and Daladier had aseries of meetings in which they were pressurised by Hitler and in turn pressed theCzechs. At Munich a modified version of Hitler's demands was deemed acceptable tothe Anglo French leaders. This appeasementallowed Hitler to further dominate hisgenerals, who believed that France andBritain would call the Fuhrer's bluff and goto war. The French and British leaders weregleefully portrayed by Nazi propaganda asweak and vacillating.

In March 1939 the Germans took over thewhole of Czechoslovakia and were able toadd the excellent indigenous Skoda LT-55and Ceskomoravska Rolben Danek (CDK)LT-38 tanks to their inventory of armouredvehicles. The Czechs had exported tanks toSweden, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Latvia andeven Afghanistan and Peru. The Wehrmacht received approximately 300 LT-35s and withthe designation PzKpfw 35(t) they wereformed into a panzer division. Two moredivisions were made up from the excellentLT-38 now designated PzKpfw 38(t).

The Munich Agreement was seen as the

27





BLITZKRIEG

LEFT:A heavy anti

aircraft gun crew

during a training

exercise. The ability

of Germany to defend

itself against air attack

with guns and fighters

was a popular and

potent myth.

RIGHT:Using their 70cm

Entfernungsmesser range

finders a 2cm Flak crew

give range corrections

on the approaching

aircraft. The gunners

would adjust their sights

until they could correct

their aim by observing

the tracer.

LEFT:The superb8.8cm Flak that would

prove as effective as

an anti-tank gun as it

was an AA gun.

During the war new

carriages would be

developed to give it a

lower silhouette.

29



BLITZKRIEG

H A I R F O R

The outnumbered Lotnictwo Wojskowe - Polish AirForce - had some excel lent air craft like the PZL-

P11c and P.37B that put up a brief but doomedresistance to the fiqhters of the Luftwaffe.Some pilots later escaped to join the RAF.

PZL-P11c

In the mid 1930s the Polish National AeroFactory (PZL) produced a new monoplane

fighter, the PZL P11, that became the objectof international interest and respect.However by 1939 the PZL P11c thatequipped 12 of the Lotnictwo Wojskowefighter squadrons were outclassed by theMesserschmitt Bf 109. The PZL P11c has thedistinction of being the first fighter in WorldWar II to shoot down a Luftwaffe aircraft, aJu87 dive bomber. By the close of thecampaign PZL P11 fighters had downed

125 enemy aircraft. The only operationalmodel of the intended successor, the PZLP50, was shot down by Polish AA fire sinceits modern silhouette was confusedwith that of a German aircraft.

MODELP.37B Los B(ELK)

The pride of the Lotnictwo Wojskowe, theP.37B Los was a modern twin engined

bomber that first flew in mid 1938. By 1939some 95 had been built and 40 were in frontline service. Flying on reconnaissance andground attack missions 25 were lost to enemyaction. Surviving aircraft flew to Romaniaand were later used by the Romanians in theattack on the USSR in 1 9 4 1 . The remarkablebomber remained in service after World WarII until the mid 1950s operating as target tugfor fighter training.

SPECIFICATIONSType: Twin engin ed medium bombe rCrew: 4Power Plant: Two 91 8h p (PZL built) Bristol PegasusPerformance: Max imu m speed at 3, 40 0m (1 1,150ft)

445km/h (277mph)Maximu m range: 4,5 00 km (2,796miles)Weights: Empty 4, 28 0k g (9,4361b)

Maximum 8,900kg (16,6201b)Dimensions: Wi ng span 17 .9 3m (58ft 10in)Length: 12.92m (42ft 4in)Height: 5. 08 m (16ft 8in)Armament: One 7.7mm (0.303in) KM W z 37

machine gun in nose, dorsal and ventralpositions and 2,5 80 kg (5,688lb)bomb load



BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE:French soldiers in working dress sit on

the rud der of an He111 do wn ed dur in g the

1939 - 4 0 Phoney War.

RIGHT:A local victory, the bullet scarred cockpit

of an He111 bom ber shot do wn by French

fighters in 1939.

Comintern Pact linking these countries in

opposition to Communism. It caused shock and surprise therefore to Communists, Nazisand conservative Germans alike when onAugust 20,1939 Hitler telegrammed Stalin tourge an agreement because of the "worsening situation in Poland".

On August 23,1939 the Russo-German Pactwas signed in Moscow by the GermanForeign Minister Joachim von Ribbentropand Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav

Molotov. Hitler in a piece of brutal pragmatism had ensured that the USSR would not



BLITZKRIEG

intervene to support the Poles and paved the \\ ay for the German invasion in Septemberthat year and allowed the USSR to extend itswestern borders by seizing areas of Poland.

With the political ground prepared theGermans launched a two pronged attack onPoland. Army Group North under GeneralFedor von Bock consisting of the 5rd Armyunder General Georg von Kuchler in East

Prussia punched south and 4th Army underGeneral Hans von Kluge with the XIX PanzerCorps commanded by General Guderiandrove east from Prussia. To the south the 8thArmy commanded by General JohannesBlaskowitz drove towards Lodz.

Army Group South under General Gerd vonRundstedt consisting of the 10th Army underGeneral Walter von Reichenau and the XVIPanzer Corps under General Erich Hoepner

drove north towards Warsaw. In Slovakia the14th Army under General Wilhelm von List

ABOVE:Ma il call for French troop s in 19 39 . Poor

leadership and low morale would undermine the

army in the bitter wint er of 19 39 - 4 0

pushed north into the industrial areas aroundCracow.

Their mission was to carry out a pincermovement to surround and destroy the bulk of Polish forces west of the Vistula-Narev l ine.

The Polish ground forces ranged oppositethem, commanded by Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly, were grouped to face a threat fromthe west.

The Polish armies positioned close to theborder in linear defences under a schemedesignated Plan Z or "West" could not havebeen worse sited to withstand a Blitzkriegattack. The Polish planners knew that theycould not withstand an all out German attack

and hoped that French and British forces inthe West would attack Germany and so draw



BLITZKRIEG

T h e Polish deve lopment of the British Vickers Six-Ton tankthe 7 TP was originally built with twin central turrets,

two twin bogies each side, front sprocket, rear idler. The7TP-2 produced in 1937 was fitted with a turret with aSwedish Bofors 37m m (1.45in) anti-tank gun . About 170had been built and most were lost in the fighting in 1939.A final development, the 7TP-3 with a new turret, thickeramour, new engine and wider tracks went into productionin 1939 but few saw action.

DeveIop ed in 19 31was based

o n o p e n t o p p e d" t a n k e t t e " v e h i c l e s

from the British

Carden-Loyd design. Thei m p r o v e dsuspensionsupporting girderclosed crew

compartment. About 390built and in

a f e w w e r eupgunned with a 20mm

gun and given

thicker armour.



B LITZKRI EG

off some of the pressure. The flat wheat fieldsof Poland offered few natural obstacles onwhich to base a defence, but rivers like theBzura, Narev, Bug and the Vistula wereconsiderable barriers.

When fully mobilised the Polish Armywould have had a strength of 3,600,000 men.The Poles had a tiny armoured force dividedinto nine companies of light tanks and 29companies of light scout cars.

In 1928 the Poles had bought Carden-Loydlight tanks and in 1932 Vickers tanks fromBritain. These two vehicles formed the basisfor locally built TK light tanks. The first werethe TK-1 and TK-2 open topped two manvehicles armed with a machine gun, theywere followed by the TR-3 reconnaissancevehicle. The 7 TP light tank based on theVickers Six-Ton was initially armed with twomachine guns, but the 7TP-2, of which about170 were built, mounted a Swedish Bofors37mm anti-tank gun with a coaxial 7.92mm

machine gun. The 7TP-3 had thicker armour,stronger suspension and wider tracks. It wentinto production in 1939 but few reached frontline formations.

In the West on September 7 the Frenchforces caused some consternation in theOKW when they began a slow advance intothe Saarland, but they did not attack theWestwall, the line of fortifications close to theGerman border.

Given the grand name "Operation Saar" itwas directed by General Gaston Pretelat.Though he had 31 divisions available for theoperation, including 14 first line units, heonly used nine. General Edouard Requin's 4thArmy managed to capture 12km (7 miles) of German territory while General Conde's 3rd

BELOW:British troops help bring in the harvest in

France in the autumn of 1939. Though not

military training, activity like this helped to keep

men busy and maintain morale.



THE RUSSO GERMAN

PACT 1 9 3 9

T h e pact ensured that :

1) Neither party would attack the other.

2) Should one of them become the objectof belligerent action by a third power theother party would in no manner lend itssupport to this third power.

3) Neither Germany nor Russia would join

any grouping of Powers whatsoever aimeddirectly or indirectly at the other party.

A secret protocol identified spheres ofinterest in Poland and the Baltic;the USSR had claims on Finland, Estonia,Latvia and Lithuania with the northernborder of Lithuania as a diving line.In Poland Soviet influence would reach asfar as the line of the rivers Narev, Vistula

and San.

BLITZKRIEG

LEFT:A German NCO and soldier captured byFrench troops in 1939, in less than a year theroles would be reversed.

BELOW:French soldiers on the Maginot Linewith a grenade thrower and ChatelleraultMl 924/29 LMG.

Army pinched out the heavily wooded WarndtForest salient. The Germans had alreadyevacuated the area and during the operationthe French suffered 27 killed, 22 wounded

with 28 missing. The L'Armee de l'Air underGeneral Joseph Vuillemin lost nine fightersand 18 reconnaissance aircraft.

On the morning of September 12, theFrench Havas News Agency reported acomplacent French Army communique:"Last night passed quietly on the whole of theWestern Front".

By October 4 the French had withdrawntheir forces from the Saarland and were safeback behind the defences of the MaginotLine to sit out the winter in comfort.



FALL WEISS Ade Polenland,

Ade weites Land,

Heim geht jetzt die Fahrt.

Wollen heimwarts ziehn,

Wo die Kirschen bliihn,

Manches Madel auf uns harrt.

Ade Polenland - "Goodbye Poland'' - German marching song.

In the east in great curving thrusts theattacking German tanks and mechanisedinfantry supported by dive-bombers cut

off the Polish armies. The Germans wereenjoying "Fuhrer's weather" - a dry sunnyautumn, perfect for flying and ideal for trucksand armoured vehicles. The Poles prayed for

cloud and rain - it would come a few daysafter their last units had surrendered.

The Luftwaffe had more than 5,600 operational aircraft and deployed 1,500 for the attack on Poland. Of these 897 were bombers and 426fighters with additional reconnaissance andtransport aircraft. Opposite them the Polish

ABOVE:Hitler meets the Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Jozef Beck in the last days of peace.

36



BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE: An He111 seen from the glazed cockpit of another bomber in the formation

Single engined fighter

1

One 984hp Daimler-Benz DB 600Aa3

Maximum speed at sea level 480km/h

(298mph)

600km (348miles)

Empty 1,800kg (3,9641b)

Maximum 2,420kg (5,335lb)

Wing span 9.87m (32ft 4in)

8.6m (28ft 2in)

2.56m (8ft 4in)

One 20mm MG FF cannon in propeller

hub, two 7.92mm (0.31 in) MG 17 in

upper cowling.



BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE:Messerschmitt Bf109D fighters in an

airf ield in Germany. These were the aircraft that

wo n the Luftwaffe air superiority over Poland and

paved the way for the success of Blitzkrieg.

Air Force - Lotnictwo Wojskowe -commanded by Maj General J. Zajac hadapproximately 1,900 aircraft and deployed400, of these 154 were bombers, 159 fightersand the rest reconnaissance or liaisonaircraft. The German aircraft were moremodern and technically superior. In the firstdays, despite heroic fighting much of the

Lotnictwo Wojskowe had ceased to exist andthe German bombers and ground attack

aircraft were free to concentrate ondestroying communications like bridges and



BLITZKRIEG

V

ABOVE:Stukas peel off to attack. The howl of the

diving aircraft as well as their accuracy made

them a very effective psychological weapon .

LEFT:A Junkers Flugzeug und Motorwerke

advertisement celebrates the Ju87 Stuka dive

bomber.

railways as well as more immediate militarytargets like headquarters and airfields.

The co mm an de rs of the Lo tnic twoWojskowe had anticipated a German airattack and though their airfields weredestroyed, the planes on the ground werenon-fliers grounded with mechanical problems. Airworthy planes had been dispersed

to emergency strips and put up a brief andbrave defence.

Among the more colourful Luftwaffe divebomber experts whose aircraft attacked thePolish airfields and bridges was WolframFreiherr von Richthofen. He was a cousin of Manfred von Richthofen, the World War Ifighter ace known as the "Red Baron" and

commander of the squadron known as the"Flying Circus". In 1936 Wolfram had servedas Chief of Staff to General Hugo Sperrle andGeneralmajor Helmuth Volkmann, thecommanders of the Legion Kondor in Spain.In 1958 as an Oberst von Richthofen was itsfinal commander. In Poland he commandedthe Fliegerkorps VIII, three squadrons of Ju87Stukas that became "flying artillery"providing very efficient close support for the

Panzers.The problem of correct aircraft recognition

39



BLITZKRIEG

LEFT:Concealed in scrub a

German soldier in a

reconnaissance patrol

observes a Polish position

through his field glasses.

Constructed from aluminium

alloy the field glasses were

light, easy to use and issued

widely in the German Army.

PZKPFW II AUSF A, B, C

B uiltbyAIkett, Daimler-Benz, FAMO,Henschel, MAN, MIAG and Wegmann

A fast reconnaissance vehicle, it had a20mm cannon. The Ausf A was the fullproduction model of the tank and wasconsiderably different from the two pre-



BLITZKRIEG

Soviet invasion Sept 17

Polish armies

German attacks

Polish pockets

ABOVE:Surrounded on three

sides by German armiesPoland was easy meat for the

Panzer Divisions that split the

Polish forces up into pockets

and then destroyed them.

RIGHT:Mounted German

troops advance through

Poland. Though the Panzers

were the cutting edge many

soldiers marched or rode on

horseback.



BLITZKRI EG

LEFT:The twisted remains of a

major road and rail link,

either bombed by the

Luftwaffe or demolished by

Polish Army engineers.

The speed of the German

advance nullified many of

the Polish attempts to create

obstacles and barriers by

demolit ions.

RIGHT:General Guderian

watches in his SdKfz 251

half track command vehicle

as a signal is decoded. The

Enigma encryption machine

has been cropped out of the

bottom of the picture by the

wartime German censor.

BELOW RIGHT:With vestigial

camouflage against a non

existent air threat German

gunners prepare a 15cm sFH

1 8 medium howi tzer for a

fire mission.

that would bedevil all combatants in WorldWar II appeared in the campaign in Poland.Colonel von Mellenthin, the IntelligenceOfficer with III Corps, recalled:

"A low flying aircraft circled over Corpsbattle headquar ters and everyone let fly withwhatever he could grab. An air-liaison officerran out trying to stop the fusillade andshouting to the excited soldiery that this wasa German command plane - one of the goodold Fieseler Storche. Soon afterwards theaircraft landed and out stepped the Luftwaffegeneral responsible for our close air support.He failed to appreciate the joke".

Offshore in the Baltic the Kriegsmarine -the German Navy - had the modern battle

cruisers RMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau,three "pocket battleship" light battle cruisers,two heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, 22destroyers and 43 U-boats. There were two

obsolete pre-Dreadnought battleships, theSchlesien and the Schleswig-Holstein, thelatter had opened the fighting. The PolishNavy under Rear Admiral Jozef Swirski hadonly three modern destroyers and fivemodern submarines as well as 23 aircraft anda small number of coastal craft.

The six Panzer and four Light Divisionsthat formed the cutting edge of the groundattack on Poland were still only equipped

with PzKpfw I and PzKpfw II light tanks andex-Czech PzKpfw 38(t) and 35(t) tanks. The

.',:,



BLITZKRIEG

PzKpfw I was essentially a training vehiclearmed only with two MG 54 machine guns.The Panzer Lehr Demonstration Battalion, atraining battalion, had been added toGuderian's XIX Corps at his request anddeployed its PzKpfw III and PzKpfw IV tanks.The former were armed with a shortbarrelled 3.7cm gun and the latter with a7.5cm. Guderian had also requested that theReconnaissance Demonstration Battalion beattached to his Corps. For Guderian, thepassionate armour theorist, Poland was aunique opportunity to test new equipment inaction. When later in the campaign he wasvisited by Hitler he took the opportunity topress for the adoption of the PzKpfw III andIV and that they should have thicker armourand more powerful guns.

In fact the Polish armoured opposition andanti-tank defences represented no real threatto the German forces who were however ableto test techniques of command and control.

At one end this was amply demonstrated by



BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE:The gunner on an M G 3 4 observes through BELOW:A Flammenwerfer 35 flamethrower crew

the gun's opti cal sight. adva nce through their smoking han diw ork .





BLITZKRIEG

"marked the end of my first drive".The right flank of the Pomorze Army under

Brigadier General Boltuc was beaten after a

two-day battle along the River Ursa and LakeMelno and pushed south. A thrust by the XIXPanzer Corps broke the Polish defence on thewestern bank of the Vistula along the Braheon the first day of fighting. The German tanksreached the Vistula and around the southernTuchel Heath cut off two Polish infantry divisions and a cavalry brigade that were trying

BELOW:An MG34 crew prepare to give covering

fire over an improvised Polish road block. The

M G 3 4 was the first General Purpose Machine

Gun that could be used in the light or medium

medium role and fired by one man.

RIGHT:A grenadier pitches a stick grenade into a

Polish posi t ion. The Stielhandgranate 24 was

easy to operate, the friction pull cord was in the

hollow handle covered by a screw cap and gavea delay of 4 to 5 seconds.

to withdraw through the Corridor to Chelmnoand Grudziadz. The Danzig Corridor was nomore, the Pomorze Army had lost 50 per centof its strength and was forced back to Torunand Bydgoszcz.

The Poznan Army under General Kutrzebahad only limited contacts in the first few days

of the campaign. The Lodz Army howeverfought for two days against the combinedforces of the German 8th and 14th Armies.

On Saturday September 2 the situation of



BLITZKRIEG

BRYGADA KAWALERII

In 1937 the motorised 10th Brygada

Kawalerii - Motorised Cavalry Brigade -under General Maczek was formed andbecame the first Polish armoured force. Itwas composed of two motorised cavalryregiments, one division (Div) of armouredcars, an anti-tank gun Div, a company (Coy)of Vickers 6 ton tanks, a TKS reconnaissancetank Coy, a motorised artillery (75mm and100mm guns) Div, an AA gun battery, anengineer platoon (Ptn), a signals Ptn, atraffic control Ptn and a transport Coy. On

August 3 1 , 1 9 3 9 it had a strength of 1,515

officers, 8,949 NCOs and 18,020 men.Tragically at the outset of World War II theforce that was part of the Army of Cracowwas parcelled out into 15 independentcompanies and attached to infantry andcavalry formations and never used as aformed armoured brigade against theGermans. Maczek managed to evadecapture at the end of the campaign andreach France where he commanded anarmoured brigade.



BLITZKRIEG

B-1

The Ju87, Universally known as the Stuka fromacronym for Sturzkampfflugzeug -

- developed a reputation as anawesome instrument of war during the Polish

campaign. The scream of the div ing aircr aft wasterrifying to men attacked on the ground. Some

aft were fitted with sirens called Jericho- Trompeten - the Trumpets of Jericho - fitted to thespatted undercarriage to enhance the psychological shock. It was superb in a close support rolewhere AA defence was negligible and where

tile fighters were not present. At the outbreakof war the Luftwaffe had 336 Ju87B-1s on itsstrength.ofstrength.

LEFT:The Battle of Bzura

The Polish breakout by the Pomorzeand Poznan Armies towards Warsawthrough the German 8th and 4thArmies. Stuka attacks hit the Bzurabridges.

RIGHT:A German MG34 crew dashpast a burned down building. The

gun fired from 50 round belts at 800to 900 rounds a minute.



BLITZKRIEG

the Cracow Army was critical and the threatfrom the north and south forced GeneralSzylling to order a withdrawal along theVistula behind the Rivers Dunajec and Nida.With Polish forces withdrawing a gap devel-oped in the central sector betweenCzestochowa, Pietrkow, Kielce andSandomierz.

By Saturday evening after Germans hadencircled the left flank of the Lodz Army thePolish forces were forced to withdraw fromtheir positions on along the Rivers Warta and

Widawaka. They were under intense pressure from the XV and XVI Panzer Corps thathad pushed into the gap between the Lodzand Cracow Armies and smashed the Polish7th Infantry Division under BrigadierGeneral Gasiorowski.

This allowed the 10th Army to pushtowards Pietrkow and Kielce and threaten to

encircle the Cracow Army from the north. Atthis point the Cracow Army started receivingreports that German forces had appeared inthe Beskid Mountains on their left flank.This was the 17th and 22nd Corps part of the14th Army.

Despite the critical situation of his armiesMarshal Rydz-Smigly still believed that thePolish armies could pull back to defensivepositions on river lines and hold the assaults.

On Sunday September 3 GeneralKasprzycki was ordered to prepare Warsaw

for defence. To the north of the city troopscommanded by General Przedrzymirski-Krukowiecki that had held positions at Mlawaagainst attacks by the 1st Corps was forcedto withdraw during the night of September 3- 4 to avoid encirclement.

On Monday General Piskor took commandof the Polish forces along the central Vistula







WEEK TWOThe disintegration and surrender of the scattered or encircled remnants of

the Polish Army is proceeding rapidly...Hostilities have resumed outside

Warsaw after the Polish truce delegate failed to turn up. The Poles are

defending the city without thought for the population of over one million.

OKW Communique September 19, 1939

On Saturday September 9, 1939 theOKH ordered the German 8th Army to

accelerate i ts advance towardsWarsaw to cut off the Pomorze and PoznanArmies which were withdrawing in contact

with the tanks and infantry of the 4th Army.Meanwhile in the south the Carpathian

Army was forced back from its positions onthe River Dunajec towards Przemysl.

Initial probes into Warsaw by tanks of the

ABOVE:Germans soldiers nervously scan the ruins

of Warsaw for snipers.

RIGHT:House clearing German style, breaking

into a building in Warsaw.

52



BLITZKRIEG



BLITZKRIEG

4th Panzer Division met with tough resistance in the suburbs and after three hours theGermans withdrew after losing 57 of the 120

tanks they had committed.On September 10, the 3rd Army and the XVI

Panzer Corps had trapped ten Polish divisionsaround Modlin. The Polish force was madeup of elements of the Pomorze Army and thePoznan Army that was almost intact. Adesperate battle now opened between theGermans and the Poznan and PomorzeArmies trying to break out of encirclementacross the River Bzura where they managedto capture bridgeheads near Lowicz.

The Poznan Army attacked in a south eastdirection against the advancing German 8thArmy. The OKH had lost contact with the two

Polish armies and initially the attack was ashock. In a three day battle at Kutno the Polesvirtually destroyed the 30th Infantry Division

commanded by Major General von Briesenand forced the Germans back 16km (10miles) before, supported by air attacks invicious fighting near Lowicz and Sochaczew,reinforcements from the German 10th Armychecked the attack.

BELOW:Flames roar from a building in a Polish

village as German soldiers carrying respirators

and assault equipment scan the streets.

RIGHT:Shells or bombs have set fire to this house,

silhouetting the German troops dashing through

the streets to clear the village.



BLITZKRIEG



BLITZKRIEG

On September 10 the left flank of ArmyGroup North attacked south and south eastacross the River Narev encircling the bulk of the Polish Narev Operational Group underGeneral Mlot-Fijalkowski at Zambrowo. Atthe industrial city of Radom on the bend of Vistula fighting had reached a crescendo.

On the same day to the south the 14th Armyestablished bridgeheads across the River Sanon either side of Przemysl. Meanwhile to thenorth Guderian's XIX Panzer Corps hadcarved its way through the Narev OperationalGroup and annihilated the Polish 18thInfantry at Lomza. When the XIX PanzerCorps reached Brest Litovsk the Polish highcommand realised that they would be unableto move the front to establish positionsbehind the River Bug.

Monday September 11 marked the day

when the cohesive Polish resistance began tocollapse. The XV and XVI Panzer Corps andthe 4th Army Corps had encircled the PrusyArmy at Radom and its commander GeneralDab-Biernacki along with 60,000 soldiers wasforced to surrender. To the north on the sameday the 1st Army Corps severed the Poles

eastward communications with Warsaw.Despite the breakdown of command and

control the Poles were far from beaten. OnSeptember 11 the Army of Poznan continuedits attacks from Bzura towards Strykow, butGeneral Kutrzeba realised that these attackswere making no headway and so shifted hisarmy to the lower Bzura and then thrust eastward to open a path to Warsaw. He believedthat this new unexpected axis might catch theenemy around Lodz by surprise.

The 4th Army Corps commanded by

56



BLITZKRIEG

LEFT:A Waffen-SS MG34

crew with their machine gun

mounted on a Dreifuss 34

A A tripod take aim at a

ground target. Opening the

bipod helped to give the

weapon a better centre of

gravity on this mount.

RIGHT:Polish artillerymen

prepare to ride into action

with their howitzer. The

Polish Army wasmodernising its weapons

an d equipment in 1939.

General von Schwedler formed weak bridgeheads across the Vistula at Annapol and Solec

on September 14. The ad hoc formation of theLublin Army was now in no condition tooppose them. The major threat was howeverto the south where the 14th Army had crossedthe River San, reached Lvov and so cut off awithdrawal route to the south east for theCarpathian Army and any other Polish forcesthat might attempt to escape to Hungary andRomania. When the 22nd Army Corps underGeneral von Kleist reached Hrubieszow they

cut off the Cracow Army from the south andalso blocked withdrawal routes into the hillsaround Lublin.

The following day the 14th Army wasordered to advance towards Tarnopol andStanislawow to block retreat routes toRomania which was still neutral.

The converging German armies hadsurrounded Warsaw by September 15 anddemanded that the city surrender. It refusedand was subject to what at the time was seenas a massive air attack.

On Saturday September 16 von Rundstedtstarted the final encirclement of the Armies

of Poznan and Pomorze. The battered divisions of the Army of Poznan managed to fightthrough to the lower Bzura, but the Army of Pomorze was cut off and trapped in theconfluence of the Rivers Vistula and Bzura.

In a le tt er h om e a so ld ie r of the Leibstandarte-Adolf Hitler later recalled theshock of war.

"Our advance took us across that part of thebattlefield which had been held by the so-called Pomorze Army. The whole area was ascene of death and destruction. The bloatedbodies of men and animals blackening underthe hot sun, smashed carts, burnt out vehicles and those most tragic victims of war, thewounded horses, waiting for the mercy shot.Everywhere there was evidence of a beatenarmy covering the ground.

"Now I understand what the words of oursong mean:

'Man and horse and wagon, the Lord Godstruck them all down...'"

57



THE STAB IN THE BACK"The Soviet Union can no longer remain indifferent to the sufferings of its

blood-brothers the Ukrainians and Belorussians who, inhabitants of Polish

territory, are being abandoned to their fate and left defenceless. In considera

tion of this situation the Soviet Government has ordered the Red Army to

send its troops across the frontier to take under their protection the lives and

welfare of the populations of western Ukraine and western Belorussia."

Vladimir Potemkin,

Soviet Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs03.00 September 17, 1939

T he Soviet Union attacked Poland onSunday September 17 and the Polishgovernment fled across the border

into Romania, but was interned followingSoviet pressure. The invading Soviet forcesconsisted of the Belorussian Front (Army

Group) under General Kovalev made up of the Vitebsk, Bobruisk, 10th and 11th Armiesand to the south the Ukrainian Front underGeneral Timoshenko composed of theZhitomir, Vinnitsa and 12th Armies. ThePripet Marshes that divided the two Frontsproved no obstacle to their advance.

Committed to their fight to the death in thewest the Polish forces were in no conditionto offer a coherent resistance though they

hung onto the important rail junction of Moledeczno on the line between Minsk andVilna. In the first day's fighting the Red AirForce reported that it had shot down sevenPolish fighters and three bombers and theArmy said that its troops "were greeted withcheers by the local White Russian andUkrainian populations".

The surviving 116 aircraft of the LotnictwoWojskowe flew into Romania where theywere interned.

On that grim Sunday the XIX Panzer Corps

ABOVE:A German NCO swigs from his water

bottle in the heat of the autumn sun.

RIGHT:The cr ew of a Polish Bofors 40 mm medi um

anti-aircraft gun scan the sky. The Poles hadlimited AA defences.



BLITZKRIEG



BLITZKRIEG

under Guderian drove along the right bank of the Vistula, seized Wlodawa and formed abridgehead on the left bank of the Bug. Hisreconnaissance and advanced forces hadreached the Lublin-Kovel railway and so cutoff Polish forces on the northern front from

retreat behind the Bug.Meanwhile the 4th Army Corps advancing

from the Annapol area on the axis Krasnik -Krasnystaw - Lublin cut the Polish Army of Lublin in half while the 14th Army blockedroutes to the south.

The 14th Army was now aligned west alongthe line Zamosc - Tomaszow - Lubelski. Itscentre then pushed towards Lvov encountering violent resistance and was attackedfrom the rear by elements of the Army of theCarpathians. The Poles had been encircled

ABOVE:Hitler scans the front through artillery

observers ' periscope binoculars. He would gloat

over France less than a year later but as the war

swung against the Third Reich his visits to the

front became infrequent.

after evacuating Przemysl and were nowattempting to push towards Lvov.

The remnants of the Army of Pomorzefinally surrendered between September 18 -19 inside the Bzura pocket. The remains of the Army of Poznan fought their way throughto Warsaw. By now the capital had a garrisonof 180,000. However few were adequatelyarmed.

Units of von Reichenau's 10th Army and

List's 14th Army surrounded the 60,000strong Army of Lublin on Wednesday



BLITZKRIEG

September 20 and its commander GeneralPyskor was forced to surrender.

On September 21 Soviet troops reachedLvov. The garrison under General Langnerput up a tough resistance for ten days beforebeing obliged to surrender. Soviet forcesfinally halted on the north south line of theRivers San and Bug. When Soviet forceslinked up with the German 4th Army at Brest-Litovsk on September 18 the German NewsBureau reported smugly "On Monday,German and Soviet troop detachments

rendezvoused at Brest-Litovsk: the officersexchanged greetings".Hitler entered Danzig in triumph and made

a seemingly conciliatory speech directed atBritain and France on September 19.

Heavy air raids were directed againstWarsaw on Sunday September 24 to preparethe way for the ground forces of vonKuchler's 3rd Army and von Reichenau's 10thArmy who were to attack the following day.

Surviving Polish forces began to fight theirway towards Romania and Hungary, coun

tries that at the time were still neutral andeventually some 120,000 managed to escape

to serve with the Allies.Warsaw capitulated on September 27, andon the same day Hitler summoned hisgenerals to a conference in Berlin and toldthem that he planned to invade France anddemanded to know how long it would takefor them to prepare for the attack.

Ten Polish divisions trapped near Modlinnorth of Warsaw were finally forced to

ABOVE:A young Polish

soldier takes aim

through the fork of a

tree. He carries the

pack , blanket and

shovel that make up full

marching order, a

burden for men going

into act ion.

LEFT:General Guderian

discusses boundaries

with a Soviet tank

officer following the link

up between German

an d Russian forces in

eastern Poland.



BLITZKRIEG

surrender on September 28. By now Germanand Soviet troops had reached the demarcation line that split Poland in two. A day latervon Ribbentrop and Molotov met in Moscowto modify the non-aggression pact betweenthe two countries. It was agreed that the

Soviet Union would be given a free hand inLithuania and would retain Belorussia andUkrainian Poland. In exchange Germany wasgiven the whole of ethnic Poland.

In Paris on September 30 GeneralWladyslaw Sikorski formed a government inexile. He later formed an army from Polishexpatriates and soldiers who had escaped. Itwas initially under French command andlater the surviving 20,000 men served with

distinction with the British Army. They wouldfight heroically in North Africa and Europe.

ABOVE:The victory parade in Warsaw. The

perfect drill by men who had been in action only

days earlier is almost a visual metaphor for

German military efficiency.

When the fighting ended on the coast three

Polish destroyers and two submarines slippedpast the Kriegsmarine blockade on October 1and eventually escaped to Great Britain. The4,000 men of the Polish Navy on the tiny Helpeninsula commanded by Rear-AdmiralUnrug surrendered that day.

The last vestige of resistance in Polandended by October 5. Among the units thatkept up the fight to the last was a mixedsquadron of unarmed RWD Model 8 and PWS

26 training/liaison aircraft. The pilots werestill attacking German ground troops with



BLITZKRIEG

Above: The Fuhrer greets his victors. There would

be more triumphs in the next three years feeding

an illusion of invincibility that would perish in the

snows of Russia.

hand grenades they threw from their cock

pits in a final gesture of defiance.On Friday October 6 Hitler visited the men

of the 8th Army outside Warsaw and ordereda parade of the men who had taken part inthe fighting in the Polish capital. The OKWreported that morning that the last remnantsof the Polish army, approximately 8,000 menunder General Kleeberg, surrendered atRock east of Deblin.

The campaign had cost the Germans 8,082

killed, 27,278 wounded and 5,029 missing.Compared to the grim butcher' s bill of World

War I these losses seemed minute. The SovietUnion lost 737 dead and 1,859 wounded.

The Poles lost 70,000 killed and 130,000wounded while the survivors marched intogrim captivity. They had been unable tomobilise their full strength from September

1 and so had only 540,000 men and 160 tanksin the field. Crucially they had been let downby Anglo French forces in the West.

At the close of the campaign in PolandGuderian derived considerable satisfactionfrom the report that at one time only 25 percent of German vehicles were out of actionth ro u g h m ech an ica l p ro b lem s . Th ePanzerwaffe had come a long way from theunreliable vehicles that had crawled into

Austria only eighteen months before.After action analysis established that the



BLITZKRIEG

<

<

ABOVE:Under international supervision the bodiesof Polish officers shot by the Russians at Katyn in1939 are disinterred for identification in April1943. The crime, not-untypical of the Soviet Unionunder Stalin, would test the cohesion of the Allies.

performance of the Light Divisions had beendisappointing, they had neither the clout of an armoured division, nor the numbers of an

infantry division or motorised rifle division.After Poland Panzer divisions were each

assigned a Luftwaffe liaison unit with its ownsignals vehicles to maintain contact withsupporting bombers and fighters.

Following the defeat of Poland bothGermany and the USSR made considerableefforts to exterminate the Polish political,military and intellectual leadership. In thewoods in the Ukraine at Katyn close to

Smolensk the Soviet secret police killed 4,500Polish officers they had captured. In April1943 the Germans found the mass graves inthe woods. The prisoners' hands had beenbound and they had been shot in the back of the head at close range. A neutral commission examined the site and agreed with theGermans that these were the bodies of mencaptured in 1939 by the Red Army when itinvaded eastern Poland. In addition to thesemurders the Soviet Union deported almost1,700,000 Poles to Siberia.

In western Poland as the invasion was stillunderway the Germans instituted the

Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion - theExtraordinary Pacification Action or ADAktion - on the orders of the Governor-General of Poland Hans Frank and his deputy

Re: Informing family members ofcasualties:

We have cause to point out that the processof informing people of casualties to theirfamilies (deaths, missing-in-action, severe

wounds) must be carried out in a fittingmanner. A few personal words and anacknowledgement of the achievements ofthe deceased, missing or wounded personare particularly comforting.



BLITZKRIEG

Artur Seyss-Inquart. Under their directionbetween September 1959 and June 1940,2,000 Polish men and women were apprehended and executed. The first execution of 107 men took place in Wawer, a town nearWarsaw, on December 27, 1959.

They were the first of about three millionwho would die. During the war Poland lost45 per cent of her doctors, 57 per cent of herlawyers, 40 per cent of her academics, 50 percent of her engineers, 185 of her clergy andmost of her journalists. The Germansdeported approximately 2,000,000 Polish menand women for forced labour in the Reich and

Occupied France working in factories, farmsor on defences.

On Sunday October 1, 1959 the BritishPrime Minister Winston Churchill broadcasting to the world summed up the feelingsof the West. "Poland has again been overrunby two of the great Powers which held her inbondage for 150 years, but were unable toquench the spirit of the Polish nation. Theheroic defence of Warsaw shows that the soulof Poland is indestructible, and that she willrise again like a rock which may for a spellbe submerged by a tidal wave, but whichremains a rock."

T 33 was a SP howitzer that equippedGerman infantry battalions. It combined the

PzKpfw I chassis.:y, top heavy and

is a very effectivethe gun was

sis and finally on a



FALL WESERUBUNGThe basic aim is to lend the operation the character of a peaceful

occupation, designed to protect by force of arms the neutrality of

the Northern countries...Any resistance which is nevertheless

offered will be broken by all means available.

Fuhrer Directive 10a March 1, 1940

On Wednesday November 29, 1939 theUSSR attacked Finland. The Sovietleader Joseph Stalin had already

established with the Nazi foreign ministerJoachim von Ribbentrop that the Baltic Statesof Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were in theSoviet sphere of influence. In October 1939 a

"mutual assistance pact" was agreed betweenthe USSR and Latvia. In June 1940, while theworld watched the German invasion of theWest, the USSR effortlessly gathered up thethree tiny states.

Finland however was a different customer.Stalin saw the close proximity of the Finnish

ABOVE:Curiosity draws Danish women and children to German vehicles following the invasion.

66



BLITZKRIEG

border to Leningrad, the second city of theUSSR, as a threat. He offered a mutual assistance treaty and demanded that Finland cedeareas of the Karelian Isthmus close toLeningrad. Finland refused on both countsand without warning the USSR attacked.

Finland had a peacetime army of barely30,000 men grouped in nine divisionscomposed of three infantry regiments.Finland had 60 largely obsolete tanks, 150aircraft and 22 anti-aircraft guns.

In the bitter winter of 1939 - 40, reserves

were mobilised and 15 Finnish divisions wentinto action inflicting heavy defeats on 45Soviet divisions. At Suomussalmi in Kareliaon January 5, 1940 outnumbered Finnish skitroops of the 9th Division under ColonelSiilasvuo counter-attacked the Soviet 163rdand 44th Divisions and destroyed them. TheSoviet forces lost 27,500 men killed or frozen

to death, 50 tanks as well as artillery andvehicles. The Finnish casualties were 900

dead and 1,770 wounded.In Germany officers in the OKW noted theincompetent performance of the Soviet divisions and their poor equipment.

The Soviet 10th and 20th Heavy Tank Brigades equipped with multi-turreted T-28also suffered heavy losses from the smallnumber of Finnish anti-tank gun crews onthe Mannerheim Line. They nicknamed theclumsy vehicles "The Mail Train".

In February 1940 the Allied War Councildecided to send a 50,000 strong expeditionaryforce to support Finland. As it was beingassembled the Soviet Union committed moreforces to the attack.

Built on the reinforced chassis of the GAZ-AAAcommercial truck the BA-10 first appeared in

the invasion of Poland bythe USSR in 1939 and in 1941 large numberswere captured by the Germans. They used themfor anti-partisan operations. Surviving vehicleswere stripped down by Soviet engineers andused as armoured- personnel carriers.



BLITZKRIEG

T-28

Though a medium tank, with its three turrets the T-28d to observers in Moscow

e May Day parade superficially like a heavy tank,went through four modifications during itsaction run from 1933 to 1940.

by the time of the Winter War against Finland theree two T-28 Brigades, the 10th and 20th Heavy TankBrigades. In an attempt to improve the level of defencethe frontal armour on the hull and turret was increasedfrom 50mm (1.96in) to 80mm (3.14in) and the rearand sides to 40mm (1.57in) by adding additional"screened armour". The weight increased to 32,510kg

Despite heavy losses between February 1and 13 the massively reinforced NorthwestFront under General Semyon Timoshenkocomposed of the 7th Army under GeneralMerestokov and 13th Army under GeneralGrendal punched through the defences of theMannerheim Line that covered the KarelianIsthmus north of Leningrad. Finland wascrushed by sheer weight of numbers. TheSoviet Union eventually forced her to capit

ulate on March 12,1940. The Winter War hadcost the Russians 200,000 men, nearly 700

aircraft and 1,600 tanks. The Finns lost 25,000men and were forced to sign a treaty onMarch 15, 1940 in which they ceded the cityof Viborg, the Karelian Isthmus and otherterritory.

On February 16, 1940 a boarding partyfrom the destroyer HMS Cossack hadreleased 299 British merchant sailors heldprisoner aboard the German supply ship KMS

Altmark sheltering in Jossing Fjord in

Norway.In 1940 Norway was neutral and German

68



BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE:The slim fuselage of the Dornier Do17, the

fast medium bomber and reconnaissance aircraftnicknamed the "Flying Pencil".

BELOW:An E Boat on pat rol . Ideal for ope rati ons

in the Baltic these fast torpedo boats would laterextend their operations to the Channel.



BLITZKRIEG

3

cargo ships used her ice free port of Narvik to collect high-grade Swedish iron ore for thewar industries of the Ruhr. The Britishconsidered mining the coastal waters to

disrupt this traffic and even making a landingat Narvik. With two Fuhrer Directives onFebruary 26 and March 1 Hitler forestalledthese moves with Fall N, Case N for North.The invasion plans were given the code nameOperation Weserubung - Weser Exercise, aname that sounded like a simple rivercrossing exercise.

Weserubung originally scheduled for March20 was quite simply the invasion of Denmark and Norway.

The Danes had a tiny Army of 14,000 men.

ABOVE:The smashed hull of the Tribal Class

destroyer HM S Eskimo hit by bombs off Norway.

She limped back to Britain, was rebuilt and

survived the war to be scrapped at Troon in

Scotland in 1949.

The Royal Danish Navy of 3,000 hadsubmarines, torpedo boats and two elderlycoastal defence vessels the Niels, Juel andPeder Skram. They also manned the forts andcoastal defences. The Royal Danish Air Forcehad 50 mostly obsolete aircraft.

At 04.15 on April 9, 1940 two Germanmotorised brigade groups from the XXXI

Corps commanded by General Kaupischcrossed the north German border with

70



BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE:Smoke rises above Oslo airport as Ju52

transport aircraft shuttle in German troops in the

near bloodless take over of the Norwegian

capi ta l .

RIGHT:German mountain troops with an MG34 on

an AA mount aboard a small vessel making itswa y up the Norwegian coast.

Denmark. Assisted by parachute and airlanding attacks on the airfields and the keybridges between the islands they quicklyoverwhelmed the country. The airborneattack at 05.00, history's first parachuteattack, secured the unarmed fortress of Madneso and soon afterwards the important

airport of Aalborg in northern Jutland.Captain Gericke commanding 4th Company1 Fallschirmjager Regiment captured the 3-kilometre (2.175 mile) long bridge linking theDanish islands of Falster and Funen. By 06.00Copenhagen was in German hands. TheDanish forces had only been able to offertoken resistance and suffered 13 killed and24 wounded. The Danes were obliged toaccept the presence of the invaders, howeverthe government remained in place with thecourts and police under its control. Ring



BLITZKRIEG

RIGHT: AS German

forces landed inNorwayNorwegian, Frenchand British forcesattempted to blocktheir advance.Halted atLillehammer theAllies were forcedback and landingsat Namsos werealso counterattacked.

urn MK 1

The Glos ter Gladiator entered service inle last biplane fighter

Air Arm (FAA). Twosquadrons, No 263 and No 804

ators took partin the Norwegian campaign. Some aircraft

ated off frozen lake Lesjaskog whenairfields were not available or had been

bombed. The Sea Gladiator had a catapultpoint, arrester hook and stowage for a

dinghy. When it had been withdrawn fromfront line service it was used for liaison andrneteorological work until 1944.

LEFT:Gebirgsjager in the snow.German mountain troops trainedin Bavaria and Austria and wereexperts in winter warfareoperations and climbing. By1945 they would have served inNorway, Crete and Russia, in1942 climbing Mt Elbrus, thehighest mountain in Europe.

72



BLITZKRIEG

73



BLITZKRIEG

=§

Frederik IX who remained in the countryprovided a focus for loyalty and until August1943 the government retained some degreeof independence.

Denmark was effectively a stepping stone

for the Germans for the invasion of Norway.The German forces intended for this operation, commanded by Colonel General Niklausvon Falkenhorst, were divided into fivegroups.

Group I with ten destroyers carrying the139th Gebirgsjager Regiment were to land atNarvik in the north. Group II with the heavycruiser RMS Hipper and four destroyers delivered the 138th Gebirgsjager Regiment to

Trondheim. Group III composed of twobattalions of the 69th Division would land at

ABOVE:A 2cm Flak 30 AA gun with range finder

covers German shipping in a Norwegian fjord.

The gun had a maximum vertical range of 2,000

metres and could be depressed for use against

ground targets.

RIGHT:Endless columns of German troops march

into Oslo watched by small crowds.

Bergen from the light cruisers RMS Koln andRMS Konigsberg, the Gunnery Training shipRMS Bremse and the depot ship RMS KarlPeters. Group IV at Kristians and Arendalcomposed of one battalion of the 310thRegiment was to land from the light cruiser

RMS Karlsruhe and the depot ship RMSTsingtau. Group V made up of two battalions



BLITZKRIEG



BLITZKRIEG

LEFT:German airborne and naval forces

effectively secured southern Norway in a

series of la nd in gs . Thou gh the Royal

Navy was a far more powerful force thanthe Kriegsmarine the Germans had the

advantage of superior air power which

they used very effectively to move troops

and attack enemy concentrations.

RIGHT:Under pressure on the ground and in the

air the Allies were forced to withdraw, though the

Norwegian King and the country's gold reserves

were safely evacuated to Britain from Andalsnes

aboard the cruiser HMS Devonshire. Only in the

north at Narvik were the Germans suffering

losses on land and particularly at sea.



BLITZKRIEG

'7- J L

Ju52/3MG7ET h e rugged Tante Ju" - Auntie Junkers -

with its distinctive corrugated fuselagewas the transport workhorse for the

Luftwaffe throughout the war. A total of4,850 were built and ironically the largestoperator of the type after the Germans was

over 80 captured orift. The USAAF had one Ju52

gnation C-79 andthe RAF had two. It was aboard Ju52s that

• were carried to Cretein the assault in 1 9 4 1 .

of the 163rd Division would land at Oslo, theNorwegian capital, where they would beassisted by airborne forces. The Oslo Groupwould be supported by the pocket battleship

RMS Lutzow (formerly the Deutschland), theheavy cruiser RMS Blucher and light cruiserRMS Emden.

They would be backed by the XFliegerkorps commanded by Lt General HansGeissler with 290 bombers, 40 Stukas, 100fighters and 70 floatplanes. In addition theLuftwaffe corps had 500 Ju52 transports thatallowed troops and equipment to be movedacross mountain ridges or deep fjords.

Norway, like Finland, was not a nationprepared to accept invasion and though her

forces were not fully mobilised they put up atough and very creditable resistance. Thepeacetime strength of the Norwegian Armywas six divisions that would on mobilisation

be expanded to a force of 56,000. The bulk of the divisions were concentrated in the south,the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th close to the capitalOslo, while the 5th was based nearTrondheim and the 6th at Narvik.

The Navy that had been partially mobilisedin 1939 had four new escort destroyers, a newminelayer, two large but outmoded coastaldefence vessels, three small pre-1918destroyers and about 40 smaller vessels. Thecoastal forts partially manned and the navalair force brought the total mobilised

77



BLITZKRIEG

manpower of the navy to 5,000.The Air Force had 40 aircraft, only 16 of

which were modern and the navy had sixmodern and about 20 older types.

One of the first and most dramatic acts of resistance was by the coastal defencebatteries at Oscarborg and in the Drobak

Narrows who acting on their own initiativeopened fire on the German warships undercommand of Rear Admiral Oskar Rummetzand then launched a pattern of torpedoes.Two hit and sank the modern 13,000 tonheavy cruiser RMS Blucher in Drobak fjord.The pocket battleship RMS Lutzow was alsodamaged and forced to turn back. The shipshad come into range as they carried troopsand equipment to land at Oslo. The illustrated

multilingual Nazi propaganda magazineSignal would later feature the operation in

ABOVE AND RIGHT:German infantry from Group V

ride in freight trucks as a train carries them

deeper into Norway. Ships, aircraft and trains

were used by the invaders to cross the rugged

terrain.

dramatic three-dimensional maps that even

showed the loss of Blucher. Germany wasafter all at war and losses are inevitable - anacceptable price for final victory. Germanywas now conquering whole countries for thesort of losses that would have been incurredin a fruitless offensive on the Western Frontin World War I.

The men of Group V led by Major GeneralErwin Engelbrecht managed to land at Oslo,seized half of the city and crucially Fornebu

airfield. Early on the afternoon of April 9 Ju52transports began to fly in reinforcements.

78



BLITZKRIEG

79



BLITZKRIEG

RIGHT: Following

the destruction

of their shipping

in two attacks

by the Royal

Navy the

German forces

at Narvik were

forced back

against the

Swedish border

and were close

to defeat in the

spring of 1 9 4 0 .

LEFT:A J U 5 2 circles above Fallschirmjager on

the Narvik drop zone as reinforcements areparachuted in.

80



BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE:German gunners man a captured

No r we g ia n coastal defence gun covering the

approaches to Oslo.

LEFT:A Gebirgsjager with a Solothurn MG30 light

machine gun. A special trigger allowed single

shots or bursts to be fired.

At Bergen the light cruiser RMS Konigsbergwas crippled by two 210mm shells fired by acoastal battery. Unable to put to sea she wassunk by aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm on April11. Earlier naval actions offshore should havegiven the Norwegian government warningthat the country was about to be attacked. Onthe morning of April 8 the Polish submarineOrzel had sunk the German transport Rio de

Janeiro off Kristiansand and the survivors hadtold the Norwegians that they were the first

wave of troops that the Fuhrer was sendingto the aid of Norway.

The delays imposed by the defences on theGerman task force at Oslo gave Ring HaakonVII and the Norwegian Royal family enoughtime to escape. Eventually they went viaAndalsnes to Great Britain taking with them

the Norwegian gold reserves aboard thecruiser HMS Devonshire. A NorwegianGovernment in exile headed by the Ring wasestablished in London on May 5.

Earlier Ring Haakon had refused to accepta government headed by the Norwegian NaziVidkun Quisling stating that he would ratherabdicate than endorse the Norwegian traitor.

On April 8 the men of the 15,900 ton heavycruiser RMS Admiral Hipper encountered the

1,345 ton destroyer HMS Glowwormcommand ed by Lieut enant Commande r



BLITZKRIEG

The man whose name would become aby-word for treachery was born in

Fyresdal, Telemarken on July 18, 1 887.Lauritz Vidkun Abraham Quisling, the futureleader of the Norwegian Fascist NationalUnion Party, graduated from theNorwegian Military Academy as a juniorofficer in 1 9 11 . Between 192 2 and 19 26he worked with Fridtjof Nansen, the

scientist and Polar explorer. Enteringpolitics he became Foreign Minister in1931. Two years later he established theFascist Nasjonol Samling party, at this timeFascism enjoyed a considerable followingin Europe since it was seen as a force tocombat Communism and sustain nationaland religious values in the face of aninternational and atheistic philosophy.However the liberal tradition in Norwayproduced only 10,000 party members.Following the German invasion in 19 40Quisling declared himself Prime Ministerand on February 1, 1942 he was madeMinister President by the ReichCommissioner for Norway, Josef Terboven.He quarrelled with Terboven, took sharpmeasures against his opponents andcollaborated in the round up of Jews.

After the war he surrendered to thenewly restored Norwegian government,was arrested, tried, found guilty of treasonand shot in Oslo on October 2 4 , 19 45 .His conduct during the war did much todistract the Norwegian public fromaddressing the responsibility of thePresident Nygaardsvold, Foreign MinisterDr Halvdan Koht and Defence MinisterLjunborg for the country's lack ofpreparedness in 1940.

Gerard Roope. The destroyer had becomedetached from escorting the battle cruiserHMS Renown off Norway during a search fora man lost overboard. In a short but heroicaction the German sailors watched as underheavy fire the destroyer closed the range withthe cruiser and rammed her before finallysinking. The damaged warship was forced toreturn to Germany, but only one officer and30 crew members of Glowworm survived.Roope was awarded a posthumous VictoriaCross. Dramatic photographs taken fromaboard the Admiral Hipper appeared inSignal, an indisputable record of heroism of the captain and crew of the destroyer.

The German forces who had landed at Oslopushed inland and linked up with Group II

82



was split between Lt General Massycommanding Allied Forces Central Norwayand North Norway under Admiral Lord Cork and Orrery.

At Andalsnes the British 148th Brigade

commanded by Brigadier Morgan pushedinland along the line of the railway to Osloand at Lillehammer encountered the German163rd Infantry Division and was forced back.The Allies evacuated the port on April 30.

The Anglo French 146th Brigade thatlanded at Namsos was commanded by thedashing Major General Carton de Wiart VC.Wounded in World War I he now sported apiratical black eye patch. It was persuaded bythe Norwegian commander General Ruge tomove south to assist Norwegian troops

LEFT: A German diagram shows how KMS

Admiral Hipper manoeuvred to avoid the

torpedoes fired by the destroyer HMS Glowworm.

The ship then went on to ram the cruiser.

ABOVE:Following the attack on April 18 some ofthe 30 survivors, seen through a gun sight on

Hipper, cling to the sinking remains of HMS

Glowworm.

and III. Southern Norway passed underGerman control by April 16. However in thenorth the French, Polish and British forcesthat had originally been intended for Finlandwere landed near Narvik on April 15, a day

later at Namsos and on April 18 at Andalsnes.Allied operational responsibility for Norway



BLITZKRIEG

RENAULT R-35

D eveloped theWorld Wa r I vintage Renault FT 17. By

1940 1,600 had been built. The tank wasslow and underpowered and the dumpy37mm Modele 1916 gun was not powerfulenough to penetrate the armour of mostGerman tanks. The French took R-35s toNarvik where some were abandoned after

were• carriers,

the turretswere removed and incorporated into bunkers

RIGHT:Fallschirmjager of the 1st Bn 1st ParachuteRgt (FJR 1) gather at the Bjornfjell ski resortabove Narvik.

holding Lillehammer but was forced back.French 5th Demi-Brigade Chasseurs Alpinsarrived on April 24 but were unable to haltthe withdrawal and the port was evacuatedon May 2.

At Narvik the German forces surprised theelderly coastal defence ships Eidsvold and

Norge and landed, obtaining the surrender of

Colonel Konrad Sundlo, a Quisling. Howeverin two naval actions on April 9 and April 13,1940 the Royal Navy had attacked destroyersand cargo ships. The British accounted fornine destroyers and seven transportsincluding the German ammunition ship RMS

Rauenfels that blew up. In the first attack theRoyal Navy had suffered losses including the



BLITZKRIEG

85



BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE: JU52Sfly in formation from a base in

Germany. The tough versatile aircraft would serve

throughout the war in parachute assault and

evacuation and resupply operations.

destroyer HMS Hardy and the death of itsCaptain and the commander of the 2ndDestroyer Flotilla, Captain B. A.W. Warburton-Lee, who was awarded a posthumous VC.

In the second attack the Royal Navy cameback in force with the battleship HMSWarspite as well as destroyers and sank theremaining German ships commanded byCommodore Paul Bonte. There was jubilationin Paris and London as the Germans underGeneraloberst Eduard Dietl were nowtrapped in Narvik.

The German soldiers and sailors were reinforced by parachute troops including men of

BELOW:A Luftwaffe ground controller waves a

Swastika flag to delineate the drop zone for an

incoming transport aircraft at Narvik. Flags were

used signal to bombers and transport aircraft andmark the limit of an advance.

RIGHT: Immaculate in his blue grey Luftwaffe

service dress a Fallschirmjager officer with FJR 1

addresses his men following their landing.

the 137th Gebirgsjager Regiment who hadreceived a crash parachute course. The 2,600sailors now trapped ashore were equippedwith 8,000 rifles and 325 machine guns takenfrom the Norwegian Army 6th Division depotat Elvegardsmoen and became "MountainMarines".

A jo i n t Fr en ch and Po l i sh fo rceco mm an de d by Lt Ge ne ra l Clau deAuchinleck, who would later serve withdistinction in North Africa, landed in theNarvik area between April 28 and May 7.

French and Polish troops under GeneralMarie Emile Bethouart grouped as the 1 er

86



BLITZKRIEG

Chasseur Light Division included the 27thChasseur Demi-Brigade, the 15th ForeignLegion Demi-Brigade and the 1st CarpathianChasseur Demi-Brigade composed of Polishmountain troops who had escaped in 1939.

The British 24th Guards Brigade underMajor General P. J. Mackesy had in fact beenin place at Harstad on the offshore island of Hinnoy since April 15, however Mackesy wasreluctant to commit it against the Germanforces. For his lack of initiative he was sackedby Admiral Lord Cork and Orrery.

LEFT: GeneralEduard Dietl, the

victor at Narvik,

wh o was nearly

defeated but was

saved by events

in France in June

1 9 4 0 .

87





BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE LEFT: A G e r m a n

platoon hunches behind a

PzKpfw I as it grind s

forward towards a

Norwegian town.

ABOVE:The tank accelerates

and soldiers run to keep

pace. They have blankets

strapped to the mess tins on

their leather load carrying

equipment.

LEFT:Smoke rises from a

burning farmhouse as

German soldiers move down

a snow covered track in

No r wa y.



assault, developments in France and the LowCou nt r ie s be ga n to force the pa ce .Auchinleck gave orders that the force shouldevacuate Narvik but the French generalpointed out that this operation would beeasier if they defeated the Germans in Narvik.

On May 28 the 15th Demi-Brigade of theForeign Legion with the Norwegian 6th

Division finally captured Narvik - it was thefirst Allied victory of World War II. TheGermans lost ten guns and 150 machineguns and were pushed back into a pockettrapped by the 1st Chasseur Division.

On June 7 the Germans discovered that theAllies had withdrawn as events in Francewere now making Narvik a side show.

PZKPFWV (NEUBAUFAHRZEUG)

This tank designated Panzer V developedfrom the Grosstraktor entered service in

1935. It reflected the idea that an "independent" tank with several gun andmachine gun turrets could operate like aland-based warship as part of a breakthrough force. The British pioneered the

concept and it was copied by France,Germany (in secret) and the USSR. Theonly independent tanks to see action wereSoviet medium and heavy designs in 1941.Only three PzKpfw V were built and thesewere sent to Norway and photographed inOslo - causing Allied intelligence officersconsiderable concern. One tank wasdestroyed in Norway and the survivorsbecame ornaments at the German Panzer

RIGHT:A German "Marine", a sailor from asunken destroyer with Norwegian leather

equipment and tunic. These men fought at Narvikand would later qualify for the Narvik Shield.



BLITZKRIEG

ABOVE: A wartime map from the magazine Signal

shows how ships and aircraft were used to move

troops to Norway in Fall Weserubung. The

invasion was described as a pre-emptive move to

prevent British forces taking over Norway.

However before they departed they demolished the town's port installations and orehandling facilities.

In Berlin the OKW had considered orderingtheir force to cross in Sweden to acceptinternment in this neutral neighbour ratherthan face surrender. Hitler ordered that theyshould hold on. His "stand and fight" ordersaved the day and would become his panacea

for grave tactical situations later in the warwhere withdrawal or manoeuvre was thecorrect and humane course.

Resistance in Norway ended on June 9,1940 with an armistice signed by Major-General Otto Ruge for the Norwegian Army.Norwegian soldiers were allowed to go home,as were Norwegian professional officers whoundertook not to take up arms against theThird Reich. Ruge refused to make this

undertaking and was imprisoned inKonigstein Castle.

91



BLITZKRIEG



BLITZKRIEG

LEFT:A BMW R75 motorcycle crew in grey

rubberised waterproof coats wait to board a

coastal ferry at Narvik.

About 40,000 Norwegians were imprisonedor sent to concentration camps, of whom

about 2,000 including 700 Jews died. Afurther 500 Norwegians were killed orexecuted for resistance activities. Total warrelated civilian losses in the Norway duringWorld War II were 8,000. Not all Norwegiansresisted the German invaders. About 5,000volunteers joined the Finnish Army andWaffen-SS and made up the 5th SS-Panzerdivision " Wiking" and the Waffen-SSDivision "Nordland" which fought on the

Eastern Front. For many men in occupiedEurope combat against the USSR and

ABOVE:German troops in Norway armed with a

9m m MP34 Steyr-Solothurn SMG taken from

Austrian police stocks in 1938.

Communism was a cause with which theycould find sympathy.

The conquest of Denmark and Norway hadcost the Germans 2,700 men, over 200 aircraftand a number of their most modern warships.The British had lost 4,400, the Norwegians1,355 and the French and Poles 530. Thoughthe Royal Navy had lost the aircraft carrierHMS Glorious and with it 1,500 men, thedepletion of the Kriegsmarine that was a farsmaller force would weigh significantly in theplans for the invasion of Britain that were

only considered after the Fall of France inJune 1940.



BLITZKRIEG



BLITZKRIEG

INDEX

7 TP, 33, 3410th Heavy Tank Brigade

(Soviet), 67, 6820th Heavy Tank Brigade,

(Soviet), 67, 68Aalborg, 71

Altmark, RMS, 68America, 25Andalsnes, 81, 83Annapol, 57, 60

Anschluss, 12, 26Anti-Comintern Pact, 31Anti-Semitism, 28Appeasement, 28

Armee de l'Air, 35Army 1st, 56Army 3rd, 32, 50, 51, 54Army 3rd (French), 35,Army 4th, 32,51,52,56,60,

61Army 4th (French), 34Army 7th (Soviet), 68Army 8th, 46, 52Army 10th, 32, 50, 51, 54,

60Army 10th (Soviet), 58Army 11th (Soviet), 58Army 12th (Soviet), 58Army 13th (Soviet), 68

Army 14th, 32, 46, 49, 50,51, 56, 57, 60Army Corps, 22nd, 57Army Group North, 51, 56Army Group South, 51Auchinleck, Claude, 86,90,

91Austria, 25, 26

BA-10, 67Baltic, 35, 69Baltic Sea, 19Beck, Jozef, 36Beisfjord, 90

Belorussia, 62Belorussian Front, 58Bergen, 81Berlin, 61, 91Beskid Mountains, 49Bethouart, Marie, 88, 90Bfl09, Messerschmitt, 20,

30, 37, 38Blaskowitz, Johannes, 32

Blitzkrieg, 6,7,9, 32, 51 Blucher, RMS, 77, 78Bobruisk Army, 58Bock, Fedor von, 32, 51Bofors, 33, 58

Bohusz-Szyska, 90Bolshevism, 28Boltuc, 46

Bonte, Paul, 86Bortonowski, 28

Bremse, RMS, 74Brest-Litovsk, 50, 56, 61Briesen von, 54Britain, 61British Army, 62

Brygada Kawalerii, 10th,47

BT, 21Buckeberg, 23Bug, 34, 56, 60, 61

Bund Deutscher Madel, 18Bzura ,34 ,48 ,54 ,56 ,57 ,60

Carden-Loyd, 11, 33, 34Carpathian Army, 28, 57,

60Chamberlain, Neville, 23,27

Chasseurs Alpins, 84Chasseur Demi-Brigade, 90Chelmno, 46Churchill, Winston, 65Ciechanow, 50Cologne, 26Communism, 31Conde, 34Copenhagen, 71Corps 1st, 49Corps 17th, 49

Corps 22nd, 49, 50Cossack, HMS, 68Cracow, 32, 51Cracow Army, 28, 47, 49,

57Crete, 72Czestochowa, 49

Dab-Biernacki, 28, 56Daladier, Eduard, 27Danish Air Force, 70Danish Army, 70Danish Navy, 70Danzig, 8, 17, 19, 46, 61

De Gaulle, Charles, 10Deblin, 63Denmark, 15, 70

Devonshire, HMS, 81Dietl, Eduard, 86, 94Dornier Do 17, 69Drobak, 78Dunajec, 49, 52

E Boat, 69 Effingham, HMS, 90Eidsvold, 84Elbrus, Mount, 72Elvegardsmoen, 86

Elvenes, 90 Emden, RMS, 77Engelbrecht, Erwin, 78

Enigma, 26, 28, 45 Eskimo, HMS, 70Esquivas, 21Estonia, 66

Fabrycy, Kazimierz, 28Falkenhorst, Niklause von,

74Fallschirmjager, 80Fallschirmjager Rgt 1, 71Falster, 71Finland, 66, 77Flak 2cm, 74Flak, 8.8cm, 20, 29Flamethrower, 44Fleet Air Arm, 72, 81Fliegerkorps VIII, 39Fliegerkorps X, 77Foreign Legion, 88, 90, 91Fornebu, 78France, 15, 23, 24, 25, 61,

62Franco, Francisco, 20Frank, Hans, 65Frederik IX, Ring, 74French Army, 34Fuhrer, 17, 26, 36, 66, 70,

81Fuller, J.F.C., 10Funen, 71

Gasiorowski, 49Gebirgsjager, 72, 81Gebirgsjager Rgt 137, 86Gebirgsjager Rgt 138, 74Gebirgsjager Rgt 139, 74Geissler, Hans, 77Gericke, 71Glorious, HMS, 94Gloster Gladiator, 72Glowworm, HMS, 81, 82,

83Gneisenau, RMS, 42Goebbels, Joseph, 6Gratangerfjord, 90

Great Britain, 23, 25, 62Grendal, 68Guderian, Heinz, 7,12, 32,

42 , 45, 60, 61, 63Guernica, 2 1, 22

Haakon VII, Ring, 81Hardy, HMS, 86Harstad, 88Heinkel, He 111 ,31 ,37

Hipper KMS, 74, 81 , 82, 83Hitler, Adolf, 4, 12, 15, 16,

1 7 , 1 9 , 2 2 , 2 5 , 3 1 , 3 6 , 6 1 ,63

Hitler Jugend, 18Hobart, Percy, 10Hoepner, Erich, 32

Horses, 41Hrubieszow, 57Hungary, 57, 61

Infantry Division 30th, 54Italy, 21 , 25, 28

Japan, 28Jossing Fjord, 68Jublenka Pass, 45Jun ker s Ju52, 20, 77, 78,80Junkers Ju87, 5, 20, 30, 48Jutland, 71

Karelian Isthmus, 67, 68Karl Peters, RMS, 74Karlsruhe, RMS, 74

Kasprzycki, 49Katyn, 64Kaupisch, 70Kielce, 49Kleeberg, 63Kleist, Ewald von, 50, 57Kluge, Gunther von, 7, 32Koht, Dr Halvdan, 82Koln, RMS, 74Konigsberg, RMS, 74, 81Konigstein Castle, 91Kovalev, 58Kovel, 60Krasnik, 60

Krasnystaw, 60Kriegsmarine, 42, 62, 94Kriegsschuldluge, 15Kuchl er, Georg von, 32, 61Kummetz, Oskar, 78Kutno, 54

Kutrzeba, Tadeusz, 28, 46,56

Langner, 61Latvia, 66

Lebensraum, 19 Legion Kondor, 20, 21 Leibstandarte-SS, 57

Leningrad, 67Lesjaskog, Lake, 72Light Division, 42Lillehammer, 83, 84List, Wilhelm von, 32Lithuania, 35, 62, 66Locarno Pact, 26Lodz, 32, 50, 51Lodz Army, 28, 46, 49, 51,

56Lomza, 56

Lotnictwo Wojskowe(Polish Air Force), 30,38, 39, 58

Lowicz, 54Lubelski, 60Lublin, 60

95





• Over 100 black and whitepictures

Documents

Blitzkrieg 01 Poland and via 1939-1940