The Germans conquered Poland in 1939. Their invasion marked the outbreak of the Second
World War. In the previous video we talked about the German view on this. In this video you will
learn about the German perspective of the occupation of Poland. Stay tuned.
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We know the Germans were ruthless during their conquest
of Poland and the subsequent occupation. Let's first look at the invasion – the Poland
Campaign or Polish Defensive War. The German armies crossed into Poland on September 1.
The campaign would last till early October. On September 7 one German soldier wrote:
Two days later he wrote setting fire to houses believed shots had come:
Straight after the Germans crossed the Polish border brutal reprisals against
civilians were carried out as soon as they met any military resistance. Now some people point out
the Polish military did commit atrocities towards ethnic Germans living in Poland. The claim that
the Polish authorities butchered ethnic Germans before the war is not true. It's nazi propaganda.
The claim that Polish soldiers killed ethnic German once the German invasion had begun ís true,
but Nazi propaganda blew it out of proportions and named it Bloody Sunday, and the Polish killings
pale in comparison to the German atrocities that already started. Reason for Polish soldiers to
kill ethnic Germans was the fear of a fifth column and in some cases it was proven these ethnic
Germans actually were picking up arms against the Polish military. Anthony Beevor wrote about:
It's a topic of a stand-alone video – I was actually hoping to record it in Bydgoszcz when I
was there at the end of 2019 but I didn't find the time to do it. Since
I do have a Polish audience I wonder how these events are regarded at in Poland.
It's interesting that the number of 58,000 dead ethnic Germans
lingered in the minds of the German people. When, in 1943, Goebbel tried to create sympathy
with the Poles, in order to showcase the far greater fear of Soviet terror, the people didn't
understand and pointed out that 58,000 Germans were killed by the Poles. This showed that
the Goebbels propaganda machine wasn't able to remake public opinion at will.
When Poland was defeated the Polish state – sometimes known as the Second
Polish Republic – was partitioned. Its former eastern territories were annexed by the USSR
according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed near the end of August 1939 between
the Nazis and the Soviets. Also Slovakia gained some small territories in the south
since they also participated in the invasion. The Western territories of Posnan and Silizia
were annexed into the Nazi Reich and fell into the zones: Danzig West Prussia, Wartheland,
Lower and Upper Silizia. Eastern Prussia got extended. The rest of Poland became the so-called
General Government (Krakow as its capital) where Poles and Jews were forced to live.
In the weeks of the German invasion and weeks after it 16,000 to 27,000 Poles were executed
by the Germans and over 500 towns and villages were burned down. The death toll would increase
in the months after. A special task force, the Einsatzgruppe, were mobilized to perform these
killings and were assisted by ethnic Germans who volunteered. Some German soldiers weren't
willing to watch the execution of women and children and walked away. German
commanders as Johannes Blaskowitz and Walther von Brauchitsch were appalled by the killings
and believed these killings undermined morale. They complained. Hitler dismissed the protests
by stating: 'one cannot wage war with Salvation Army methods'. Blaskowitz was eventually replaced.
A German WW1 veteran and devout Catholic wrote to his wife in November 1939:
This man who was stationed in Warsaw during the war intervened personally a couple of
times to have Poles released from German prisons, and, therefore befriended their families. He
even had his wife coming over to meet the Polish people which was unique in an occupied nation
where apartheid between Poles and Germans was prevelant. The letters to his wife became
a private confessional. Hosenfeld did believe the Germans had to right to rule the Poles, sharing
the nation of the ‘right of the higher culture’, so in a sense he surely was in favor of the
apartheid, yet his sense of moral restraint and humanitarian conviction remained. This was rare.
Another devout Catholic despised the Poles as he viewed them with suspicion and claimed to see:
Add-in: After the German
take-over expulsions from the German annexed, so-called 'recovered', territories – began:
619,000 Poles were resettled to the General-Government. The majority came
from Wartheland. Total number of German expelled Poles is debated by historians ranging from 1.7 to
2.5 million. During the Winter of 1939-1940 many Poles were put on trains without adquate food and
clothing. Upon leaving their house the had to make sure everything was cleaned up for the new owners.
In their place came ethnic Germans. From the Baltic states came 60,000 Volksdeutsche and
others came from Volhynia – Eastern Poland – where some of them couldn't even speak German.
German people knew violence was being committed against the Poles but by emphasising the German
deaths and the German suffering they deemed it as necessary retaliation. The German violence was
insignificant. And soon Poland wasn't a huge topic any longer. Already
mid-October 1939, Germans on the streets weren't talking about it any longer. The
dispute with Polish borders was settled. Now the Germans hoped Hitler
could restore peace with the Western Allies so that the war would be over soon.
The British rightly so didn't buy it. Hitler had spoken
the similar words when marching in the Rhineland in 1936 and at the Munich Conference in 1938.
Hitler was out for aggressive expansionism, despite to the German public it was seen as if he
was the peacemaker. He surely was not and after the Polish campaign was over he set
his eyes on the West. Plans were made to launch an invasion. More on that in a future video.