The Rapid Collapse Of The Polish Army

[Peter K]

Von Rundstedt yet in May of 1939 tried to predict what defensive actions would the Poles undertake:

He considered several variants of Polish actions:

1. Variant most favourable for the Germans according to von Rundstedt:

"If the Poles are to make the same mistake as the Czechs made in the Autumn of 1938, namely if they since the very beginning want to defend all of their borders (...) it will be easy to pierce such defence with concentrated forces in over a dozen points."

2. Variant most reasonable and thus most probable according to him:

"This is why it should be presumed, that the Poles will seek to defend their vast borders only with weaker forces, while maintaining the main part of their army as mobile reserve force. In the region of Poznan Polish forces shall not be too strong.
Behind the Warthe line, the resistance will grow stronger. Polish mobile units will be located probably (a) in the region of Jaroslaw & Przemysl (b) in the region of Deblin (c) in the region of Warsaw and (d) at the Narew."

3. Variant most unfavourable for the Germans in his opinion:

"If the Poles could count on fast and sure help of other powers, they would put up resistance with the main bulk of their forces to the east of Vistula, defending fiercely and withdrawing behind the line San - Vistula - Narew. (...) For us this means a problem of concentrating all units on the western and southern banks of these rivers, without dispersing forces in the eastern direction."

[JBbelgium]

Some of my thoughts on Blitzkrieg and Poland:
1) Germany lost WW1 and by consequence examined closely the lessons learned from WW1 + they had experience from civil war in Spain + Anschluss (30% of the panzers broke down, they had to use civilian gasstations for refueling) + occupation of czech republic. GB and France won WW1. As a consequence there were fewer pushfactors to come up with new tactics. + less recent experience
2) Hitler listened to Oswald Lutz, Heinz Guderian etc Other countries had similar personalities (Fuller, Lidell Hart, de Gaulle...) but weren't heared or to lesser extent. Not much you could do about that. So a lot depended on a few military leaders.
3) The panzerbreakthroughs stunned and paralyzed high commands that had to deal with them (Polish, French, you name it). So troops in the field were enormously affected by elements beyond their control no matter how well they fought. It also meant that they were often ordered to pull back (due to being outflanked) without fully understanding the reasons for that. => bad for the morale.
4) Germans fought on foreign soil unitil 1944. So their families and houses were safely behind them. Most of the allies fought on their own lands. So they preferred, understandably to defend as much as possible instead of the best/shortest positions. How can you ask your soldiers to defend the country if their own home, wife, kids, parents are already given up from the beginning.

[Peter K]

Excerpts from "Polish Armed Forces in the World War 2, Volume I - September Campaign 1939, Part II - Course of Operations from 1 to 8 September", chapter "Supply & Logistics in period 1 - 5 September", pp. 425 - 427:

"(...) Polish medical service almost immediately faced extremely difficult tasks.

Vast majority of its formations started to mobilize only during the general mobilization. Even divisions mobilized already during the alarm mobilization in most cases didn't have their field hospitals with them yet (field hospitals were mobilized in alarm mobilization only for divisions from Corps Districts VII and VIII). Out of non-divisional medical units, only part of surgeon and anti-gas units as well as 9 sanitary trains and 11 motorized sanitary columns (out of 36 sanitary trains and 17 motorized sanitary columns included in the mobilization plan) were mobilized during the alarm mobilization. In addition, some of medical units mobilized as part of the general mobilization, had very late dates of mobilizational readiness (up to 20th day of mobilization).

From domestic medical formations all peaceful hospitals (district hospitals and such - in total 13) and wartime hospitals located in Corps Districts VII and VIII were mobilized in alarm mobilization.

Expectations regarding the inflow of wounded were based on experiences of the First World War. It was considered, that the number of wounded will grow systematically and basing on this, dates of mobilizational readiness of medical formations were calculated.

Indeed the number of wounded during the very first days of war (at least those wounded who actually could be evacuated from the battlefield and float away to the rear area instead of being captured by the Germans) was relatively not too big. As of 4 September the total number of wounded in military hospitals amounted to around 12,000 (including some number of civilian wounded). Additionally in sanitary trains (if they were all fully filled with wounded) there were up to 4,500 further wounded (on that day 15 sanitary trains were on the move with transports of wounded - including 9 typical and 6 improvised trains). The number of still empty beds in all working at that time military hospitals amounted on 4 September to 7,620.

However, other, not expected previously problems, emerged.

First of all the number of wounded among the civilian population immediately started to grow to very large numbers as the result of German air attacks against settlements, cities and roads crowded with civilian refugees.

Secondly, evacuation of wounded with use of railway trains was being conducted very slowly because of constant air attacks of the railway network by enemy Air Force. There were also cases of enemy Air Force attacking sanitary trains directly, as the result of which casualties were suffered. One of sanitary trains (No. 25) was thoroughly bombed and destroyed at the railway station Szydlowiec.

Thirdly, coordination of the evacuation of wounded became very difficult due to problems with communication.

On 5 September the main Chief of the Medical Service described the situation as follows:

"Sanitary trains in usually sufficient numbers. But due to difficulties with communication... they are not able to capably shuttle, which causes slow evacuation and getting behind of wounded in the operational area. Evacuation from the area of combats to hospitals and to evacuation stages is hindered by lack of means of motor wheeled transport. Individual sanitary chiefs try to carry out evacuation using local means of transport with great effort to complete it. Detailed situations in the operational terrain are unknown due to lack of reports from medical chiefs and as the result of difficulties with obtaining communications with them."

But the most burdened with consequences was the necessity of radical change of the entire plan of dislocating military hospitals (both field and domestic) due to unfavourable development of situation on the frontline.

On days 3 - 4 September evacuation further hinterland of district hospitals from Poznan, Krakow, Torun and Lodz had to be started. Also new places of concentration for army evacuational hospitals had to be designated along the line of Bug-Wisla-San rivers (Brest Litovsk, Warsaw, Lublin and Jaroslaw). Wartime hospitals were ordered to concentrate in the south-eastern part of the country (including Lwow).

Implementation of all those new orders could no longer be carried out without considerable confusion. Some voivodeship hospitals had just finished their concentration or were during the process of concentration: some others were on the move to their previously designated places of concentration. Now everything had to be rolled up or doubled back. In such a way in a period of a constant growth of the influx of wounded, a general evacuation of hospitals from from the west to the east and to the south started. Additionally this evacuation was going to take place in the most difficult conditions due to activity of German Air Force and more and more difficult situation of the railway services."

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Later I will post more information about problems with other aspects of logistics & supply. Many of them also resulted from late mobilization of services, supply columns, etc. for most of divisions - even if combat elements of those divisions were already mobilized & concentrated on 01.09.1939, they often had incomplete services.

[Peter K]

Translated excerpt from the preface to Part II ("Operations between 1 and 8 September") of Volume I ("September campaign 1939") of "Polish Armed Forces in WW2" study, written by the Historical Commission of the Polish General Staff in London, published by the General Sikorski Historical Institute in London (2nd edition, 1986):

"(...) September campaign was most certainly the largest military defeat in our past. During its stormy course individuals often failed and there were also instances of collective breakdowns. There is of course no shortage of episodes painfully harming our national ambition and soldier's pride. History of this campaign must be thus out of necessity an unpleasant, or even painful reading for any Pole. Especially for readers not very acquainted with the history of warfare this reading will be very hard. For this reason at the beginning we want to direct reader's attention to some indispensible things, when it comes to fair evaluation of that sad reality. Namely, that it is a well-established fact that in initial campaigns, in wars fought after long periods of peacetime - and this applies to the September campaign - always many things go incoherently (clumsily) and unskilfully (inefficiently), a large percentage of commanders and units disappoint and generally such kinds of mistakes are commited, which would be simply unthinkable in later stages of the war. The reason of this is undoubtedly the fact, that versatile (broad) and complete preparation of armed forces to war is a very hard thing to achieve during peacetime, or even - as it seems - in some aspects unattainable. For it is impossible in peacetime conditions to provide the armed forces with complete picture of wartime reality and for this reason, in initial campaigns, this reality is always a greater or lesser surprise for a soldier. This refers to both of the opposing sides, but especially vulnerable in this respect (in respect of surprise) is always the weaker side, which after loosing initiative of operations is doomed for defence and for retreat. This was always the case, even if subsequent wars did not differ much from each other. Let alone in the September campaign, which after all had a totally new nature. Everything indicates, that this campaign demarcates between two large epochs in the history of warfare, because during this campaign for the first time, thanks to usage of Schnelle Truppen and Air Force on a vast scale by Germans, an agelong ratio of time to space (1 day and night = at most 25 km), intransgressible until that time when it comes to huge masses of troops, ceased to be in effect. It was a real revolution on the battlefield and in entire theatre of war, and one of its results was the increase in dread of war. This new reality was of course for commanders and soldiers on the Polish side a surprise in a way collateral. (...) It must be said that in military historiography (also in staff studies) there exists a kind of constant tendency to treat defeats and failures as shameful and embarrassing corners. They are being described in the most parsimonious possible way, they are often being sugarcoated, and sometimes - especially if during the course of further combats the tide turned - many things are totally omitted. Already Clausewitz considered this as unreasonable and very harmful. "We must truly ascertain the insane foolishness, when we see, that nearly all armies apply the principle of acknowledging (announcing) as little information (news) about unfortunate war events as possible." In our case this question is solved by the instruction of the Chef of General Staff, who ordered the historical commission to write a study that should be "a document of impartial historical truth". (...) Only in the light of diligently established facts a fair evaluation of the role of the September campaign in totality of WW2 will be possible. From this fact arises the need for as much objectivity as possible, and exclusive Polish point of view can only be marked in striving for not overlooking (not ignoring) brighter aspects of the campaign and for not showing anything in darker light than irrefutably emerges from analysis of sources."