At 4:45 am, some 4 million German
troops invade Poland all along it's
1,750 mile border.
Simultaneously, the German Luftwaffe bombed
Polish airfields, and German warships and U-boats
attacked Polish naval forces in the Baltic sea.
To Hitler, the conquest of Poland would
bring Lebensraum, or "living space," for the
German people.
To neutralize the possibility that the USSR would come to
Poland’s aid, Germany signed a nonaggression pact with the
Soviet Union on August 23, 1939. In a secret clause of the
agreement, the ideological enemies agreed to divide Poland
between them. Hitler gave orders for the Poland invasion to
begin on August 26, but on August 25 he delayed the attack
when he learned that Britain had signed a new treaty with
Poland, promising military support should it be attacked.
To forestall a British intervention, Hitler turned to
propaganda and misinformation, alleging persecution of
German-speakers in eastern Poland. Fearing imminent
attack, Poland began to call up its troops, but Britain and
France persuaded Poland to postpone general mobilization
until August 31 in a last ditch effort to dissuade Germany
from war.
Shortly after noon on August 31, Hitler ordered hostilities
against Poland to begin at 4:45 a.m. the next morning
At 8 p.m. on August 31, Nazi S.S troops wearing Polish uniforms
staged a phony invasion on Germany, damaging several minor
installations on the German side of the border. They also left
behind a handful of dead concentration camp prisoners in Polish
uniforms to serve as evidence of the supposed Polish invasion.
In Poland, German forces advanced at a dizzying
rate. Employing a military strategy known as
blitzkrieg or "lightning war".
The Polish army was able to mobilize one million men but
was hopelessly outmatched. Rather than take a strong
defensive position, troops were rushed to the front to
confront the Germans and were systematically captured or
annihilated.
The Polish forces hoped to hold out long
enough so that and offensive could be
mounted against the Germans in the West,
but on September 17, Soviet forces invaded
from the East and all hope was lost.
For the fourth time in history Poland
was partitioned by its more powerful
neighbors.
In June 1941, Hitler attacked the USSR, breaking his
nonaggression with the Soviet Union, and Germany
seized all of Poland. During the German occupation,
nearly 3 million Polish Jews were killed in the Nazi Death Camps.
The Nazis also severely persecuted the
Slavic majority, deporting and executing
Poles in an attempt to destroy the
intelligentsia and Polish culture. A large Polish
resistance movement effectively fought
against the occupation with the assistance
of the Polish government-in-exile. Many exiled
Poles also fought for the Allied cause. The
Soviets completed the liberation of Poland in
1945 and established a communist
government in the nation