Today is the 80th anniversary of WWII – the day Germany invaded Poland. Six months prior to the invasion, Hitler had encouraged an event which he later came to regret. An event which saved tens of thousands of lives and aided the Allies in their future victory.
What big mistake did Hitler make in 1939 that contributed to his eventual defeat?
The map below illustrates the boundaries of European countries in early 1938 before Hitler began his conquests. Notice that Poland is sandwiched between Germany to the west and the USSR to the east. It was bordered by Czechoslovakia and Rumania in the south.
Before the end of 1938, Germany seized Austria and the mountainous area of western Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) without opposition. Hitler then devised a way to take possession of the rest of Czechoslovakia and her iron works, armament factories, and huge supplies of modern military equipment. First, he encouraged the Hungarian government to invade the eastern tail of Czechoslovakia and reclaim the territory of Carpathian-Ruthenia lost after World War I.
So, in March of 1939, the Hungarians acted upon Hitler’s suggestion and repossessed their former lands in the Carpathian Mountains. This distraction allowed the Germans to march into Prague and seize the whole western half of Czechoslovakia unopposed. The middle of the divided country became “Slovakia” and a protectorate of Germany. The rest of the world responded with outrage but didn’t move to stop these advances. As seen on the map below, Hungary gained a common border with Poland.
Courtesy of Professor John L Heineman, Boston College
And then almost 6 months later . . . on September 1st . . .
the Germans unleashed the German army, the Wehrmacht, on Poland, giving birth to the blitzkrieg, “lightning war.” In the days leading up to the invasion, the English and French had urged the Polish government not to mobilize its troops so they wouldn’t further enrage Hitler. The Poles had ignored the warnings and secretly mobilized half of their armed forces by August 31st. Unfortunately, the German air force, the Luftwaffe, bombed trains, train stations, and rail lines, preventing many of the remaining troops from reaching their battle stations. Refugees clogged the roads, making it even more difficult for defense forces to engage the enemy.
What the Polish soldiers lacked in numbers and equipment they made up for in bravery and sheer determination. They held the enemy back longer than Hitler had expected. However, armed with the most modern equipment (including the newly acquired arsenal from Czechoslovakia), the German troops attacked from multiple points, broke through weak spots where the Polish Armies were spread out, and encircled hundreds of thousands of troops. The Poles tenaciously fought an army almost twice their size and an air force five times greater.
By September 9th, Hitler was impatient to finish the Polish campaign. The Germans asked the Hungarian government for permission to transport soldiers to Poland on a rail line through Hungary. The Hungarians denied passage. Even though they had signed a trade agreement with Germany, the Hungarians considered Poland their friend. If German troops set foot in Hungary, the government would consider it an act of war.
Nevertheless, the Germans advanced across Poland, and on September 11th Polish Commander-in-Chief Marshal Rydz-Śmigły ordered his remaining troops to retreat to the Romanian border in southeast Poland. He expected new military equipment to arrive from France and England via Romania. He also planned to organize a counterattack from the east when France opened an offensive from the west as they had promised.
Then on September 17th, the unthinkable happened . . .
The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east and captured Polish troops. Upon hearing the news, Rydz-Śmigły ordered all remaining Polish units to cross the border into Hungary or Romania by any means possible. Although many soldiers, airmen, and civilians escaped into Romania, the Soviets quickly sealed the Polish-Romanian border, leaving Hungary as the only other escape route in the south.
The Hungarians officially opened their border with Poland on September 18th, and tens of thousands of Polish soldiers and civilians entered Hungary safely despite a lack of passports and visas. This allowed many military units and future soldiers to escape to fight another day.
Polish Soldiers. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Both Romania and Hungary followed the Geneva Convention and established refugee camps for civilian refugees and internment camps for soldiers. Refugees who could fend for themselves passed through Hungary and Yugoslavia to Italy and France. Hungarian citizens housed civilians in their homes and transported them to the Yugoslavian border where they found transportation further west. The Hungarian government didn’t stop “refugees” dressed in civilian clothing from leaving the country. In fact, the Hungarians sent civilian clothing to the Polish Embassy in Budapest, and this enabled tens of thousands of soldiers to make their way to France and rejoin the Polish Army and Air Force.
Graves of Polish Soldiers (1939) By Сергей Семёнов User: Stauffenberg via Wikimedia Commons
The Polish Armed Forces joined the Allies and became the fourth largest Allied military force to serve in World War II, and they served with distinction. If the escape route through Hungary had not been available, how many more Poles would have been captured or killed? How much longer would the war in Europe have lasted? How many more civilian lives would have been lost?
Used by Permission from Budby via flikr
Sources:
No Greater Ally (Kenneth K. Koskodan) Poland Betrayed (David G. Wiliamson) Man of Steel and Honour: General Stanislaw Maczek (Evan McGilvray) Hungarian History
Last month, I shared how Hitler came to power and took dictatorial control of Germany in 1933, and I described the state of the Jews in Germany during the interwar period (WWI – WWII). Here’s the link to the post if you missed it: “How Did Evil Men Take Power in Germany?” Today we will examine how Hitler and the Nazis gradually subjugated their opponents and the Jewish people prior to WWII.
In April of 1933, the German government sponsored a two-day boycott of Jewish businesses. Political opponents of the Nazis and all Jews who hadn’t fought in WWI were dismissed from civil service. New laws pushed Jews out of other government jobs, including Jewish doctors who worked in government-financed healthcare programs.
In 1933 . . . 37,000 Jews emigrated from Germany.
In 1934 . . . another 23,000 Jews fled the country.
But during these early years of Nazi control, many Germans, including the Jews, thought that Hitler wouldn’t last long.
Not even everyone in his own movement agreed with his policies.
The three-million-men-strong, brown-shirted, street-fighting SA Stormtroopers, who’d been instrumental in bringing the Nazis to power, now threatened the party’s power and existence. Hitler’s close friend Ernst Röhm headed the SA. He and the other SA leaders were unhappy with Hitler’s slow implementation of the radical policies the Nazis had advocated from the beginning. Also, Röhm wanted Hitler to combine the Reichswehr, the German military, with the SA and replace the officer corps. The German military leaders fought back by threatening to topple the Nazi regime if the too-powerful SA wasn’t eliminated.
Between June 30 and July 2, 1934, and under Hitler’s direction . . . Heinrich Himmler and the SS arrested the SA leaders and shot them to death, including Hitler’s buddy, Ernst Röhm.
This operation became known as the “Night of the Long Knives.”
As a result, the German Army leadership formed an alliance with Hitler and supported him when he declared himself Führer on August 19, 1934, less than three weeks after the death of President Hindenburg. Most of these military leaders remained loyal to Hitler for many years to come.
In September of 1935, Hitler reduced the Jews to the status of second-class citizens and stripped them of their civil rights. Despite this, many thought the worst was over. Indeed, the Jews felt a sense of calm for two years, and . . .
10,000 Jewish emigrants returned to Germany from neighboring countries in 1935.
By 1938, Germany had rebounded from the economic instability created by WWI and the Great Depression. Firmly in control of the country, Hitler and his regime set their sights on territorial expansion, and Jewish policies took a radical turn.
The German Army occupied Austria in March, 1938.
There were 185,000 Jews (3% of the country’s population) living in Austria, and 170,000 of them lived in Vienna (10% of the city’s population). Sixty-two percent of all lawyers in Vienna were Jewish, and a similar percentage held positions in finance and commerce. Almost 50% of all Viennese doctors were Jewish, and Jews dominated trade and were quite visible in cultural enterprises.
Before the occupation, the Nazi Party was very active in Austria, promoting the unification of Germany and Austria and stirring up anti-Semitism. After the annexation, anti-Jewish laws were put in place and enforced immediately. The Jews quickly came under attack and were even assaulted in the streets. Jews lost their businesses and their apartments from the start.
In August of 1938, SS Lieutenant Adolph Eichmann set up an emigration office in Vienna to help speed the exit of Jews from the country, and . . .
150,000 Jews left during the following eighteen months.
The Nazis forced them to give up their property and their wealth before leaving Austria, but the Jews were thankful to be alive.
Violence against the Jews increased in Germany and Jewish businessmen were pressured to sell and leave. Jews who had previously immigrated from Poland were sent back; however, the Polish government didn’t allow them to return and left them to fend for themselves in the frontier zone. An angry young Jewish man in Paris whose Polish parents resided in the frontier zone retaliated by shooting Ernst vom Rath, a German officer stationed at the German Embassy in Paris. The Nazis used this incident to accelerate Jewish persecution in Germany and Austria.
On the nights of November 8-10, 1938, SS and SA men, dressed as ordinary citizens, “set fire to 1000 synagogues, smashed up 7500 Jewish-owned businesses, invaded and ransacked the homes where Jewish people lived, and fatally assaulted over 90 Jewish men. Police herded 30,000 male Jews into concentration camps until they could be ransomed out by their terrified families” (Cesarani).
This event became known as Kristallnacht, or “Night of Broken Glass.”
In addition, the Nazis charged the German Jewish community one billion Reichsmark (approximately 400 million U.S. dollars at that time) for the damage done on Kristallnacht. This spared the German insurance companies from paying.
What were the conditions in Germany which led to another world war only twenty years after the War to End All Wars? How did a “civilized” nation allow its leaders to annihilate so many of its own citizens? And how did such evil leaders gain power in the first place?
Post WWI Turmoil
The Treaty of Versailles – as one of the conditions of surrender, Germany was forced to pay huge reparation payments to the countries she fought during WWI. She also lost territory and was forced to surrender her colonies abroad, further limiting the income needed to pay debts and recover from the War. To help pay its obligations, the German government printed more money, which led to extreme inflation.
Enter ➥ numerous political parties vying to fix Germany’s troubles, parties that opposed the new government (Weimar Republic) and hated democracy. The German Army hired former WWI soldiers to infiltrate and spy on these groups. One of these soldiers, Adolph Hitler, became an undercover agent and joined the German Workers’ Party in 1920. He liked the party’s program, so he dumped his role as spy and soon became the leader, renaming the party the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazis.
Hitler’s Rise to Power
Hitler led the Nazi Party in a failed attempt to take over the Bavarian state government in 1923 and spent a year in prison. After his release, he built support for his party by recruiting from other discontented groups.
1928 elections – the Nazis had 800,000 votes (2.6%) for representatives in the Reichstag (German Parliament).
1929 Wall St. Crash – American banks called in German loans, causing German businesses and banks to fold and unemployment to spin out-of-control.
1930 elections – the Nazis had 6.4 million votes for representatives in the Reichstag. The centrist German government was unable to cure the economic problems and parliament was paralyzed by the two large opposing blocks of Nazis and Communists.
July, 1932 elections – the Nazis received 13.7 million votes (37.3% of the vote) and became the second largest party in the Reichstag. Hitler used his growing power to demand the position of chancellor, but President Hindenburg resisted.
September, 1932 elections – the Nazis received 11.7 million votes (fewer than the previous election), and President Hindenburg offered Hitler the post of chancellor, which he accepted on January 30, 1933. The Nazi celebrations included torchlight parades and the assaulting of their political opponents.
February, 1933 – an arsonist set fire to the Reichstag building, and Hitler convinced President Hindenburg to issue a decree (allowed by the Weimar Constitution), suspending most civil liberties in Germany. These rights (secrecy of the post and telephone; habeas corpus; freedom of the press, of expression, of free association, of public assembly) were not reinstated as long as the Nazis held power. Because the Reichstag arsonist was a communist, Hitler declared that the communists were plotting to take over the government. Many communists were arrested, including those serving in the parliament.
March, 1933 elections – the Nazis received 44% of the vote. By forming an alliance with another party which had received 8% of the vote, the Nazis now had a majority in the Reichstag (52%). In order to pass the Enabling Act, the Nazis either arrested or intimidated representatives of the Social Democratic Party who opposed them. The act passed, giving Hitler the right to rule by decree, and he effectively became the dictator of Germany.
The Nazis immediately embarked on a plan to exclude the Jewish population from German culture, politics, economics, and society.
The State of the Jews in Germany
After WWI, approximately 600,00 Jews lived in Germany (under 1% of the population). One third lived in Berlin (4% of the Berlin population). Seventy percent of Jews lived in large cities while 50% of the non-Jewish population lived in small towns and villages. In 1933, only one in five Jews lived in small towns.
During this period, 75% of all Jews were employed in trade, commerce, the financial sector, and the professions (three times the proportion among the general population). Jews owned 80% of the turnover of all German department stores, 25% of smaller retail outlets, and 30% of clothing stores. They handled 25% of all wholesale agricultural trade, and in some districts, largely controlled cattle dealing and grain marketing.
Only 11% of all doctors and 16% of all lawyers in Germany were Jewish, but they were concentrated in Berlin, giving the appearance of a much higher percentage. Several of the great publishing houses were owned by Jews, and they were highly represented among writers and journalists, in theater and the film industry. However, a significant number were rather poor.
In 1932, during the Great Depression, over 31.5% of Jewish employees in Berlin were out of work, and one in four received charity. Jews from Poland and Russia had immigrated to Germany during the 1880’s to the 1920’s, and by 1933, they made up 20% of all German Jewry. The Eastern Jews were predominately small merchants, itinerant traders, shopkeepers, tailors, artisans, and industrial workers. Many were Orthodox and religiously observant whereas the majority of German Jews belonged to the Reform or Liberal movement. Also, many German Jews were assimilating and marrying outside the faith.
Sources:
Introduction from Into the Arms of Strangers, Stories of the Kindertransport, by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer. (Introduction by David Cesarani)
