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Opposing forces in the Polish September Campaign

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Through Invasion of Poland, World War II and Nazi Germany

Lab · Class 8–10India's Freedom StruggleLab · Class 8National Movement

Tactics and military hardware used in the Invasion of Poland varied between the two sides; The German economy was geared toward military production which supplied their armed forces with equipment that was often superior to their Polish counterparts. Old tactics such as Vernichtungsgedanke and the concept of the Schwerpunkt combined with newly mechanized units punched holes in Polish lines and close air support provided by the world class Luftwaffe disrupted Polish supply and communications lines. Other German tactics included the targeting of civilian targets in terror bombings to inflict huge losses amongst the civilian population, sending streams of refugees out of afflicted areas, thereby hampering Polish logistics. In 1939 the German navy also had an advantage over the tiny Polish fleet.

Preparations for a defensive war with Germany were ongoing for many years but most plans assumed fighting would not begin before 1942. The Polish Army had about a million soldiers, but fewer than half had been mobilised by 1 September due to political pressure from France and Britain. The Polish-Soviet War showed Poland the benefits of mobility in military conflicts but Polish officials were unwilling (and unable) to invest heavily to make that a reality. Polish Cavalry Brigades were still effectively used as mobile infantry but in the end fell against German motorized units, however Germany also used cavalry for transportation during the September Campaign. The Polish Air Force lacked modern fighter aircraft for its highly trained pilots, while the Luftwaffe was much more numerous and had superior aircraft. The Polish Navy was a small fleet composed of destroyers and submarines, some of which survived the campaign by escaping to the North Sea to join with the Royal Navy.

Germany

Germany was only moderately prepared for the invasion of Poland; stocks of ammunition and replacement vehicles, for example, were low, and historians regard Hitler's move as a military gamble as well as a political one. The German economy had for years geared toward production of military equipment and supplies, and was capable of creating an army that could successfully invade its neighbours only if the campaign was not a long one. In fact, in January 1939, while planning for the invasion of Poland was underway, the Wehrmacht's allocation of raw materials was cut, by some 30 percent of steel, 20 percent in copper, 47 percent in aluminum and 14 percent in rubber. Moreover, the German economy was never fully mobilized for war, with Joseph Goebbels belatedly calling for "Total War" only in 1943. Millions of Reichsmarks went into consumer goods, the female population was never harnessed efficiently for use in war production (James Lucas notes in his book Reich that 1 million German women were employed as hairdressers as late as 1943 instead of in armaments or war related industry), and many workers in the German war economy later in the war were unwilling slave labourers. As early as 1940, British production "though still lackadaisical, outstripped that of Germany in aircraft, tanks and heavy guns, in everything in fact except equipment for a large army." (A.J.P. Taylor, The Second World War, 1975).

The Polish Campaign, and the spectre of war with Britain and France, did not change things. Walter Warlimont, who headed the Department of Home Defence for the Wehrmacht, wrote postwar:

In the fact of the successful Polish campaign, Hitler (still) refused to order mobilisation in the full sense of the word; later on, partial mobilisation was ordered, but the economy was specifically exempted...None of the carefully thought-out measures designed to protect the armament industry by keeping its skilled workers on the job was put into effect. (Quoted in Brute Force (Ellis, Viking Penguin, 1990))

Wehrmacht

The German military was collectively known as the Wehrmacht, and all three components had separate but related roles to play in the campaign. The firepower of a German infantry division far exceeded that of a Polish (as well as French and British) infantry division. The standard Heer infantry division on the eve of the Second World War included 442 machine guns, 135 mortars, 72 antitank guns, and 24 howitzers.

Germany had not only a large numerical advantage over Polish forces, but their organisation and command structure was much more efficient. While German forces were not as mobile or numerous as they would be in the later stages of the Second World War, the Wehrmacht had some 2,400 tanks organized into six armoured (panzer) divisions using operational doctrine developed during and after the First World War, coupled with older concepts such as Vernichtungsgedanken. German tanks of this period Panzer I, Panzer II, Panzer III and the most advanced Panzer IV. In accordance with the ideas of Heinz Guderian, German tanks and mechanized support units (motorized artillery, etc.) were used in massive, mechanized spearhead (Schwerpunkt) attacks, serving as highly mobile units to punch holes in the enemy line and isolate selected enemy units, which the infantry would then encircle and destroy while the armored and mechanized forces pushed forward to repeat the process, eventually breaking through enemy frontlines and then dispersing, causing confusion in the rear areas and severing lines of supply and communication.

Less mobile mechanized infantry and regular infantry (who, along with their horse-drawn artillery support, vastly outnumbered their mechanized comrades) would then in theory follow-up the panzer divisions' penetration into enemy territory. The Heer was closely supported by the Luftwaffe, especially by dive bombers that attacked and disrupted the enemy's supply and communications lines and spread panic and confusion in its rear, thus further paralyzing the enemy's defensive capabilities. Mechanization was the key to this German tactic first revealed in the September Campaign and nicknamed blitzkrieg (lightning war) by contemporary journalists, who found the name fitting because of the unprecedented speed and mobility that were its underlying characteristics.

Despite the term blitzkrieg being coined by the Allies during the Polish September Campaign of 1939, historians (such as Matthew Cooper) generally hold that German operations in Poland were more traditional than revolutionary. Cooper, for one, writes (in The German Army (1976)) that Heer strategy was more inline with Vernichtungsgedanken, or a focus on envelopment to create pockets in broad-front annihilation. Mechanized forces were deployed among the three German concentrations without strong emphasis on independent use, being used to create or destroy close pockets of Polish forces and seize operational-depth terrain in support of the largely unmotorized infantry which followed.

Luftwaffe

Aircraft (particularly fighter and ground attack aircraft) played a major role in the fighting. Bomber aircraft purposely attacked cities and civilian targets causing huge losses amongst the civilian population in what became known as terror bombings. The Luftwaffe forces consisted of 1,180 fighter aircraft (mainly Bf 109s), 290 Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers, 290 conventional bombers (mainly of the He 111 and Do 17 types), and an assortment of 240 naval aircraft. In total, Germany had close to 3,000 aircraft (~2,000 of them can be considered militarily modern) with half of them deployed on the Polish front.

The German Air Force, or Luftwaffe, was also the best force of its kind in 1939. It was designed to support the army, but in air combat the German planes were superior to most designs fielded by the Allies. In the rearmament period from 1935 to 1939, the production of German combat aircraft steadily mounted, and the standardization of engines and airframes gave the Luftwaffe a repair and production advantage over its opponents.

Kriegsmarine

At sea, the odds against the German Kriegsmarine were less favorable. They were much worse in September 1939 than in August 1914, as the Allies had many more large surface warships than Germany. However, the naval theater, for Germany, was of least significance. During the entire war there was to be no major encounter between the Allied and the German surface fleets, nothing that resembled the battle of Jutland from the previous war. Kriegsmarine activities saw only the individual operation of German pocket battleships and commerce raiders, with the rare exceptions of operations like the Operation Rheinübung, and submarine-driven Battle of the Atlantic. That noted, in 1939 Germany did have an advantage over the tiny Polish fleet, and the Western Allies were unwilling and unprepared to challenge the Kriegsmarine on the small, land-locked Baltic Sea.

Slovakia

The six months old Slovak Republic had an army composed of Slovak units of the former Czechoslovak Army. When Germany asked for Slovak assistance in invading Poland, Field Army Bernolák, under the command of Slovak Minister of War Ferdinand Čatloš was formed and invaded the country together with German forces on 1 September. Slovak troops faced the Polish Karpaty Army, and captured the towns of Javorina, Jurgów, and Zakopane. At the end of the campaign, Field Army Bernolák had suffered 37 dead, 114 wounded, and 11 missing.

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