On This Day: Germany invades Poland

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939: Nazi Germany invaded Poland on this day in 1939 – triggering World War II, the Holocaust and the deaths of up to 85million people across the globe.

A total of 1.5million Wehrmacht soldiers penetrated Polish territory from the north, west and south at 6am while Luftwaffe aircraft bombed the country’s cities.

Britain and France, which warned that future attacks would meet resistance after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in March, declared war on Germany on September 3.

But, haunted by the First World War two decades earlier and having appeased Adolf Hitler for years, the Allies failed to provide any meaningful support to the Poles.

Germany forces, which invaded without warning under the pretext of self-defence, were numerically and technically superior and quickly overwhelmed Polish defences.

The frightening speed of the German speed shocked the British.

Weeks before the invasion, a British Pathé newsreel reported on the democracy’s military might amassing near Germany’s controversial East Prussian enclave .

It showed the new civil and naval port of Gdynia, a rival to nearby Danzig, a Treaty of Versailles-mandated free city that was neither Polish nor German-controlled.

In preparing for a possible German assault, Poland’s military leaders had hoped to draw Germans troops in and then encircle them.

But, in the event of the invasion, its army could not mobilise quickly enough against Germany’s Blitzkrieg – or “lightning war” - attack to carry out this plan.

Instead, the Nazis had gained complete air superiority within a week and reached the outskirts of Warsaw by September 9 to lay siege to the capital.

The Soviet Union, which weeks earlier had secretly agreed to carve up Poland with Germany, then invaded from the eastern frontier on September 17.

Red Army units were defeated at Szack by a thread-bare Polish battalion that had already sent 9,000 of its soldiers west to combat the German assault.

But other units had more success in conquering the now thinly defended territory and Soviet soldiers met with Germans by the Narew and Vistula rivers by September 28.

On the same day the military and civilian defenders of Warsaw capitulated - and 100,000 Polish soldiers were later captured by the Germans.

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On October 6, Nazi and Soviet forces gained full control of Poland following the deaths of 65,000 Polish military men and 200,000 civilians.

The Polish government, which unlike France never surrendered or sought to negotiate peace with Hitler, ordered its soldiers, sailors and airman to regroup in France.

Around 250,000 fight men escaped Poland, providing crucial help to the Allies during the war – including the Battle of Britain – with 21,000 losing their lives.

Those who remained in Poland – including the 690,000 Polish prisoners of war - were far more likely to face death.

The Soviets alone killed 22,000 soldiers – mainly officers – in the April 1940 Katyn Massacre under the orders of dictator Joseph Stalin.

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Two months later Soviet occupation in Poland ended after the Nazis, who wanted territory in the east as “living room” for Germans, invaded the USSR.

Nazi occupation resulted in the deaths of 5.6million Poles - including 3million – or  90% of the country’s Jews.

In total, 20% of Poland’s population was wiped out during WWII - representing the biggest proportional loss inflicted on any single country.

After the war, Poland once again became a sovereign state, although Soviet influence ensured communist dominance.

The USSR once again seized eastern parts of the country and incorporated it into its territory, including the major city of Lwow, which is now Lviv and lies in Ukraine.

To compensate, Germans were expelled from cities that were formerly in eastern Germany – such as Breslau (now Wroclaw) – and the land was given to Poland.

Communist oppression, which included the imprisonment of those Poles who returned after fighting for the Allies, did not end until the restoration of democracy in 1989.