Okla-homey
9/27/2007, 05:58 AM
September 27, 1939: Poland surrenders
http://aycu36.webshots.com/image/27755/2001272020317082810_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2001272020317082810)
68 years ago, on this day in 1939, 140,000 Polish troops are taken prisoner by the German invaders as Warsaw surrenders to the superior mechanized forces of Hitler's army. The Poles fought bravely, but were able to hold on for only 26 days.
http://aycu30.webshots.com/image/29629/2001245695499428740_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2001245695499428740)
German troops enter Warsaw
Warsaw fell preceded by 20 days of bombardment by the Luftwaffe; Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor on the Polish state radio station until cut off by German bombs Sep. 23 -- as told in the 2002 film The Pianist based on his 1946 autobiography.
http://aycu26.webshots.com/image/27465/2000167484438851996_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2000167484438851996)
On the heels of its victory, the Germans began a systematic program of terror, murder, and cruelty, executing members of Poland's middle and upper classes: Doctors, teachers, priests, landowners, and businessmen were rounded up and killed.
http://aycu01.webshots.com/image/28320/2001204464077190441_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2001204464077190441)
Polish cavalry attack during Polish Army manuevers in 1938. The Poles were'nt completely unmechanized. They had a little over 200 French Renault tanks, but stopping the Wehrmacht blitzkrieg with these and their small armored force was like trying to put out a housefire with a water pistol.
http://aycu16.webshots.com/image/26975/2001227888433503461_rs.jpg
Reenactors wearing uniforms and equipment of the Polish Army c.1939.
The Nazis had given this operation the benign-sounding name "Extraordinary Pacification Action." The Roman Catholic Church, too, was targeted, because it was a possible source of dissent and counterinsurgency.
In one west Poland church diocese alone, 214 priests were shot. And hundreds of thousands more Poles were driven from their homes and relocated east, as Germans settled in the vacated areas.
http://aycu24.webshots.com/image/30383/2001268779260827980_rs.jpg
Polish Jews are rounded up.
This was all part of a Hitlerian master plan. A month earlier in August 1939, Hitler had warned his Wehrmacht senior officer corps he was preparing Poland for that "which would not be to the taste of German generals"--including the rounding up of Polish Jews into ghettos, a prelude to their liquidation.
Did that fact make the German Army leadership complicit in the horrors of Auschwitz and the other death camps? The international tribunal at Nuremberg, held after WWII ended, generally tended to rule that way when high ranking German officers were on trial.
http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/7166/insane7zopp6.jpg
http://aycu36.webshots.com/image/27755/2001272020317082810_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2001272020317082810)
68 years ago, on this day in 1939, 140,000 Polish troops are taken prisoner by the German invaders as Warsaw surrenders to the superior mechanized forces of Hitler's army. The Poles fought bravely, but were able to hold on for only 26 days.
http://aycu30.webshots.com/image/29629/2001245695499428740_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2001245695499428740)
German troops enter Warsaw
Warsaw fell preceded by 20 days of bombardment by the Luftwaffe; Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor on the Polish state radio station until cut off by German bombs Sep. 23 -- as told in the 2002 film The Pianist based on his 1946 autobiography.
http://aycu26.webshots.com/image/27465/2000167484438851996_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2000167484438851996)
On the heels of its victory, the Germans began a systematic program of terror, murder, and cruelty, executing members of Poland's middle and upper classes: Doctors, teachers, priests, landowners, and businessmen were rounded up and killed.
http://aycu01.webshots.com/image/28320/2001204464077190441_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2001204464077190441)
Polish cavalry attack during Polish Army manuevers in 1938. The Poles were'nt completely unmechanized. They had a little over 200 French Renault tanks, but stopping the Wehrmacht blitzkrieg with these and their small armored force was like trying to put out a housefire with a water pistol.
http://aycu16.webshots.com/image/26975/2001227888433503461_rs.jpg
Reenactors wearing uniforms and equipment of the Polish Army c.1939.
The Nazis had given this operation the benign-sounding name "Extraordinary Pacification Action." The Roman Catholic Church, too, was targeted, because it was a possible source of dissent and counterinsurgency.
In one west Poland church diocese alone, 214 priests were shot. And hundreds of thousands more Poles were driven from their homes and relocated east, as Germans settled in the vacated areas.
http://aycu24.webshots.com/image/30383/2001268779260827980_rs.jpg
Polish Jews are rounded up.
This was all part of a Hitlerian master plan. A month earlier in August 1939, Hitler had warned his Wehrmacht senior officer corps he was preparing Poland for that "which would not be to the taste of German generals"--including the rounding up of Polish Jews into ghettos, a prelude to their liquidation.
Did that fact make the German Army leadership complicit in the horrors of Auschwitz and the other death camps? The international tribunal at Nuremberg, held after WWII ended, generally tended to rule that way when high ranking German officers were on trial.
http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/7166/insane7zopp6.jpg