Poland's Conduct in WWII.

[Big Orange]

Ok, this nothing like this rubbish little thread where I was clearly smoking something made out of grounded down Mutant Space Bats.

I'm really interested in how well the Poles did as soldiers in WWII and even though they as a nation folded relatively quickly under the bulk of the Soviets and Nazis, that of course did not end things for them and they fought on in other armies or as partisans. While you can comment on the Polish nation as being too easy, they still deployed a bigger ground force in 39 than what the US deployed at the time, their 7TP tank was a competent light tank comparable to the T-26, and their cavalry did not blindly charge into machine gun fire as much as legend suggested (also the Germans, Russians, and French had many horses as well).

While the Germans in 1939 were still a force to be reckoned with, they had a lot of surplus WWI junk and too many POS Panzer I/II tanks with them. Their tactics and personnel were not properly ironed out yet, their strategy workmanlike (but they just got deluded soon after). The Luftwaffe suffered surprisingly heavy losses, the Waffen-SS had a mediocre showing, and Heer/SS vehicles had silly white crosses on their sides which made them good targets for anti-armour equipped Polish troops.

The Polish campaign seems to be relatively undetailed in comparison to the French campaign, while Poles loyally serving in the militaries of the British Empire and Soviet Union were of course shafted.

[K. A. Pital]

Basically, the USSR went into Poland when it's army and government already collapsed; in essence, they could not prove their worth against the Soviet tanks in any way. As for the Wehrmacht, they totally steamrolled the nation in their famous kesselschlachts. The fact that they suffered some losses wasn't relevant - Poland was a nation where their large-scale encirclement battles suceeded 100% percent. But then, so was France.

Poland wasnt a bad combatant. The Germans just had really vastly superior tactics, and they had superceded the Poles in deployment. Supreceding someone's army in deployment genreally leads to horrific defeats on the part of the undeployed enemy army.

[Samuel]

Completely surrounding the Poles helped too. I heard that Poland could have held out longer, but they didn't want to give up any territory and fall back. How long would the army have lasted if the moved into the South East so they could be externally supplied?

[PeZook]

Completely surrounding the Poles helped too. I heard that Poland could have held out longer, but they didn't want to give up any territory and fall back. How long would the army have lasted if the moved into the South East so they could be externally supplied?

Externally supplied by whom?

Romania was already under pressure from Hitler not to give Poland any aid ; It's very doubtful they would supply us had the war lasted any longer. Just about the only defensible line would be the Bug-Warta-Vistula rivers, and these could be easily circumvented from East Prussia, or just plain overwhelmed.

Frankly, Poland is pretty much perfect terrain for the kind of mechanized warfare the Blitzkrieg needs: the lack of large-scale mechanized units in the Polish army pretty much guarantees failure in any possible scenario. At most, you could see an extra month added to the campaign as German advance stalls and more supplies have to be brought in ; But the advance would resume as soon as the Wehrmacht is able to, and by that time many important industrial areas would be in German hands already. Incidentally, the Polish general staff considered deploying along defensive riverlines, but decided against it partly for that reason: the western parts of Poland were also some of their most industrialized ones.

Take note that Wehrmacht's superiority wasn't just in its mechanized units, though they were instrumental to this stunning victory: a typical German infantry division had more machineguns, mortars and artillery than comparable Polish units, who often had one LMG per platoon or sometimes even a company, rather than one per squad. It was German infantry which broke through the borders, after all. And this is discounting the Luftwaffe, which enjoyed total air dominance from Day 1, heroic efforts of the Polish airmen notwitstanding, and could pound Polish industries and population centres with impunity in almost any situation.

As for the conduct of Polish soldiers, in situations where combat was more even, they did very well. Witness the first attack against Westerplatte, which was repelled with murderous casualties by a well-prepared and thought out Polish defence. Situations on other fronts also showed that Poles were decent, well-motivated and disciplined soldiers.

[Mr Bean]

I'll also add to PeZook's point that soldiers and airmen in other countries forces after the fall of Poland handled themselves well and the Polish airmen became famous for the number of aces they had by wars end serving with RAF. Not to mention the even 1 for 1 exchange ratio the Polish forces achieved using six to ten year old fighter craft armed with a max of four MG's and having little ammo storage ability. However as noted due to it's small caliber armaments many shot down planes were in fact recoverable. While German 13mm and 20mm main guns tear gaping holes in enemy planes the 7.92mm MG's(.303's) had to hit something vital(Like the pilot or the engine) in order to get a "kill" while a 20mm burst can saw off a wing and destroy control surfaces.

Enough about Planes however, one the biggest factor against Poland was terrain. They have to give up two thirds of their country to re-org in the south and as I recall the factories and airfield were concentrated around the flat open areas of the country meaning even if they give up everything and base their defenses around south of the country they have to give up the Capital and all the industry there or have to establish a corridor to the south which will simply be a place to encircle them again.

[Thanas]

Even if the Polish army had such a plan for withdrawal, I doubt that they could move their forces faster than the German army could advance, especially with the Luftwaffe harrying them on the march. So IMO the only option they really had was to make a stand on the boarder and hope for western intervention, as they did in the OT.

[PeZook]

Even if the Polish army had such a plan for withdrawal, I doubt that they could move their forces faster than the German army could advance, especially with the Luftwaffe harrying them on the march. So IMO the only option they really had was to make a stand on the boarder and hope for western intervention, as they did in the OT.

That actually was the plan: hold the borders as long as possible, then withdraw to the Bug-Warta-Vistula line, then fall back south towards the mountains, delaying the German advance as long as possible until the French could mount an offensive.

There were two basic assumptions made here:

1) That German mechanized units would not be able to outpace withdrawing non-mechanized Polish divisions. Nobody really knew what kind of advance rates mechanized units could achieve, so it's an understandable mistake, especially since Poles had cavalry brigades to shield withdrawing infantry

2) That French promises of a "full offensive within seven days" would be fulfilled. Again, a reasonable assumption: the French had a huge military, and were always reliable allies so far - even going so far as to grant truly gigantic loans to Poland to purchase military equipment with.

Within the context of the overall political situation, one could see why the Polish general staff would make those mistakes. Take note that infantry-based units engaged in maneuver just fine during the 1920-1921 war, and early war tanks were considered unreliable and prone to breakdowns. Of course, it weren't really the tanks which made armored divisions so fast...

While German 13mm and 20mm main guns tear gaping holes in enemy planes the 7.92mm MG's(.303's) had to hit something vital(Like the pilot or the engine) in order to get a "kill" while a 20mm burst can saw off a wing and destroy control surfaces.

Erm, bean, not to nitpick, but Me-109s used in the September campaign were also armed merely with two 7.92 MGs

They were faster, though, but didn't quite outclass the P-11 fighter. Of course, when used properly, Me-109s could pretty much engage and disengage with impunity, but once drawn into circular combat, well-trained pilots flying a P-11 would generally win due to the better handling of the airplane at low speeds (Poland had an excellent pilot training program, as did many other countries with small air forces at that time, like Czechoslovakia).

The big problem for the Poles came from the fact that baseline German bombers were faster than Polish interceptors - I don't think I need to explain why that's a problem

Once given equipment which could match the Germans, these pilots achieved excellent results and disproportionate kill ratios - they were a priceless source for veteran, well-trained pilots for the RAF, so that's one good episode of "Poland's conduct"

Another good example is the Home Army, which was one of the largest and best organized resistance organizations of the war. Amongst other things, they managed to steal and smuggle to Britain an entire V2 missile

[PeZook]

Here are some resources useful for visualizing how the campaign progressed:

General deployment on the eve of the campaign

Operations 1-14 September

Campaign summary

And here is a quick summary in English.

The problem for English speakers who try to study the September Campaign is really that most of the sources are in Polish. Which kind of sucks, because it makes fighting retarded myths rather hard.

EDIT: I made a mistake, BTW. I kept calling the Bug-Vistula-San line the Bug-Warta-Vistula line. Tsk, tsk.

[Mr Bean]

Erm, bean, not to nitpick, but Me-109s used in the September campaign were also armed merely with two 7.92 MGs

109's had center line firing 20mm. The Wind 20mm's were a BoB or in the field modification. They only went in with two twin MG loadout after the second week of the campaign when the advance out-ran the airfields and they had to start leaving off the cannon and ammo for extra range. There are both eyewitness accounts I've read from then and the various almanacs of the second World War that back that up. The 109D(Of which over 80 flew over Poland) where equipped with either four MG-17's in the over the engine and twin wing mounts or two over the engine, one center-line, or the twin 20mm's which were popular for the 109E. I have it book side which means I can't post it here but trust me when I say there were nearly two full squadrons of experiential(Inculding the 109E-2) flying over Poland during the short war.

They were faster, though, but didn't quite outclass the P-11 fighter. Of course, when used properly, Me-109s could pretty much engage and disengage with impunity, but once drawn into circular combat, well-trained pilots flying a P-11 would generally win due to the better handling of the airplane at low speeds (Poland had an excellent pilot training program, as did many other countries with small air forces at that time, like Czechoslovakia).

That was noted that Poland was almost lavish with it's training programs for pilots(A fact recorded by the number of double or even triple Polish Aces by war's end) and the amount of frills they had built into pilot training which also doubled as almost semi-noblemen training strait from the First World War.

[PeZook]

I have it book side which means I can't post it here but trust me when I say there were nearly two full squadrons of experiential(Inculding the 109E-2) flying over Poland during the short war.

Well, I'll concede that - I didn't know there were so many 109-Es and similar involved.

That was noted that Poland was almost lavish with it's training programs for pilots(A fact recorded by the number of double or even triple Polish Aces by war's end) and the amount of frills they had built into pilot training which also doubled as almost semi-noblemen training strait from the First World War.

The way I understand it, most small countries who couldn't afford modern airplanes did it that way, since it was cheaper to train pilots really well than develop and produce modern airplanes, especially if effin' Germany was your primary competitor in the technology arms race.

[Mr Bean]

The way I understand it, most small countries who couldn't afford modern airplanes did it that way, since it was cheaper to train pilots really well than develop and produce modern airplanes, especially if effin' Germany was your primary competitor in the technology arms race.

I recommend "A Question of Honor:The Kosciuszko Squadron" by Lynn Olsen and Stanley Cloud who's first few chapters deal with the training of Fighter Pilots in Poland and the Polish War. Be warned it's got it's issues but since they like to print almost verbatim large chunks of quotes from the pilots themselves it makes for good read.

[PeZook]

I recommend "A Question of Honor:The Kosciuszko Squadron" by Lynn Olsen and Stanley Cloud who's first few chapters deal with the training of Fighter Pilots in Poland and the Polish War. Be warned it's got it's issues but since they like to print almost verbatim large chunks of quotes from the pilots themselves it makes for good read.

Yeah, I own that book