Polish Army in WW2

Regardless of the situation, then it is a fact that the calvary charged at the armour. Whether it was to escape or to fight, it did charge. This then can be determined to be an attack. I'm sure the enemy is not going to allow you to walk out of an encirclement.

 

Which is my exact point —that I've been hopelessly trying to explain to certain members who only quote biased sites and put words in your mouth...

No one ever said such a thing.

 

”THERE IS THE ONLY ONE MATH AND THE ONE PHISICS”

Really, did anyone tell Einstein and Bohr?

No.9

 

Well, in this case it is a "fact" that German soldiers did charge Soviet tanks with iron bars, stupid them.

Cheers,

 

Don't be silly, the Iron Brigade were in the American Civil War.

No.9

 

Let´s ask this a bit differently : What should the Poles have done differently about their army to change the outcome or could they do anything at all to stop/slow down the Blitzkrieg machine?

 

Nothing much, really.

First, they had very long borders to defend and not enough men and equipment to do that properly.

Second, their industrial basis was too weak to supply all her armed forces adequately.

Third, their tactics were from the time of Russian-Polish war of 1920, not capable of fighting back 1939 Blitzkrieg weaponry and tactics.

Another big dilemma; Poland's long borders had completely lousy deffensive terrain. The best defence line they could have used was the Vistula river, but that would have meant to give the Germans the richest part of the country. Therefore they decided to defend the borders and allowed the Germans to easily encircle and annihilate them.

It didn't matter whether the Polish soldiers and officers were very brave and capable and that they launched wise counterattacks against the German exposed flanks or against German infantry, away from the Panzers. But there was the Luftwaffe to disrupt Polish communications and supply lines, making impossible to continue the counterattacks and even co-ordinate them effectively. And of course, the German motorised and Panzer divisions were far more mobile and were capable of deploying reserves very rapidly in treathened sectors.

Unless the Anglo-French attacked the German border, there was no chance for the Poles.

 

Agree with Friedrich. The Polish campaign is where Blitzkrieg was introduced so all countries based their strategy on WWI. Had the Poles known about blitzkrieg, with what they had, best thing to do is withdraw into the cities and make them fight for each house. Blitzkrieg did not work well in urban fighting. Still would have ended with the Poles losing though.

 

Whoa!

They were facing only one army at first. The Soviets simply moved in to protect foreign nationals who might be caught in the military action

As for huge army and well prepared, I don't think you can substantiate that. Read Guderian's own book and see how he describes the event when his own division stops short of their primary objective. He seems unable to come up with a plan of his own to fix the problem. Guderian, the so-called architect of Blitzkrieg was quite nonchalant about his men stopping for a 'rest' on the second day of the advance, having advanced 130 odd kilometres. That rate of advance is less than 3 km per hour, and similar to the advance rate in 1914.

No, the German army was no more efficient in 1939 than it had been 25 years earlier.

So what of the Russians? They were much bigger, had better tanks and more men. So why didn't the Poles stop the Russians the same way the Finns did only a few months later?

[ 22. March 2004, 09:44 PM: Message edited by: Major Destruction ]

 

How can you say that the Soviets moved only to protect their nationals? That sounds like a peaceful UN operation of our days, not as the treacherous invasion of the USSR, which took a great part of Polish territory and which assassinated and imprisoned thousands of Poles.

Huge and well-prepared Army. Yes. That perfectly describes the Wehrmacht of 1939. I wasn't of course, the fully motorised and modern war-machine Goebbels wanted to seem or the people to believe. But there was no doubt that the German Army's units were all much more better-equipped, trained, co-ordinated and leaded than the Polish ones. German artillery was not from WWI nor the 1920s, neither were lorries, half-tracks or Panzers. What about the Luftwaffe? What about communications?

An average Polish infantry division simply couldn't match a German one. Because the German command structure was far more agile, they had more, better and far accurate artillery tha the Polish, plus radios to call for Panzer and air-support. Indeed, the main fighting was made almost entirely by infantry and artillery as in WWI. But communications allowed the German Armies to deploy and re-deploy reinforcements wherever needed more rapidly. When I say fast movement, I don't mean 1.000 kilometres in a week as Rommel and the British did in North Africa.

Because the Russo-Polish border was hundreds of miles long, there were no adequate defences and 90% of the Polish Armed Forces were engaged in fighting the Germans.

Finland fought only one enemy in a narrow front, with better tactics and with weather and terrain on their favour. And even so, they lost because of numbers and technology.

 

I accept the Winter War estimates except for the narrow front...




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Kai, but the main Finnihs defense ad the main Soviet attacks were concentrated in the south of the country at Karelia, right?

If not, I'll have to wait for the book to come so I can clarify!

 

Yes, the very main attack line was in the south but all in all the Red Army attacked in all directions, and one of the ideas was to cut Finland in two in the middle...

 

Actually the Polish army had more men than the German army facing them. The Polish border with Germany was no longer than the Finnish border with USSR.

In the time that it took for the war to end industrial might did not come into play.

If you compare the German armoured might which consisted mainly of PzI machine gun carriers and PzII light tanks, neither of which were particularly reliable or effective with the armour and gunnery of the Poles, I think you would come to a different opinion. The Poles had good anti tank guns which were easily capable of defeating any German tank while the German tanks were only powerful by virtue of massed numbers.

What is Blitzkrieg weaponry outside of German propaganda? The German army advanced into Poland in 1939 at the same pace as they did in 1914.

given that several divisions of Polish army managed to find refuge in Romania, I don't think it accurate to say that the Polish army was annihilated.

The majority of the German army in 1939 was horse transported- as it had been in 1914.

Actually the French did attack and were soundly defeated. The RAF also attacked in large numbers and were also beaten soundly.

There was no chance for the Poles as soon as Germany announced that Warsaw had been captured after only 3 days and the UK accepted this. In fact Warsaw was not defeated for some weeks later.
Poland was abandoned by the UK and France who found they were powerless to intervene.

 

You'd better read that book!

 

Consider the spectacle of a German armoured unit sitting helpless without fuel, awaiting the supply wagons and without infantry protection.
Engine covers are up allowing the engines to cool off, (they were terribly underpowered- even my 3/4 ton pickup develops more power than a PzII) and you are in command of a mounted cavalry unit.

It is relatively simple to attack, surprise the unarmed mechanics and drivers and cut the fuel hoses to the engines with your sabres then gallop off.

It is also relatively simple although more hazardous to attack the supply trains (which also incidentally belong to the Panzer division) as they struggle to reach the tanks (such as they were).

Either attack might be described, as Guderian does himself in his book Panzer Leader, as a cavalry charge against a Panzer division.

All these web based historical sites simply restate the same stuff. Who was it who said, If you tell the same lie enough times, eventually everyone will believe it.

Think.

Research.

 

[/QUOTE]Consider the spectacle of a German armored unit sitting helpless without fuel, awaiting the supply wagons and without infantry protection.
[/QUOTE]

First how would they get there as i am assuming that they are behind the front line and have at least some solders with rifles to protect them.
If there is no Polish army still fighting in Poland then i think its safe to say they have been anihalted.
Also Blitzkrieg is an awsome weapon WW1 is a good example of how not conquer France but with lighting speed,air support and solid objectives it was achieved. correct me if i am wrong but didn't the French have more tanks during the invasion ? so tatics go along way.
Blitzkrieg reminds me of "Shock and Awe"

 

For anyone who loves to say things like "the Polish army was incompetent..." or "the poles were just walked over..", think about this:
-In the 1939 campaign, Poland destroyed one fifth of Germany's deployed armor.
-In this campaign, Germany lost a quarter of its air force.
-Poland killed more German soldiers and destroyed more of their equipment in 1939(tanks planes etc) than did Britain and France combined in the next year.
-Poland's newest figter was the PZL P-11, an obsolete parasol wing plane armed with two machine guns, with a top speed around that of the German bombers, and roughly 150km/h slower than the German bf 109, which had two machine guns and a 20mm cannon, amd had a 4000m ceiling advantage over the p-11.
-The Germans originally had white balkenkruz(white battle crosses) painted on their tanks, but changed them to the well known black crosses, because of the excellent target the white made for Polish AT riflemen, who destroyed large numbers of panzers.
-Poland knew war was coming and had mobilized a day earlier, but, at the strong urging of Britain and France, the Polish government agreed to de-mobilizing for at least 24 hours. Germany attacked.
-Had Britain and France done what they had been supposed to do as laid down in treaty, and attacked Germany, they could have easily driven into Germany, since at the outbreak of the war, the Germans didn't have enough troops on their western border to even man all the pillboxes at the same time.
-At katyn, the soviets murdered near to 30,000 Poles, mainly teachers, doctors, priests, professors etc, and officers. The allies did everything they could to cover up the atrocities committed by their "good ally," the USSR.
-Polish soldiers who escaped to France warned the French of how the Germans would attack, but were scoffed at. The French laughed at "Polish incompetence" in the September campaign, and believed the German propaganda of Poles charging tanks with lances.When the Germans did attack France, the French were very surprised, the attack happened very much as the Poles had warned them. The French needed to stop the Germans coming through the Ardennes, and so sent a large force of cavalry to do so. They failed.
-When Polish squadrons were formed in Britain, flying the hurricane, the British commanders were very sceptical of the Poles fighting ability. These squadrons turned out to be the highest scoring in the battle of Britain, and Kosciuszko Squadron(303 sqn) had the most kills of any squadron in the battle.
-British, Ghurka, Canadian, New Zealand, US, and other troops tried, with varying degrees of success, to take the fortress of Monte cassino, but all failed.
The Polish II Corps took the abbey, and the road to Rome was opened. This was after the Poles had found out about the US-British betrayal of Poland, along with the rest of Central and Eastern Europe to the Soviets, and after an American bomber accidentally dropped one of it's bombs on the Polish forces assembling to take the monastary atop Monte Cassino, killing and wounding hundreds.

I do not blame you for probably not knowing these facts, as propagandists worked very hard after the war to make it appear that their wonderful allies, the soviets, were innocent, brave fighters who liberated half of Europe, and that Poland was simply a nation of dumb half-wits that couldn't do anything for itself, and existed only by their grace. They didn't want the world to know of their betrayal, and so made a story of absolute good triumphing over absolute evil, ommiting the "trivial details."
If this fascinates or horrifies you, I would suggest that you read a very well-researched book called "A Question of Honor", by Stan cloud, and Lynne Olsen. The website for the book is www.questionofhonor.com in English, and now in Polish, www.sprawahonoru.com

 

Were the-hell did this come from?! That's absolutely false.

</font>

• German Casualties of Fallweiß:</font>
• 8.082-10.572 killed</font>
• 27.278-30.322 wounded</font>
• 3.404-5.029 missing</font>

</font>

• German Casualties of Fall Gelb:</font>
• 27.074 killed</font>
• 111.034 wounded</font>
• 18.384 missing</font>