The Polish Army of 1939

With organized Polish resistance drawing to a close, let’s take a moment to reflect on an army that had just suffered a crushing defeat. Someone, I forget who, observed that defeated armies do not get the respect they deserve. The Union army at Chancellorsville or the Austrian army at Austerlitz are undeserving of the gratuitous contempt that is directed at them by partisans of a cause or those who vicariously identify with “winners”. So it is with the Polish army of 1939.

Poland was considered a serious regional power before the war. The active army was 280,000 men organized into 30 infantry divisions (two of them mountain infantry) 11 cavalry brigades and a mechanized cavalry brigade plus corps and army level troops mostly artillery, tank, engineer, antiaircraft and signals units. There were 1,500,000 trained reservists between the ages of 24-42 plus older reservists and national guardsmen for support duties.

A look behind that organization revealed many weaknesses. There were too many men in the reserves given the Polish geography which meant there would be little time and space in which to mobilize. Much of the heavy weaponry from machine guns to artillery pieces was in short supply and obsolescent. Most notably a Polish artillery regiment contained only three artillery battalions typically two of 75 mm guns and one of 100mm howitzers. Many divisions lacked one of those battalions or the battalions themselves had two batteries instead of three. Fire control equipment was obsolescent and all artillery was foreign made. A program to upgrade to 105mm and 155mm howitzers of Polish manufacture was just beginning. By comparison the German artillery regiment in a first line infantry division was composed of three battalions of 105mm howitzers and one of 150mm howitzers with modern fire control equipment which allowed for state of the art massing and switching of fires to support planned actions while being responsive to surprise developments, and improvisations to exploit opportunities.

Polish tanks were too few, too lightly armored and deployed in separate battalions for infantry support in the manner of World War I or with the mechanized cavalry for reconnaissance. There were just too few antitank and antiaircraft guns and the quantity and quality of mortars, machine guns and light artillery for direct support of the infantry fell well short of German levels. While images of Polish cavalry attacking German tanks with lances may have been the product of German propaganda films, the fact remained that cavalry had no business on a battlefield dominated by the tank, the airplane, rapid fire artillery and the machine gun and the Polish army had 11 brigades of it. As was also the case with many other countries, Polish military doctrine had not kept up with conceptual, material and technological developments since World War I.

The things the Polish army did not lack were bravery, patriotism and a stubborn spirit of resistance. The Polish army held out as long as it could, counterattacked where it could and when possible escaped to fight another day. As this blog continues to track developments it will become clear that Polish resistance in 1939 ranks among the best of the efforts to resist German attacks under desperate circumstances in the early years of the war. Another thing to watch will be how Polish forces, many composed in substantial part of troops who escaped in 1939 and after will appear in most of the campaigns against Germany. For example, less than a year after the defeat of 1939 a Polish brigade (and a Polish submarine) will be found defending Norway against German invasion.

This spirit of resistance helps explain how a country that had already survived three partitions by major European powers went on to survive a fourth at the hands of the Germans and Russians in 1939.