A World at Arms (184 page)

2: FROM THE GERMAN AND SOVIET INVASIONS OF POLAND TO THE GERMAN ATTACK IN THE WEST

1
On the Polish campaign, see
DRuZW,
2: 79ff; Nicholas Bethell,
The War Hitler Won: The
Fall of Poland, September,
1939 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972).

2
Bertil Stjernfelt and Klaus-Richard Böhme,
Westerplatte
1939 (Freiburg: Rombach, 1979); Herbert Schindler,
Mosty und Dirschau
1939, 2d ed (Freiburg, Romback 1979). The bridge was not repaired until the end of August 1940; see Forster to Hitler, 30 Aug. 1940, BA, NS 10/18,f. 40.

3
Many have overlooked the hope of some in the Polish government that war might be averted altogether and their attuning of policy in both diplomatic and military spheres to this possibility. The desperate military situation could only reinforce such a tendency. The other side of this equation was that the postponement of the German invasion from the planned date of August 26 to September 1 was that additional German divisions were ready on the later date (
DRuZW
, 2: 87–88).

4
A striking example, in which State Secretary in the German Foreign Ministry Ernst von Weizsäcker endorsed in August 1939 a repetition toward Poland of the tactic Hitler had ordered followed in the preceding year toward Czechoslovakia: that of always raising the demands so that agreement could not be reached, is published as
ADAP
, D, 7, No. 119.

5
The account in Francis H. Hinsley,
British Intelligence in the Second World War
, 5 vols. (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979–90), 1: 488–93, needs to be supplemented by Wladyslaw Kosaczuk,
Enigma
(Frederick, Md.: UPA, 1984), pp. 58–60, 292–318, and David Kahn,
Seizing the Enigma
, pp. 78–81 (the German who had sold key documents to the French was shot in July 1943, Kahn, p. 115).

6
See n I, above. The Poles were not psychologically prepared for war, least of all for German policies in occupied territory, see Karl Dietrich Bracher
et al.
(eds.),
Deutschland zwischen Krieg und Frieden
(Düsseldorf: Droste, 1990), pp. 54–62. On the air war in Poland, see John F. Kreis,
Air Warfare and Air Base Defense
, 1914–1973 (Washington: GPO, 1988), pp. 54–62.

7
See the map in DRuZW, 2: 116.

8
Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
, 1937–39, p. 536 n 4. Worth noting is Hitler’s comparison of Slovakia’s role with that of Hungary and “another state” (presumably Lithuania) in a conversation with the Slovak Minister to Germany on Oct. 21, 1939
ADAP
, D, 8, No. 286).

9
Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
, 1937–39, pp. 477, 497.

10
On the policy of Hungary, see
Hung. Docs.,
4, Nos. 329,331,332,334,341,353,354, 372, 377, 379, 381, 388, 392; ADAP, D, 8, Nos. 9, 45, 48, 51, 67, 95; Gyula Juhasz,
Hungarian Foreign Policy
1919–1945 (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1979), pp. 163–64; Hildebrand et al., 1939: pp. 163–64. The Hungarians were encouraged in their reserved attitude by Italy (
Hung. Docs.,
4, Nos. 338, 363, 377–79, 385).

11
Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
, 1937–39, p. 486; ADAP, D, 8, Nos. 36, 41, 57, 58, 65, 76, 84, 121, 164; von Nostiz, “Pol I M 4552g.II,” 8 Sept. 1939, AA, St.S., “Litauen," Bd. 11, fr. 193119. The Germans had begun their effort to draw Lithuania into the war already on August 29; see Weizsacker to Kovno citissime of 29 Aug. 1939, AA, Buro RAM., “Litauen,” fr. 117606.

12
Note Jörg K. Hoensch’s piece in Gottfried Niedhart (ed.),
Der Westen und die Sowjetunion
(Paderborn: Schoningh, 1983), pp. 135–52.

13
The subject is discussed in both volumes of Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
, and Jiri Hochman,
The Soviet Union and the Failure of Collective Security
, 1934–1938 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1984).

14
ADAP, D, 7, No. 567; 8, Nos. 2, 5, 34, 35, 37, 39, 46, 59, 70.

15
Robert M. Kennedy,
The German Campaign in Poland
(1939) (Washington: GPO, 1956), p. 124.

16
John Erickson,
The Road to Stalingrad
(New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 14. A full study of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 would be most useful.

17
See James W. Morley (ed.),
Deterrent Diplomacy: Japan, Germany and the U.S.S.R.
1935–1940 ( New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 123, 173. The whole incident is reviewed in detail in Alvin D. Coox,
Nomonhan: Japan against Russia,
1939, 2 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1985).

18
Morley,
Deterrent Diplomacy,
pp. 123, 169–70.

19
Ibid., pp. 174–75.

20
Bethell,
War Hitler Won,
p. 306, overlooks the fact that Soviet ambassadors do not return to the Soviet Union on their own initiative but under instruction.

21
On this point, see the extensive suspicion about German adherence to the August 23 line first summarized in Gerhard L. Weinberg,
Germany and the Soviet Union,
1939–1941 (Leyden: Brill, 1954), pp. 54–56, and further substantiated by additional evidence since (
ADAP
, D, 8, Nos. 90, 101, 103).

22
ADAP,
D, 8, Nos. 78, 80, 94.

23
Jan T. Gross,
Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988). There is a fine collection of essays in Keith Sword (ed.),
The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern Provinces,
1939–41 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991).

24
On the technical problems involving German troops moving into the part of Poland that was to go to the Soviet Union and Soviet troops entering the Vilna area at a time when Lithuania, increased by that territory, was still scheduled to be in the German sphere, see Weinberg,
Germany and the Soviet Union,
pp. 54–58;
ADAP,
0, 8, Nos. 114, 123. For similar problems in the naval sphere, see Norbert von Baumbach, “Die Angelegenheit des 20. Langengrades Ost 25.-30. Oktober 1939,” 9 March 1945, BA/MA, M1676, PG 31874a;
ADAP,
0, 8, Nos. 305,309,313.

25
A good account of these events in
DRuZW,
2: 129–33. On the German air force terror raids against Warsaw and Modlin to force surrender, see Samuel W. Mitcham,
Men of the Luftwaffe
(Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1988), pp. 72–73.

26
DRuZW,
2: 133.

27
The view expressed in ibid., that these casualties had major repercussions in subsequent years, is one this author cannot share. The losses have to be set against the experience gained by the overwhelming majority of German officers and soldiers who survived the campaign and went into subsequent battles with higher morale, greater cohesion, and more knowledgeable in the ways of war.

28
Weinberg,
Germany and the Soviet Union,
p. 63. The quote is from Stalin’s reply to von Ribbentrop’s congratulations on his 60th birthday. The full text was published in
Pravda
on December 25, 1939, alongside exchanges with such dignitaries as Father Tiso, the President of the Nazi puppet state of Slovakia, and Otto Kuusinen, “Head of the National Government of Finland,” the leader of the puppet government Stalin intended to install in Helsinki.

29
These preparations are reviewed in Chapter 4, below.

30
The new boundaries went far beyond the old everywhere except for a 50-mile segment of southeast East Prussia, and at this point additional Polish territory (the district of Bialystok) was later added to East Prussia. There are maps of the partition of Poland in many books; one of the few which shows the 1914 border for comparison is that in the back of the fine book by Martin Broszat,
Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik
, 1939–1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1961).

31
It appears that the concept of population transfer was first raised with the Italians by Hermann Göring when he visited Rome in January 1937 (Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1937–
39, pp. 270–71). No evidence of prior discussion of the issue between Hitler and Göring has come to light. The exchange of population between Greece and Turkey in the 1920S belongs in this writer’s opinion in the context of the post-World War I settlement of nationality issues.

It should be added that the population shuffling planned by the Germans was not completed during the years of German occupation. What is remarkable is not that some of the terrible changes intended in 990 years of rule by the Third Reich were left unfinished, but rather how far they were carried in the first five. See Richard C. Lukas,
Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation,
1939–1944 (Lexington, Ky.: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1986).

32
Bernhard Stasiewski, “Die Kirchenpolitik der Nationalsozialisten im Warthegau,”
VjZ
7 (1959), 46–74.

33
Alexander Dallin,
German Rule in Russia,
1941–1945 (London: Macmillan, 1957), p. 90.

34
On Hitler’s reference to the massacres of the Armenians being forgotten, see the recent discussion in Richard Breitman,
The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution
(New York: Knopf, 1991), p. 258 n 47.

There is a good summary of German policy in Poland in Norman Rich,
Hitler’s War Aims, 2 The Establishment of the New Order
(New York: Norton, 1974), chap. 4; see also Waclaw Dlugoborski’s piece in Karl Dietrich Bracher
et al.
(eds.),
Nationalsozialistische Diktatur
(Düsseldorf: Droste, 1983), pp. 572–90; Gerhard Eisenblatter, “Grundlinien der Politik des Reiches gegenüber dem Generalgouvernment 1939–1945?” (Frankfurt/M. Phil. diss., 1969); Czeslaw Madajczyk,
Die Okkupationspolitik des deutschen Imperialismus in Polen 1939–1945
(Berlin-East: Akademie, 1987). The entry in the diary of the commander of the German northern Anny Group, von Bock, of September 22 1939, that Hitler wanted to get rid of the population of Warsaw, points to his subsequent plans for the eradication of Moscow and Leningrad (cf. Eisenblätter, p. I 17 n 6).

On mass murders in the early months of the occupation, see also Christian Jansen and Arno Weckbecher,
Der “Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz” in Polen
1939–40 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992).

35
For the text of Frank’s speech of December 16, 1941, see Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (eds.),
Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen
1939–1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1975) p. 459 (henceforth cited as
Frank Diary
; there is something like a translation of the relevant passages in Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, 2: 89.

36
ADAP,
0, 8, No. 104.

37
Ibid, No. 131.

38
This whole issue remains to be explored in detail; there is a preliminary analysis in Weinberg,
Germany and the Soviet Union,
pp. 56, 57, 60, 70; see also
ADAP,
D, 8, Nos. 109, 115.

39
I am not aware of any study of this question. German military plans contained provisions for an occupation of Lithuania whether or not that state resisted, and in the immediate office of Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop a draft convention for German military control of Lithuania was prepared (
ADAP,
D, 8, No. 113). The Lithuanian Foreign Minister was summoned to Danzig to surrender his country to the Third Reich (ibid., No. 121; note by von Sonnleithner, 4 Sept. 1939, AA, St.S., “Der Krieg,” Bd. 3, fr. 35641–42). The trading of Lithuania to the Soviet Union by Germany meant that instead he had to go to Moscow.

40
ADAP,
D, 8, No. 152.

41
Robert Koehl,
RKFDV: German Resettlement and Population Policy
1939–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Haward Univ. Press, 1957), remains the best introduction to the subject in English.

42
The September 28 agreements have been published in
ADAP,
D, 8, Nos. 157–63. To this should be added: Ingeborg Fleischhauer (ed.), “Der deutsch–sowjetische Grenz-und
Feundschaftsvertrag vom 28, September 1939: Die deutschen Aufzeichnungen über die Verhandlungen zwischen Stalin, Molotov und Ribbentrop in Moskau,”
VjZ
39 (1991), 447–70.

43
It is often overlooked that the Soviet government initially moved at both the northern and the southern portions of its European border and only postponed moves at the southern end when the negotiations with Finland ran into difficulties and then broke down.

44
The Soviet Union promised to deliver an additional quantity of petroleum products equivalent to the annual production of the Polish oil fields and to facilitate the transport of Romanian oil to Germany across the Soviet-occupied part of Poland. This latter point was especially important for the Germans not only because the railway in question was single-tracked but because the Russians under the agreement kept it at the old gage, rather than converting to the wider Russian gage with a resulting double transfer of cargo. On this issue see
ADAP,
0, 8, No. 386. Statistics of the German Ministry of Transport show a steady rise in the quantities shipped over this route (BA, R 4311/332a, f. 119).

45
On the economic negotiations, see Weinberg,
Germany and the Soviet Union,
pp. 65–75;
ADAP,
D, 8, passim;
DRuZW,
4: 103; St.S., No. 688 of 6 Sept. 1939, AA, St.S., “Russland,” Bd. I, fr. I I 1578; Notiz für Buro RAM, 10 Sept. 1939, AA, St.S., “Der Krieg 1939,” Bd. 3, fr. 35794–95; Russland-Ausschuss der Deutschen Wirtschaft, Bericht, 3 Oct. 1939, BA, R 43 II/1489a, f. 163–66; KTB Skl A, 4, 7 Dec. 1939 BMMA, RM 7/7, f. 45–46; KTB Skl A, 5, 10 Jan. 1940, BMMA, RM 7/8, f. 62–63; Ritter (Moscow) tel. 9 of 3 Jan. 1940, AA, St.S., “Russland,” Bd. 2, fr. 11 1933, and memorandum by Ritter (Berlin) of 10 Jan. 1940, fr. 111943–45. For a recent Soviet assessment, see Michail Semijarga’s statement in Hildebrand et al., 1939, p. 298.