Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#331

Post by David Thompson » 06 Sep 2010, 06:32

An unsourced opinion post from Okyzm, containing personal remarks about another poster without adding anything of informational value to the topic, was removed by this moderator - DT.

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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#332

Post by Piotr Kapuscinski » 07 Sep 2010, 00:01

In Poland in 1939, as in the United States today, private ownership of firearms, by both ethnic Poles and ethnic Germans, was fairly common.
Provide your sources - proper paragraphs from proper codes would be the best.
I believe that the German historian Ernst Nolte was quite correct;
Yeah, of course - everybody knows it was the Fascist Poles who first created the institutionalized, well-organized, resilent machine of a massive genocide of innocent minority groups - not the Nazi Germans. :roll:
It is obvious that what Chincinski is doing is perpetuating the Polish chauvinist myth that was invented in the first days of the German-Polish War, namely that the Polish defeat was due to wide-spread treason on the part of the ethnic German minority.
Yeah, certainly the German minority members who were mobilized into the ranks of the Polish army, were fighting against their compatriots from the other side of the border with great gallantry. :roll:

The same minority attitude was in Czechoslovakia - that's why it fought against the Reich so fiercely. :roll:
There is one more interesting item in the claims made by Chincinski, that almost goes unnoticed. He states that the Polish forces had not been given any orders to destroy the industrial facilities in Polish Silesia so as to prevent from falling into German hands and being used by Germany for its war effort (as actually happened). He explains that failure to initiate a "scorched earth" policy on the basis that the Polish Government believed that the German forces would be repulsed, and Polish Silesi either would not be conquered by invading german forces or else would be retaken. That is one more piece of evidence that the Polish Government did not fear a German invasion, but rather believed that once war broke out between Poland and Germany, Germany would be defeated by the combined action of Polish forces in the East and French and British forces in the West.
What is so interesting about it?

It seems you are not familiar with even the basic assumptions of the Polish Defensive Plan "West".

Silesia was the key point of Polish defensive lines - as I wrote in other threads on this forum, Army "Cracow" was ordered to defend Silesia as long as possible. In other areas ground was supposed to be lost, quick withdrawal was supposed to take place - but Silesia was the place in which resistance was supposed to continue for many days.

After the initial German success, the counterattack of Army "Prusy" north of Silesia, towards the northern wing of Army "Cracow" was supposed to stop the German advance and defeat at least part of their forces in this area.

Of course that the Polish authorities expected the French military help - as was promised.

Of course that the Polish authorities did not expect the real power of Blitzkrieg.

Nobody knew the power of Blitzkrieg - this new type of warfare - before September 1939. There were articles in the Polish press which claimed that "The Lightning War" is impossible to put into practice, even in August 1939.

One of such articles was even quoted by me on this forum - but without translation.

There is nothing "interesting" nor strange about it.
That myth was generated because of Polish embarrassment at the quick defeat of their armed forces, and a psychological inability to accept that the much-vaunted Polish cavalry was no match for a modern, technologically advanced army.
Actually the Polish cavalry made a good match for them in tactical scale, because it was modernized in the 30s. It was obsolete in operational scale but Poland could not afford motorized units so cavalry was a substitute for lack of mobile, armoured-motorized units. And it proved its worth in many battles, such as Mokra-Ostrowy for example, where a Polish cavalry brigade halted a German Panzer-Division for two days and it was not able to break its defensive lines.

Even boneheads know that Poland was not the only country which was using cavalry units in WW2. Also Germany was using large cavalry formations even in 1943 - 1945. And in 1939 they also had one cavalry brigade.

Apart from the fact that you speak like the whole Polish army was cavalry, while it was only some 8%.
The phenomena probably occurred at the beginning of the German invasion. Polish units retreating in panic in the face of the massive German onslaught began to fire at each other, or came under fire from groups of german commandos that had been dropped behind Polish lines.
8O

I have a better theory - German units attacked in panic against a stiff Polish resistance but the massive onslaught of German saboteurs (or "commandos" as you like - but they were not uniformed and they were not fulfilling any of the internationally accepted legal conditions required to call them "combatants") began to fire at the Poles.
As Chencinski says, many members of those organisations were arrested before the outbreak of war, but none could be defintiely identified as trained saboteurs.
Either Google Translation is so poor or you are not able to properly understand what you read. :roll:

Chincinski writes that there were clear evidences they were involved in sabotage and anti-Polish actions but most of them were released simply because of so called "political correctness" as well as "do not provoke them" idea.
3. After the outbreak of war, despite the large number of alleged saboteurs, there was no successful sabotage by them. Successes claimed by German propaganda after the Polish defeat were largely imaginary.

Chincinski appears to explain the Polish failure to identify and capture the alleged saboteurs before the outbreak of war and the failure of the alleged saboteurs to actually carry out any sabotage on the basis of incompetence. The Polish security authorities did not catch any of the supposed 8-10 thousand saboteurs before the outbreak of war because they were incompetent or impeded by the Polish justice system; the 8-10 thousand alleged saboteurs did not achieve anything because they were incompetent teenaged amateurs.
Wrong.

If you read other works by Chincinski (some fragments of some of which I already quoted in this thread) as well as his book probably (although I haven't read his book yet so I'm not sure) you will see you are wrong.

By the way - even in the article Chincinski mentions some examples of German saboteurs arrested before the war. In his other publications he also mentions many saboteurs being arrested before the war. I already wrote about this in this thread - also prof. Juszkiewicz in his book "Battle of Mlawa" mentions this, and I also wrote about it on this forum.

Chincinski doesn't say German saboteurs didn't carry out numerous actions - he says most of their actions were spectacular failures. Only about 20% ended in a success. Chincinski also mentions German paratroopers-saboteurs being dropped behind the Polish frontline in numerous cases. Also Janusz Ryt in his book "Battle of Pszczyna" mentions a certain sabotage organization in that area (I don't remember its name now), the biggest success of which was "sicherung and istandsetzung" of a nearby road.

I was already quoting large fragments of Chincincski's article "Sabotage-subversion activities of Breslau Abwehra in Poland in 1939 in the light of German and Polish documents". Read them. I bet he writes the same but even more about it in his latest book, I'm going to buy it soon.

In the months leading up to the outbreak of war, there were no trained saboteurs among the German minority in Poland, certainly not 8-10 thousand of them. Such a large number could not possibly have gone undetected.
And it DID NOT go undetected as Chincinski, Juszkiewicz and others clearly write.

Polish counter-intelligence service "Dwójka" ("Two") detected and infiltrated their organizations.

As I also wrote in this thread many times. But you don't bother to read my posts - you prefer to discuss only with yourselve. And you know - it is a very good idea - I will also simply stop to even read your posts.

Continue to discuss with yourselve. I won't bother about your posts any more.

You are really a fact-proof and arguments-proof person. In Poland there is a proverb that only cows don't change their mind. But it seems that also Michael Mills doesn't change his mind - not only cows. :roll:

Good night, I am tired of replying to your funny and stubborn statements.

=================

Edit:

By the way - as Chincinski writes, for Hitler the German minority in Poland was nothing but "Dust". He was treating them only as a political tool useful for his targets - instrumentally - nothing more. Just "dust and tool". Both Nazis and Communists were taking care only about their own asses - about their own "might" - nothing more. Despite the fact that both proclaimed something completely different (nation is important; workers and peasants are important).

I fully agree with Chincinski. Hitler's statement about "protecting German minority in Poland" was not even simply a pretext for war. He planned the entire provocation and used the minority as a tool for his political goal.


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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#333

Post by michael mills » 07 Sep 2010, 10:49

Yeah, of course - everybody knows it was the Fascist Poles who first created the institutionalized, well-organized, resilent machine of a massive genocide of innocent minority groups - not the Nazi Germans.
If Poland had not been defeated so quickly, and the areas where most of the ethnic Germans so quickly captured by the invading German Army, then Poles might well have gained a reputation for the genocide of innocent minority groups. After all, in the immediate aftermath of the First World War Poles gained a reputation for violence against Jews, due to a number of massacres.

And then after the Second World War there was again a number of massacres of Jews perpetrated by Poles, of which the Kielce pogrom of 1946 is the most famous.

So for the reputation of Poland, it was fortunate that the German invasion succeeded so quickly and put an end to killings of ethnic Germans, which remained at a relatively low level due to the rapid German conquest.
Yeah, certainly the German minority members who were mobilized into the ranks of the Polish army, were fighting against their compatriots from the other side of the border with great gallantry.
Obviously young men of the German minority were conscripted into the Polish armed forces, as were men of all the ethnic minorities in Poland. Most probably they obeyed the orders of their NCOs and officers, as intimidated conscripts normally do.

But what was the fate of the ethnic German conscripts in the Polish armed forces?

Polish chauvinist historiography is full of tales of large numbers of German "saboteurs" wearing Polish uniforms who were captured and summarily executed. But who were these "saboteurs"? Most probably they were just ethnic German conscripts in the Polish armed forces who fled in disorder on the first day of the German invasion along with the rest of the units they belonged to, were subsequently picked up by Polish military police, accused of being saboteurs, and executed out of hand.

No doubt are large number of the 2,000-3,000 alleged German saboteurs killed by Poles in the first few days of the German invasion were ethnic german members of the Polish armed forces accused of sabotage purely on the basis of their ethnicity.
Chincinski writes that there were clear evidences they were involved in sabotage and anti-Polish actions but most of them were released simply because of so called "political correctness" as well as "do not provoke them" idea.
Poland in 1939 was hardly a place where "political correctness" was a motivating factor. Since 1934 members of ethnic groups considered to pose a potential threat to the ruling junta were simply thrown into the concentration camp at Bereza Kartuska, no questions asked. That was in peace-time, and the victims were mainly Ukrainians; in the atmosphere of war psychosis that prevailed in Poland in the summer of 1939, the Polish security forces would have shot first and asked questions later.

If ethnic Germans had been found preparing sabotage, eg caught in the act of training with weapons, then at the very least they would have been tossed into a concentration camp; most probably they would have been shot on the spot. If there had been the slightest evidence against any ethnic German of preparing sabotage, then there is no way that he would have been released.

No doubt the Polish security forces arrested many members of ethnic German political organisations, but the fact that they were mainly released shows that there was no real evidence against them.
By the way - even in the article Chincinski mentions some examples of German saboteurs arrested before the war. In his other publications he also mentions many saboteurs being arrested before the war.
Were they genuine saboteurs? Or just members of German political organisations who had expressed their support for Germany?
Chincinski doesn't say German saboteurs didn't carry out numerous actions - he says most of their actions were spectacular failures.
But what were those "spectacular failures"? A group of young ethnic Germans in a village near the border, members of a pro-german political group, hear the sound of gunfire on the morning of 1 September, and go out to greet their "liberators"; they are intercepted by Polish border guards who shoot them down; the border guards report the "failure" of a "sabotage action". Could that be an example of a "spectacular failure"?
Only about 20% ended in a success.
No doubt these were actions by German commandos, members of the German armed forces under the command of Abwehr, which was itself part of the German military.
Chincinski also mentions German paratroopers-saboteurs being dropped behind the Polish frontline in numerous cases.
Again, these would have been German commandos, members of the German armed forces, dropped behind the Polish lines to carry out typical commando-type operations such as disrupting the enemy's lines of communication. Obviously these commandos were not civilian members of the German minority in Poland.
And it DID NOT go undetected as Chincinski, Juszkiewicz and others clearly write.

Polish counter-intelligence service "Dwójka" ("Two") detected and infiltrated their organizations.
Then why did they not break those organisations up and imprison them? It is claimed that there were at least 8,000 young ethnic German men undergoing training as saboteurs. That could hardly have gone unnoticed, and if such a large number of saboteurs-in-training had really existed, one would expect a few thousand to have been caught and incarcerated before the start of the German invasion.
But you don't bother to read my posts
Most of your posts are about pure military history, which does not interest me. For example, lists of Polish army units in a particular place at a particular time.

But sometimes you write posts that present a Polish chauvinist version of political history, and those are the ones I respond to.

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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#334

Post by Piotr Kapuscinski » 07 Sep 2010, 13:39

Were they genuine saboteurs? Or just members of German political organisations?
All German right wing political organisations had got their own paramilitary militias.

For example the political organisation called NSDAP had got Die Sturmabteilungen der NSDAP (SA).

Thus being a saboteur and a member of a German political organisation is not inconsistent. :D

German national Jungdeutsche Partei in the Polish part of Upper Silesia also had got its own paramilitary militia - Freikorps der Gewerkschaft Deutscher Arbeiter - as I already wrote before on this forum:

"Freikorps der Gewerkschaft Deutscher Arbeiter was created in May of 1939 at the initiative of Rudolf Wiesner, director of the national Jungdeutsche Partei in [Upper] Silesia."

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... i#p1494785
Then why did they not break those organisations up and imprison them? It is claimed that there were at least 8,000 young ethnic German men undergoing training as saboteurs. That could hardly have gone unnoticed, and if such a large number of saboteurs-in-training had really existed, one would expect a few thousand to have been caught and incarcerated before the start of the German invasion.
They did, all of this happened, read my post here (quotations from the book "Battle of Mlawa 1939" by Juszkiewicz):

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... z#p1494922
But what were those "spectacular failures"?
For example that one in Bydgoszcz as well as those in Silesia when they tried to capture & secure Polish industry.

But the one in Bydgoszcz was a success from the purely political and propaganda point of view.
But sometimes you write posts that present a Polish chauvinist version of political history
And you present a Nazi Germany's chauvinist version of political history. And you don't have enough evidences to prove it. Most of your posts are just speculations. So we have got "word versus word".
After all, in the immediate aftermath of the First World War Poles gained a reputation for violence against Jews, due to a number of massacres.
8 smaller or bigger pogroms took place in Poland, Ukraine and Belarus during that period.

The same refers to the Germans but they gained a reputation for violenece against Jews yet before WW1.
Most of your posts are about pure military history, which does not interest me.
Good to know this. This partially explains why you write about "conscripts in the Polish armed forces who fled in disorder on the first day of the German invasion along with the rest of the units they belonged to". :roll:

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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#335

Post by David Thompson » 07 Sep 2010, 23:41

An off-topic opinion post from Okyzm was deleted by this moderator - DT.

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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#336

Post by David Thompson » 08 Sep 2010, 01:43

Another six off-topic posts from Okyzm were deleted by this moderator - DT.

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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#337

Post by David Thompson » 08 Sep 2010, 02:21

Several additional off-topic posts from Okyzm, seeking to raise the issue already being discussed on the thread at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=169685 , were deleted by this moderator - DT. The thread is temporarily locked due to Okyzm's attempts to disrupt it.

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Re: Germans killed by Polish army prior to invasion?

#338

Post by Piotr Kapuscinski » 10 Feb 2011, 23:11

The Bromberg massacre has been ivestigated properly and by neutral commissions, too! It was, of course, exagerated by Goebbel´s propaganda which at times spoke of as many as 58.000 Germans as victims.

There is a complete list of the names of all known victims of the "Bromberger Blutsonntag" in the German Bundesarchiv in Koblenz. This report was filed by and with the assistance of an international commission.

See Bundesarchiv Koblenz, "Dokumentation der Verschleppungsmärsche und polnische Kriegsverbrechen im September 1939", No. 12, BA, Ost. Dok. 7
Hi Timo,

according to Bundesarchiv Koblenz 1794 ethnic Germans are listed as victims with name, surname, age and profession, fate and source of all the data. Thus a check of the data is possible at any given time.

Greetings,
GJ
1794 must be the number of all casualties in West Prussia (or entire Poland), not only those from Bydgoszcz.

Check the figures of the "Graberzentrale fur die ermordeten Volksdeutschen".

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Re: Germans killed by Polish army prior to invasion?

#339

Post by uberjude » 13 Feb 2011, 03:53

An old thread, but worth pointing out that although the "Bromberg Massacre" is often used by Nazi-sympathizers as a justification for the invasion, even according to the German propaganda, whatever happened at Bromberg actually took place on September 3, and thus was a response to the invasion.

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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#340

Post by Marcus » 13 Feb 2011, 12:27

The two above posts were moved from "Germans killed by Polish army prior to invasion?" to this already active thread on the same topic.

/Marcus

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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#341

Post by michael mills » 14 Feb 2011, 01:05

1794 must be the number of all casualties in West Prussia (or entire Poland), not only those from Bydgoszcz.
It could be the number of ethnic Germans killed in all of West Prussia, but it certainly was not the total number of ethnic Germans killed in all of Poland.

The best estimate of the latter number is between 5,000 and 6,000. That estimate, made by investigators of the Wehrmacht office for the investigation of war crimes, was subsequently exaggerated by a factor of 10 by Goebbel's Ministry of Propaganda, to arrive at the falsified figure of 58,000 victims.

Most of the 5,000 or so victims were killed in the western provinces of Poland, where the ethnic German minority was concentrated. About 1,000 were killed in and around Bydgoszcz, in the largest single massacre of ethnic Germans. Other ethnic Germans died after having been evacuated into Central Poland; many of those evacuaees had been arested even before the start of the German invasion.

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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#342

Post by michael mills » 14 Feb 2011, 01:26

An old thread, but worth pointing out that although the "Bromberg Massacre" is often used by Nazi-sympathizers as a justification for the invasion, even according to the German propaganda, whatever happened at Bromberg actually took place on September 3, and thus was a response to the invasion.
Indeed. But for several months before the German invasion, a war psychosis had been raging in Poland, whipped up not by the Polish Government but by the opposition and sections of the media connected with the opposition, particularly Endecja. A large number of members of the German minority, in particular community leaders and members of ethnic German political groups, were arrested prior to the invasion, on the pretext that they were potential saboteurs. After the invasion, the arrested persons were marched off into the interior of Poland, and many perished on the way from one cause or another.

While the massacre of around 1,000 ethnic Germans in the Bydgoscz area was not the trigger for the German invasion, there was certainly repression of the German minority prior to the invasion, of varying degrees of intensity, and it is likely that there would have been more killings of ethnic Germans in western Poland if that area had not been so quickly captured by the invading German forces.

It needs to be remembered that western Poland, in particular the former Posen Province, or Wielkopolska according to the official Polish designation, was the power base of the most fantically anti-German elements of the Polish population, in particular of Endecja, and that those anti-German political groups had been responsible for widespread violence against the German civilian population in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, and also for the pressure on the ethnic German minority that had caused nearly one million of them to emigrate before Pilsudski seized power in 1926 and put a stop to anti-German measures.

Accordingly, the Bydgoszcz massacre and other killings of ethnic Germans were not entirely a novum, but rather represented a continuation of anti-German violence by particular Polish political groups, albeit on a much larger scale then previously, triggered by the German invasion. One possible explanation for the massacres is that the anti-German elements in Western Poland, that is Endecja, associations of former insurgents, and various paramilitary groups associated with Endecja, including Sokol and Harcerstwo, fearing that the area they inhabited would quickly be conquered by the German forces, wanted to eliminate as many of the hated ethnic Germans in their midst while they still had the power to do so.

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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#343

Post by uberjude » 14 Feb 2011, 04:25

All true, I'm sure, but without justifying anything, still fair to say that none of those killings would have happened without the invasion; had Germany announced on September 1 that they were backing away from their claims on Danzig, things doubtlessly would have calmed down considerably. At any rate, whatever happened at Bromberger can't be used a justification for the invasion, or as evidence that ethnic Germans were at risk of their lives before the invasion.

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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#344

Post by michael mills » 14 Feb 2011, 06:15

...still fair to say that none of those killings would have happened without the invasion;....
It is impossible to be absolutely certain. So far as I know, there had been no documented killings of ethnic Germans in Poland prior to the invasion, but there had been mass arrests. Given the war hysteria in Poland, there is no saying what would have happened if the "war of nerves" had continued without a German invasion.

It is important to realise that the war hysteria in Poland was not purely defensive. The more extreme anti-German elements in the opposition to the Sanacja regime were calling for Poland to take the initiative and invade Danzig and East Prussia, and also Silesia. There was wide-spread confidence among the Polish population that Britian and France were preparing to confront Germany and would immediately come to Poland's aid if war broke out between Germany and Poland, even if Poland took the initiative. The feeling among the Polish public was that Germany would be quickly defeated, and there was no fear of war. So even if Germany had declared its renunciation of claims to Danzig, the war hysteria might not have cooled down completely.

From April 1939 onward, and particularly after the eruption of the "war of nerves" in the summer. it was pretty well inevitable that there would have been some sort of action against the ethnic German minority in Poland, although not necessarily massacre, more probably rounding up and deportation. However, it is most probable that the shock at the massive scale of the German invasion was the trigger for the massacres, which were most probably perpetrated by local Polish elements on their own initiative, without a directive from the Polish Government.

Finally, reference to the utilisation of the massacres as a justification for the German invasion is really a red herring. Although German propaganda had throughout the summer been trumpeting reports of Polish "atrocities" against the German minority, the actual massacres seem to have taken the German Government by surprise, and to have caused something of a shock. In any case, the massacres of ethnic Germans did provide an impetus to the subsequent German massacres of Polish civilians, which were targeted against the various Polish political groups that were anti-German and had participated in the killings in Bromberg and elsewhere.

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Re: Der Bromberger Blutsonntag

#345

Post by uberjude » 14 Feb 2011, 06:20

Don't disagree with you, but as a history forum, we can only say with certainty that there were no massacres of Germans before the invasion. What might have happened had Germany not decided to go to war is anybody's guess. On one level, of course, this game of "who started it" is pretty meaningless 70 years after the fact, but those who play it (and I'm not putting you in that group) should at least get the order right.

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