Making World War Official—September 1, 1939

Hittler and members of the General Staff review troops marching into Poland.  Mechanization of the German army was not complete and the tank driven blitzkrieg not yet perfected.  Much of the army, especially artillery and supply trains still moved by horse power. 

The exact beginning of the greatest cataclysm in the history—so far—is harder to pin point than you might imagine.  In the early 1930’s Japan and Italy were honing their war skills and adding to their empires with attacks on, respectively, Manchuria and Abyssinia (Ethiopia.)  The Germans and Italians on one side and to a lesser extent the Russians on the other used the Spanish Civil War as a kind of laboratory for modern war.  In 1937 Japan opened up war with China, Throughout the late 1930’s Adolph Hitler continued to blatantly re-arm in pretty much open violation of the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I and used that gathering might to cower Britain and France into acquiescing to aggressive land grabs in the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia.  All of this was part of the slide into the eventual universal conflagration known as World War II.

Americans are apt to believe the whole thing started on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese bombed  Pearl Harbor.  But of course war had raged in Europe and Asia for years.

Open up any text book and you will find an exact date for the beginning of the war—September 1, 1939.  It came just one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the German and Russian non-aggression pact that also secretly called for the division of Poland.

On the night of August 31 a small group of German operatives, dressed in Polish uniforms seized the Gleiwitz radio station in Silesia and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish.

To “prove” that attack was the work of the Poles, Franciszek Honiok, a German Silesian known for sympathizing with the Poles and who had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo was dressed in a Polish uniform and then killed by lethal injection.  His body was riddled with gunshot wounds, and left at the scene. The corpse was subsequently presented as proof of the attack to the police and press.

The reason for this elaborate but transparent ruse was to provide justification for a German declaration of war against Poland as an act of self-defense and not a violation of international law.  The hope was that the French and British, pledged to the defense of Poland, might be cowed once again and refrain from action.  As early as August 22 with preparation for the invasion of Poland in full swing Hitler told his generals, “I shall give a propaganda reason for starting the war; whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth.”

On September 1 in a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler cited the Gleiwitz incident and twenty other equally spurious episodes of Polish “aggression” against Germany and ethnic Germans in its territory.  By then the tanks were already rolling.  The long planned invasion had started across the border shortly after 4 am.

The pride of Poland was its cavalry which rode gallantly but futility against the Nazi tanks.  It was a virtual last hurrah of mounted warfare.

The Poles, who were partially mobilized as tensions grew, put up as good a defense as possible.  They hoped to hold out long enough for promised British and French intervention.  Despite inferior equipment and numbers, they slowed the highly mechanized German advance in many places.  But they were relatively helpless against German air superiority.  Their whole defense plan collapsed on September 17 when the Russians attacked from the rear.  

The Poles managed to get sizable numbers of their troops over the border to neutral Romania, including many officers of the Polish Air Force, before the country was completely over run on October 6.  Some of these troops and airmen eventually made it to Britain from which they participated as Free Polish forces in the D-Day invasion and French campaign.

Polish women farm workers killed in a Stuka attack.

On September 3 at 11:15 AM British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced on BBC Radio that the deadline of the final British ultimatum for the withdrawal of German troops from Poland expired at 11:00am and that “consequently this nation is at war with Germany”. Australia, India, and New Zealand also declared war on Germany within hours.  The French followed a few hours later.

The British and French began mobilization, but were not ready to materially aid Poland.  And they never extended their declaration of war to the second aggressive party, the Soviet Union.  There followed months of the so called Phony War as the Allies built up forces and dithered in France.  That ended when Hitler shifted his forces from the East and launched his invasion of France on May 10, 1940.  Chamberlain’s government fell and Winston Churchill became British Prime minister. 

There would be no more Phony War.

 

Remembering The Biggest Undertaking in the History of the World

Note—This event is too big to ignore.  Versions of this post have appeared annually.

When it comes to World War II, certain dates are etched indelibly into the American consciousness, even occasionally piercing the historical amnesia of young people now generations removed from the events.  December 7, Pearl Harbor day is one.  August 6 when the U.S. dropped the first Atomic Bomb making the end of the war with Japan inevitable is another.

So is June 6, known without further explanation as D-Day.

On June 6, 1944 the Allies invaded Nazi occupied France under the overall command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is the iconic event of World War II in the American memory. 

It was the largest coordinated movements of men, arms and materiel in history and had to be conducted in enough secrecy to surprise the Germans who had at least 55 divisions in France while the Allied effort could only put 8 ashore to secure the beachhead on the first day.

Nearly 2 million soldiers, sailors, and airmen were involved in the total Operation Overlord, including those landed after the first day.  195,000 Naval personnel manned 6,039 vessels including 1,200 warships and 15 hospital ships.  The United States alone shipped 7 million tons of supplies, 14 billion pounds of material including 448,000 tons of ammunition.  

Air operations in support of D-Day, which began in April, included 14,000 missions with a loss of 2000 air craft and 12,000 airmen before the landing.  127 planes were lost on D-Day alone.

On June 6th U.S. casualties were reported as 6,603 including 1,465 dead.  While these are awful numbers, there were several Civil War battles with greater dead.  The Soviets suffered more single day casualties four or five times.  And losses in some Pacific landings per men engaged were more than 5 times as high.  Total allied casualties that day among U.S. British, Canadian, Free French, and Polish troops are estimated to be in excess of 10,000.  German losses are less well documented but are estimated between four and nine thousand. 

After the beachhead was secured hundreds of thousands of men and tons of supplies landed across those sands because the Allies did not control any French port for weeks.  By July 14 over a million men had come ashore. 

But heavy German resistance confined the invaders to a small zone around the landing beaches until a breakout began on July 25. 

Once free, the Allied advance across France was remarkably swift.  Despite setbacks like the Battle of the Bulge in December and delays in getting a bridgehead across the Rhine into the German heartland, by the following April British and American units from the west met up with Soviet troops from the east.  Within a few days of that Hitler committed suicide, Berlin, and the German High Command surrendered unconditionally. 

It has been my pleasure to know several men who either fought on D-Day or who landed on the Normandy beaches over the next few days.  One of them was my late father-in-law, Art Brady. 

All of them are gone now.  Within a few years the last of the veterans of D-Day will go the way of the ghosts of Gettysburg and Belleau Wood.  The latter battle reached its peak on another June 6 in 1918 when U.S. Marines suffered their worst single day losses in history.

So much war.  So much grief.