Assassination Attempt on Hitler – Munich 1939

On November 8th 1939, a bomb planted by Georg Elser, a German Communist who worked as a carpenter, exploded at the Burgerbraukeller in Munich killing eight people and wounding 63. Eva Braun’s father was among the dead. The bomb was intended for Hitler who was scheduled to make a speech there on the occasion of the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. Elser had managed to hide in the Burgerbraukeller after closing every night for over a month. During that time he hollowed out a column near where Hitler would be speaking and filled it with explosives.

Hitler did make his speech but cut it short. Somewhere between eight to thirteen minutes after Hitler left the building (depending on which source you use) the bomb exploded. Elser was arrested, tortured and confessed to the attempt but claimed to have acted alone. He was imprisoned in a concentration camp and murdered there on April 9, 1945 to ensure he would not be rescued by the Allies. He lived as long as he did because Himmler wanted to use him in a show trial to establish British complicity in the assassination attempt after Germany won the war.

Historians generally agree that Elser planted the bomb but it remains uncertain whether he acted alone. Depending on how you count there were as many as seventeen attempts on Hitler’s life between September of 1939 and May of 1945. The July 20, 1944 attempt is only the most famous one.

United States Amends Neutrality Act – “Cash and Carry”

On November 4th, 1939 amendments to the Neutrality Act became effective which allowed the United States to sell weapons and military supplies to belligerents in Europe which would (1) pay cash and (2) carry the material away in their own ships. As a practical matter British control of the seas meant that only Britain and France could benefit from this policy. Earlier on October 18th in the same spirit President Roosevelt had banned foreign submarines from U.S. territorial waters, a ban which though neutrally stated could concern only the Germans.

The invasion of Poland affected opinion in the United States in a way which allowed Roosevelt to overcome isolationist opinion on this occasion and to this degree. Thus did Roosevelt’s slow and patient movement toward the end of American neutrality continue.

Sinking of the British Battleship Royal Oak

On October 14th 1939, the German submarine U-47 penetrated the harbor defenses of the British main base for their home fleet at Scapa Flow in the Orkney islands. After searching in vain for some time for a suitable target, U-47 came upon the British battleship Royal Oak. U-47, commanded by Captain Gunther Prien, fired four torpedoes. This produced one hit, two misses and a malfunction. On board the Royal Oak, the crew was not clear what had happened and the first thoughts were that there had been an internal explosion. Many crew members simply went on with what they were doing at the time. U-47 fired another torpedo from her stern tubes which also missed. In the meantime the forward tubes were reloaded. This time a spread of three torpedoes produced three hits and Royal Oak capsized and sank. 833 of her crew of over 1,200 were killed.

The daring and spectacular nature of the attack was a substantial propaganda coup for the Germans. The substantial loss of life and the fact that many of the bodies could not be recovered from the ship have made the site of the sinking a memorial for the British people and the Royal Navy perhaps comparable to the USS Arizona memorial for Americans.

However, the military impact of the sinking beyond the immediate loss of life was very small. Royal Oak was one of the Revenge class of battleships built in 1913-1914. Despite refits and upgrades during the interwar years, in 1939 Royal Oak could manage a top speed of only 20 knots which was not enough to keep up with the rest of the fleet. This had been demonstrated earlier in the month when Royal Oak had participated in a search for the German battle cruiser Gneisenau which had entered the North Sea as a diversion and cover for the successful breakout of the commerce raiding German pocket battleships Deutschland and Graf Spee.

Royal Oak had returned to Scapa Flow with its shortcomings exposed and some minor but not inconsequential damage from its efforts to operate at top speed in rough seas. The reason U-47 had to search for targets was that the main units of the British fleet had been dispersed to other ports for fear of a German air attack. A decision had been made that Royal Oak could be risked so that its antiaircraft armament could be added to the Scapa Flow defenses. Royal Oak might have served usefully later in the war supporting amphibious landings with its heavy guns. However, for the immediate aftermath of its sinking, an objective and admittedly cold-hearted assessment is that the sinking had little impact on the military balance. Winston Churchill then First Lord of the Admiralty said as much when he announced the sinking on October 17th.

On the other hand, the loss of life which would have been tragic in any event had that tragedy compounded by the Royal Navy’s employment of boy seamen between the ages of 15 and 17. Over 100 of these boys under 18 were among those killed on board the Royal Oak. Although the navy publicly defended the practice, boys under 18 never again served aboard active warships except in exceptional circumstances. There are many informative internet sites on the sinking so I won’t link to one of them. I’ll just say that typing “royal oak sunk” into a good search engine will bring up a number of good choices for digging deeper into these events.

The Polish Campaign: Results and German Lessons Learned

Germany conquered its half of Poland in 36 days. It took almost 700,000 prisoners and inflicted over 100,000 casualties in killed, wounded and missing on the Poles. The vast quantity of captured military equipment and ammunition(e.g. over 3000 artillery pieces and 16,500 machine guns), while not suitable for use by the Wehrmacht, could be used to help equip Germany’s minor allies later in the war. By contrast German personnel losses were relatively light – a total of 40,000 including 8,000 dead. Among the 22.5 million Poles in the German occupied territory were 750,000 ethnic Germans and some ethnic minorities prepared to work against the Soviet Union e.g. Ukrainians. However, the overwhelming bulk of the population was hostile and would require an occupation force.

German equipment losses were serious and illustrated the enormous strain of building and maintaining the equipment necessary for mechanized warfare. The Germans lost over 200 tanks and over 400 aircraft. More extensive still were the deferred maintenance issues and outright mechanical breakdowns associated with the demands of combat, poor roads and maintenance and repair resources that lagged far behind the rapid advance of the mechanized ground forces and aircraft operating off of improvised airfields near the front. Many German units were virtually immobile by the end of the campaign.These issues would increase with longer campaigns and tougher opposition.

As was their custom, the Germans reviewed their operations for possible improvements with an intelligent and critical eye worthy of a better cause. They certainly had reason to be satisfied. Their armored forces had overcome earlier operational issues under combat conditions and restored the war of movement the Germans had always preferred to fight, removing the threat of world war I style trench deadlock. German artillery was highly effective. The Luftwaffe had gained air superiority and successfully attacked Polish strong points, troop movements and supply columns on a large scale.

On a more detailed level however the Germans found room for improvement. Tank and motorized units were employed conservatively and cautiously by later standards. Advocates of more aggressive armored tactics were able to build on lessons learned in Poland for later campaigns including France and Russia. The lighter German tanks were found to be useful only for reconnaissance if at all. In the future production of the heavier types would be emphasized even at the expense of the total number of tanks in a division. The mg 34 machine gun was found to be vulnerable to jamming under eastern European conditions. Research was accelerated resulting in the faster development of the more reliable and faster firing mg 42.

The Germans found that their light divisions were, well, too light for sustained combat operations. They were upgraded to Panzer divisions. On the other end of the spectrum, the motorized divisions were too hard to maneuver and control with three motorized infantry regiments. They were each reduced by one such regiment.

There were additional small improvements in battlefield communications and infantry equipment. The Germans also took note of the effective use by the Poles of night attacks and guerrilla activity in rear areas. They stressed night attacks and the combat capabilities of supply column personnel in improved training methods. One area where they learned little was camouflage discipline against air attack. That would come later as the Germans faced increasingly effective air opposition.

Much of the information from this essay is drawn from “The German Campaign in Poland (1939)” the book length Department of the Army Pamphlet No. 20-255 by Robert M. Kennedy which despite being published in 1956 remains a valuable source on the campaign and is packed with the kind of detail on numbers, organization, equipment and order of battle that gladdens a war game designer’s heart.

You can read it online here .

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.

Warsaw Surrenders

On September 27, 1939 the defenders of Warsaw surrendered to the Germans. The resistance of the defenders had been long and determined but by this time all reasonable means of defense were exhausted. Any realistic hope of relief from their western allies or their own Polish forces had disappeared well before this date. For the Germans there remained only mopping up operations which were completed by October 6th. Polish soldiers persisted in their efforts to escape across neutral borders to the very end. Expect a mini-essay on the results of the campaign and another on the Polish army of 1939 soon.

Massive German Bombing Raid on Warsaw

On September 24th, 1939 the German Luftwaffe (air force) conducted a massive bombing raid on Warsaw. A common figure given for this raid is an attack by 1,150 bombers. I was skeptical because the first source that gave that figure also gave the Germans only 850 bombers for the entire campaign. The book “Men of the Luftwaffe” by Samuel W. Mitcham Jr. (Presidio, 1988) confirms the 1,150 figure and gives the Germans barely enough bombers to mass that many in an attack if you count Stuka dive bombers and planes assigned to the western front with France. It helpfully adds that the “bombers” included 30 Ju-52 transports carrying 2 pound incendiaries that were literally shoveled out the door by two men in each plane equipped with potato shovels. In part because of the smoke from the resulting fires, german ground troops were killed by stray bombs provoking an argument between army and air force that had to be settled by Hitler himself. Hitler said keep on bombing as before.

In “The Luftwaffe War Diaries” ( Doubleday, 1968) Cajus Bekker states that the Germans made 1,176 bombing sorties (one flight by one aircraft). He also gives the date for the attack as September 25th and gives it credit for the subsequent surrender of Warsaw. I am inclined to believe Bekker on the sorties (the Stuka’s e.g. could easily have attacked multiple times in the same day) but not on the date or the raid’s impact. So this was probably not the first “thousand bomber raid” nor a raid that decisively broke an enemy’s resistance. Warsaw had been bombed and shelled for days as well as subjected to ground attacks. Food, ammunition and even drinkable water were in increasingly short supply. There is no doubt that this and other bombing attacks contributed to the end of Polish resistance but Bekker is hogging all the credit for the Luftwaffe and possibly distorting the chronology to bolster his case.

Chinese Counteroffensive at Changsha

On September 21, 1939 the Chinese counterattacked at Changsha. The timing of the attack appears to have been based on the fact that on the previous day the Japanese had begun breaking through the fourth and last Chinese line of prepared defensive positions. With the Japanese fully extended and the Chinese having extracted the last ounce of advantage from the prepared defenses, the counterattack cut the Japanese supply lines and forced a retreat. I will go on to say that a second Japanese attack, begun from the north on the 18th, was similarly dealt with starting on the 25th. By October 6th the Japanese had been forced back to their original positions.

The Japanese will try again and as a result the above operations became known to history as the first battle of Changsha. Meanwhile more and more observers including many Japanese believe this battle demonstrates that the Japanese have reached the limit of their ability to win territory in China.

Soviets Invade Poland

On September 17, 1939 Soviet troops crossed the border into Poland to claim their portion of Poland under the secret protocol of the Nazi – Soviet nonaggression pact.. Polish troops were ordered not to resist except in direct self defense or to avoid capture. Soviet troops initially did not go out of their way to attack the Poles where it was possible to advance without doing so. Later, however they did become more aggressive and sought to prevent Polish troops from escaping across Polish borders with neutral countries attacking and capturing Polish troops in order to do so.

By now, Warsaw was encircled by the Germans. Another Polish army in the South was on the brink of surrender. Remaining Polish units were either holding out in small pockets, most notably on the Baltic coast, trying to escape into Rumania, Hungary or Lithuania or trying to join up with the defenders of Warsaw or Modlin for a last stand.

Back in my high school days I hadn’t paid attention to the date of the Soviet invasion and had casually assumed it was on more or less the same date as the German one. However, upon further review it seems that the situation was attended by some confusion on the part of the Soviets. They intended to keep as low a profile as possible by coming in after the Germans had invaded. They would try and obscure the true nature of their actions with a cloud of propaganda about protecting Soviet nationalities such as Ukrainians and Byelorussians and providing civil order.

In fact, the Germans at least were concerned about a power vacuum in eastern Poland and on September 3rd their Foreign Minister Ribbentrop had cabled his Soviet counterpart Molotov urging the Russians to commence their attack from the east. The Soviets however were surprised by the speed of the German advance and Molotov was forced to send a series of cables providing assurances and promises of action. During this time the Soviet army was frantically completing logistical preparations. They did not use the army units located nearest the Polish border which contained large percentages of troops with an ethnic affinity to some of the peoples of eastern Poland. Moving troops from the Soviet interior increased the scale and complexity of the logistical task. Hence, September 17th.

The World War II Game

As I have mentioned before on this blog, when I was in high school and college I designed a world war II game that my friends and I actually played. We played it several times with a new iteration of the design after each play and near the end we had at least the European Theater in very good shape if I do say so myself. We also played many commercial wargames on World War II battles and campaigns and part of the purpose of this blog is to recall and revive that experience and perhaps to design another iteration – one that would take advantage of fresh research on a wider variety of more accessible and higher quality sources. It also might take advantage of computer capability e.g. by using some of the concepts and techniques of the Civilization series of computer games.

For those of you who don’t want to wait for that I want to mention some commercial non-computer games that would allow you to play out some of the campaigns I have mentioned so far. The Wargamer magazine #37 had a game called “China Incident” that covered the fighting between China and Japan from 1937 to 1941. Strategy & Tactics magazine # 152 had a game on a hypothetical German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Suffice it to say that the victory conditions turned on when as opposed to whether Germany could defeat Czechoslovakia. S&T # 158 had a game on Nomonhan/Khalkin Gol. The game rules note that Conflict magazine also had a game on the July battles published in 1973. The S&T game (published in 1993) seems to me to be the more comprehensive and higher quality product. Finally the Europa Series on WW II had a game on Poland called “Case White” and there was a second edition called “First to Fight”.

Although these games are long since out of print, I suspect they turn up for sale on the internet from time to time. If anyone knows of other commercially produced games on these campaigns, please let people know about them in the comments section.