At 4:48 on the morning of September 1, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on Polish positions at Westerplatte, a small military transit depot near Danzig. The opening salvo of World War II had been fired. The position held little strategic value, but the Germans wanted a demonstration of overwhelming force, and the warship quickly brought the city of Danzig under the control of the Third Reich. The Nazi invasion had finally brought war to Europe.
Even before that first shot, the Germans had already begun their next move. A massive iron bridge south of Westerplatte was critical to their plans because it would allow German forces to envelop the Polish defenders. Anticipating the attack, Polish engineers mined the bridge and blew it up before the Germans could seize it. The destruction slowed the German advance and prevented them from crossing the Vistula River as quickly as they had intended.
The defense of that bridge was only the beginning of Polish resistance. The Germans also struck from the air. The first Polish town to suffer was Wieluń, near the German-Polish border, bombed by squadrons of Stuka dive bombers in the opening minutes of the war. Using their new Ju 87B aircraft, the Germans dropped tens of tons of bombs, destroying roughly 75 percent of the town, including a hospital, and killing more than a hundred civilians, among them women and children.
It was the start of a slaughter. But instead of paralyzing the Poles with fear, the bombing drove them to fight, raising morale rather than breaking it. To understand why the Poles fought with such determination, it is necessary to grasp their recent history. Germany was not threatening Polish independence for the first time.
Poland had been erased from the map of Europe entirely, its lands occupied by Russians, Prussians, and Austrians. Only after World War I, in 1918, did the Poles regain their independence. The borders were defined by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and the Treaty of Riga in 1921. Poland was a nation caught between two great powers, the Soviet Union on one side and Germany on the other.
Polish governments had always known the country could become a victim of those powers’ policies. This freedom did not last long. When Hitler decided on war with Poland, he knew he could not afford a war with the Soviet Union at the same time. Before the invasion, he signed an agreement with Stalin known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
A secret protocol in the agreement divided Poland into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Hitler signed it to secure Soviet neutrality and to prevent the Soviet Union from forming an alliance against him. Britain and France had guaranteed Poland’s sovereignty before the war. On September 3, Britain declared war on Germany.
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain spoke to the nation, saying, “This country is at war with Germany. ” He described his long struggle for peace as having failed. Yet the British and French were desperate to avoid the kind of war they had fought against Germany in World War I. The problem was that the kind of war Britain and France were prepared to fight was of little use to Poland.
Poland needed offensive action, but the Allies were not politically ready to open a full front, and they were not militarily prepared for it either. They delayed direct engagement, hoping to compensate for their shortcomings. Later, these moves were called the Phoney War. Meanwhile, Poland fought a defensive war against an overwhelming German force alone.
Slogans like “honor above life” and “fight the enemy to the end” became the foundations of the future underground army. Their origins trace back to a battle fought by one of the first heroes of Polish resistance. Near the village of Wizna, a battalion commanded by Captain Władysław Raginis, numbering only a few hundred soldiers, faced roughly 40,000 German troops and 350 tanks. Heinz Guderian’s armored forces attacked Raginis’s men.
For several days, those few hundred men held up the German tanks, infuriating a German commander who had expected a lightning advance. The Poles used an effective weapon: a bullet that shattered tank armor from the inside, causing maximum damage to the crew. Despite the heroic defense, the overwhelming German numbers eventually broke through. Raginis became a symbol of heroism, a model of refusing to surrender and fighting to the end.
While the Allies began a naval blockade of Germany to destroy the Third Reich’s economy, Germany responded with U-boat attacks. These operations turned into the Battle of the Atlantic. On land, Poland received no military help from its allies. Could the war have been avoided?
According to some analysis, the only circumstance in which Hitler would not have attacked Poland was if Poland had surrendered to German territorial demands over Danzig and the Polish Corridor. But any notion of a serious German offer of alliance with Poland in 1939 misunderstands the goals of the Third Reich. Germany was never interested in an alliance with Poland. The Poles continued fighting bravely through September 1939, but they did not expect what came next.
The Soviets invaded from the east on September 17, taking their agreed share of Poland under the secret protocol. It was a tremendous shock. The Poles fought heroically against the Germans, but there was no military chance of holding out against both Germany and the Soviet Union at the same time. Warsaw surrendered to the Germans on September 28.
On October 6, 1939, the last major fighting unit of the Polish army surrendered. Poland had been free for only twenty years before falling again under the control of Germany and the Soviet Union. But Poland never formally surrendered to Germany. Out of this defeat was born a resistance movement that became the strongest secret army in Europe.
Its origins lay partly in orders delivered by a pilot who flew into besieged Warsaw. Major Jan Galinat landed at the Mokotów field, almost on the front line in the middle of the city. He carried orders to establish a secret army. But by the time he reached Polish headquarters, the orders were obsolete.
Hours earlier, General Ramm, commander of the armed forces in the country, had already decided to form a secret army without knowing of the commander-in-chief’s order. The goal was to direct all of Polish society’s resources toward the struggle for independence. Galinat eventually made his way to London, where he worked on secret projects for special operations units meant to return to Poland and support the fight. While the first underground structures were being created in Poland, the government and military leadership, including Prime Minister Sikorski, traveled through Europe to London.
There, an exile center was established to direct the struggle for independence from a distance. These were the beginnings of the most developed resistance organization against the Nazis. In October 1939, Major Henryk Dobrzański, known as “Hubal,” ignored the demobilization order after the fall of Warsaw and refused to take off his uniform. He wanted to keep fighting.
A highly experienced commander, he had been famous before the war for completing maneuvers that normally took three days in just three hours. With a handful of soldiers, he surprised enemy headquarters. His men were ready to follow him even into the heart of fire. For months, his unit attacked the Germans in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains in the Kielce region.
Hubal became a symbol of resistance. The partisans needed reliable weapons. Hubal’s men used Mauser rifles from Polish army reserves. But a well-armed underground army also needed intelligence and supplies, which came from the local population cooperating with the partisans.
Hubal led a series of attacks, and the Germans were determined to capture him and punish the locals who helped him. The scale of repression was unimaginable. Hubal changed his tactics, hiding in the forests to spare civilians, and ordered his forces to disperse. In March 1940, Hubal won a significant victory near Hucisko, where a Wehrmacht infantry battalion was almost completely destroyed.
Another German unit met a similar fate a few days later near Sławy. On April 30, 1940, 7,000 German soldiers were hunting Hubal. They finally found him. Hubal’s reputation was a problem for the Germans.
A photo taken right after his death shows soldiers posing beside the major’s body. The Germans knew he had gained wide fame, so they hid his grave to prevent him from becoming a symbol of resistance. He became the first partisan of World War II and a legend. With his death, something ended, but it was also a new beginning.
Independent partisans turned into organized guerrilla warfare. Hubal had sparked the desire for guerrilla war in others, and many followed his path. The underground army grew significantly. It operated within the structures of the secret state, was subject to command, and carried out many attacks.
Larger groups even had radio communication equipment; others communicated through liaison officers. The independent partisans had become an organized force. Meanwhile, in the west, the Germans invaded France and drove the British from continental Europe. Churchill had to organize the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk.
After that, the Nazis felt like masters of Europe. The Poles realized any chance of Allied military support had vanished. The secret resistance army knew it had to draw on all its experience to defeat the Germans. The Poles had much of that experience, having lived 123 years without a state, with a cultural tradition of living in hiding.
It was natural for Poles to operate secretly under the noses of the Germans despite the great risks. The Polish secret state was highly developed. Underground resistance formed immediately after Poland’s defeat in 1939, and many groups existed within it. The largest was the Home Army, known by its Polish initials AK, but alongside it were the Peasant Battalions and the National Armed Forces.
Hundreds of thousands of people fought in these organizations. The underground carried out sabotage operations and set up secret training camps. The secret state handled social activities, courts, judging traitors, and propaganda. In 1944, one partisan unit supported more than eighteen military operations against the enemy, including an attack on a high-ranking German officer.
Between 1942 and 1945, Home Army forces carried out tens of thousands of military operations against the occupation forces. On June 14, 1940, Paris surrendered without a single shot. After the defeat, the Vichy government chose to cooperate with the German occupiers. The fall of Paris was a shock to the French, but the government that ran Vichy France collaborated with occupied Germany.
The surrender of France and the evacuation from Dunkirk signaled to the Poles that the fight could only happen in secret. The Germans continued their expansion and fought in the skies over Britain. The Luftwaffe attacked British air defenses, beginning the Battle of Britain. Polish pilots served in the Royal Air Force and helped repel the German offensive, saving Britain from German air superiority and a possible invasion.
In Poland, the underground army showed no sign of weakness. Even during the brutal Polish winter, the partisans grew stronger. To survive the winter, they hid in villages and towns, with weapons concealed in secret caches or in the forests. Even today, documents and weapons hidden by the partisans are found in the woods.
One weapon was designed specifically for them: the Sten submachine gun, suitable for close combat. It was not only exceptional weapons but exceptional courage that allowed the partisans to harass the Germans throughout the war. By 1940, better armed and better organized, they accelerated their operations. Their tactics were quick, irregular attacks, harassment, ambushes, and hidden strikes, based on excellent knowledge of the terrain and information from local civilians.
Helping the partisans was a risk with deadly consequences. Partisans hid documents, plans, and maps in secret compartments, even in simple items like the special stone used to make traditional Polish flatbread. Local civilians helped the insurgents operate and provided cover for their activities. The Nazis repressed civilians to stop them, regularly plundering Polish property and food.
The confiscation of supplies was a tool of repression against the rural population and cut off supplies to the partisans. Polish civilians were completely unprepared for this brutal wave of violence. The Germans had occupied the country during World War I, but nothing similar had happened then. Throughout the war, the Nazis continued their crimes against civilians who supported the partisans.
Yet the secret army in Poland only grew larger and stronger. The partisan fight was only one part of a vast underground organization. The Poles built excellent military and industrial intelligence and a network of couriers who carried the Third Reich’s greatest secrets to the Allies.
They even established secret networks inside concentration camps and were the first to inform the world about the Holocaust.