Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface to the New Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 From one War to Another
- 2 From the German and Soviet Invasions of Poland to the German Attack in the West, September I, 1939 to May 10, 1940
- 3 The world Turned Upside Down
- 4 The Expanding Conflict, 1940-1941
- 5 The Eastern Front and a Changing War, June to December, 1941
- 6 Halting the Japanese Advance, Halting the German Advance; Keeping Them Apart and Shifting the Balance: December 1941 to November 1942
- 7 The War At Sea, 1942-1944, and the Blockade
- 8 The War in Europe and North Africa 1942-1943: to and from Stalingrad; to and from Tunis
- 9 The Home Front
- 10 Means of Warfare: Old and New
- 11 From the Spring of 1943 to Summer 1944
- 12 The Assault on Germany from All Sides
- 13 Tensions in Both Alliances
- 14 The Halt on the European Fronts
- 15 The Final Assault on Germany
- 16 The War in the Pacific: From Leyte to the Missouri
- Conclusions: the Cost and Impact of War
- Bibliographic Essay
- Notes
- Maps
- Index
2 - From the German and Soviet Invasions of Poland to the German Attack in the West, September I, 1939 to May 10, 1940
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface to the New Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 From one War to Another
- 2 From the German and Soviet Invasions of Poland to the German Attack in the West, September I, 1939 to May 10, 1940
- 3 The world Turned Upside Down
- 4 The Expanding Conflict, 1940-1941
- 5 The Eastern Front and a Changing War, June to December, 1941
- 6 Halting the Japanese Advance, Halting the German Advance; Keeping Them Apart and Shifting the Balance: December 1941 to November 1942
- 7 The War At Sea, 1942-1944, and the Blockade
- 8 The War in Europe and North Africa 1942-1943: to and from Stalingrad; to and from Tunis
- 9 The Home Front
- 10 Means of Warfare: Old and New
- 11 From the Spring of 1943 to Summer 1944
- 12 The Assault on Germany from All Sides
- 13 Tensions in Both Alliances
- 14 The Halt on the European Fronts
- 15 The Final Assault on Germany
- 16 The War in the Pacific: From Leyte to the Missouri
- Conclusions: the Cost and Impact of War
- Bibliographic Essay
- Notes
- Maps
- Index
Summary
THE WAR AGAINST POLAND
The German plan for the invasion of Poland had been developed since the spring of 1939 and was greatly assisted by the very favorable geographical position Germany had always had, a position further improved by the territorial changes of early 1939. It was the intention of the Germans to combine surprise coups to seize special objectives at, or even before, the moment of attack with a sudden overwhelming attack on two fronts carried forward by the mass of the German army supported by most of the German air force. As Hitler had emphasized to his military leaders on August 22, it was Poland as a people that was to be destroyed; and therefore from the beginning it was assumed that massive slaughter of Poles and particularly the extermination of their political and cultural elite would both accompany and follow the campaign designed to destroy Poland's regained independence. The possibility of some kind of subordinate puppet government in a portion of occupied Poland was temporarily left open, but any such concept would be dropped quickly: German policy made collaboration impossible for self-respecting Poles and any individuals still so inclined were turned away by the Germans in any case.
The planned surprise coups for the most part failed; even the peacetime sending of a warship with a landing party into Danzig could not force the quick surrender of the minute Polish garrison there, and the attempted seizure of the strategically important railway bridge over the Vistula at Tszew (Dirschau) was thwarted as Polish engineers blew up the great span. A portion of Poland's navy succeeded in escaping the German effort to destroy it, but the major land offensives were crushingly effective.
The Polish government had faced four problems in contemplation of any German attacks, and all were probably insoluble under the circumstances. In the first place, until 1939 the assumption had been that the 1934 agreement with Germany made it safe to confine military planning to the contingency of a renewal of the conflict with the Soviet Union, a conflict ended by the Peace Treaty of Riga of 1921, which had left to Poland substantial territory that had belonged to her before the partitions of the eighteenth century, but that the Soviet government was likely to want to recover.
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- A World at ArmsA Global History of World War II, pp. 48 - 121Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005