The Invasion The Outbreak of World War II_1of2
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00:00It began on the 1st of September 1939, the German attack on Poland.
00:15That day, one world became another, for the children too.
00:30I remember vividly that my mother wouldn't let me take off my shoes, you know, and sleeping
00:37in the shoes was somehow very painful for me, but of course she wanted to be ready to
00:42run wherever it was necessary.
00:46There were improvised shelters in the cellars where you were among hundreds of people, you
00:55see, with being able only to sit on the bench and sometimes lying in my mother's lap.
02:13That was the first operational order of the war.
02:16It was also the first for 22-year-old Otto Schmidt.
02:42Within minutes, the Stukas of the 7th Regiment
03:11and the Stukas of the 77th Dive Bomber Wing were in the air.
03:16Twenty minutes flying time and the target was in sight, the small Polish town of Wilunie.
03:23They made their approach at 13,000 feet.
03:27All new machines had to crash into the town centre from this approach altitude.
03:44I was so shocked.
03:46The people, they didn't even know it was war.
03:50From that moment on, they were probably dead, and my bomb was probably with them.
04:03For Piotr Kiskowski and his siblings, that moment was the end of childhood.
04:09We saw what the war was going to be like.
04:12We went to sleep.
04:14We got ready to go to school on the 1st of September.
04:20On the 1st of September, the Stukas of the 7th Regiment and the Stukas of the 77th Dive Bomber Wing were in the air.
04:28Everything collapsed.
04:30The beams, everything heavy, started to fall apart.
04:34There was only a flash, a bang, and dust.
04:37A mouthful of dust.
04:39And we were in the darkness.
04:42And we were shouting, who is still alive, who is dead?
04:46It was a terrible thing.
04:51The children barely escaped with their lives.
05:08The painting was all they could save.
05:11Their house was destroyed, and that wasn't the worst.
05:21I haven't told anyone about it yet, because it's very sad.
05:25It's buried in the dust.
05:50I couldn't resist it.
05:53I still vividly remember the picture of this village in front of me.
06:01I fell for it.
06:04That's when you knew that a new era had begun.
06:20Hitler had lost 60 million lives.
06:26The question remains, could it have been prevented?
06:50Could it have been prevented?
07:21The Czechoslovak government in Prague wasn't even consulted.
07:25The country was simply supposed to accept the decision of the great powers
07:29for the sake of peace.
07:35Hitler was in the driving seat.
07:37He had very plain designs on Czechoslovakia.
07:42He was threatening to take this to war
07:45within a very specific time span, by the beginning of October.
07:50If the Western powers did not concede.
07:54So this was a classic blackmailer who had his victims at his mercy.
08:03Hitler was a blackmailer and a dissembler.
08:06Since coming to power in 1933, he had been rearming Germany.
08:11But the German army and the Luftwaffe
08:14were still by no means as strong as the Western powers believed.
08:18In 1938, Hitler would have struggled to win a war
08:22against France, Britain and Czechoslovakia combined.
08:27It's possible that the Western powers could have said in September 1938,
08:33you're not going to get the Sudetenland.
08:36I think almost certainly that would have compelled Hitler to back down.
08:40But once the Munich agreement had been signed,
08:44after the Sudetenland had passed into German hands,
08:48I think Hitler increasingly began to think that the West was morally bankrupt,
08:54that the West was not really going to oppose.
08:57Hitler had already challenged the great powers two years earlier.
09:02In 1936, the German army had marched into the Rhineland,
09:07demilitarised after the First World War.
09:10The Western powers had merely protested.
09:13When Hitler occupied the Rhineland in 1936,
09:16he was actually naked militarily.
09:18There were only a few battalions he sent to the Rhineland.
09:21If the French had reacted militarily, Hitler would not have been able to do anything.
09:25That would have gone wrong with drums and trumpets.
09:28There would have been no war,
09:30because the Germans could not have led a war in 1936.
09:33It was a game of par excellence.
09:36We don't know, of course, but it is very likely
09:39that Hitler would not have survived a defeat in this Rhineland crisis,
09:43even if it had not been politically successful.
10:09The city of Danzig.
10:12After the First World War,
10:14it was placed under the authority of the League of Nations
10:17and cut off from Germany by a swathe of land awarded to Poland.
10:22This was a recipe for conflict.
10:25Joachim Scholz was 15 at the time,
10:28and he was the only German to have ever been a member of the League of Nations.
10:34We were separated from the Reich.
10:37That meant that if you travelled by train,
10:40the doors had to be sealed,
10:43the windows were closed,
10:46as if you were travelling through an enemy territory.
10:49And so you first came through Danzig and from Danzig to East Prussia.
11:03And he could count on the support of many Danzig citizens.
11:07Over 90% of them were German.
11:10Many had pinned their hopes on Hitler.
11:15And the Nazis controlled the city government.
11:22The city was under German control.
11:25The city was under German control.
11:28The city was under German control.
11:32Then came the 15th of March 1939.
11:36Germany occupied Prague,
11:39broke up what was left of Czechoslovakia
11:42and annexed Memel from Lithuania.
11:45Hitler had broken the Munich Agreement
11:48less than six months after signing it.
11:51Then the scales fell from their eyes
11:54and Hitler was seen now as an imperialist
11:57who was out to attack other countries
12:00which had nothing to do with German nationalism as such.
12:03And it was a very important distinction which was made at that time.
12:07And therefore the 15th of March was a crucial moment
12:11where the Western powers now saw Hitler for what he was,
12:15which was an imperialist who would stop at nothing
12:19and had no obvious limits to his expansionist aims.
12:24The mask was off.
12:27The Polish government too drew its conclusions.
12:58The Polish government decided to make no concessions.
13:01It put its faith in its allies in the West, particularly France,
13:05and in Poland's own military strength.
13:08If it came to the worst, Poland would counter the enemy
13:11with its own fighting spirit.
13:27The film director, Andrzej Wajda, was 13 years old at the time.
13:31He was the son of a Polish officer.
13:58In April 1939,
14:01Hitler announced a German-Polish non-aggression treaty.
14:05He also ordered his army leadership
14:08to prepare to wipe out the Polish state.
14:13I'm going to make a devil's brew for them.
14:16I'm going to make a devil's brew for them.
14:19I'm going to make a devil's brew for them.
14:22I'm going to make a devil's brew for them.
14:25I'm going to make a devil's brew for them, he declared.
14:28The so-called return of Danzig to the German Reich
14:32was now only the pretext for all-out war on Poland.
14:38An SS unit, the SS Home Guard Danzig,
14:41was set up in the city. It was armed.
14:56We knew that after Austria had been annexed,
14:59the Sudetenland, now it was our turn.
15:02We wanted to go to our homeland.
15:05And so, over the course of the summer,
15:08the rumors and the tension grew.
15:25People threw stones at us.
15:28When I was on the street in my uniform,
15:31they threw stones at me.
15:34They screamed,
15:36"'Excuse us for the murder of Polish pigs'
15:39and so on. It was terrible.
15:42Papa said,
15:44"'Please, don't go out on the streets in those uniforms.
15:48"'Don't go out on the streets in those uniforms.
15:51"'Don't go out on the streets in those uniforms.
15:54"'Don't go out on the streets in those uniforms.'"
15:57But her father was a Polish patriot
16:00and hung out the Polish flag on Poland's National Day.
16:25He always ordered a glass-maker
16:28who had to make new windows,
16:31because the windows were destroyed by stones.
16:40Inflaming the already tense mood,
16:43Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels visited Danzig.
16:48We were on our way to a meeting in our uniform.
16:54All we heard was the sound,
16:57"'Hail, Sieg! Hail, Sieg!"
17:00and so on.
17:02We were very curious.
17:05What was going on?
17:07We didn't know that Goebbels was there.
17:10They were singing,
17:12raising the flag.
17:14We were supposed to raise our hands.
17:17There were gendarmes and SS men,
17:20and one of the boys said,
17:22"'We are Poland.
17:24"'We are standing, of course,
17:26"'but we won't raise our hands.'"
17:30The Polish media and army
17:32tried to build confidence with slogans of their own.
17:36Poland did have a large army,
17:38but technologically, it was far behind the times.
17:42Polish propaganda tried to conceal the truth.
17:45Polish radio claimed that if there were a war,
17:48the Poles would be in Berlin in three weeks.
18:08Poland had never dealt with the Germans,
18:11because it was clear in the Polish headquarters.
18:16That's why it was doomed to military alliances
18:19with the Western countries,
18:21especially with France.
18:24No doubts about Poland's ability to win
18:27were allowed to seep out.
18:30You can't replace war.
18:32If you wanted an exact answer,
18:35it would seem that it was already a war,
18:39and that it would look like a war,
18:42that people would be shouting,
18:45that they would be using different arguments,
18:48but the war itself would never come.
18:50We had no idea.
18:54Mid-August.
19:00Andrzej Wajda's father was ordered
19:02to leave for the German border.
19:05Boys, come here.
19:10Andrzej.
19:15You're in my house now.
19:18Take care of your brother and your mother.
19:22I'll be back soon.
19:26Soon. Very soon. You know that.
19:30The mother had a ring with the mother of God.
19:34She put the ring in her pocket,
19:37on her heart.
19:39And then a kiss,
19:42and they parted.
20:01It was to be the last time
20:03that Andrzej Wajda saw his father.
20:06Warsaw, August 1939.
20:09There were ominous signs everywhere.
20:12Since the German occupation of Prague in May 1939,
20:16there had been no sign of war.
20:19The war had begun.
20:21Andrzej Wajda,
20:23the son of the German commander-in-chief,
20:26and his father,
20:28had been killed by the Germans.
20:31There were ominous signs everywhere.
20:34Since the German occupation of Prague in mid-March,
20:37elements of the Polish army
20:39had been mobilized in readiness
20:41for any attack from Germany.
20:47That month, Roman Polanski
20:49traveled to the Polish capital
20:51with his mother and sister.
20:56The general feeling among the Polish population
21:00was that Warsaw was the safest place to be.
21:04So my father decided to send me
21:10with my mother and my sister to Warsaw.
21:13I remember the train going to Warsaw
21:17with my mother in the midst of August.
21:22And my birthday is the 18th of August, you see.
21:27So those two events were somehow very much connected for me.
21:32I remember this very, very hot summer.
21:36It was a picture-book summer, seemingly endless.
21:40Budzimiera Wojtalewicz, the girl from Ganzig,
21:43enjoyed a family holiday in the country.
21:58We prepared everything on the lake
22:01so that my mother could get her fish.
22:06Summer weather.
22:10School holidays.
22:16Fun at the beach.
22:19Happy times.
22:21Who would think of war?
22:27Only those who followed power politics
22:30realized that in those late August days,
22:33the fate of Europe and the peace of the world
22:36were hanging in the balance.
22:41On the 21st of August,
22:43Hitler received a top-secret telegram
22:45at his mountain retreat, the Berghof.
22:48It was a positive response to a confidential inquiry
22:52from one dictator to another.
22:54Stalin was willing to receive the German foreign minister,
22:58von Ribbentrop, in Moscow.
23:04The 23rd of August, 1939.
23:07Moscow.
23:09The Soviet foreign minister, Molotov,
23:11personally received his erstwhile enemy with a warm handshake.
23:16Von Ribbentrop came armed with an offer from Hitler,
23:19a non-aggression pact.
23:21They quickly reached an agreement.
23:23Poland would be carved up between the Soviet Union and Germany.
23:27To eliminate Poland,
23:29Hitler was even prepared to seal a pact with his arch-enemy.
23:35For the Poles, of course, that was catastrophic
23:37because it now meant that they were totally exposed,
23:40sandwiched between two powers
23:43which were ready to see them thrown to the wolves.
23:48This most cynical deal of all time
23:50was settled within a matter of a couple of days
23:54and that deal was one which suited both sides.
23:58The pact of the dictators.
24:01Stalin was in the best of moods.
24:04Opponents had become accomplices.
24:07For the time being.
24:20Hitler had a free hand.
24:22When there was a war between the British and the French,
24:25he had a partner on the continent.
24:27The Russians supplied him with food, oil and raw materials.
24:33He was, so to speak, blockade-proof.
24:35He couldn't have been hit by the blockade.
24:38The 25th of August.
24:41The way was now clear for Hitler's campaign of annihilation.
24:45He had been preparing the army for it for years.
24:49He issued the attack order.
24:51The countdown to disaster began.
24:57In Kiel, the German navy training ship Schleswig-Holstein
25:02had been spruced up for a supposedly friendly visit to Danzig.
25:07On the 25th of August, the battleship anchored just off the city
25:12to the delight of many of the locals.
25:16We got a visit every year.
25:18We were happy about it,
25:20because it documented the connection to our fatherland.
25:23Ships came every year, and this year Schleswig-Holstein.
25:26The special thing was that there was no visit this time.
25:32Nor were the people of Danzig aware
25:34that Hitler had already given the order for war,
25:37or that the ship, like the Trojan horse,
25:40carried an unwelcome surprise in its belly.
26:01The order to attack Schleswig-Holstein
26:04had been given by the Fuehrer himself.
26:07We, as cadets, could possibly
26:11launch an attack.
26:15Preparations for the attack were going ahead.
26:19Otto Schmidt's Stuka squadron flew to Neudorf,
26:22just outside the city of Oppeln, near the Polish border.
26:44You had to wait for nothing to happen.
26:47In my silence, I just hoped
26:51that diplomacy would find a way
26:56to prevent the war.
27:14Hitler was going to attack Poland,
27:16and as he leaves, he said,
27:18if you attack Poland, the French will declare war on you.
27:22Hitler gets very angry and says,
27:24why do you give this blank check to the Poles?
27:27Then the Italian ambassador arrives,
27:29and he says, I'm sorry, bad news,
27:31Mussolini is not going to support you.
27:33Hitler and Ribbentrop and the others are furious about this.
27:38But exactly half an hour later
27:40comes news that the British and the Poles
27:42had signed a treaty, the Anglo-Polish treaty.
27:46In Warsaw, there was jubilation.
27:49Poland had treaty guarantees from both France and Britain.
27:53Now Hitler would never dare to attack,
27:56or so the Poles hoped,
27:58and briefly it seemed they were right.
28:01Really, everything rested with Hitler.
28:03Hitler had to judge whether they really meant it or not,
28:06and he's thrown into complete confusion.
28:08He finally says, OK, OK, let's cancel it for tomorrow,
28:11and we'll see what happens.
28:14The Jablunka Pass on what was then the Polish-Slovak frontier,
28:18early on the 29th of August.
28:21Guided by locals familiar with the area,
28:24German commandos crossed into Poland.
28:27Their mission, to seize the railway station
28:29in the border town of Mosta.
28:31Its rail line was strategically important.
28:34The Poles had wired it for demolition.
28:42BELL RINGS
28:48The raid was successful.
28:50The detonators were disabled.
28:53Only then did the commandos learn that the attack had been halted.
28:57BELL RINGS
29:11BELL RINGS
29:31It was a massive violation of the border.
29:41They explained that it was an incident
29:44provoked by an unreadable person on the German side.
29:48Generally, the Polish troops had orders
29:52to behave in a far-reaching manner,
29:55to be careful, to be vigilant,
29:58not to succumb to German border provocations,
30:01which, in Polish understanding,
30:04were to give Hitler one of the pretexts
30:07for an attack on Poland.
30:11The situation was on a knife edge,
30:14but ordinary people heard nothing of the events at the Jablunka Pass.
30:23The governments in London, Paris and Warsaw were informed,
30:27but they did not react.
30:31The Western powers even warned Poland
30:33not to do anything that might antagonise Germany.
30:41At the end of August, it was about preventing the war.
30:44The Western powers were very interested
30:47in trying to find a diplomatic solution.
30:50That's why they looked away from the commandos
30:53and said,
30:55this is not the reason for the great war.
30:58We know that Hitler was playing tricks.
31:01We know that he was preparing the attack.
31:04But let's try to solve the matter diplomatically.
31:08Maybe at the last moment, like in Munich,
31:11we can prevent the war.
31:15Hitler drew his own conclusions
31:17from the reaction of the Western powers.
31:21His judgement, which became increasingly a conviction,
31:24was that they would just back down.
31:26Lots of theatre, but they wouldn't really do anything serious.
31:29And that's what, in the end,
31:31led him to order German forces into Poland
31:35on the morning of September 1st.
31:39A station in Kiel on the 31st of August 1939.
31:44Hershel Glantz, Jewish, 15 years old,
31:47was about to begin the journey of his life.
31:50He had been granted a British entry permit.
31:54Next name?
31:57Glantz, Hershel.
31:59Can't your son say that himself?
32:01Glantz, Hershel, here.
32:02Number 145.
32:04Go on.
32:07Next name?
32:09For much of the late 1930s,
32:11the Western powers had been reluctant
32:14to accept a large flood of Jewish refugees from Germany.
32:18But finally, in 1938, late 1938 and 1939,
32:22the doors began to open a little bit wider,
32:25and the British finally agreed to the so-called Kindertransport.
32:30In the end, they came to recognise
32:32that this really was a humanitarian crisis of huge proportions,
32:37and they really were morally obliged to do something.
32:42Access only for emigrants.
32:45Do what you have to do.
32:48Here.
32:50Next.
33:01We weren't allowed on the platform.
33:04They had to say goodbye outside.
33:08It seems that the Nazis didn't want it to be published.
33:14And then we said goodbye.
33:16My mother cried and hugged us and said,
33:19we'll see each other again soon.
33:21You'll see him very, very soon.
33:23My dear boy.
33:25Stop coming along now.
33:27Mama.
33:31Mama.
33:33I told you to come along.
33:36For most of the children, it was goodbye forever.
33:55Henry Glantz's parents and his younger brother
33:58were murdered in death camps.
34:00For Henry and a handful of other Jewish children,
34:03that train trip on 31 August 1939 was a journey to a new life.
34:34That same night,
34:36a group of SS men tried to stage a justification for war.
34:41Disguised as Polish soldiers,
34:43they attacked the German radio station at Gleiwitz.
35:03The SS men tried to broadcast fake Polish propaganda,
35:09but it could only be heard locally,
35:12as the transmitter was partially clogged.
35:15The German radio station in Gleiwitz
35:18was the only radio station in the area
35:21that could broadcast fake Polish propaganda.
35:24The SS men tried to broadcast fake Polish propaganda,
35:28but it could only be heard locally,
35:31as the transmitter was partially closed.
36:01The 1st of September.
36:03At 4.45am, Schleswig-Holstein,
36:06the training ship on a friendly visit,
36:09opened fire on the Westerplatte,
36:12a small Polish fortress in Danzig.
36:31GUNFIRE
36:50After the shelling, the naval infantry,
36:53who had been hiding aboard the Schleswig-Holstein,
36:56launched their attack.
37:02Meanwhile, the SS home guard Danzig
37:05was trying to seize the Polish post office.
37:31The Germans were taking over Danzig,
37:34and there was a certain pressure
37:37to occupy the Polish post as quickly as possible.
38:01They were accused of belonging to a militia.
38:04Today, the post office is a memorial,
38:07and Danzig is the Polish city of Gdansk.
38:31If you were to be seen as lost,
38:34you had to hold on as long as possible.
38:44Wojtanovic?
38:45Dad!
38:46Dad said to me,
38:48you're the oldest,
38:50and please help your mum,
38:54and take care of your younger sister,
38:58and be the right hand for your mum,
39:02because I'm going to be interned.
39:05Interned?
39:07I don't know how long.
39:09In that moment,
39:11my childhood was gone.
39:14I felt responsible.
39:17I felt grown up,
39:19responsible for my family.
39:21Dad?
39:29On the 1st of September, 1939,
39:33one and a half million German soldiers invaded Poland.
39:38Their objective was to gain as much ground as possible.
39:42Hitler had long ago made it clear to his generals
39:45that this war was not about Danzig.
39:53Supported by the Germans,
39:56supported by aircraft,
39:58the tanks of the Wehrmacht quickly gained the upper hand.
40:25These are fantastic films.
40:28It's as if another world has entered our lives.
40:32A world of mechanical civilisation.
40:37Maybe it won't be so bad,
40:39maybe these are people too.
40:42But after a few days,
40:44this war showed its true face.
40:47SS units moved in after the army
40:50and began the systematic murder of the Polish elite.
40:54It was the prelude to a horrendous slaughter
40:57that was to last for over five years.
41:01This was a war of a very different kind to any previous war,
41:05even including the First World War,
41:07that this was now a war which contained genocide at its very heart.
41:12And so here was the beginnings
41:16of a collapse of civilisation
41:20of a sort the world has previously never seen.
41:24That was what the 1st of September 1939 unleashed.
41:34Herschel Glantz, the Jewish boy from Kiel,
41:37escaped the inferno on the continent.
41:40Two days after the war began, he disembarked in England.
41:50My wife really believes that, God willing,
41:53a 13-year-old girl in London is waiting for him.
42:02She really believes it.
42:05My son makes fun of it, but...
42:09That day, Britain declared war on Germany.
42:39It didn't happen.
42:41That's why we're now in the war zone in the middle of Germany.
42:44And then a few hours later, France declared war.
42:57We were happy that it was coming to an end.
43:00We all thought that Hitler would be destroyed in a few months.
43:05We hoped it would be the end.
43:10The people of Warsaw, too, felt fresh hope
43:14after their allies, France and Britain, entered the war.
43:24But their expectations of direct military assistance were soon dashed.
43:39It was assumed that in 1940,
43:42France and Britain would be better prepared for war.
43:46If the Germans were to be attacked in Poland,
43:50as promised in September 1939,
43:53perhaps the war would have already been declared.
43:57Historians still support this idea.
44:02Warsaw, early September 1939.
44:06The city braced for its defence.
44:09Within two weeks, it was surrounded.
44:12The Luftwaffe bombed it systematically.
44:32People went hungry. Roman Polanski, too.
44:36There was nothing to eat, nothing to drink.
44:39My mother was making these excursions and coming back with water.
44:44And there was sugar on the sidewalk, as she told us.
44:49And she scraped the sugar and came with a big bag of sugar home.
44:56The tragedy of Warsaw.
44:58The once proud city was buried under a mountain of rubble.
45:04It is estimated that around 20,000 people died in the siege of Warsaw.
45:10September 1939 is still remembered by Poles as a time of heroism.
45:23In the midst of it all was one small boy.
45:27His name was Henry.
45:33My main preoccupation was with Papa.
45:37Where is my father?
45:43I always have a hard time telling you about it
45:46because it's an incredible moment in my life, you know?
45:50I found the tail of a bomb, you know,
45:55with fins like this, you know, and a ring around it.
46:00And I was playing with it. This was my trophy.
46:04And someone called me and I turned around
46:09and I saw a man crouching with his arms open like that.
46:13That was my father.
46:26But their joy at being together again
46:29was soon clouded by the sight of German troops in Warsaw.
46:36They were very well dressed and in military order
46:40and clean and spunk, you know, and marching
46:45and people on the street were turning backs to them.
46:51I watched with curiosity and my father,
46:54I remember just saying the equivalent of
46:59bastards, bastards, you know.
47:03No, actually, I would rather say the equivalent of...
47:07you know, and pulled me by the hand and we just walked away.
47:14September 1939 was hit the same year
47:18September 1939 was hit this hour of glory.
47:22It would take five and a half years and immense sacrifices
47:26to bring about his downfall.
47:29No one in Europe had felt strong enough to stop him
47:33when it might just have been possible.
47:48For more UN videos visit www.un.org