The invasion of Poland (September 1939) From 1 September 1939, the war against Poland was intended as a fulfilment of the plan described by
Adolf Hitler in his book
Mein Kampf. The main goal of the plan was to make all of
Eastern Europe into the
Lebensraum (living space) of
Greater Germany. German historian
Jochen Böhler observed that the war of annihilation did not begin with the
Final Solution, but immediately after the attack on Poland. In order to inspire rage against the Poles and trigger broad public acceptance for total war (that is, war with no legal or moral limitations), the
Goebbels propaganda machine soon published and distributed throughout Germany two books based on falsified information:
Dokumente polnischer Grausamkeit (Documents of Polish Brutality) and the
Polnische Blutschuld (Polish Blood Guilt). A
false flag operation, the
Gleiwitz incident, was organised by the German agents to serve as the
casus belli.
Wehrmacht (the German armed forces) was sent out without a formal
declaration of war "to kill without mercy and reprieve all men, women and children of the Polish race", as ordered by Adolf Hitler in his
speech to military commanders on 22 August 1939. This could be seen as an attempt to destroy the entire nation. The invading Germans believed that the
Poles were racially inferior to them.
Indiscriminate executions by firing squad From the very beginning of war against Poland, German forces carried out massacres and executions of civilians. Many of these atrocities were not properly researched after the war due to the political divide between Eastern and Western Europe during the
Cold War, wrote Böhler. Polish eyewitness accounts do not identify the German units involved; that information is traceable only through German records. Therefore, the crimes committed by the Wehrmacht (the regular German army) were often wrongly attributed to
SS operational groups in Polish historiography. It is estimated that there were two hundred executions every day in September 1939.
Reinhard Heydrich, head of the
Reich Security Main Office, complained that the rate was too slow. Typically, the mass executions were conducted in public spaces such as the town square in order to inflict terror. during the German
takeover of Poland, Records show that during the German advance across Poland 531 towns and villages were burned. By the end of September 1939 the names of settlements, dates and numbers of civilians executed by the
Wehrmacht included:
Starogard (2 September), 190 Poles, 40 of them Jews;
Świekatowo (3 September), 26 Poles;
Wieruszów (3 September), 20 Poles all Jews. On 4 September 1939 the 42nd Infantry Regiment committed the
Częstochowa massacre with 1,140 citizens or more, 150 of them Jews, murdered in wild shooting actions in several city locations, leading to a final bloodbath according to Polish reports, involving frightened and inexperienced troops opening machine gun fire at a crowd of 10,000 civilians rounded up as hostages in the Main Square. The official Wehrmacht tally listed only 96 male and 3 female victims of the so-called "anti-partisan" action in the city. In
Imielin (4–5 September), 28 Poles were killed; in
Kajetanowice (5 September), 72 civilians were massacred in revenge for two German horses killed by German friendly fire;
Trzebinia (5 September), 97 Polish citizens;
Piotrków (5 September), Jewish section of the city was set on fire;
Będzin (8 September), two hundred civilians burned to death;
Kłecko (9–10 September), three hundred citizens executed;
Mszadla (10 September), 153 Poles;
Gmina Besko (11 September), 21 Poles;
Kowalewice (11 September), 23 Poles; Pilica (12 September); 36 Poles, 32 of them Jewish;
Mielec (13 September), 55 Jews burned to death;
Piątek (13 September), 50 Poles, seven of them Jews;
Mień (13 September), 9 Poles;
Moskwin (14 September), 9 Poles. On 14–15 September about 900 Polish Jews, mostly intelligentsia, were targeted in parallel shooting actions in
Przemyśl and in
Medyka; this was a foreshadowing of the Holocaust to come. Roughly at the same time, in
Solec (14 September), 44 Poles killed; soon thereafter in Chojnice, 40 Polish citizens;
Gmina Kłecko, 23 Poles;
Bądków, 22 Poles;
Dynów, two hundred Polish Jews. Public executions continued well beyond September, including in municipalities such as
Wieruszów County, Gmina Besko,
Gmina Gidle, Gmina Kłecko,
Gmina Ryczywół, and
Gmina Siennica, among others. , 15 June 1941 Along with civilians, captured Polish Army soldiers were also massacred. On the very first day of invasion (1 September 1939), Polish
prisoners of war (POWs) were murdered by the
Wehrmacht at
Pilchowice,
Czuchów, Gierałtowice, Bojków,
Lubliniec, Kochcice, Zawiść, Ornontowice and
Wyry;
such atrocities would continue throughout the invasion. The German army did not consider captured servicemen to be
combatants because they fought differently from them, often avoiding direct confrontation in favor of guerrilla tactics in the face of overwhelming force. Historian
Tadeusz Piotrowski estimated over 1,000 POWs were executed by the Wehrmacht, while
Timothy Snyder, an American historian wrote that over 3,000 Polish POWs were killed in 63 separate shooting actions in which they were often forced to take their uniforms off, an estimate shared by
Jochen Böhler. On top of executions by regular troops, more mass killings were conducted in remote areas by the newly formed
Einsatzgruppen totalling 3,000 men aided by the
Selbstschutz volunteer executioners, bringing the total number of killing operations to 16,000 before the end of September 1939. Before the end of the year, over 45,000 Poles had been murdered in occupied territories.
Bombing campaigns , during the German aerial bombing campaign against the city, September 1939 The invading German force was equipped with 2000 modern war planes, which were deployed on 1 September 1939 at dawn in Operation Wasserkante, thus opening the
September Campaign against Poland; there was no declaration of war. The ''
Luftwaffe's'' first sorties of the war targeted Polish cities with no military targets of any kind; for example,
the city of Wieluń was destroyed almost completely by 70 tonnes of munitions dropped within several hours in spite of the fact that it had no strategic importance to the Germans, and the
city of Warsaw was bombed as well. The
Luftwaffe took part in the
mass killing by strafing refugees on the road. The number of civilians wounded or killed by aerial bombing is put at over 100,000. The
Luftwaffe dropped thousands of bombs on urban centres inhabited only by civilian populations. Amongst the Polish cities and towns bombed at the beginning of war were Brodnica,
Bydgoszcz, Chełm, Ciechanów, Kraków, Częstochowa, Grodno, Grudziądz, Gdynia, Janów, Jasło, Katowice, Kielce, Kowel, Kutno, Lublin, Lwów, Olkusz, Piotrków, Płock, Płońsk, Poznań, Puck, Radom, Radomsko, Sulejów, Warsaw, Wieluń, Wilno, and Zamość. Over 156 towns and villages were attacked by the
Luftwaffe. Warsaw suffered particularly severely with a combination of aerial bombardment and artillery fire reducing large parts of its historic city centre to rubble. The Soviet Union assisted the Germans by allowing them to use a radio beacon from Minsk to guide their planes. , during the Nazi occupation of Poland During the German
invasion of Poland, were deployed in the rear and arrested or murdered civilians who were caught offering resistance against the Germans or who were considered to be capable of doing so, as determined by their position and social status.
Extermination of Polish intelligentsia Unternehmen Tannenberg Immediately after invasion, the Germans employed the earlier prepared
Special Prosecution Book-Poland to launch the
Operation Tannenberg campaign of mass murders and concentration camps incarcerations. German army units and paramilitary
Selbstschutz ("self-defense") forces composed of
Volksdeutsche also participated in executions of civilians. The
Selbstschutz, along with
SS units, took an active part in the
mass murders in Piaśnica, in which between 12,000 and 16,000 Polish civilians were murdered. In the city of Bydgoszcz, the
Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz (German Fifth Column) attempted to aid the invading German forces by shooting at the
Polish Army. A number of saboteurs were executed by the Poles for treason, including for possession of military weapons. and claimed the wholesale slaughter of Germans in the city, which was not true. When Bydgoszcz was taken over by the Wehrmacht in October, designated killing squads began murdering civilian Poles in revenge at the
Valley of Death (Bydgoszcz); 136 Polish school boys including 12-year-olds with about 6000 others by end of 1939; some 20,000 were murdered in all. Other murder sites included
Gniezno, 15 Polish townsmen including Father Zabłocki;
Szamotuły (20 October), five Poles in a crowded spectacle at the city centre; Otorowo (7 November), 68 Polish intelligentsia including parish priest and a count; One of the best-known examples was the deportation to concentration camps in November 1939 of 180 professors from the university of Cracow in the
Sonderaktion Krakau.
AB-Aktion The German occupiers subsequently launched
AB-Aktion in May 1940—a further plan to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia and leadership class, culminating in the
Palmiry massacre (December 1940 – July 1941), in which two thousand Poles perished.
"War on the clergy" The
Roman Catholic Church was suppressed more harshly than elsewhere in
Wartheland, a province created by Nazi Germany after the invasion.
Churches were systematically closed and most
priests were either murdered, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government. In the General Government,
Hans Frank's diary shows he planned a "war on the clergy". The Germans also closed
seminaries and
convents and persecuted
monks and
nuns. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 2801 members of the Polish clergy were murdered (in all of Poland); of these, 1926 died in concentration camps (798 of them at
Dachau).
108 of them are regarded as blessed
martyrs, with
Maximilian Kolbe being regarded as a
saint. . In total about 2,000 Poles were murdered at the site, in secret executions between and
German pacification and reprisal massacres The large-scale pacification operations, sometimes called "
anti-partisan actions", constituted the core policy of the Nazi regime against Poland and resulted in the death of approximately 20,000 people in less than two years following the invasion. They were mainly conducted in the areas of General Government,
Pomerelia, in the vicinity of
Wielkopolska, and in the later created
Bialystok District. On 10 September 1939 the policy of collective punishment was introduced, resulting in destruction of villages and towns in the path of Polish defence lines. In
Bogusze and in
Lipówka in
Suwałki County residents were massacred by the
Wehrmacht as soon as the Poles retreated. Some 30 other settlements in the vicinity were burned down in the counties of
Bielsk,
Wysokie Mazowieckie, Suwałki and
Łomża, even though there were not used by the retreating Polish forces. Around
Białystok 19 villages were completely destroyed. In
Pietraszki elderly people and children were fired at from an army tank, while in the villages of
Wyliny-Ruś,
Drogoszewo and
Rutki all civilians were summarily executed, including the elderly. Terror killings committed by uniformed troops across Poland continued and between 2 October7 November 1939, over 8,866 Poles were murdered (53 of them Jews). Among the victims were in
Otorowo (20 October), five or 19 Poles shot because a swastika flag was removed by someone;
Warsaw (22 November), announcement of the first anti-Jewish legislation: 53 Jews executed in public as punishment for one
einheimischen Polizisten (local policeman) assaulted on the street;
Wawer (27 December), 106/107 murdered; including by
Hermann Göring Divisions such as the
1st Infantry Division across
Praga, the
2nd Motorized Division in
Czerniaków, the
25th Panzergrenadier Division in
Marymont as well as the
19th Panzer Division in Praga and
Żoliborz districts. were methodically rounded-up and executed by
Einsatzkommandos of
Sicherheitspolizei operating within the Reinefarth's group of forces under the command of
Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski. Executions in the Wola district, referred to as the
Wola massacre, also included the killings of both the patients and staff of local hospitals. The victims' bodies were collected and burned under pain of death by the members of the
Verbrennungskommando made up of captured Polish men. The carnage was so bad that even the German high command were stunned. Massacres took place in the areas of
Śródmieście (City Centre), Old Town, Marymont, and Ochota districts. In Ochota, civilian killings, rapes, and looting were conducted by the members of Russian
SS Sturmbrigade RONA under the command of
Bronislav Kaminski and the SS
Dirlewanger under the command of
Oskar Dirlewanger. Until the end of September 1944,
Polish resistance fighters were not considered by the Germans as combatants and were summarily executed when captured. After the fall of the Old Town, during the beginning of September, the remaining 7000 seriously wounded hospital patients were executed or burned alive often with the medical staff who cared for them. Similar atrocities took place later across Czerniaków. Captured insurgents were hanged or otherwise executed after the fall of
Powiśle and Mokotów districts as well. More than 200,000 Poles were killed in the uprising. Out of 450,000 surviving civilians, 150,000 were sent to labour camps in Germany, and 50,000 After the rising had ended, the Germans continued to systematically destroy the city. The city was left in ruins. Neither von dem Bach-Zalewski nor Heinz Reinefarth faced a trial for their actions in the Warsaw Uprising.
Extermination of psychiatric patients In July 1939, a Nazi secret program called
T-4 Euthanasia Program was developed in Germany with the intention of murdering physically or mentally disabled people. The program was put into practice in the occupied territories during the invasion of Poland. Initially, it was implemented according to the following plan: a German director took control over the
psychiatric hospital; under the threat of execution no patient could be released; all were counted and transported from the hospital by trucks to an unknown destination. Each truck was accompanied by soldiers from special
SS detachments who returned without the patients after a few hours. The patients were said to be transferred to another hospital, but evidence showed otherwise. The first action of this type took place on 22 September 1939 in
Kocborowo at a large psychiatric hospital in the
Gdańsk region. A firing squad murdered six hospital employees, including a deputy director, along with their patients. By December, some 1800 patients from Kocborowo had been murdered and buried in the
Forest of Szpęgawsk. In total, 7000 victims were buried there. Another extermination action took place in October 1939 at a hospital in Owińska near
Poznań where 1000 patients (children and adults) were murdered, with 200 more executed a year later. In addition to executions by firing squad, other methods of mass murder were implemented for the first time at the hospital in Owińska. Some 400 patients, along with medical staff, were transported to a military fortress in Poznań where, in
Fort VII bunkers, they were gassed with
carbon monoxide delivered in metal tanks. Other Owińska hospital patients were gassed in sealed trucks by exhaust fumes. The same method was performed in Kochanówek Hospital near Łódź, where 2200 persons were killed between March–August 1940. This was the first successful test of mass murder using
gas van poisoning and this technique was later used and perfected on many other psychiatric patients in occupied Poland and Germany. Starting in 1941, gas vans were used on inmates of the
extermination camps. The total number of psychiatric patients murdered by the Nazis in occupied Poland between 1939 and 1945 is estimated to be more than 16,000, with an additional 10,000 patients dying of
malnutrition and hunger. Additionally, approximately 100 out of 243 members of the Polish Psychiatric Association met the same fate as their patients.
Cultural genocide National Gallery of Art and Museum in Warsaw, summer 1944 As part of the concerted effort to destroy
Polish cultural heritage, the Germans closed universities, schools, museums, public libraries, and dismantled scientific laboratories. They tore down monuments to national heroes. Leading Polish academic institutions were reestablished as German. By the end of 1942 over 90 percent of the world-class art previously in Poland – as estimated by the German officials – was put into their own possession. The Polish language had been banned in
Wartheland; children were forced to learn the basics of German under harsh physical punishment. To prevent the emergence of a next generation of educated Poles, German officials decreed that the schooling of Polish youth would end at the elementary level. In his capacity as Reich Commissioner,
Heinrich Himmler oversaw the kidnapping of Polish children to be
Germanised. Historians estimate that between 50,000 and up to 200,000 Polish children were taken from their families during the war. They were sent to farms and families in the Reich never to return.
Roundups of Poles for forced/slave labour or for keeping as hostages All Polish males were required to perform
forced labour. The incomplete list of camp locations with at least one hundred slave labourers, included in alphabetical order:
Andrychy,
Antoniew-Sikawa,
Augustów,
Będzin,
Białośliwie,
Bielsk Podlaski,
Bliżyn,
Bobrek, Bogumiłów, Boże Dary,
Brusy,
Burzenin,
Chorzów, Dyle,
Gidle,
Grajewo,
Herbertów,
Inowrocław,
Janów Lubelski,
Kacprowice,
Katowice,
Kazimierza Wielka,
Kazimierz Dolny, Klimontów,
Koronowo, Kraków-Podgórze,
Kraków-Płaszów,
Krychów, Lipusz, łysaków, Miechowice, Mikuszowice,
Mircze,
Mysłowice, Ornontowice,
Nowe,
Nowy Sącz,
Potulice,
Rachanie,
Słupia,
Sokółka,
Starachowice, Swiętochłowice,
Tarnogród,
Wiśnicz Nowy,
Wierzchowiska,
Włoszczowa, Wola Gozdowska, Żarki, and
Zarudzie.
Concentration camps outside
Kraków, 1942 Citizens of Poland, but especially ethnic Poles and Polish Jews, were imprisoned in nearly every camp of the
extensive concentration camp system in German-occupied Poland and in the Reich. A major
labour camp complex at
Stutthof, east of Gdańsk/Danzig was begun as an internment camp in September 1939. An estimated 20,000 Poles died there as a result of hard labour, executions, disease and starvation. Some 100,000 Poles were deported to
Majdanek concentration camp with subcamps in Budzyn, Trawniki,
Poniatowa, Kraśnik, Puławy, as well as the
"Airstrip", and
Lipowa added in 1943. Tens of thousands of prisoners died there. An estimated 20,000 Poles died at
Sachsenhausen outside Poland, 20,000 at
Gross-Rosen, 30,000 at
Mauthausen, 17,000 at
Neuengamme, 10,000 at Dachau, and 17,000 at
Ravensbrück. in prisons and other places of detention inside and outside Poland. The
Auschwitz I concentration camp went into operation on 14 June 1940. The first transport of 728 Polish prisoners consisted mostly of schoolchildren, students and soldiers from the overcrowded prison at
Tarnów. Within a week another 313 arrived. There were 1666 major transports in August and 1705 in September. This Polish phase of Auschwitz lasted until the middle of 1942. By March 1941, 10,900 prisoners were registered at the camp, most of them Poles. The most notorious concentration camps in occupied Poland as well as along Nazi German borders included: Gross-Rosen in Silesia, now part of Poland,
Janowska, Kraków-Płaszów, Poniatowa (reassigned from forced labour camp),
Massacres and death marches during German retreat , 1944 During the cold winter of 1944–1945 and temperatures dropping below , the Germans perpetrated
death marches of prisoners of various nationalities from concentration camps, forced labour camps and
prisoner-of-war camps. In 1945, during the German retreat, the
Gestapo, Wehrmacht and
Waffen-SS carried out further massacres and executions of Polish civilians, such as in
Chojnice (18 January 1945; 800 victims),
Wieniec-Zdrój (18 January; nine victims),
Płock (19 January 1945; 79 victims),
Ostrzeszów (20 January 1945; 14 victims),
Pleszew (21 January 1945),
Marchwacz (22 January 1945; 63 victims). ==The Final Solution and the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland==