142 The Gleiwitz Incident, After the Battle
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//-->battleafter theTHE GLEIWITZINCIDENTNumber 1424 29770306154080£3.95NUMBER 142© CopyrightAfter the Battle2008Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. RamseyManaging Editor: Gordon RamseyEditor: Karel MargryPublished byBattle of Britain International Ltd.,The Mews, Hobbs Cross House,Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow,Essex CM17 0NN, EnglandTelephone: 01279 41 8833Fax: 01279 41 9386E-mail: hq@afterthebattle.comWebsite: www.afterthebattle.comPrinted in Great Britain byWarners Group Publications PLC.,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH.After the Battleis published on the 15thof February, May, August and November.LONDON STOCKIST for theAfter the Battlerange:Motorbooks, 13/15 Cecil Court, London WC2N 4ANTelephone: 020 7836 5376. Fax: 020 7497 2539United Kingdom Newsagent Distribution:Warners Group Publications PLC.,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PHAustralian Subscriptions and Back Issues:Renniks Publications Pty LimitedUnit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. 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Professing peace at everyoccasion, behind the scenes Hitler was build-ing the Nazi war machine. Meanwhile, worldleaders were adeptly kept off balance withhis chicanery.The 1936 seizure of the Rhineland was car-ried out against little resistance as the Frenchstood by powerless and her allies silent. Twoyears later, German troops marched intoAustria for a bloodless takeover. Plans werenext conceived for the invasion of Czechoslo-vakia — known as ‘Fall Grün’ (Case Green),Hitler’s pretext for the protection of theSudeten Germans against their Czech-Slovakusurpers, and German troops marched intothe Sudetenland on October 1, 1938 with thetacit approval of the infamous MunichAgreement (seeAfter the BattleNo. 62).That same month, Hitler began to pressfor the return of the Free City of Danzig. TheLeague of Nations held oversight of the portFront Cover:The Gleiwitz radio station – site of one ofthe fake frontier incidents created by the GermanSicherheitsdienst on the night of August 31/September1, 1939 to provide Nazi Germany with an excuse toinvade Poland. Today Gleiwitz is Gliwice in Polandand the former radio station is the Gliwice Museum ofRadio History and Media Art. (Karel Margry)Centre Pages:Wrecks of American Sherman tanksand M-10 tank destroyers spotted at a dump outsideGrandhan near Durbuy in the Belgian Ardennes.Taken over by the Belgian Army after the war, theywere used as practice targets on the Elsenborn firingrange until 2007. Given up for scrap, they will soonend up in the melting pot. (Dirk van Ooteghem)Back Cover:A perfect recreation by members of theFallschirmpioniere re-enactment group of one of thephotos taken by an SS war photographer at Poteauduring the Battle of the Bulge on December 18,1944. During the Nazi occupation of Belgium, theReich re-annexed its German-speaking easternprovince, making Poteau a frontier village like it hadbeen in the 19th century. (USNA/Frank Hübner)Acknowledgements:For their help with the Gleiwitzstory, the Editor would like to thank AndrzejJarczewski, director of the Gleiwitz Museum ofRadio History and Media Art; Marek Panek and, inparticular, Okko Luursema, without whose know-ledge of Polish we would not have been able to findsome of the locations connected with this story.Photo Credits:ATL – Alexander Turnbull Library,Wellington; AWM – Australian War Memorial,Canberra; BA – Bundesarchiv; IWM – Imperial WarMuseum, London; USMC – US Marine Corps; USNA– US National Archives.city while economic control was awarded toPoland as part of the Versailles Treaty, giv-ing the country access to the sea. Danzigstood as a gross injustice to the German peo-ple, as well as the majority German-speakingpopulation.In March 1939, as Czechoslovakia disinte-grated and German troops marched intoPrague, Hitler ordered the military highcommand to draw up the plans to take careof the ‘Poland problem’ militarily. On May 1,‘Fall Weiss’ (Case White) was presented aspart of ‘Instructions for Operations in theEast’ designed for the invasion of Poland.Rebuffed in his demand for the immediatereturn of Danzig, Hitler rescinded Ger-many’s 1934 Non-Aggression Treaty withPoland on April 28, 1939. German troopsmassed along the border. Poland mobilised1.5 million, then 2.5 million into military ser-vice. Atrocity stories heated up tensions onboth sides. British Prime Minister NevilleChamberlain, embarrassed by the result ofthe Munich pact, publicly committed hisnation to the protection of Poland againstNazi aggression.2On the night of August 31/September 1, 1939, the GermanSicherheitsdienst (Security Service) staged a series of fake bor-der incidents along the German-Polish frontier in Upper Silesiadesigned to give Nazi Germany an excuse for invading Poland.The most prominent of these provocations was the seizure ofthe German radio station in the town of Gleiwitz(above),fivekilometres from the border, by a band of seven ‘Polish rebels’who proceeded to broadcast a message of Polish insurrection.Far less known are two other incidents staged that same night:an attack by ‘Polish soldiers and rebels’ on the Germancustom-house at Hochlinden, 20 kilometres south of Gleiwitz,and the other by ‘Polish terrorists’ on the forestry station nearPitschen, some 100 kilometres to the north-west. The follow-ing morning, with the German press headlining these three‘acts of Polish aggression’. Hitler declared war on Poland, thusunleashing the Second World War.THE GLEIWITZ INCIDENTOn August 11, Hitler met with ProfessorCarl Burckhardt, the League of Nations highcommissioner in Danzig. He did not mincehis words: ‘If there’s the slightest provoca-tion, I shall shatter Poland without warninginto so many pieces that there will be nothingleft to pick up.’ He added that where his gen-erals may have been hesitant in the past, hewas now having difficulty holding them back.German preparations for aggression werestepped up. The Nazi party ‘Rally of Peace’,scheduled to begin in Nuremberg on August15, was cancelled. The Wehrmacht mobilisedan additional 250,000 troops and its head-quarters were moved to Zossen. The agingbattleshipSchleswig-Holsteinsailed into theport of Danzig to a cheering crowd on a‘goodwill visit’ (seeAfter the BattleNo. 65).On August 22 Hitler gathered his armedforces commanders on the Obersalzberg toannounce his plans for the invasion ofPoland: ‘I will give propagandistic cause forthe release of the war, indifferently whetherconvincing. The winner is not asked laterwhether he said the truth or not.’ Assured ofRussian neutrality and confident of WesternRight:Today, Gleiwitz is Gliwice in Poland— the result of the westward shift of thatcountry as a consequence of the PotsdamAgreement of 1945 — but the town’sradio station has remained exactly thesame . . . except for the swastika eagle onthe forecourt pole which has beenreplaced by a Polish eagle.3weakness, Hitler decided that ‘Fall Weiss’would proceed on August 26.Hope for peace between Germany andPoland faded as the world’s attention turnedto the ratification of the Molotov-Ribben-trop Pact on August 23/24. Within 12 hoursof signing, Germany was only thinly veilingBy Dennis Whiteheadits plans for a partition of Poland betweenherself and the Soviet Union. A mobilisationorder was issued across England. The worldwould be at war.ATBULLSTEIN 642581The mastermind behind the staged border incidents: SS-Grup-penführer Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Sicherheits-polizei and Sicherheitsdienst. Two months after the fakeprovocations, Heydrich’s two security organisations, one astate organisation, the other a Nazi party body, would be com-bined into the all-powerful Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA,Reich Main Security Department), of which Heydrich wouldremain the head until his assassination by Czech secret agentsin Prague in June 1942 (seeAfter the BattleNo. 24).OPERATION ‘TANNENBERG’Determined to wage war on Poland, Hitlerneeded a pretext that would allow him tostart it. If Germany could provide proof ofPolish aggression against Germany, thiswould leave England and France withoutgrounds for a declaration of war against her.Hitler decided to fabricate these acts by stag-ing a series of fake incidents along the Ger-man-Polish border on the night directly pre-ceding his invasion of Poland.While he had briefed his military chiefs onthe operation, Hitler turned to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler for action. In earlyAugust, he had ordered Himmler to beginpreparations for war with Poland. Himmler,in turn, assigned SS-Gruppenführer Rein-hard Heydrich, the 35-year-old head of theboth the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo, State Secu-rity Police) and of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD,the Nazi party’s intelligence service), the taskof implementing the plans.Heydrich was pleased with the job. In fact,the idea to stage counterfeit border incidentshad come from himself. He and Himmlerhad been prompting it to Hitler and theFührer — the only one who could approve ofsuch provocations — had latched on to theidea. Equally important for the ambitiousHeydrich, Hitler’s order gave his rapacioussecurity apparatus total command over theoperation and relegated the Wehrmacht andits intelligence branch, the Abwehr headedby Heydrich’s rival, Admiral WilhelmCanaris, to minor supporting roles.Heydrich lost no time in getting plans intomotion. Together with his principal subordi-nate, SS-Oberführer Heinrich Müller, thechief of the Gestapo (Secret State Police), heselected a group of SS officers that would beinvolved in the covert operation. They were:SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Hellwig,4Heydrich’s main associate in planning and executing the‘Tannenberg’ provocations was SS-Oberführer Heinrich Müller,the chief of the Gestapo. Müller was also the driving forcebehind the scheme to plant dead bodies — referred to as ‘Kon-serven’ (‘canned goods’) — which were to be dressed up asPolish soldiers or Polish insurgents and left behind at the sceneof the provocations as additional evidence of Polish aggres-sion. (This picture shows him in his later rank of SS-Gruppen-führer.)Oberführer Mehlhorn. His objections werenot quite unexpected for his nickname withinthe SD was ‘Bedenkenrat’ (Councillor ofWorries, i.e. one who always raises concernsabout everything). At this first meeting,Mehlhorn lived up to his reputation byimmediately voicing doubts about the opera-tion. He stated that it would create a respon-sibility for Germany that would be hard tobear in the face of history; and, on a morepractical level, that such operations were theresponsibility of the Wehrmacht, not of theSS. Mehlhorn’s trepidation caused Heydrichto ponder eliminating him from the planningteam but in the end he kept him on board.Discussing the force needed to stage theprovocations, it was decided to set up a com-pany-size force of about 250 men, all SSmembers, of middle age, militarily trainedand capable of speaking Polish. The task ofgetting together this force was given to Hell-wig. Orders immediately went out to the SSdistricts along the Silesian border seekingrecruits for special duty requiring knowledgeof Polish language and customs.So far, Heydrich had not yet decided onthe exact locations where the border inci-dents would take place, but he knew some-one would be able to give him good advice:SS-Sturmbannführer Dr Emanuel Schaefer,chief of the Gestapo in the Upper Silesiantown of Oppeln. Schaefer, an old friend ofHeydrich, knew the border region like theback of his hand. He had grown up in thearea and had taken part in the German-Pol-ish frontier battles in the 1920s. On August 8,Schaefer received a phone call from Hey-drich’s adjutant, SS-Hauptsturmführer Neu-mann, requesting him to come to the airstripat Neustadt the following day — alone and incivilian clothes. He was asked not to informanyone as it concerned a top secret matter.the commander of the Sicherheitspolizei-Schule (Security Police School) at Berlin-Charlottenburg;SS-Standartenführer Hans Trummler,commander of the Grenzpolizei-Schule(Border Police School) at Pretsch an derElbe;SS-Oberführer Otto Rasch, chief of theSicherheitspolizei and SD in Upper Austriabased at Linz; and.SS-Oberführer Herbert Mehlhorn, for-merly with the SD-Hauptamt, but nowassigned to assorted SS missions abroad andcurrently based at Pressburg (Bratislava) inoccupied Slovakia.The selection of Mehlhorn was remark-able for Heydrich did not at all get on withhim. Totally different in character, the twomen had fought out many conflicts in thepast, so much so that Heydrich himself hadbeen behind Mehlhorn’s transfer out of theSD. However, Mehlhorn was an excellentorganiser, and so Heydrich wanted him in onthe team.On August 8, Heydrich and Müller calledHellwig, Trummler, Rasch and Mehlhorn toa first meeting in Heydrich’s office at No. 102Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. Heydrich’s chiefadjutant SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt Pommeand some other SD functionaries were alsopresent.Welcoming his subordinates with thewords ‘Gentlemen, you will by now havebecome aware yourselves that a war withPoland is inevitable’, Heydrich proceeded todisclose his plans for the subterfuge. Stress-ing the need for absolute secrecy, heannounced that the fake border incidentswould run under the code-name Operation‘Tannenberg’.The proposed scheme elicited little protestfrom the SS officers, with one exception: SS-On August 9, Heydrich, Hellwig and Neu-mann flew to Neustadt in a Junkers Ju 52 air-craft and met up with Schaefer. As healighted from the plane, Heydrich told anastonished Schaefer: ‘The Führer needs areason for war’. Schaefer took Heydrich andthe others to the Haus Oberschlesien, agrand hotel in the centre of Gleiwitz, whereHeydrich explained the plan for the upcom-ing operation. Schaefer, who was also incharge of the district’s frontier police, wasinstructed to see to it that this force would bewithdrawn for the duration of the provoca-tions.The following day, August 10, Schaefertook his guests on a reconnaissance along thefrontier. After a long search, they had foundtwo sites that suited Heydrich’s plans: theGerman customs office outside the village ofHochlinden, some 20 kilometres south ofGleiwitz (on the main road from Gleiwitz toRatibor), and the lone forestry station nearthe town of Pitschen, some 100 kilometres tothe north-west of Gleiwitz.Both sites had a topography that was idealfor the intended fake border incidents. Thefrontier at Hochlinden ran partly over openfields, partly along the Ruda creek. A narrowstrip of German territory extended intoPoland in such a way that the German cus-tom-house could be fired at over Polish landwithout having to leave Germany. The cus-tom-house itself lay in a fold of the land, withthe result that the inhabitants of Hochlindenwould be unable to see what was happeningthere. The Polish custom-house lay a fewhundred yards distant from the German oneand the nearest Polish village, Chwalecice(Chwallentzitz), a little further up the road,lay too far away for its inhabitants to inter-fere with the provocation.The other target, the forestry office atPitschen, stood on the edge of a forest, theSchlüsselwald, some three kilometres to thenorth of the town. A solitary stone building,at one time it had been the main house of anold farming estate known locally as Kluczow.The German-Polish frontier ran along theProsna river, just to the north of it, so a forceapproaching through the wood could easilypose as Polish.Heydrich’s excursion to Upper Silesia hadcaused him to think up yet a third provoca-tion: a raid by ‘Polish rebels’ on the Germanradio station at Gleiwitz to broadcast a mes-sage of Polish insurrection. Heydrich wassure such a provocation would have a wideimpact. A Polish-language radio broadcastfrom a German radio transmitter violentlyoverrun by Polish terrorists would give theworld clear evidence of Polish aggressionThe radio station in question stood alongTarnowitzer Landstrasse, on a hill in thetown’s north-eastern outskirts, five kilome-tres from the German-Polish border, its 118-metre-high wooden aerial tower being themost prominent landmark in Gleiwitz. Aregional transmitter, it broadcast music andGerman-language programming for the peo-ple of the Gleiwitz area.The special task of staging the raid on theReichssender Gleiwitz was given to SS-Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks, an oldfighter and party faithful, and sabotage spe-cialist on the staff of the SD-Hauptamt. OnAugust 10, Naujocks was summoned intoHeydrich’s office. Heydrich informed him ofhis special mission, which he said would be ofthe highest profile. He instructed Naujocksto put together a team of five or six men andtravel to Gleiwitz, there to await the codedsignal to launch the attack. He was not to getin touch with or inform any official authorityin the town and his men should not carryanything that could identify them as belong-ing to the SS, SD, police or show their Ger-man nationality. The code signal for theattack was ‘Grossmutter gestorben’ (Grand-mother died) and would be telephoned fromBerlin by Heydrich himself.PITSCHENOPPELNEHRENFORSTGLEIWITZHOCHLINDENOberschlesien (Upper Silesia), the region of the German Reich where the border incidentswere planned, had a rather erratic frontier with Poland which allowed easy transgres-sions by fake insurgents. This map is from 1920 but the frontier in the south-eastern tip ofSilesia, between Beuthen and Ratibor, was re-aligned in 1922 following the 1921plebiscite and subsequent insurgent battles. We have drawn the border as it ran in 1939.Within the next 48 hours, Naujocks puttogether a team of six men. He personallyselected four from his own SD unit and Hey-drich assigned the other two. One was a‘radio expert’ from Radio Berlin, the otheran announcer who spoke Polish. (This latterman, a Polish bank clerk and Gestapoinformer from Oppeln, actually did not jointhe team until later, arriving only one hourbefore the actual raid.) Naujocks trusted nei-ther.On August 12, Naujocks and his band offive motored to Gleiwitz in two cars and tookup residence in the Haus Oberschlesien andone other hotel. They registered under falseidentifications under the pretence of engi-neers and geologists surveying the local land-scape, particularly that around the loomingradio tower. Naujocks made one reconnais-sance of the station site, presenting himself atthe gate as a street-hawker. Then he and hismen settled in in their hotel rooms, awaitingthe coded call from Berlin.Meanwhile, on August 11, Heydrich hadconvened another planning conference withthe four ‘Tannenberg’ commanders, Mehl-horn, Hellwig, Trummler and Rasch. At thismeeting Mehlhorn again raised questions,which he apparently presented to Heydrichin writing, but Heydrich was quick to extin-guish all doubts by declaring the operation aFührerbefehl (Hitler order) and that hewould not listen to any more objections. Hewanted to get down to business.By now plans had become more crys-tallised. There would be three staged borderincidents: an assault by ‘Polish Army soldiersand insurgents’ on the German custom-house at Hochlinden; an attack by ‘Polishinsurgents’ upon the Pitschen forestry sta-tion; and a raid by ‘Polish rebels’ on the Ger-man radio station at Gleiwitz to broadcast amessage of Polish insurrection.The mock attack at Hochlinden wasdesigned to draw the attention of the Polishfrontier troops and, so it was hoped, evenlure Polish soldiers across the border intoGermany, allowing the Germans to take realPolish prisoners. The ‘German defenders’would consist of SS men in Grenzpolizei(Border Police) uniforms and real Grenz-polizei cadets supplied by Trummler’s regu-lar command, the Grenzpolizei-Schule inPretsch an der Elbe.5
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