POLISH THEATRE: Such Is War

When the French retreated to the Marne in 1914, their strategy proved shrewd and salutary. For the Polish armies to fall back from the Corridor and East Prussia to a primary defense line from Loruń south through Lódź and Kielce to Cracow, and after that to the angle between the Bug and Vistula Rivers in the north and the Industrial Triangle (Cracow to Lublin to Lwow) in the south, was the strategy approved for Marshal Smigly-Rydz by his Allied military advisers (see map, p. 16). He need endanger only 15 Polish divisions by this plan, holding 45 in reserve to smite the Germans after their supply lines and communications were extended. His own defense line would be less than 500 miles long instead of more than 1,000 miles. Even the Germans estimated it would take them one month to crush Poland in such a campaign.

This week, after only eleven days of fighting, it was a grave question whether Poland was not already crushed. Perhaps Marshal Smigly-Rydz was to blame, for having his generals resist too long; perhaps the speed and power of the German advance surpassed even German calculations; perhaps the weather made the difference, staying dry and leaving the roads passable for motorized advance; perhaps the German air-power exceeded all expectations, breaking Poland’s wings before they left the ground, smashing defensive positions before they could be organized. Certainly all these factors combined to make half Poland a shambles and her stand at Warsaw a desperate siege, as ghastly as Madrid.

Germany’s armies from East Prussia, with the shortest distance to go, were the slowest to blast their way to Warsaw’s outer defenses. Impeded at the Narew River after taking Plonsk and Pultusk, they were halted last week at the Bug. At the junction of the Narew and the Vistula, the fort city of Modlin had yet to fall at week’s end. But artillery diverted for this defense weakened the Poles on the southwest. Smashing into Cracow, Germany’s armies of the south swept on into the Industrial Triangle to take Sandomierz, Poland’s munitions centre. Mechanized columns, whirling far ahead of infantry following in trucks, seized Kielce, Radom, Lódź (the textile centre). The entry of one motorized unit, traveling far ahead of its support, into the heart of Warsaw, led to premature announcement of the capital’s invasion on Friday. Snipers at windows, machine gunners on roofs, drove the invaders back to Warsaw’s southwestern suburbs, but there the main German forces soon arrived, too, and Warsaw was hemmed in on at least two sides. To its defense from the west came Polish divisions retreating in good order out of the big pocket formed around Poznan, where the Nazi attack had been light for fear of harming the thick German population. With other reinforcements from the east, Warsaw’s defenders dug in on the Vistula’s right bank, lobbing their shells over the city at the gathering Germans.

While the battle for Warsaw took form, in the south the German columns smashed on westward toward Lublin and toward Przemysl on the San River, gateway through the hills toward Lwow. Slovakian columns, too, came out of the border mountains to threaten Lwow, for through that city ran Poland’s one remaining lifeline; the road and railroad to Rumania.

Siege of Warsaw. Stefan Starzynski, mayor of Warsaw, was a demon in its defense. He rallied civilians to help the soldiery, exhorted Poland’s women to fight beside their men, took to the radio to order the city’s life. “Go to the slaughter house,” he said, “for pigs have arrived. Help the butchers there. Go to the post office and pick up your mail yourselves. The banks are open, so do your banking. All stores must be kept open.”

Such details as these sounded ludicrous amid the lethal pandemonium in which the city was living. Flights of Nazi bombers passed over the city every hour and oftener. Sometimes there were as many as 70 of them at once. They dropped 800-lb. demolition charges. Bridges, public buildings, Lazienki Gardens erupted debris.

Correspondence from behind the German lines heightened the outside world’s picture of the siege. Wrote one Enrico Altavilla for the Rome Tribuna one of several newsmen taken along by Nazi pilots to see their fun:

“We saw the Vistula [at Warsaw]. Our objective was the great new bridge of nine spans over the river. We flew over it at 600 meters. It was jammed with autos, armored cars, trucks and private vehicles.

“I saw them all standing still and wondered why they did not flee. Then I perceived that in their panic they had created a jam and none could goforward or backward.

“The first bombs missed their objective by a hair’s breadth. We turned and could see the bridge already full of smoke. One of the other bombers was more accurate than ours. My pilot bit his lip. He must have felt like a hunter who has missed a fine hare and sees it killed by a hunting comrade.

“The bridge was still standing, but this time our bombs were better aimed. I saw a truck full of soldiers tossed into the air and an armored car fall into the river.

“The arches of the bridge were precipitated into the river one after another, forcing up high columns of water. Some soldiers floundered in the ruins. Others succeeded in reaching the bank. Some in animate figures floated in the current. Such is war.”

First Soldier. Also in the air over smoking Poland was Germany’s First Soldier, Adolf Hitler. After visiting his armies in the Corridor at Chelmno (north of Toruń), where he inspected Polish prisoners, visited German wounded, he shifted his base to somewhere in Silesia and flew out to view the rich prizes his smooth-running juggernaut had taken: coal mines and steel works. Ahead of him, still bombing and blasting with machine guns (even at open towns) went his wings of death. Captured German pilots said they had orders to shoot or blow down “everything living or standing.”

Flight from Warsaw. Most of the Polish Government withdrew from Warsaw in the middle of the week. They went to Naleczów, a suburb of Lublin, and one Cabinet meeting was held there under shade trees. Foreign diplomatic staffs accompanied them, but when the German radio blandly announced their whereabouts, even naming the house in which U. S. Ambassador Biddle was quartered, Government and diplomats fled again, farther east and south.

The railroad and single highway were jammed with refugees, walking, creaking along in wagons, only a few so lucky as to have automobiles. A trainload of war-wounded, had to wait hours every few miles while its crew repaired blown up rails. The diplomatic exodus came to rest at Sniatyn, a town near the Rumanian border where there were boarding school dormitories. Ambassador Biddle got a fine “mansion” on the main street. There were no lights, of course, and no running water, but his wife and family were safe. His British neighbors across the way marveled to see him sweating, stripping to his undershirt, as he loaded baggage into his official car, which was taking his girl clerks into Rumania.

Poland’s Fate rested not so much on the fate of Warsaw—heavy blow to morale though that would be if it fell—as on the whereabouts and condition of Poland’s remaining divisions. If they could form their mass of maneuver, as the French did around Paris, and strike at the separated advancing German armies, they might accomplish a master counterblow. If that did not work, there were still the rains to hope for and the Allied pressure at Germany’s back.

The massing of Red Russia’s armies on the border east of them did not apparently worry the Poles. They figured that J. Stalin was merely planting his men to make sure A. Hitler did not forget to stop when he reached Russia, and to collect his slice of Poland without fighting, reopen the trans-Poland rail line from Minsk to Berlin, if & when the conquest was complete. Between the Poles and Stalin still lay the Pripet Marshes where they could hole up for the winter, await the outcome of their Allies’ effort in the West.