September 1st Danzig, 4:48 AM
The German battleship fires.
Eleven-inch shells scream toward the Polish garrison holding the peninsula.
Troops hit the dirt. A brick wall smashes inward.
A radioman transmits to the next base along the coast:
"SOS. Under fire.”
Bullets tear past.
A Polish soldier falls - the first combat casualty of a new world war.
There are German troops coming through the break in the wall.
The Poles open fire, catching the invaders in a kill zone, forcing them back.
Only 182 Polish soldiers defend this peninsula.
They're under attack from a battleship, dive bombers,
field artillery and nearly a division's worth of German soldiers.
Even the local police have thrown in with the Nazis.
But they'll hold for as long as they can.
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Mokra, Southern Poland 6:30 AM
They must have crossed the border by now, the cavalrymen think.
Nearly 10% of the Polish Army is cavalry.
Modern cavalry!
Cavalry that fights on foot, using horses to reposition and scout.
Cavalry that tows antitank guns behind them.
Cavalry that's dug into a line of trees outside the town of Mokra,
along with an infantry division and a battalion of TKS tankettes...
...waiting to meet the invasion.
Waiting is the hardest part.
The first Germans they see are motorcycle scouts.
The sides exchange fire, probing.
An hour later the armour emerges.
It's the 4th Panzer Division,
pressing forward with 25 Panzer I and IIs, firing on the move.
Autocannons set the thatched roofs of Mokra alight.
The cavalry holds fire until the panzers close,
then answer with their antitank guns.
Half-dozen tanks slew, burning, grinding to a halt.
Polish machine guns drive back the supporting infantry.
They've stopped the first wave.
Then comes another, and another.
House-to-house fighting breaks out in the village.
German armour and motorised infantry press close to the Polish positions.
Air strikes and artillery pound the woods.
With a blast of steam, an iron behemoth pulls out of the trees...
The Poles' backup, Armored Train No. 53.
Its twin cannons and machine guns open up.
Twelve German tanks go out of action.
The 4th Panzer regroups and attacks again.
Warsaw.
Another crash rattles the window.
German dive bombers have been hitting Warsaw since 8:00 AM.
Edward Rydz-Śmigły, Marshal of Poland, looks at his map.
Things are going as well as they can be, under the circumstances.
Germany is invading Poland from three of its borders:
North, south, and west.
The enemy has around 53 divisions, while Rydz-Śmigły has 40 - if that.
But at least in these early hours, the Polish defensive lines are holding.
In some places, better than that.
At Mokra, the defenders report a hundred German vehicles destroyed.
There are problems, of course.
But he has one big advantage: he doesn't need to win.
Polish strategy rested on two major pieces of diplomacy.
The first was a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union,
securing the country's eastern border and allowing the Polish Army
to prepare for the possibility of a German invasion.
After all, Poland couldn't fight a two-front war.
The second was a mutual defence pact:
signed agreements with France and Britain
to aid Poland in the event of a German invasion.
As a sweetener, Rydz-Śmigły had even given them Poland's most prized secret:
they'd cracked the German Enigma codes and reverse-engineered a machine.
He'd given each ally a copy of it earlier that year.
It was a sound strategy.
In order to invade Poland,
Hitler would need to strip divisions from the German homeland,
leaving only a token force on his western border.
If Germany violated Polish borders, the agreement stated,
France would invade from the west, forcing Hitler to withdraw his troops
and allowing Poland to counterattack.
Britain would provide bombing support.
But for the treaty to take effect,
the invasion of Poland had to be contested,
the Germans couldn't just walk in, as they had in Czechoslovakia.
As a result, Rydz-Śmigły had been forced to spread his troops thin,
ensuring that wherever the Germans crossed the border
they'd be met with resistance.
His plan called for the Polish Army to buy time with a fighting withdrawal
and regroup near Warsaw,
ready to strike once France mobilised and intervened.
But he still didn't have enough troops and it was his allies' fault.
Every time Hitler made threats,
Rydz-Śmigły had tried to sound the mobilisation,
but every time, Britain and France shut him down.
A mobilisation would give Hitler an excuse to invade, they said.
And they continued saying so even as German troops gathered on the border.
Even the week before,
when Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviets,
the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, they'd preached restraint.
Two days ago Rydz-Śmigły had enough and sounded general mobilisation,
but the British forced him to rescind it.
Now Hitler had made his own excuse, staging a fake attack on a radio station
and blaming it on Polish partisans. So much for provocation.
Luckily, Rydz-Śmigły had been secretly mobilising troops for weeks,
calling them up for "summer manoeuvres” as a cover story.
It wasn't enough, but it gave him an army.
And that was a good thing, because as a result of diplomatic pressure,
the Polish army hadn't openly mobilised until a day before the invasion.
Now just half the army had reached their positions,
and only a fraction of those were combat ready.
Poland was vastly outnumbered,
facing a mechanised opponent with more modern equipment.
The Luftwaffe's yearly budget
was larger than all Polish defence spending since 1935.
Germany had produced 800 tanks in 1938 - Poland made fifty.
But at least those fifty tanks were good tanks.
Eighty-seven percent of German armour consisted of Panzer Is and IIs,
thin-skinned training tanks outfitted for combat.
Poland's new 7TP matched the Panzer I and II for armour,
while sporting a larger long-ranged Bofors gun.
The old Polish TKS Tankettes could do little against German armour,
but the 7TPs might make some difference if they made it to the battlefield.
Still, at least things were going well... for now.
September 2nd.
Things are not going well anymore.
By the second day, it's clear that the highly mobile tactics
the Germans had field-tested in the Spanish Civil War,
what others would later call Blitzkrieg,
are outmanoeuvring and penetrating the Polish defence.
Regular army units stand their ground,
but the national guard constantly withdraws in poor order,
creating gaps in the line.
The Polish Army tries to make up lost ground in night operations,
but the fatigue of constant battle offsets any gains.
Polish troops fight, day and night, for three days straight.
And the roads are nearly impassable.
Refugees choke every roadway, getting in the way of troop movements,
raving about Nazi liquidation squads operating behind the German lines.
Dive bombers enhance the chaos, attacking soldiers and civilians alike.
Communication begins breaking down, the army doesn't have enough radios.
Tanks have to communicate with signal flags,
meanwhile German armour executes precise encirclements,
coordinated via wireless.
On September 3rd, Britain and France declare war on Germany.
But by then, German forces were precariously close to Warsaw.
But at least the 7TPs finally arrive.
September 5th Piotrków, 10:30 AM
It's the last opportunity to stall the German advance in the south.
Polish troops are retreating to regroup around Warsaw,
but if the 4th Panzer Division takes this road hub,
the door to the capital will stand open.
The day before, the 7TPs of the Polish 2nd Light Tank Battalion
had their first skirmish with the Panzer II,
and had taught the German tankers to fear their 37mm Bofors cannon.
Now, the Germans are closing on Piotrków with tanks and motorised infantry.
But there's a chance, just a chance, to cut off the bulge in the German line.
To take prisoners. To surround them.
It was time to counterattack.
Major Karpow, commander of the 2nd Light Tank Battalion orders the advance.
They surge forward on either side of the German push,
using the low hills for cover - and close to 500 metres.
The lead 7TP sights in.
The industrial chung of the gun fills the turret with acrid smoke.
They fire again. A Panzer II burns.
Autocannon rounds slap the TP7's glacis, failing to penetrate.
The Germans armour runs for the woods.
On the other flank, 7TPs tear through Panzers and armoured cars.
Germans bail out of the burning craft. The 7TPs encircle them.
The 1st Light Tank Battalion strikes in the north,
engaging a dozen tanks as they push toward the junction.
But German artillery shells begin to drop,
and there's no one following behind the 7TPs to exploit their breakthrough.
The German spearhead, though mauled, is still heading for Piotrków.
Major Karpow calls a withdrawal.
In two days of fighting, his 2nd Light Tank Battalion has destroyed 17 Panzers,
two self-propelled guns, and fourteen armoured cars.
During just this attack, Polish armour had destroyed 15 German tanks
with the loss of only seven of their own.
But that doesn't matter.
There are no Polish units ready or able to exploit the victory.
The plan remains to retreat toward Warsaw, so that's what they'll do.
September 7th Warsaw.
Marshal Rydz-Śmigły gathers his documents.
Command staff haul radios and charts.
They're evacuating to Brest along with the rest of the government.
Plans call for making Warsaw a citadel,
a stone for the Germans to break their teeth on.
But he and the rest of the government
cannot be killed in that assuredly bitter combat.
The French are already massing on Germany's western border.
Soon, he'll be managing a counterattack.
He leaves a small communications team
to forward messages on to his new headquarters.
He has no idea how mangled the lines of communication are,
how little he will know once he relocates,
and how impossible it will be to transmit orders.
The Polish Army, already hard-pressed,
is about to lose touch with its leadership.
The next day, the 4th Panzer Division reaches Warsaw.
Inside, soldiers set up concealed artillery.
Civilians dig trenches, planning to trap German tanks
and torch them with cans of gasoline.
Warsaw is preparing for a siege.
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