The Battle of Poland was the first official campaign of aggression launched by Nazi Germany against a sovereign state, and it was the first time that Nazi Germany's new-style army showed its sword on the battlefield, marking the full-scale outbreak of World War II.
After Hitler came to power, he constantly showed tough measures to the outside world, while Britain and France, in order to avoid war, constantly implemented a weak policy of appeasement, causing Germany to annex all the territories of Austria and Czechoslovakia. Germany became one of the most powerful countries on the European continent after a decade of industrialization and militarization after World War I, with 108 divisions and 2.03 million professional soldiers, a well-developed economic infrastructure and industrial system, and nationalism flourished and intensified, paving the way for the war.
1939.8.23.Ribbentrop, the German governor, and Molotov, the Soviet Union, signed the "Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact" and secretly agreed to divide and occupy Poland. The last fears of German aggression against Poland were dispelled, and nothing could stop the pace of German aggression.
On August 29, 1939, Germany demanded that Poland surrender Danzig, an important port in northern Poland, but Poland** refused.
On 1 September, Army Group "North" under General General von Bock and Army Group "South" under General Rundstedt launched the "White Plan" to attack Poland from Pomerania and Silesia, respectively. The Germans committed 44 army divisions (including 7 panzer divisions, 4 light armored divisions and 4 motorized infantry divisions) and two air forces totaling 8860,000 people. The battle was completely different from the previous positional and trench warfare, light armored units and motorcycle units had become the main force of the battlefield, and the birth of the "blitzkrieg" announced the arrival of a new era of warfare. Poland was slow to react after the start of the war, and even 20 of the whole ** team had not yet been mobilized. The Polish army, led by Polish Field Marshal Smigway Rhodes, committed 39 infantry divisions, 11 cavalry brigades, 3 mountain infantry brigades, 2 armored motorcycle brigades, and nearly 80 civilian defense battalions, totaling about 1 million men, to resist the Germans.
However, the Polish army still adhered to the backward operational thinking of the First World War, and at the beginning of the war, a series of major problems were exposed: low communication efficiency, backward equipment, backward tactics, etc. At 4:45 a.m. on September 1, 1939, the Luftwaffe took the lead in launching a surprise attack on the Polish army, with hundreds of dive bombers dropping tens of thousands of bombs on factories, airports, railways and other strategic places. Subsequently, the German army on the German-Polish border launched an offensive on all fronts, and the battleship "Schleswig-Holstein", disguised as a ferry, opened fire on the port of Danzig. At dawn, the disorganized Polish army still failed to organize an effective counterattack, and the defense line was largely broken by the German ** team.
Panzer Pioneer Guderian led the 19th Panzer Army to the line of the Vistula River and completed the siege of the Polish Army "Pomerania" in the area of the "Polish Corridor". A day later, the fourth division of the Polish army was annihilated, and he himself only abolished 850 people. The commander-in-chief of the Polish army, Field Marshal Smiglilitz, ordered all troops to withdraw to the east of the Vistula to form the Vistula-San line. Poland *** withdrew from Warsaw and went to Lublin. The Polish army completely lost the initiative in the war. Guderian of the 19th Panzer Army was the first to cross the Narev River, intending to encircle Warsaw. Three days later, the army group "South" broke through the line of defense on the Vistula, and the Polish army collapsed further. The 22nd Panzer Corps joined up with Army Group North in the Fuhuodava area and surrounded the Polish troops decommissioned in the triangle of the Bug, San and Vistula rivers. The next day successfully surrounded Warsaw, Poland ** in exile. On October 5, 1939, the German army annihilated all the formed armed forces in Poland, occupied all of Poland, and then ruled with the Soviet Union, and the Polish campaign ended. In this war, the Polish army died 6630,000 people, **13370,000 people, 69 captured by the Germans40,000 people, captured by Soviet troops 2170,000 (including those who surrendered), 100,000 fled to neighboring countries. German dead 1060,000,**3030,000 people, more than 3,400 missing.