Today is the 86th anniversary of the invasion of Poland
I’ve been thinking about September 1, 1939 quite a bit lately. The reason is that I’ve been watching YouTube videos in which Holocaust survivors describe their experiences. I plan to write more about those videos – I have a lot to say. But at this point I’ll just mention that many of them were Polish Jews, and they almost universally describe that day, mentioning that it was frightening but they believed – as did most Christian Poles – that the Polish army would handily defeat Germany (Polish propaganda had been saying this).
On the other hand, there had been Jewish German refugees fleeing to Poland after the Nazis took power in Germany but prior to September 1, 1939, and they had told a frightening story (although not one of genocide – yet). So the German invasion filled most of the Jews of Poland with dread, despite the sanguine predictions of the Polish government and press.
In fact, it was a nightmare for the Poles themselves, in addition to a nightmare for Polish Jewry. This was by design [emphasis mine]:
The result was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, hastily signed so that Hitler could have his pact before his planned invasion of Poland. In the official agreement the Soviets promised not to aid Britain or France in the event of a war with Poland. However, the crucial part of the agreement was a secret protocol that reshaped the map of central Europe. According to this, Bessarabia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and eastern Poland would become part of Stalin’s sphere of influence while Hitler would get all of western Poland. As Timothy Snyder put it, “the two regimes immediately found common ground in their mutual aspiration to destroy Poland.…Hitler saw Poland as the ‘unreal creation’ of the Treaty of Versailles, Molotov as its ‘ugly offspring.’” …
On August 22, just before the invasion, Hitler delivered a speech to his military commanders at Obersalzberg. In the speech, he said that the object of the war was to physically destroy the enemy. Men, women, and children of Polish descent or language were to be killed without pity. The campaign was to be carried out “with the greatest brutality and without mercy.” To that end, the Einsatzgruppen—SS death squads—and police battalions were formed to exterminate Poles who might oppose German rule. Lists were drawn up of prominent men and women who were to be tracked down and killed as soon as possible. Cities like Warsaw were eventually to be “cleansed” of their Jewish populations and the ethnic Polish population reduced to a small group of slave laborers. Hitler devised a monstrous plan of colonization based on extreme violence and murder; tragically, those plans would evolve into unimaginable crimes that would culminate in the creation of a new kind of industrial-scale killing: the extermination camp.
And on September 17, Stalin gobbled up the Eastern part of Poland – although in 1941 Germany took it all (Stalin got the last laugh on Poland after the war).
There’s much more to be said, but right now I also want to emphasize that although Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, it wasn’t until Churchill became PM in May o 1940 that the true war against Germany began. However, tragically:
After World War II, it was discovered that Nazi Germany’s armed forces were vulnerable throughout the September Campaign. They had not yet reached full fighting strength and might have succumbed to a determined opponent, or at least suffered serious damage. At the Nuremberg trials, German military commander Alfred Jodl said that “if we did not collapse already in the year 1939 that was due only to the fact that during the Polish campaign, the approximately 110 French and British divisions in the West were held completely inactive against the 23 German divisions.” General Wilhelm Keitel stated: “We soldiers had always expected an attack by France during the Polish campaign, and were very surprised that nothing happened…. A French attack would have encountered only a German military screen, not a real defense.” According to General Siegfried Westphal, if the French had attacked in force in September 1939, the German army “could only have held out for one or two weeks.”
”Hitler saw Poland as the ‘unreal creation’ of the Treaty of Versailles…”
Gee, that sounds so familiar! I can’t help but think I’ve heard something very similar to that — maybe about a sizable European country just to the south of Poland — very recently, maybe even repeated in the comments of this very site.
”According to this, Bessarabia [Moldova], Finland, Estonia, Latvia, [and Lithuania] and eastern Poland would become part of Stalin’s [Russia’s] sphere of influence…”
This, too, sounds very familiar. Perhaps a more recent — or even current — Russian leader could fill us in on why that would be.
”Lists were drawn up of prominent men and women who were to be tracked down and killed as soon as possible.”
More deja vu.
”Hitler devised a monstrous plan of colonization based on extreme violence and murder.”
And again.
”…if the French had attacked in force in September 1939, the German army ‘could only have held out for one or two weeks.’”
And if tanks, artillery, and air support been provided in February 2022…
One interesting detail of Poland’s role in WW II I learned a while back concerns the Polish fighter pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain. These pilots were veterans of the Polish Air Force who had managed to escape to Great Britain after the fall of Poland. There they volunteered for the RAF.
By this time the RAF had discovered that when fighter pilots went into combat for the first time there was a small but noticeable percentage of them who when they got an enemy in their sights found that they could not pull the trigger. They could not overcome their peacetime conditioning against killing another human being.
The Poles did not have this problem. They proved to be ready, willing and able to kill Germans and did so at every opportunity. Did it make a difference as to the outcome of the Battle of Britain? Who can say? But it certainly did not hurt the British cause.
September is the clueless month?
“FBI Helped Cover Up Saudi Role In 9/11”—
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2025/09/01/fbi-helped-cover-up-saudi-role-in-9-11/
John F, the Polish Pilots were very aggressive. After the War, those that survived were given a choice my the British Govt. Become a Citizen of England or be deported. Many were deported and Stalin shot them. A Polish General that played a very important role in Normandy ended up be a bricklayer in England. Not a good look for the Brits.
Shirehome, the post war treatment by the British Government of the Poles (and Eastern Europeans in general) was definitely not one of their finest hours.
WW1 pretty much did for ‘toujours l’audace’.
Book recently read, within a year or so, Katyn from the Russian perspective. The Russians made out in WWII taking over Poland. Not to little the brutal occupation of Russia the Nazis had for a few years.
JohnF,
Before I moved to Florida I was a volunteer docent ay the New England Air Museum. They have great exhibit on the Polish WW2 fighter pilots:
https://neam.org/pages/the-kosciuszko-squadron
Polish fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain…here’s a movie which is about Czech fighter pilots rather than Polish, but it is excellent.
Dark Blue World
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/11599.html
The French did invade Germany in 1939 with 11 divisions. They stopped short of the Siegfried Line, not having enough artillery and being unable to breach it, and withdrew to France as the Germans began to counterattack.
There’s a popular belief that the French and British just sat on their hands until 1940, but it takes time for a democracy at peace to mobilize, and France had a serious manpower disadvantage relative to Germany. As for the British, their assets on the continent at that time were “two divisions now and two divisions later”. They did what they could with their navy while they built up.
It’s easy to say after the fact that France should have just gambled and charged right in with everything in September, even without their artillery, but that was what they did in WWI and consequently after those horrendous losses the manpower didn’t exist for WWII, the self-serving comments of German generals notwithstanding–of course they blamed the Allies for not stopping them right away.
In 1939 a document signed by 400 prominent writers, artists and professors, which is often referred to as the Open Letter of the 400, was published in The Nation magazine. Notice of its publication appeared in the New York Times (Aug 14,1939).
A Marxist website has provided open access to the Open Letter. To All Active Supporters of Democracy and Peace: The text of an Open Letter calling for greater unity of the anti-fascist forces and strengthening of the front against aggression through closer cooperation with the Soviet Union, released on August 14 by 400 leading Americans.
Note the Open Letter was published on August 14. The Hitler-Stalin Nonaggression Pact was signed on August 25. Germany invaded Poland on September 1.
Some excerpts follow.
Some of the more blatant points follow.
Soon after this was published, The Soviet Union marched into Poland. But in the interest of peace, mind you. I am reminded of a conversation I had with a self-professed Commie in Bogota. The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was done gently, he told me.
Yup, the Soviet Union has open access to all sorts of books and magazines—-that the Party approves of.
“Replaced myths and superstitions,” a.k.a. suppressing religion by killing priests and destroying churches. While pre-Soviet Russia had widespread illiteracy, its arts, sciences and engineering were at a high level. Refugees such as Igor Sikorsky and Stephen Timoshenko enriched the US with their inventions and engineering scholarship.
Yes, dictatorship was transitional once the Soviet Union collapsed. Constitutional guarantees, oh yes. Constitutional realities, another matter.
Who signed? The usual suspects, for the most part. Shows that the Venn diagram of “Intellectuals” and “fools” has had a big intersection for a LONG time. Not just today with the “Woke.”
In WW II, American Infantry divisions did not have their own “organic” tanks, tank destroyers, and anti-aircraft units. Those were separate battalions assigned as needed.
My father’s division, 104th ID, was first in contact in Holland in 1944 under the Canadian Corps which itself was under the British Army—Montgomery. At one point, they were supported by a Brit tank battalion. The Brits were in charge of the free Poles including their ground forces. And, so, at one point the division was supported in an assault by a Polish tank battalion. The terrain was too soggy to allow the tanks to go in to the objective, so they shot it up until the Infantry got on the objective. Once that happened, doctrine called for the tanks to lift or shift fire. Instead, the Poles got out of their tanks, got their side arms, and went in as INfantry. The Americans were impressed. But you couldn’t let them near the POW.
Turns out the college grads were required to be reserve officers. So the high school principal might be commander of the local rifle company and a couple of dozen of his grads were still in town with rifles in the basement. Which is why the Russians went after the “intellectual” class. To decapitate any organized resistance.
On a tangential note, I just encountered the following video last night. It was posted by someone under the name of George Turner (at Instapundit overnight thread) and is about the effect that being a German POW in American captivity had on the prisoner.
This remarkable video does several things: It demonstrates the inconceivable nature of American industry; it speaks to American empathy to these men even thought they were enemy prisoners; and the last third verges on the philosophical, regarding what their imprisonment on America actually accomplished and meant to the prisoners themselves.
It is 50 minutes long, but IMO should be shown in every high school history class across the country. It kept me up until 2:00 AM.
the link:
https://youtu.be/gykVp3JJNdI
I hope you are all as impressed with this as I was.
One out of five Poles died in WWII, by percentage second only to Belarus. Nine out of ten Polish Jews were murdered by the Nazis, a percentage exceeded only by Jewish deaths in Lithuania.
Polish units embedded with Allied forces fought with courage and distinction in other battles other than the air war in Britain, for example, in the battle for the Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy.
It’s hard to come up with a group of people more screwed by 20th C history & geography than the Poles. God bless them all. They deserve it.
Very much worth reading Churchill’s Second World War. He is not infallible, and on many occasions does not speak the whole truth, but his book is a very good starting point from someone who had far more information and experience at the time than any of us.
At no point in his book does he suggest France could have rushed Germany in September and beaten Germany in two or three weeks. In fact, in Book 2 Chapter 5, “The Front in France”, he says (apologies for length)
They weren’t all to be killed. About a million Poles were to be reclassified as Germans.
Thousands of Polish children were kidnapped — with special attention to orphanages and foster children on the theory that Poles were systemically hiding their German heritage — but often enough from families, frequently after their parents’ murders. They were often brutally instructed in German and if they failed muster at a later stage, they were murdered to avoid such racially valuable children be available to enemies.
T
I listened to the German POW video—there wasn’t much to see. The good treatment the German POWs received in the US did not surprise me. I worked in South America with a German national who had spent nearly his entire life there. His father was a mining engineer in Peru. He told me that an uncle of his had spent WW2 in a camp in the US for foreign aliens. His uncle told him he had been very well treated in the foreign alien camp.
I read a memoir by a German POW who, after the end of WW2, escaped from the POW camp because he was afraid he would be sent back to his hometown in the Soviet zone. Decades later, he finally fessed up. He fessed up because his wife wanted to travel abroad, and as an escaped POW, getting a passport would have been problematic. No negative consequences.
(Georg Gaertner & Arnold Krammer: Hitler’s Last Soldier in America)
Victor Davis Hanson and the British general Edward Spears on parliamentary reactions to the invasion of Poland:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/69892.html
I very briefly dated a Woman in College (alas, she wasn’t really interested in me, but I found my True Love a bit latter) whose Father had been a German Prisoner in the US, most likely in CO. He came back, I presume after the War and settled in CO, on the plains East of Denver. During the war he had been in Rommel’s Tank Corp, not sure in what capacity, but I think an Officer.
It’s hard to come up with a group of people more screwed by 20th C history & geography than the Poles. God bless them all. They deserve it.
YoungHegelian, you might appreciate this:
_______________________________
At the Museum This Week
POLAND THROUGH THE CENTURIES a touring
Exhibition of maps drawn
By German and Russian cartographers reveals
There never was a Poland.
–Bill Knott, “Becos” (1983)
_______________________________
Knott was a peculiar, powerful poet — more of a poet’s poet — who emerged in the 60s. He taught at Emerson College for 25 years. Which was fortunate, since he remained an outsider to the poetry world and always had trouble getting published.
The fact that the Germans could probably have been crushed if Britain and France had moved immediately touches on one of the ironies of history. If they had done that, if the had crushed Nazi Germany during that window of vulnerability, how would it be remembered now?
After all, that would have prevented many of the worst horrors. So would it be remembered as preventing disaster…or as a needless ‘war of choice’?
On the subject of Poland and the Holocaust, I recently took a class titled “WWII Today” where one of the assigned readings was a book on Holocaust memory in the countries behind the Iron Curtain, especially in Poland and the former USSR. The memory of the Holocaust is an very complex thing, not nearly so black and white as it is viewed in the English speaking world.
On this side of the Atlantic, there are Jewish victims and Nazi perpetrators. In Eastern Europe, Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands,” there are victims, and perpetrators, plus accomplices, willing and unwilling, and bystanders, and witnesses. None of the non-Jewish native populations like to view themselves (and their grandparents) as anything other than victims of the Nazis. (And many of them put the Soviets on a par with the Nazis as oppressors, which is a major source of friction between Russia and many of those countries, including Ukraine. In the Russian view, the Soviet Red Army was an army of liberation, not oppression.)
I have a friend who is Mescalero Apache, and who owns land near Ruidoso, New Mexico. The Mescalero reservation is there. Her father had a cattle herd that grazed around SIerra Blanca mountain. During WWII all the Apache men had volunteered (they’d never pass up a fight that big!), and there was no one available to round up the herd from the endless little canyons and hiding places cows will find to keep their calves safe.
But at nearby Fort Stanton, a German merchantman crew was interned. Since they were civilians, not POWs, they had a limited amount of freedom. But there wasn’t anyplace to go; there wasn’t much more than sheep nearby.
So when my friend’s father asked the crew if anyone could ride, all 20 hands went up. Perhaps 4 actually had, but no one was going to miss this adventure. After about three days of training, they hit the trails around Sierra Blanca to bring in the herd.
And they were successful. The Lincoln County Museum has a photo of them on horseback, and all 20 names are known. And 20 German sailors got to pull in the free drinks, describing in German taverns how they participated in a genuine Old West cattle roundup.
My understanding is that a fair number of German POWs volunteered to work on American farms for free, and built multi-generational friendships.
Fun fact: Vyachslav Molotov lent his name to the infamous “cocktail’ as well as the pact. During the Winter War, Molotov claimed that the Soviets weren’t dropping bombs on Finland, oh no no; those were just “bread baskets” for starving Finns. The Finns replied “If bombs are Molotov’s bread baskets, then we’ll give the Russians a drink to go with the snack!” and the “Molotov cocktail” was named.
@HC68:The fact that the Germans could probably have been crushed if Britain and France had moved immediately touches on one of the ironies of history.
Unfortunately this is not a fact, but a myth, at least according to Winston Churchill who can be presumed to have known something about it. By September 1939 Germany was too strong relative to France and Britain, and Britain had nothing in Europe to move in any case.
Somehow a tossed-off self-serving remark by a defeated enemy general gets more weight than many volumes of real history, but a lie goes around the world before the truth can get its pants on.
In March of 1935 Hitler began the re-armament of Germany.
This was in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
France and the UK – and every other nation that was a party to the Treaty of Versailles – did nothing.
Then again, did anybody in 1935 (aside from Hitler and his pals) really believe another war was possible?
The fact that the Germans could probably have been crushed if Britain and France had moved immediately touches on one of the ironies of history. If they had done that, if the had crushed Nazi Germany during that window of vulnerability, how would it be remembered now?
(Buckle up – this is going to be long.)
Irrespective of the truth versus myth of the first clause (I don’t know nearly enough, myself, to comment), this paragraph is so important right now.
I can’t believe this comment thread has made it this far without anyone’s observing that this is exactly the motivation – at least, the stated motivation – for the #resistance. I don’t know whether Democrat leadership believes it or not, but certainly rank-and-file Democrats have been fully indoctrinated with the message that we’re living through the 1930s and they have a chance to stop Hitler before he gets going.
For some of these, I think they’re excited to be the heroes of their own story. For others, I think they would pray that this cup would be taken from them, but are reluctantly onboard because “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” – that is, they really, really believe we’re in that kind of peril.
And any counter to their belief that Trump is marshalling his forces to overrun America and ultimately the world, for instance by pointing out growth in real wages or decrease in violent crime, is taken as, “Yeah, yeah, and Mussolini made the trains run on time. Wake up!”
If you point out that, for all that he wanted a real audit of the undeniably statistically bizarre 2020 election, Trump walked out of the White House on Jan. 20, 2021, under his own steam and without cavil, their answer is that Hitler didn’t immediately seize power either. If you point to the many blatant examples of lies, censorship, selective prosecution, and cancellation that have marked the past nine years, their answer is that the perpetrators were motivated by the same pure impulse that they themselves are – they see the danger and are willing to sacrifice even their own reputations to keep it at bay.
Basically there is no fact on the ground that can sway them. Maybe in 2029 when Trump again leaves the White House willingly, their sense of doom will begin to fade – or maybe not: if a Republican wins the presidency in that election, maybe at that point they’ll pivot to seeing Republican leadership as a Politburo (the irony of which will not be lost on me).
But the problem is – someday there will be another Hitler. If our senses are so deadened by the ridiculous but unremitting comparison of a Clinton/Kennedy Democrat with a murderous Führer, how are we going to recognize him?
Well yes, actually.
Churchill KNEW.
And Chamberlain suspected as much (in spite of all the virtue signalling, of course—today’s term—and paper waving).
Even Baldwin was having some serious second thoughts.
(Note that the Supermarine Spitfire was designed and developed in the mid-thirties.)
@John Tyler:Then again, did anybody in 1935 (aside from Hitler and his pals) really believe another war was possible?
Hitler thought he could step over red lines forever and never get any consequences but huffing and puffing. To quote Churchill again (same chapter):
In fact, Albert Speer related, post-war, that Hitler, in the summer of 1939, did not believe that war with Britain and France would break out until about 1942.
Cf. “The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer” by Dan van der Vat
FWIW.
HC68.
Presuming the “crush” happened as you suggest, I think you’re right. It would have been a sordid war for markets. Victors’ vengeance. Imperialism. Since it could not be known what was prevented, it would necessarily look like something else. All of which might make such pre-interference look legit no matter the labels attached. That might be a lesson going forward. Interesting and possibly ominous.
Yet there are people on the Woke Right (Candace Owens for one) who think that we should have allied with Hitler! Tucker Qatarlson had some idiot on his show who is a Chemistry (I think) Professor at Cornell who advocated that and Qatarlson nodded along with that adoring look on his face. Let’s not forget that neo Nazi miscreant fake historian he interviewed last year (he gave him over 2 hours to spread his claptrap) Darryl Cooper who thinks that the Holocaust happened because the Nazis were not prepared for all the millions of prisoners they took and did not have enough food for them.
— Niketas Choniates
Fair point, and I did know that, more or less. I phrased it sloppily because I was thinking about my actual point about perceptions. I should have said something like “assuming Germany had been crushed early”.
I’ve read (actually listened to) several books recently about World War 1. In addition to Germany’s Schlieffen Plan to attack France through Belgium to knock France out of the war so they could turn their attention to Russia, France also had a plan, Plan XVII, which was geared toward attacking and liberating Alsace and Lorraine, taken from France after they lost the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
Also, before WW1, the French Army had overwhelmingly adopted a theory of warfighting that focused solely on attacking, no matter the circumstances. They believed French soldiers possessed overpowering “elan,” or fighting spirit, that would make their attacks invincible.
The result of their plan and their insistence on the offensive at all times was that they were pushed back almost to Paris in the first month of the war, barely held on, counterattacked until the grievous losses of marching men into machine gun fire stalled their counteroffensive, and led to trench warfare that lasted 4 years and cost them 1.7 million battlefield deaths and millions more wounded.
France may have had overwhelming numbers, but they had no more “elan.” They had relatively good equipment, but they had built the Maginot Line as a response to the last war. Their army was for defending France, not going on the kind of offensives that had bled them white only 20 years earlier.
I can understand French reticence. It led to them being conquered, but I can understand it. The Germans probably could, too, and factored that into their war plans.
Niketas; HC68:
In the post, I quoted German generals saying (postwar) that Germany would have collapsed early (the last quote in the post). Whether they were correct or not I have no idea, but I would assume they had some evidence for their assertions
neo
“collapsed” isn’t a single-meaning word in this context,
Note what happened at the end of WW I. German troops went back to Germany and…in the European Usual tradition–borders got shoved around some and the bigs didn’t miss a meal. Then Germany was left to run its own affairs.
Perhaps that was the generals’ view of “collapse”. No big deal,
My understanding was that the Germans didn’t really feel defeated in November 1918. They marched back to Germany, and endured a near famine (Herbert Hoover led the fight to relieve that). But it was at the peace conference that they really put the knife into Germany. The Versailles Treaty was very punitive, but by then there was no way for Germany to resume fighting.
Some commentators, on the Allied side, thought the treaty was a recipe for another war in 20 years. They were correct. But Woodrow Wilson was an ass, and very confident in his own wisdom. He didn’t care what others thought.
@neo:I would assume they had some evidence for their assertions
I’m not sure why their offhand remarks offered without evidence would outweigh Churchill’s evidence in six massive tomes, which despite their length are very much worth your time to read. It has appendices full of government documents backing his assertions.
@Gordon Scott: My understanding was that the Germans didn’t really feel defeated in November 1918.
Another myth. Their economy was in tatters thanks to the Allied blockades (that was one reason they had a “famine” to deal with), their armies were surrendering and retreating everywhere under Allied attacks, and their allies had already collapsed. They made the best arrangement they could before their own total collapse.
Countries that aren’t defeated are very rarely occupied and starving.
After the war, yes people did try to create a “stab-in-the-back” myth to explain what happened. But during the last year of the war and immediately after the war they had few illusions about who had won, because the industrial regions of Germany were occupied by foreign soldiers until 1930, and the blockade continued until 1919.
Jordan Scott;
The view of the authors of “A War to Be Won” took the position that the Germans had won WW I by November of 1918. Picked up fat territory in the east under Brest-Litovsk. Still on French and Belgian territory. Regiments marched home after the Armistice behind the bands, glockenspiels spieling (or whatever the do) and the wolf tails twirling on the bass drummers’ sticks.
It was the treaty process that got their minds right. Had to give up the Saces, Al and Lorraine, and the B-L territory went back to Russia. Or wherever. Had to pay a fine and promise not to do it again. And got to run their own affairs including many of those involved in the late unpleasantness.
This was pretty light, considering; Bismarck observed that if there were to be another major European war it would be due to some “damned foolishness” in the Balkans. True. But if you try to follow how the Balkan usual got loose into the rest of Europe (The Balkans produce more history than they can consume locally.), you will find no iron chain dragging Germany into it, It was completely optional. They had plans, yes, on how to do something. That’s one function of the military command; be ready for anything. But the plan TO use their central position, industrial sector, man power, professional military to attack everybody they could find on a map was entirely voluntary. Nothing prevented them from staying home. Instead, they converted the damned foolishness into the most horrible war imaginable
Got off easy. Kaiser abdicated with the family plate. The Hapsburgs didn’t miss many dinners. They and the Hohenzollerns are still duking and princing, marrying money, making the society pages, don’t need any silly 9-5 to keep bread on the table.
That’s why “unconditional surrender” was the WW II goal. Some people you just can’t…..
So my view of what the German officers might have thought of as collapse is not that they foresaw what happened after WW II, but a couple of battalion fights and some scolding. The European Usual.
For a view of what the Allies thought in the second go-round, see on youtube, “Your Job In Germany”. Pick the twelve-minute one. It’s to orient occupation troops as to their jobs and the reasons for them. Pretty severe. Surprisingly, the film “Our Job in Japan” has a completely different tone.
Germany was defeated in wwi, they asked for the armistice. The German generals knew the allies were in fact going to march into Berlin.
Wiki
The Kiel mutiny (German: Kieler Matrosenaufstand) was a revolt by sailors of the German High Seas Fleet against the maritime military command in Kiel. The mutiny broke out on 3 November 1918 when some of the ships’ crews refused to sail out from Wilhelmshaven for the final battle against the British Grand Fleet that the Admiralty had ordered without the knowledge or approval of the German government. The mutineers, who saw the planned battle as a futile “death voyage”, took over Kiel with workers’ and soldiers’ councils and then helped spread them across Germany. The German Revolution that was triggered by the councils swept aside the Hohenzollern monarchy within a few days, brought about the end of the German Empire and led to the establishment of the Weimar Republic.
…
Following the Allied successes during the Hundred Days Offensive, the new German government under Prince Max of Baden, at the insistence of the Supreme Army Command, asked President Woodrow Wilson on 5 October 1918 to mediate an armistice. One of Wilson’s preconditions was the cessation of Germany’s submarine war. Despite the objections of Admiral Scheer, the Chief of the German Admiralty Staff, the government made the concession on 20 October, and the submarines at sea were recalled on 21 October.[12] The following day, Scheer, on his own authority and without the knowledge of the new German government,[13] ordered Admiral Hipper, commander of the High Seas Fleet, to prepare to attack the British with the main battle fleet, reinforced by the newly available submarines. Hipper’s order was promulgated on 24 October, and Scheer approved it on 27 October.[14] The fleet then began to concentrate at Schillig Roads off Wilhelmshaven to prepare for the battle.
…
Detachments of revolutionary sailors moved out from Kiel to all major German cities beginning on 4 November. They encountered almost no resistance in their takeover of civil and military power; only in Lübeck and Hanover did two local commanders attempt to maintain military discipline by force of arms.[33] On 6 November, Wilhelmshaven was in the hands of a workers’ and soldiers’ council; by 7 November all the larger coastal cities plus Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart and Munich were as well. King Ludwig III of Bavaria was overthrown on the same day, making him the first German federal prince to fall.[34] The revolution reached Berlin on 9 November, and on the same day the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II was proclaimed. By the end of the month, the dynastic rulers of all the other German states had abdicated without bloodshed.[35]
Chases Eagles
Those possibilities depended on whether the Allies had the will, speaking of any soldiers left to do it (rumors of Brit mutinies and certainly French mutinies) because the Germans weren’t going to give up without a fight. Fighting to defend what one conquered in another country is different from fighting to defend one’s own country.
Treaties happen when the side which is, in effect, giving up still has the force to say, “This far and no further. You might overcome what we have left but you’ll be too tired to enjoy it.”
Which is why occupation was minimal and temporary.
Now, my Brit friends will certainly have a stroke if I mention it, but perhaps the prospect of five million fresh American troops getting ready for 1919 might have had an effect.
In any event, my point is that the Germans had no historical example, certainly the most recent, to equate “collapse” with anything much more severe than having to go back where they came from again.
Balck, supposedly the best German general nobody ever hear of, mused during his second ultimately unsuccessful invasion of France that if Carl’s kingdom/empire had not been divided, none of this would be necessary. IOW, it’s a tragedy that not all of Europe was Germany. And that, poor Germany, surrounded by stronger enemies and always forced to strike first. Guys like this were wandering around loose.
Point being, they get to invade whomever they want and if it doesn’t work out, back home and figure out a better way next time. Perfectly acceptable. Why should 1939 be any different? Why should their frequent enemies hold a grudge?
It took far more destruction in WW II to accomplish the “collapse”. Which is to say total destruction of Germany military forces and Allied armies (stronger than ever) practically everywhere before a “surrender”–not a treaty or armistice–could be enforced. No conditions.
My point is that, based on European history, the Germans had no reason to picture this as a possibility. So it was worth a shot. Plus, they get to Holocaust a b bunch of people. What’s not to like?
See World War Two for the real thing.
they probably didn’t, with perfect hindsight, one could say, of course an advance by British and French troops, would have stopped it, but for a people who had seen the slaughter all across the Western Front, in too many places to name,
of course the Soviets had been training German troops on their soil, a detail the Abwehr had used to provoke the purges of top staff, whether Stalin believed it was immaterial, the French General Staff and many industrialists were still working out their anti Dreyfusard sentiments, you get some of that sentiment, with some early Alan Furst novels, many of the political class, not only the Cliveden set, but the likes of Lord Halifax, were resistent to intervene,
Churchills clique were certainly out of office, of course Chamberlain’s gambit, did allow for the interval of rearmament, fwiw,
The mutiny of the fleet showed the German people, who were starving, were sick of the war. The sailors overthrew the imperial government in days with almost no killing. The empire was collapsing. The peace terms, draconian. There is zero proof that the bled white German army would resist at all. American war production hadn’t hardly even reached the battlefields yet.
By the armistice, American industry could produce 21000 aircraft per month. Only about 3400 made it to Europe before wars end.
Chases Eagles. To be clear, I didn’t say US troop strength was decisive in 1918. I said anticipating it for the 1919 fighting season, so to speak, was a serious consideration for the Germans.
Sick and bled white is one thing. Stopping somebody from keeping you from conquering some other country is not as urgent for the tired as is stopping somebody coming onto your own country. That’s not right.
The peace terms were insufficiently draconian. The big shots who got Germany into this–which, as I say, was closer to recreational than geostrategically necessary, kept their pensions. Those who killed so many millions in the east, beyond any records and millions on the Western Front, involving campaigns in East Africa….walked.
Versailles has to be “draconian”. That way, WW II isn’t the Germans’ fault.
Draconian is after WW II. And they’ve been very, very good people since.
— Richard Aubrey
Not all by themselves they didn’t.
Yes, they could have stayed home. Every participant in the war could have done something different, but in each case there were pressing reasons why they thought it was necessary to do what they did.
Quite possibly.
One of the complaints, fair or not, from Germans after WW I was that they were excessively punished for doing or attempting to do exactly the same kind of thing Britain and France had done to build their own world empires. There is a certain amount of truth in that observation.
At the same time, Germany had been no kinder to Russia after the Russian collapse a year or so before, either.