A full-length study of the opening campaign of the Second World War,
dispelling common misunderstandings and myths concerning the Nazi
invasion.
Hitler's attack on Poland in 1939 was the first brutal act in six years
of world war, but the campaign is often overshadowed by the momentous
struggle that followed across the rest of Europe. David Williamson, in
this timely and thought-provoking study, reconstructs each stage of the
battle in graphic detail. He looks at the precarious situation of the
Polish nation caught between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union,
reconsiders the pre-war policies of the other European powers,
particularly France and Britain, and assesses the state of the opposing
armed forces before the Germans launched Operation White. In a vivid and
fast-moving narrative he follows the course of the campaign as it moved
across Poland in September 1939.
His book should encourage a fresh understanding of the Polish-German war
and of its significance for the wider conflagration that followed.
Critical episodes in the German offensive are reexamined: the mock
attack at Gleiwitz, the battles at Westerplatte and Bzura, the siege of
Warsaw and the impact of the intervention of the Red Army. Throughout
the narrative, first-hand accounts of soldiers and civilians who were
caught up in events are used to give an insight into the experience of
the war. The author dispels myths that persist about the course of the
campaign - the apparent destruction of the Polish air force, the Poles'
use of cavalry - and he draws attention to often overlooked flaws in
German military organization. He also records the immediate aftermath of
the Polish capitulation - the division of Poland between Hitler's
Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union and the fate of the captured Polish
troops.
