The Blitzkrieg Myth: Hitler’s Invasion of Poland | FULL DOCUMENTARY

[00:00:01][music] German tanks head westward in the Battle of France in 1940.

[00:00:13]These scenes were reconstructed for the first Nazi documentary film in color.

[00:00:17]The artillery attacks glorified Germany's victory over its archeneemy in [music] the west as the success of a supposedly revolutionary military strategy.

[00:00:32]>> The Blitzkre concept is actually an old concept of the German general staff. It is mobile warfare. The Germans had always had far too few resources to endure a long war. So the concept developed that a battle of annihilation had to be fought and that was only possible by overrunning the enemy in a mobile war.

[00:01:06]When it came to grabbing the limelight in German cinemas, the Vermachar knew no bounds. An entire village was expertly reduced to rubble for the cameras.

[00:01:16]Extras had to wear captured French uniforms.

[00:01:20]This was obviously not original footage from the campaign in France where such scenes would have been too difficult and too dangerous to film. But army high command spared no expense in presenting Germany's glorious artillery in the right screenlight and gunners could blaze away to their hearts content.

[00:01:38]In between the two world wars, German military leaders had thought about to conduct a future conflict and the experience of the first world war played a major role. Blitzkrieg was a propaganda term. It sounded a lot more forceful than talking about a swift victory or a rapid operation or having to decide a battle quickly.

[00:02:18]The term blitzkrieg was actually coined by an allied journalist because after Germany's military successes in the opening years of the war, the whole world was asking how the Germans managed to be so effective.

[00:02:30]Well, the journalist replied, the German army strikes Europe like a bolt of lightning and registers victories at lightning speed.

[00:02:44]Captured French tanks served as props.

[00:02:46]Pyro technicians created explosions for the camera.

[00:02:50]The artillery, of course, repulsed the tank attack with ease. And the inferior enemy could only flee in the face of German superiority.

[00:03:03]German hubris on the road to destruction.

[00:03:11]Berlin, early January 1939. A New Year's reception for Hitler in the Chancellery.

[00:03:17]The Furer finally wanted to launch the war the Munich Conference had prevented him from waging in 1938.

[00:03:25]The efforts to maintain peace by Europe's major powers could not deter him from his original plan.

[00:03:36]In reality, for Hitler, the peaceful expansion of the German Reich from 1938 was designed solely to strengthen his own and Germany's power base. The real new order was to come through war. If you look at national socialist ideology, which was built on battle and survival and on conflict between races, it was actually just a logical step for this new order in Europe to be introduced by force of arms.

[00:04:03]This rude awakening was not long in coming. Following the annexation of the Sudatan land, Hitler wanted to dismantle Czechoslovakia. On March 15th, 1939, 60,000 German troops occupied what remained of Czechoslovakia in just a few hours. The parade on Venusla Square in Prague was humiliation for the Czech nation.

[00:04:29]Hitler had deliberately broken the Munich agreement. Swine was the word he used to describe the negotiating partners from Great Britain and France who had thwarted his plans for war back then.

[00:04:42]In visiting Prague Castle, Hitler made it unmistakably clear that there would be no further peace conferences.

[00:04:51][cheering] Poland and the Nazi regime enjoyed good relations. In March 1939, Foreign Minister Yoakim von Ribbentrop traveled to Warsaw.

[00:05:06]Hitler's relationship with Poland fluctuated greatly. Originally, he wanted to have Poland as a junior partner against the Soviet Union because Poland too saw the Soviet Union as a major enemy. So, Hitler thought this was something he could utilize. But when the polls hesitated, Hitler realized that he could not take Poland as a junior partner. Consequently, Poland was then regarded as a Slavic state that was racially inferior to the Germans.

[00:05:35]Above all, Ribbentrop wanted Danzig to be returned to the German Reich.

[00:05:39]Polish forces stationed on the nearby Wester Plat [music] Peninsula were not allowed to set foot in the city which had been independent since 1920 and was under the control of the League of Nations. 95% of the citizens of Danzig spoke German and the overwhelming majority wanted Hitler to take them home into the Reich.

[00:06:01]Great Britain and [music] France actually accepted this demand. But for Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the time [music] for negotiating had come because ever since German troops had marched into Prague, the Polish government had feared that Poland would become Hitler's next victim.

[00:06:18]>> Basically, the guarantee which the British and French gave Poland put an end to appeasement politics. The attempt to restrain Hitler in some way and to stop him from waging war had failed.

[00:06:29]This was shown at the latest by his treatment of Czechoslovakia. So a clear signal had to come from London and Paris to prevent a future conflict, possibly even a major war. Hence the guarantee statement to show that they were serious that if the worst came to the worst, appropriate preparations for war would take place in Britain and France.

[00:06:53]Early in April 1939, the British Secretary of State for Air, Sir Kingsley Wood, visited a bomber factory in a war. or the aircraft it was producing would attack German cities.

[00:07:04]After the Munich agreement, Britain had rearmed. Nevertheless, the British did everything to avoid antagonizing the Germans. Secretly, however, Prime Minister Chamberlain regarded Hitler as a psychopath and wanted to gain time to prepare his country for a long war against Nazi Germany.

[00:07:26]Polish foreign minister Ysef Beck flew to London to give formal approval to the new alliance.

[00:07:34]He stressed that the Polish army was capable of repulsing the vermach.

[00:07:41]When the Germans occupied Rump Czechoslovakia, the allies had already stood firm. After saying that was now the last step, they concluded assistance treaties with Poland. This was to show Hitler, take one more step, there will be war.

[00:07:56]But that didn't stop him because Hitler knew anyway that he wanted a new order in Europe under military circumstances.

[00:08:06]>> Berlin, April 20th, 1939. Hitler arrives at Un Lindon to attend a massive military parade.

[00:08:15]The bombastic celebrations to mark the Furer's 50th birthday were, of course, part of the Third Reich's preparations for war. Nazi Germany was putting its military might on display and the propaganda machine even elevated the myth it had created. That of Hitler as a brilliant commander no one and nothing could stop.

[00:08:37]A closer look revealed the strategy of the German armed forces. Its armor and air force had been upgraded.

[00:08:46]The problem was that the German armament industry could not meet all the demands from Berlin.

[00:08:54]The buildup of the armored units was still in full swing. The Vemach had vehicles whose quality in 1939 and 1940 would soon prove inadequate.

[00:09:09]And above all, it did not have enough vehicles. That is why it was so important for the Vermacht to incorporate the Czech armaments industry because tank production in Czechoslovakia was at a top European level.

[00:09:25]Incorporation of the Czech arms industry meant that when war began in 1939, 12% of the Vermach's vehicles came from Czechoslovakia.

[00:09:34]12% and in such a critical situation that was highly significant for the Vermacht.

[00:09:45]At a military parade in Warsaw, the Polish army demonstrated its resolve to resist the Vermacht.

[00:09:51]The government left no doubt as to its determination. It had ordered the partial mobilization of its armed forces as early as March 1939 and thus provoked Hitler. Polish newspapers praised the strength of the country's army. The British government continued to trust in diplomacy and deterrent. London threatened Hitler with war, but wanted to avoid it at all cost.

[00:10:16]The British had always wanted to curve the polls a little. Don't mobilize so openly, they said. We're not yet ready.

[00:10:22]Don't provoke Hitler. Full mobilization would have been provocation. So the British always tried to rein the Poles in a little. That is why Poland was only able to mobilize with a handbreak on, so to speak.

[00:10:33]Yet the Nazi regime found it hard to put the Germans on course for war. The traumatic memories of the First World War had not been forgotten.

[00:10:42]A German journalist noted that observers cannot avoid the impression that people are deliberately abandoning themselves to uninhibited pleasure.

[00:10:55]>> If you look at the mood in the summer of 1939, there was certainly no widespread enthusiasm for war in Germany. That was definitely not the case.

[00:11:08]At the same time, however, the government was engaged in subtly orchestrated propaganda against Poland.

[00:11:17]This varied from day to day.

[00:11:22]In 1939, therefore, Poland was again being built up as an adversary of Germany, and the plan to wage war on Poland was already being accompanied by work on the propaganda front.

[00:11:38]On June 19th, 1939, propaganda minister Yseph Gerbles visited Danzig. A regional culture week was designed to reinforce Nazi claims to the city.

[00:11:51]The prominent visitor was given a frenetic reception. In his speech, he made Hitler's desire to annex Danzig quite clear.

[00:12:12]We even mention the heard on returning to Germany, Gerbles launched a large-scale hate campaign against Poland.

[00:12:32]The propaganda centered on the allegedly desperate situation of the German minority in Poland.

[00:12:49]Fore! Foreign! Foreign!

[00:13:23]During the summer, Hitler withdrew to Bavaria and only occasionally appeared in public.

[00:13:29]Meanwhile, plans for the invasion of Poland were in full swing.

[00:13:40]On August 22nd, Hitler invited his military leaders, including the heads and commanders of the army groups, and explained to them that Poland was now going to be destroyed, as he put it, but that the Polish campaign was to be a limited conflict. The Western powers would not be involved. He then stunned and at the same time reassured them with the news that alliance negotiations were currently in progress with the Soviets and would soon be concluded. So the German military no longer needed to worry that a major world war was about to begin because at the time no one wanted that, especially Hitler. He really believed that the Western powers would do nothing but talk and engage in saber rattling. But on no account would they risk a new world war because of Poland.

[00:14:23]>> Hitler wanted to attack, but foreign minister Ribbon was still involved in secret negotiations with Moscow. The aim was for archeneemy Ysef Stalin of all people to become an ally of the Nazis.

[00:14:36]The Furer sent a personal letter to Mr. Stalin, Moscow. For him, a pact with the Soviet Union meant determining German politics in the long run. It's not clear if Stalin actually believed that.

[00:14:50]However, his reaction to the offer from Berlin was unexpectedly positive.

[00:14:55][music] On the Burghoff on August 16th, 1939, Nazi leaders congratulated Hitler on [music] his 25th military jubilee. Yoim von Ribbentrop personally brought the good news from Moscow.

[00:15:11]>> Naturally, the pact between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, which was signed on August 23rd, 1939, laid the foundation for the German invasion of Poland. It meant that Hitler could at least be sure of no resistance from Stalin and the Soviet side. that the Russians would not attack Germany. That could now be forgotten. It meant he had a free hand, but so too did Stanley.

[00:15:36]On August 22nd, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop flew via Kernixburg to Moscow. He had with him the draft of a non-aggression pact. In negotiations, agreement was quickly reached on the final details.

[00:15:50]A secret supplementary protocol divided up Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union.

[00:15:57]The Red Army would occupy the east of the country.

[00:16:03]The German Soviet non-aggression pact and especially the secret supplementary protocol smoothed Hitler's path to war.

[00:16:09]It was precisely what he had been waiting for. Now with this Hitler and Stalin pact, it was clear that the Soviet Union did not constitute a threat to the German Reich. On the contrary, the two dictators were working on the destruction of the Polish state.

[00:16:26]>> Finally, the German delegation was received by Stalin himself. The Soviet leader had every reason to be satisfied.

[00:16:33]He was also promised Finland, the Baltic [music] states of Estonia and Latvia, and Bessabia. In his toast, he said Hitler was one hell of a fellow.

[00:16:47]On the Burghof, the Furer was waiting impatiently for the relieving news from Moscow. When Ribbentrop finally confirmed the non-aggression pact, Hitler was delighted. [music] Now he said, "Poland is in the position I wanted it to be."

[00:17:06]>> Concluding an alliance with Stalin was of course a coup that was successful in two ways. militarily because it prevented a war on two fronts and politically because the allies in the west were shocked. This was something they hadn't expected to pull the Soviet Union over to their side. A Franco British delegation had also traveled to Moscow, but they were diplomats who did not have the authority to sign a treaty. They did not even get to see Stalin and returned home empty-handed.

[00:17:42]In maneuvers, the French army showed its strength. A plan even existed for it to march straight into Germany's rur district in the event of war.

[00:17:53][music] >> The Germans knew that they had to defeat the Poles relatively quickly because at the same time to the west of the Reich, they were facing the French. But there they could only deploy second rate units because the mass and indeed the elite of the German army and air force was engaged in Poland.

[00:18:14]>> Poland had a major problem simply from a geographical point of view.

[00:18:18]Strategically, it was already as good as encircled even before the war began.

[00:18:22]What is more, the Polish army considerably overestimated its own ability.

[00:18:30]Poland published maneuver footage which was also shown in Britain and France.

[00:18:36]What the pictures could not hide was the lack of equipment and a modern strategic concept.

[00:18:43]In the meantime, Polish customs officials on the Danzig city boundary had been issued with arms. Foreign Minister Joseph Beck thought that Hitler needed to be faced with grim determination. The message was that Poland would defend itself and on no account just hand over Danzig to the Germans.

[00:19:05]>> Militarily the Vermacht was superior to the Polish army in many ways in men and material.

[00:19:13]But I don't think that was so decisive.

[00:19:16]We should always remember that these armies consisted of conscripts who four weeks earlier perhaps had been civilians. They were then put in uniform and first had to learn what war meant and that also has to be taken into account with regard to the military leadership.

[00:19:32]We are not talking about professionals who had already fought in many wars and could thus rely on recent comprehensive experience of warfare.

[00:19:40]No, these armies first had to learn what it meant to wage war.

[00:19:47]On the evening of August 24th, 1939, Nazi television broadcast a documentary on soldier comrades open day at the Gross Deutsland Guards Regiment in Berlin.

[00:20:00]First and foremost, the Hitler Youth was mobilized. It had been preparing for action for [music] years.

[00:20:17]against Hitler had planned to attack Poland on August 26th, the day before an armored infantryman took this amateur footage near the border with Poland.

[00:20:51]54 German divisions with 3,600 armored vehicles and around 1 and a half million troops were on standby.

[00:21:02]>> Initially, German military plans provided for a classic Pinsir movement.

[00:21:07]Two large army groups advancing in the south from Celisia and Slovakia and in the north from Pomerania and East Prussia towards Warsaw and the Vistulla would encircle the mass of the Polish army in a large pinser movement.

[00:21:24]>> The Polish military leadership aided this plan by moving its troops relatively close to the border. In other words, this deployment of the Polish forces actually benefited the Germans.

[00:21:39]On August 25th, 1939, [music] Danzig was also preparing for military conflict.

[00:21:48]The Nazis had created an SS home guard of about 1,500 men.

[00:21:55]These armed thugs were supposed to defend the city from attack by Polish forces.

[00:22:01]In the morning, the German warship Holstein entered Danig Harbor.

[00:22:07]Holstein Schlesig Holstein was one of the few warships the Treaty of Versailles had allowed the German Reich to keep. It was almost cynical for the Schles Holstein of all ships to be sent into Dansik Bay. After all, it was supposed to be on a voyage of friendship and peace. But the vessel already had Viam troops hidden in its hold because the plan was for it to shell the Vesta Plata Peninsula and thus fire the opening shots of the war against Poland.

[00:22:34]In the meantime, Hitler had arrived at the Chancellery. At 3 p.m., he issued the order to attack, but Germany's Italian allies suddenly decided that they did not want to participate after all. At 700 p.m., Hitler called a stop to everything.

[00:22:52]The days immediately preceding the invasion of Poland were marked by repeated postponement of the German assault. The German plan was clear.

[00:23:00]There was going to be an invasion. The only question now was whether this would take place a few days sooner or later.

[00:23:06]Even so, in this phase, Hitler was afraid that, as he put it, some swine might put forward another peace treaty.

[00:23:12]He was worried that on the foreign policy front, someone would get in his way. He wanted war.

[00:23:21]On August 26th, Neville Henderson, the British ambassador in Berlin, returned to London. This time, the British were not prepared to accommodate Hitler in any way whatsoever.

[00:23:32]For his part, the Furer threatened to accept the possibility of war with the Western powers.

[00:23:39]For weeks, the leader of the SS, Hinrich Himmler, had been planning actions that would give Hitler a reason to declare war on Poland. The head of the security police, Reinhard Hydrich, had prepared everything for weeks. He had also been organizing the systematic persecution of the Polish intelligencia and the elimination of Poland's Jews.

[00:24:02]The plans for the German invasion of Poland already provided for elements that deviated from so-called conventional warfare. In this case, it was not only about the military conquest of a certain area. It also involved the persecution and murder of people who according to international military law should be protected. In other words, civilians. But we know that the task forces of the security police have been told that in areas already occupied by the Germans, so-called enemies of the rash were to be arrested on a massive scale and in specific cases murdered.

[00:24:42]>> These pictures were taken in Warsaw in 1939 by an American tourist. The Polish capital was home to the biggest Jewish community in Europe. The country as a whole had a Jewish population of more than 3.3 million. During the Second World War, around 90% were murdered.

[00:25:05]>> The new date for the attack was September 1st. The evening before, a special SS unit had attacked the German broadcasting station at Glyitz in Silasia. The men wore Polish uniforms.

[00:25:16]Listeners [music] to the radio station heard a call for action against foreign domination by Germans. This was the reason to attack which Hitler had ordered.

[00:25:27]>> The Glyitz broadcasting station was one of many actions designed to create a propagandistic reason to attack Poland.

[00:25:33]The fact that in the end it was Glitz was simply because the other actions were even less successful. And even Glavitz was a totally amateurish operation. Everyone could see through it. But that didn't matter. The next day, Hitler said in the end, the winner will decide whether or not that was an adequate reason. He knew full well that it was all so transparent. But the Vesta Plata Peninsula was something totally different.

[00:25:57]Danzig Harbor on the morning of September 1st, [music] 1939.

[00:26:04]Stationed on the nearby Vesta Plata Peninsula was a Polish garrison. Nazi radio broadcast live.

[00:26:18]At 447, the warship fired the first salvo. The Second World War began with a lie.

[00:26:42]The naval shock troops hidden in the hold of the Schlesvig Holstein tried in vain to storm the Vesta Platter.

[00:26:49]The defenders only surrendered after a week of continuous shelling.

[00:26:57]Case white had begun. Nazi propaganda camera teams took iconic footage which still symbolizes the Blitzkrieg myth even today, but it has little to do with reality.

[00:27:11]Hitler had achieved his goal.

[00:27:24]Everything was going according to plan.

[00:27:32]The vehem was clearly superior to the Polish army both in men and material.

[00:27:37]The Poles were in fact confident that although they might not be able to defeat the Germans, they could resist them long enough for the Western Allies, the British and the French to enter the war and relieve the pressure on the Polish front.

[00:27:55]On September 1st, nearly 2,000 German Air Force planes were also operational and ready to attack Polish cities. The raids also killed thousands of civilians in the small town of Van, for example, which was attacked by dive bombers.

[00:28:15]In a surprise attack in the early morning, the Germans had occupied public facilities in the free city of Danzig, which since 1920 had been under the control of the League of Nations.

[00:28:27]But around 50 Polish civil servants had dug in at Danzig post office. The defenders had received arms and ammunition from Warsaw several weeks before. They were to hold the position until the Polish army arrived.

[00:28:43]But the brave men were fighting a losing battle. When the Germans set fire to the building, the remaining defenders gave up. They were sentenced to death by court marshal and executed.

[00:28:56]The sixth tank regiment left its positions in Transpomerania and also entered northern Poland. As an American journalist commented [music] later, the veh advanced with the precision of a steamroller.

[00:29:10]Polish armored units that confronted the invaders were eliminated.

[00:29:21]>> The main mistake the Poles made was that in trying to defend as much Polish territory as possible, they had spread their forces too widely. They were just not strong enough to do that. Instead, they should have marshaled their forces and focused on defending just one main focal point.

[00:29:38]France had also signed an assistance treaty with Poland.

[00:29:42]Prime Minister Edoard Daladier ordered mobilization.

[00:29:49]Hardly anyone believed that France and Great Britain really would sacrifice the lives of their troops for Danzig.

[00:29:59]Hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen responded to the call to arms, hoping that this time too it would be a false alarm.

[00:30:07]The governments in Paris and London demanded that Germany withdraw its troops from Poland and gave Hitler an ultimatum. It remained unanswered.

[00:30:16]War was now inevitable.

[00:30:21]2 days after Germany invaded Poland, France and Britain both declared war on the German rush.

[00:30:27]It was thus clear that this was not going to be just a local conflict, but a European war.

[00:30:34]In the days that followed, Commonwealth countries like Canada, Australia, and so on also declared war on Germany.

[00:30:41]So at an early stage, it became evident that the war could and probably would assume a global dimension.

[00:30:48]But the problem now, especially from the Polish point of view, was that the French and the British were not taking any military action to relieve Poland.

[00:30:56]They continued to sit on the border instead of attacking the German Reich.

[00:31:07]Air raid alarm in Paris.

[00:31:12]The French were afraid of German air strikes, so they practiced seeking refuge in shelters and using gas masks.

[00:31:20]The people were far from enthusiastic about the news that mobilization had been ordered.

[00:31:28]>> Nothing. the guarantee of assistance that had been given to Poland made a declaration of war politically inevitable. But in contrast to Paris in London, there was still heated discussion as to whether this really was the right moment for such step. Most people, however, said that Hitler had already been given numerous chances. If we let him get away with it this time, they reckoned he'll never tow the line.

[00:31:51]We have to go to war. But that first meant getting British troops across the channel to mainland Europe.

[00:31:59]units of the British Expeditionary Force saying their farewells on the British Channel Island of Gernzi. Just like in the First World War, the British and the Canadians would come to the help of the French if the Germans really did attack in the West as well. Initially, six divisions were dispatched to the continent. Nine others would follow.

[00:32:23]But even so, the Western powers did nothing to help Poland.

[00:32:28]Hitler had taken a great risk and he'd been lucky.

[00:32:31]Tanks were at the heart of the Blitzkrieg strategy.

[00:32:35]The amateur filmmaker with the Sixth Tank Regiment documented his unit's advance.

[00:32:44]We have to dismiss the notion that the German army only advanced into Poland with tanks.

[00:32:50]Only a very small section of the army was motorized or even armored.

[00:32:54]Time and again, however, it was these units which decided battles. So, what we have here is an army with a small elite and a large mass of infantry, which was not necessarily always decisive on the battlefield.

[00:33:07]The German tanks had a massive advantage in that they were equipped with radios, so tank commanders could communicate with one another and take swift decisions on the battlefield.

[00:33:17]The coordinated Vermacht thrusts put the Polish armed forces under huge pressure.

[00:33:23]On September 6th, the 10th Army broke through the Polish defensive front in depth.

[00:33:31]The concept of blitzkrieg always conjures up this concept of huge tank units swarming through a country.

[00:33:38]The truth is that 90% of the veh consisted of uniformed pedestrians of middle age. It was a large conscripted army that had been made mobile. But at the most, the actual mechanized spearheads accounted for just 10% of the German armed forces.

[00:33:56]>> On September 5th, the chief of the general staff, France Halder, was certain that the enemy is as good as defeated, but bloody battles still took place with the Germans too suffering many casualties.

[00:34:13]>> The army which attacked Poland had no battle experience. Its soldiers encountered violence and saw corpses for the first time irrespective of whether they were Polish or German.

[00:34:25]Before then that had not been part of everyday life for these men.

[00:34:29]So they had to get used to violence, but they had already been shaped ideologically.

[00:34:36]The young generation of conscripts had of course spent 5 years with the Hitler youth.

[00:34:42]So this was a generation that had already been shaped ideologically.

[00:34:50]>> Even before the campaign, Hitler had said his goal was to obliterate Poland.

[00:34:56]France Halder noted clearance measures, Jews, intelligencia, clergy, nobility.

[00:35:03]The security police began with the purging that had been planned >> in the towns and villages that had been captured. They seized card indexes of the inhabitants to determine who might be dangerous.

[00:35:19]Naturally, lists identifying the Jewish inhabitants of these places were also confiscated immediately.

[00:35:27]And in addition to securing this information, first and foremost, the security police task forces were ordered to persecute those who were to be seen as enemies of the Third Reich.

[00:35:41]>> The Vermach received no orders instructing soldiers to murder civilians, but agitators warned young troops in particular about the Jewish population.

[00:35:51]Resistance, they said, was to be expected everywhere and had to be met with drastic measures.

[00:35:58]Consequently, massacres were soon taking place.

[00:36:02]>> The following situation occurred in Konsia in September 1939.

[00:36:06]German soldiers had been killed near the village and word spread amongst the men that somehow this had not happened in normal combat, that the man had been ambushed or shot by Polish partisans.

[00:36:17]Even though there was no proof of this, So Jews in the village who had had nothing whatsoever to do with the incident were rounded up and made to dig graves for the German troops who had been killed.

[00:36:36]The men in the detachment supervising the job were very edgy and aggressive.

[00:36:41]They began mishandling the Jews who had only been brought there to work. The situation got out of hand. The Jews were beaten up and some of them of course panicked and tried to run away.

[00:36:54]At that moment a German officer in a military vehicle appeared on the scene.

[00:37:01]He saw soldiers and Jews in a tussle and Jews running away and immediately opened fire on them.

[00:37:10]Then not only the officer, the soldiers themselves also began shooting at the fleeing Jews.

[00:37:18]The officer faced a court marshal because he had opened fire first and caused the situation to escalate.

[00:37:27]But the sentence he was given was ridiculously light.

[00:37:31]But other soldiers who had used their weapons never even stood trial.

[00:37:39]Film director Lenny Reefenstyle [music] witnessed the massacre in which 22 people were murdered.

[00:37:45]In her memoir, she claimed to have made a complaint to the vermach because of the incident, but that can no longer be checked because, as in most cases of this kind, there were no particular consequences.

[00:38:04]In some cases, the murder of Jewish Poles was investigated. Not always for humanitarian or legal reasons though, but because by their nature such crimes threatened military order.

[00:38:19]So the motivation for pursuing such cases varied.

[00:38:25]Some war crimes in Poland were prosecuted, but such cases were hushed up relatively quickly. Poland was the transition to a new form of warfare. The reason why the situation did not become more radicalized is simply because the war was soon over.

[00:38:42]>> On September 8th, 1939, a loudspeaker vehicle in Offenberg in Bardon broadcast news of victories in Poland. The local daily press also printed special reports [music] from Army High Command. The Germans were amazed that their fathers, husbands, and sons had overrun Poland so quickly.

[00:39:08]The Poland campaign saw the first encirclement battles.

[00:39:12]The Germans repeatedly tried to surround Polish units to cut them off from their supplies and forced them to surrender more quickly.

[00:39:20]Despite fierce resistance from the Poles, slowly but surely, the Germans advanced closer and closer to Warsaw.

[00:39:31]Hitler appeared close to the front even though the campaign had only just begun.

[00:39:36]He was highly interested in the military achievements of his forces although he rarely intervened in discussions by his generals.

[00:39:46]>> The war in Poland began with two flanking attacks which initially were also relatively successful. The speed of the assaults also put most of the Polish army in a precarious position. The Poles were forced to retreat.

[00:40:02]However, along the Bzura River west of Warsaw, a situation developed which was definitely critical for the Vermacht for several days.

[00:40:12]But in the end, the German army came out on top.

[00:40:18]The Poles resisted for several days, but on September 16th, 1939, they had to accept defeat here, too.

[00:40:28]>> I think the Polish government already knew that the war was lost. It now had very little political scope left. All that remained was to flee the country and go into exile. That was clear at the very latest when the Red Army invaded from the east. There was no way the Polish army could survive against two adversaries.

[00:40:46]On September 17th, a million Soviet troops marched into eastern Poland to occupy the Russian sphere of interest outlined in the secret supplementary protocol to the non-aggression pact.

[00:41:01]Hitler now concentrated on taking the Polish capital. He had no feelings for its civilian population. In warfare, he said, it is not who is about right, it is about who is victorious.

[00:41:14]He demanded a brutal approach and maximum severity. The vermach had to show no sympathy.

[00:41:23]Hitler >> Hitler wanted Warsaw to fall before the Soviets arrived because at the time the demarcation line was to be the river Vistula. How? He said, can we get Warsaw to surrender quickly? Various approaches were suggested. Some said by bombing it.

[00:41:37]At least we now have the chance to show how a city can be destroyed with bombs and fire. But others didn't think this was a good idea. They preferred to starve the Poles into submission. The Poles reckoned they could hold out.

[00:41:50]>> Barricades were erected in the capital in expectation of a German assault.

[00:41:55]In Warsaw, 120,000 poles dug in.

[00:42:04]A decision now had to be taken. Was it to be urban warfare with high German losses or [music] barbaric destruction from the air?

[00:42:21]>> Warsaw [music] was encircled and Hitler and Guring decided to force its surrender with bombing raids.

[00:42:28]That was justified, they said, [music] because the Poles had called for their capital to be defended.

[00:42:42]>> [music]