Rank and File
A Clerk’s War
4th July and 5th July 1939
The morning of the 4th July I found an excuse to call at the Foreign Ministry on my way to work. I had thought that if Poland had entered into peace negotiations then I might pick some information there. But my discrete enquiries met with polite disclaimers of any such discussions, so I continued to the Reichskanzlei.
If the Poles were not going to surrender, then they were going to pay a high price. Overnight we moved into Grajewo, sparking a fierce battle. Von Sodenstern is challenging Strzlecki’s mountaineers (22nd Dywizjon Piechoty) who have been reinforced by the 25th DP. Surely he cannot expect to win, outnumbered nearly two to one? And in such difficult terrain? I suppose the Army of East Prussia is keen to just turn the screws on the Poles.
General Feketehalmy-Czeydrew has better odds in his attempt to recover St Wendel. His 27.Infanterie and 61.Infanterie are attacking Kieffer’s single 3eme Legere Division. While it looks good, I have been putting together position maps for some weeks now and know that the French rapidly reinforce when attacked, so I expect the odds to shorten rapidly. The French did try to attack our bombers, but their fighters were detected when they were still over Metz and easily turned back.
A mortar crew fires at French troops in entrenched in St Wendel
Battle of St Wendel
Late in the afternoon we all had a shock – von Massow reported his advance into Warszawa was blocked by another unit, 44th Dywizjon Piechoty. It was only a temporary scare: our two motorised divisions which were spearheading the advance hardly changed gear. Even if they had a problem, von Massow had two more divisions marching behind them. Before I went home 2.Infanterie (motorised) and 3.Infanterie (motorised) were moving into the Polish capital at full speed, having lost a mere 4 men while killing or capturing 39. (In all the excitement I forgot to include the casualty report from yesterday’s attack on Warszawa. A conscientious staff member, Oberleutnant Baltasar, has notified me of this breach of reporting standards. Losses were 361 German, 181 Polish).
Polish prisoners captured by our motorised troops in the Battle for Warszawa get transferred to the rear in relative comfort. While they have retreated from the border on foot, they now get carried back in Henschel trucks.
The Last Battle of Warszawa
I knew the good news as soon as I woke the next day. When I turned on my little radio there was continuous martial music interrupted regularly by an announcement that the Polish armed forces had stopped resistance. An interesting choice of words. I got ready in even quicker time than normal and sprinted to the Bahnhof, keen to find out what was really happening.
There was no need to get to work to understand the newsreaders careful phrasing: I grabbed a newspaper and soon found that while the Polish Army had been ordered to cease fighting to avoid needless casualties, the Polish Government has refused to surrender and has fled (presumably through neutral countries to London). The rest of the articles were useless fluff, obviously written by someone who had no further knowledge but a lot of newspaper columns to fill.
Polish prisoners taken in the last stages of the battle of Warszawa
At work I had no difficulty finding out the real news, anyone who knew the details was surrounded by a group of listeners hanging on every word. We have imposed a military government over Poland, but not the whole country. That was the real surprise: move than half the land area has been seized by the Soviet Union! Although we have the richest, most populated and most developed regions, Russia has taken control of vast areas of agricultural land. My informant in the Foreign Office back in April has been proved to be correct: there must have been a secret protocol to the Non-Aggression Pact. All conflict had ceased at midnight, and after 50 days the guns were silent. I was struck by the strange coincidence: midnight of 4th July, the day the USA declared itself independent, and now the day that the Poles lost their independence for ever.
Poland divided: the Soviet Union has won handsomely for doing nothing, while Hungary has retained only a sliver of the territory it occupied (though it has retained the city of Lwow).
Soviet troops cross the border: like our troops weeks ago, they too have taken the Polish Customs sign as a souvenir
Of course the generals whose troops were actually in combat at the time of the cease-fire claimed victory (it will read so much better in the divisional history). So Czestochowa was claimed as a victory by Geyr von Schweppenburg for the loss of 231 men, Opoczno by von Kuchler (69), Grajewo by von Sodenstern (182) and Lomza by Agricola (653). Polish losses were 909, 317, 115 and 524 respectively.
I also heard (and it was made clear to me that I was not to spread this too far) that at midnight the Russians had issued ultimata to the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The details of each ultimatum varied, but my informant (who is attached to von Neurath’s personal staff) told me that this is immaterial: the essentials are the same. Each country must give up its independence and accept Soviet rule. (Agreeing to keep this secret turned out to be easy: within hours the three governments had been told that they could expect no assistance from Germany and had accepted the annexation of their countries by their much more powerful and ruthless neighbour.)
Lithuanian tanks prepared to defend Vilnius: the Lithuanian Army had about 20 of these 4 ton Vickers M1933 tanks and about 10 M1939s but luckily for the crews the government decided that resistance to the Soviet demands was futile.
I found all this while making my way from the front door of the Kanzlei to my office. When I finally opened the door, I found my desk groaning (metaphorically) under the weight of transfer documents. Sighing, I took off my jacket and started to sort them out. It seems the Fuhrer’s expressed desire for no delay in moving our forces west has been taken to heart.
The Luftwaffe was already on the move. 3rd Taktischeluftflotte had been taken from Polen Army Nord and assigned to Benelux Army, its new base being Wilhelmshaven. 5th Fliegerkorps was now based in Berlin, directly ordered by OB East. Every other plane was transferred to the Westwall Army. They were in the air already, heading for airfields at Bitburg, Munchen, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf and Kassel.
As if that were not enough, pilots had been sent straight to the Messerschmitt factory to pick up brand new Bf 109G fighters and fly “Sturm” geschwader to its home at Bitburg. Stacked with the necessary transfer forms for dozens of individual air units and tens of thousands of Luftwaffe personnel were literally hundreds of requisition orders from the commanders of the designated aerodromes. Fuel, spare parts, ammunition, maintenance equipment, rations: the lists went on and on. I can just imagine the chaos across the half dozen Luftwaffe bases as they tried to be ready for the influx. It would be a few days before we could expect any missions to be flown, but soon our soldiers would have massive assistance.
The Heer would be slower, and the job immeasurably more complex. But a start had been made. 1st Panzerkorps has been detached from the Army of East Prussia and is entraining for Dusseldorf. How Bayerlein has managed to get enough trains organised to simultaneously move 1st and 5th Panzer Divisions and 20th and 29th motorised divisions is beyond me. The man must have been working day and night to achieve this.
II Armeekorps HQ with 2.Infanterie and 32 Infanterie is heading for Minden (3rd, 71st and 23rd Infantry were still recovering from recent action and would follow.) Similarly, II Armeekorps with 18.Infanterie was boarding trains bound for Dortmund, with 8th and 28th Infantry ordered to catch up as soon as possible. Army of Polen Nord HQ, stripped of all its units, was on its way to Frankfiurt, where it would be set up as part of the new structure when units were in place.
A troop-train heading west: our soldiers keen to retake provinces taken by the French and to repay the Belgians for their perfidity.
The entire Osterreich Army is assembling for another complex railway exercise as they move en masse to Stuttgart. Five full divisions with the HQ units! How the normal train scheduling will manage I don’t know, but I sure that no Stuttgart factory will be allowed to run out of materials while the troops are being moved!
The final rail movements were marked Highest Priority. The Sturm Marines were to be rushed from Denmark, with the Headquarters bound for Kolkar, 1st Sturm Marine Division for Monchengladbach and 2nd Sturm Marine Division for Koln. The industrial heartland of the Ruhr must be protected from the Belgians.
Unfortunately neither 1st nor 2nd Leichte Panzerkorps were able to start moving. Nearly all their troops were exhausted and the individual units needed some time before their men and vehicles were fit to be moved. In a way this is fortunate as from the forms and schedules I had in front of me every locomotive and railway carriage in the Reich would be in service. Even more worrying, every rail line would surely be at maximum capacity, even with our research into methods of maximising infrastructure usage. I hate to think how many supplies will be consumed over the next few weeks while most of the Wehrmacht moves from one side of the country to the other.
Among the Luftwaffe transfer and requisition documents were some more interesting reports of attempts by the British to again get through to our cities. The bombers were first met over Bebra by Christiansen with five geschwader. By the time they got to Leipzig we had nine geschwader attacking the bombers, which were jettisoning their bombs and desperately taking evasive action. Weise chased them all the way to Duren by which time the last two of our fighter units said that nearly 20% of the strategic bombers had been shot down. Despite the exemplary record of our Home Defence fighter shield, we have installed anti-aircraft guns at both Koln and Hannover.
Christiansen punishes the British for having the temerity to threaten our cities
Our Hungarian allies have come to our assistance at our time of need. Realising that the occupation of Poland will tie up troops who are needed in the west, they have voluntarily provided us with four full divisions of troops. These have been gratefully received by the Heer, and renamed 1st to 4th Ungarn Exeditionary Divisions. It is perhaps a case of both sides getting a good deal, as while we have the benefit of thousands of reliable troops, the Hungarians get the benefit that we will not only maintain the four divisions, but also re-equip and train them to the level of our basic regiments. Nobody here begrudges the expense – any manpower increase to the Heer is welcome, and as one of General Blomberg’s advisers said to me while he waited for a document to be located, even if the Hungarians take them back when they are fully upgraded, it means we know we can count on them having at least four modern divisions!
It was only later that we realised the sacrifice the Hungarians were making. Many of their forward units in Poland were so far from base they could not return. It seems they will be interned by the Russians and railed back to Budapest, but this will take some time. Until then, the Hungarian Army is only a shadow of its full strength.
It was mid-afternoon and I had barely made a dent in the paperwork when another batch of transfers and rail reschedules were brought in: 71.Infanterie was now ready to move and the Deutsches Reichsbahn was eager to show its efficiency.
That was it: I closed my door and rolled up my sleeves, determined that I was not going to face this pile of paper in the morning. So that was the end of 5th June, hours of paper shuffling, possibly an anti-climax to the events of the day. The only question now is whether the DRB can deliver its precious cargoes before the French and Belgians realise that this is their last chance to take advantage of our weakness.
Bombing Summary
4th July
Lomza: Kitzinger with 2 x He 111, 2 x Bf 109E:
49 (Attacked by Kalkus with 3 x Interceptors)
Opoczno: Muller-Michiels with 2 x He 111:
84, 94, 41
Lomza: Kesselring with 4 x Ju 87B, 2 x He 111, 2 x Bf 109E:
79
Lomza: Kesselring with 4 x Ju 87B:
73, 115
St Wendel: Lohr with 2 x Ju 87B:
53
St Wendel: Sperrle with 1 x Bf 109G, 2 x Ju 87B, 2 x He 111:
115
5th July
St Wendel: Lohr with 2 x Ju 87B:
27, 84
St Wendel: Kesselring: 2 x Ju 87B:
59
St Wendel: Kesselring with 4 x Ju 87B:
65
It was only when I double checked the bombing summaries that I could be sure: Kesselring’s Stukas were flying combat missions within hours of rebasing! There should be commendations for some supply clerks at Bitburg airbase who managed to not only get the aircraft refuelled and maintained after their long flight from the Polish border, but also had bombs and ammunition ready.
The Westwall: while the Battle of St Wendel continues, elsewhere combat has paused. But will the Allies realise this is their last chance?
