First to Fight
Page 29
One encounter where relations appeared – at first sight at least – to be rather more cordial took place at Brest, known in German as Brest-Litowsk, where in early 1918 the Germans had dictated a punitive peace treaty to the nascent Bolshevik state. There, as at Lwów, the Soviet invasion met with German forces that had advanced beyond the agreed demarcation line, so the city needed to be handed over to Soviet control. It was an event that would come to symbolise the German–Soviet relationship.
The Germans had appeared at the gates of Brest on the evening of 14 September, after General Guderian’s headlong drive southward from the bridgeheads on the Narew. He had intended to take the city in a coup de main the following day, and his men duly made good progress against the city itself and the outer defences of its old Russian fortress, which sat at the confluence of the river Bug and its eastward tributary, the Muchawiec (Mukhavets). However, Guderian’s initial attempt to take the fortress was hampered by a lack of fuel and poor weather, which prevented the deployment of the Luftwaffe,68 and by the simple Polish tactic of parking an obsolete Renault FT-17 tank across the main entrance to the citadel.69
In the two days that followed, a number of infantry assaults were launched to take the fortress, but each was beaten back by the Poles, who – according to the official German war diary – ‘defended the citadel with intelligence and determination’, deploying snipers and often attacking German forces from the rear to reoccupy previously lost positions.70 On the morning of 16 September, then, the German corps command decided that frontal attack promised little success, and ordered that the fortress should instead be besieged. That night, however, Polish forces withdrew, sneaking away through an unguarded gateway, leaving only their wounded. The fortress was occupied, without resistance, shortly after eight o’clock the following morning, 17 September.71
By that time, the Red Army had crossed Poland’s eastern frontier and the power dynamic in Brest was already shifting. That very morning, official German accounts noted how news of the Soviet approach had caused ‘great excitement’ among the city’s Byelorussian population, many of whom saw the Soviet Union as their protector against Polish oppression. In the days that followed, a celebratory atmosphere developed in the city’s suburbs, with the traditional greeting of bread and salt being prepared for the arriving Red Army soldiers.72 At the same time, Polish refugees from Polesie, fleeing the Soviet advance, began to arrive.73
Awaiting the arrival of the Red Army, the German command in the city prepared as best they could: issuing orders on how the Soviet troops were to be greeted and making ready for a withdrawal behind the temporary demarcation line of the river Bug. In addition, a leaflet was drawn up, in Polish, to inform the city’s inhabitants of the Soviet decision to intervene, stating that they intended to ‘occupy the remaining parts of Poland’.74 Guderian, meanwhile, had other concerns, not least among them dealing with the former Bishop of Danzig, Edward O’Rourke, and his entourage, who had fled Warsaw and now, finding themselves in Brest, were understandably anxious not to fall into Soviet hands. Guderian’s solution, which was gratefully accepted, was to send the former bishop back northward to Königsberg in a returning German supply column.75
First contact with the Red Army was made on the morning of 20 September, when a Soviet BA-10 armoured car approached units of the 10th Panzer Division near Turna, to the north of the city. The Red Army officer it carried was then taken to the corps command post, where he was greeted by Guderian. The discussion that followed, which was mainly concerned with the drawing up of a demarcation line, was described as ‘friendly’ and continued into lunch.76 In his memoirs, Guderian was rather less enthusiastic, complaining that the deadline agreed for a German withdrawal from Brest, two days later, gave his men too little time to evacuate their own wounded or recover their damaged vehicles.77 Nevertheless, an agreement was made that a formal hand-over of the city to Soviet control would take place on the afternoon of 22 September.
On the morning of the handover, events went smoothly. According to the agreement, which had been formalised the previous day, Soviet forces took sole control of the city, and its fortress, from 8.00 a.m. Two hours later a joint commission met to clarify any remaining points of confusion or friction. Then Guderian met with his opposite number, Brigadier-General Semyon Krivoshein, the commander of the Soviet 29th Light Tank Brigade, a short, wiry man who sported a Hitler-esque toothbrush moustache and – like Guderian – had been a pioneer in the use of tanks. Conversing in French, the two discussed procedures for the formal hand-over of the city. Guderian had been given no instructions on how the ceremony should be carried out, so he improvised and suggested a joint march-past of Wehrmacht and Red Army forces for that afternoon, followed by the raising of the Soviet flag. Though Krivoshein was less than entirely enthusiastic, stating that his men were weary after their long march, he nonetheless agreed.78
At four o’clock that afternoon, the two generals reconvened on a small wooden platform, which had been hastily constructed in front of the main entrance to the German command, the regional administration building on Union of Lublin Street (now Lenin Street). Standing before a flagpole bearing the German war flag, Guderian grinned broadly, looking resplendent in his red-lined greatcoat and black leather jackboots. To his left stood Krivoshein, wearing a belted leather coat to keep out the autumn chill. Surrounding the platform, beyond a knot of senior German military personal, a mixed crowd of Wehrmacht and Red Army soldiers thronged the route of the parade, pockets of German field grey mingling with the black leather coats of Soviet officers, the olive drab of the infantry and the dark overalls of the tank crews.
On the street beyond, a large crowd of civilians had gathered to watch events. Among them was twenty-year-old Raisa Shirnyuk, who recalled how word of the parade had spread: ‘There was no official announcement, but the rumour mill had worked well. Already that morning everyone in the town knew that the troops would be marching there.’79 According to one German account, the crowd was enthusiastic, being made up primarily of Brest’s non-Polish communities – Byelorussians and Jews – who welcomed the Red Army with flowers and cheering.80
Then, to the blare of a military band, the parade began. German infantry led the way, their smart uniforms and precision goose-step drawing admiring comments from the assembled crowds. Shirnyuk was impressed by their military bearing, noting that their commanding officer kept the men in line, shouting ‘Langsam, langsam, aber deutlich!’ (‘Slowly, slowly, but smartly!’)81 Motorised units followed: motorcycles with sidecars, trucks and half-tracks laden with soldiers and towing artillery pieces. Tanks too clattered along the cobbled street. As each group filed past the reviewing stand, they drew a crisp salute from both Guderian and Krivoshein.
Inevitably, some of those watching drew comparisons between the two forces on display. The somewhat primitive Soviet T-26 tanks, for instance, contrasted rather obviously with more modern Wehrmacht examples, especially when one of them slid off the road not far from the reviewing platform.82 Stanislav Miretski noticed other differences: the Soviets’ belts were canvas rather than leather, and while the Germans employed trucks to haul their artillery, the Red Army used ‘stunted and unsightly’ horses with inferior harnesses.83 Raisa Shirnyuk concurred, noting that the Red Army men, with their ‘dirty boots, dusty greatcoats and stubble on their faces’, compared rather unfavourably with their German counterparts. Another eye-witness drew a chilling conclusion from the poor appearance of the Soviet infantry. Boris Akimov was accustomed to seeing well-dressed Polish soldiers, so the ‘poverty and slovenliness’ of the Red Army struck him, but their smell and dirtiness prompted a more profound question: ‘What sort of a life will they bring to us?’ he wondered.84
Wehrmacht and Red Army soldiers mixed awkwardly for the newsreel cameramen and photographers, sharing cigarettes and smiling, while Guderian and Krivoshein grinned from atop their platform. Only occasionally did the latent tensions show. Krivoshein reacted mischievously to Guderian’s enthus
iastic welcoming of a Luftwaffe fly-past, remarking: ‘We have better!’ He was evidently determined not to be impressed by the display of German air power.85 Elsewhere, one eye-witness saw a German soldier launch a playful kick at the backside of a Soviet soldier in front of him. But whether it was evidence of exuberance or underlying tension is impossible to discern.86
With the parade drawing to a close, Guderian, Krivoshein and the senior personnel around them all turned to face the flagpole. As the military band struck up the German national anthem and the assembled officers and men solemnly saluted, the blood-red German war flag was lowered, to be replaced by the deeper red of the Soviet ‘hammer and sickle’. As one of those present recalled, it was a searing moment: ‘I realised then that the war was lost and we were under Soviet occupation.’ All the Poles in the crowd, he added, ‘had tears in their eyes’.87 With that, the band played the Internationale, Guderian and Krivoshein shook hands for the last time and the German general joined his men as they departed to the west, across the river Bug.
*
While the Germans and Soviets were congratulating one another at Brest, Polish forces further west were engaged in a desperate fight to escape the maelstrom. Already on 18 September, Polish radio had reported that the High Command and the government had escaped to Romania. The order was given that all military units were to attempt to follow suit, moving south-eastward towards Lwów and thence to Kołomyja (Kolomyya) and the Romanian border. The problem, even for those Polish forces that were relatively intact and able to make a push for the frontier, was that between them and their sanctuary lay a shrinking space through which to escape, with the Germans on one side and the Red Army on the other.
Moreover, that space was rapidly filling with tens of thousands of ordinary Poles, displaced by the war and fleeing the Germans or the Soviets, who were clogging the roads as their caravans inched along, unsure where to find sanctuary. For many Poles, the decision of which side’s occupation would be the less onerous was a difficult one. Deliberations drew, naturally, on Poland’s long history of foreign oppression, and they would rage and rumble interminably as the refugees trudged along. One overheard exchange summed up the bleak choice that many Poles faced: ‘What will you do, sergeant, where will you go?’ asked a voice, ‘I don’t know, brother,’ another replied. Weighing his options for a moment, the second speaker went on: ‘Go to the Germans and it’s a bullet in the head. Go to the Soviets and your life is like a drop of dew that falls off a leaf and soaks into the ground. No one will ever hear from you again.’ After another pause: ‘I think I’ll go to Hungary.’88
For Zofia Chomętowska, a 36-year-old aristocrat and socialite, there was little question of which way to head. Fleeing westward from her estate in Polesie, along with members of her family, she recorded the great migration that ensued as people tried to escape the Soviet invasion. She wrote of her fears: fear of the Soviets, fear of the Germans, or fear of the hostile Byelorussian peasantry in whose midst they found themselves. But she also included flashes of wry humour. At one point, she came across Princess Izabella Radziwiłł, scion of one of Poland’s noblest families, nudging through the crowd in her Rolls-Royce. Seeing Chomętowska, the Princess called out: ‘What are you doing here?’ to which she replied: ‘Same as you … escaping!’89
In her memoir, Chomętowska recalled the chaos, of every man and woman for themselves, of civilisation itself having broken down. She encountered groups of soldiers, which merged with her caravan and then mysteriously diverged again; men who had removed their insignia, had no commanding officers, and were now ‘wandering wild’, not knowing where they were. The roadsides that she passed were littered with the detritus of a world destroyed: ‘strewn with smashed cars, all without tyres … Great lorries on their sides … pretty, brand new limousines, sports cars, all covered with holes and without seats. They lie there grim and helpless.’ And, all the while, the ‘human wave’ pushed onward; impossible to stop, rolling across gardens and pavements, through farmers’ fields and hedgerows, breaking fences and swamping rural villages.
We see suitcases, trunks and bundles, wives and mothers with children, and even a canary in a cage. But the road is terribly jammed and on the way a long line of people trudges along on foot … Among the civilians one sees suffering and sick faces. The intelligentsia and townsfolk are not used to such physical strain. There are also railway workers in uniform, and almost everyone is unshaven, exhausted and dirty, often limping … We have the feeling that a storm has rolled over us, and keeps on rolling.90
Within that chaos, countless military units, large and small, were also looking for an escape; some in good order, others the remains of smashed and scattered units. Most, following their orders, if not their instincts, were heading south-east, towards the so-called Romanian Bridgehead, where the surviving Polish forces – numbering some 120,000 men by the end of the campaign – hoped to regroup so as to carry on the fight elsewhere. The Polish government and High Command, which had endured a peripatetic and largely impotent existence since leaving Warsaw on 7 September, travelling via Brest, Łuck (Lutsk) and Kołomyja, finally crossed the Romanian frontier in the early hours of 18 September. It was said that Edward Śmigły-Rydz had to be persuaded to leave and that he contemplated suicide. He would later seek to justify his departure: ‘I was travelling for help. I believed in my authority abroad, I believed in the Allies, their honour and help. They betrayed me.’91
However tragic and ignoble that escape may have been – and there are some who considered it a betrayal of the Polish soldiers who were left behind – a few chapters of the wider story deserve notice. On 9 September, the decision was made in Warsaw to evacuate Poland’s gold reserves, in all 80 tonnes of bullion, to prevent them falling into the hands of the Germans. Forty trucks, cars and municipal buses were commandeered, including a fuel tanker to accompany the convoy. The drivers that were recruited included Halina Konopacka, a former Olympic discus champion and the wife of the man who organised the evacuation, the former treasury minister Ignacy Matuszewski. Alongside the gold bullion, it was decided to evacuate other valuables: artworks, state documents and manuscripts. Travelling by night, with the Germans hard on their heels, the convoy first headed east, to Łuck, then to Lwów, and lastly to Śniatyń (Snyatyn) on the Romanian frontier, where it arrived on the evening of 13 September.92 For the gold, if not for its guardians, it was the beginning of an odyssey which would lead – via Turkey, Lebanon, France and west Africa – to Britain, the US and Canada, where it finally arrived in 1944. Matuszewski, however, did not reap the rewards for a successful operation. Accused of embezzlement by the Polish government in exile, he escaped to the US, where he died in 1946.93
Another vitally important evacuation was that of a small group of Polish mathematicians – Henryk Zygalski, Jerzy Różycki and Marian Rejewski – who had been working to crack the German Enigma encryption machine for the Cypher Bureau of the Polish General Staff. The three left Warsaw by train on the evening of 6 September, and after collisions, air raids and numerous detours, reached Brest three days later. By that time, the city was already under air attack from the Germans, and when the railway station was bombed the following day, the onward journey to safety was only possible by road. Given a car and ordered to drive to Romania as quickly as possible, the three then set off towards Kowel and Łuck. It was not to be an easy journey. Zygalski’s laconic diary entries give a flavour of the chaos of their escape: ‘13 September. We lose our superiors in Łuck. We race on to Włodzimierz [Volodymyr-Volynskyi]. Then turn back, then head once again for Włodzimierz. Meet the Major. He tells us to head back. We lose our way and go for Łuck. Not a pleasant day. We wait in Łuck.’94 After vehicle breakdowns, air raids, wrong turns and constant fuel shortages, the group crossed the Romanian frontier on the night of 17–18 September. Ten days later, they arrived in Paris. It was the start of a personal and technological adventure that would lead to Bletchley Park and would change the very course of the war. The vital
work done by Rejewski, Zygalski and Różycki on the German Enigma codes would, according to some estimates, shorten the war by as much as two years.95
For all the success stories, however, there were others on whom fortune did not smile. The staff and families of the Polish Naval Command departed from Warsaw on 5 September and travelled first east to Brest, then on to Pińsk and Brody, where they arrived on the night of 13 September. Travelling mainly by train, they were under regular attack from the air, and had to abandon their journey south on 16 September, when the lines were damaged in a German air raid. Soon after that, at Deraźne (Derazhne), near RÓwne (Rivne), they encountered a Soviet patrol and were forced to surrender. While their families were released, twenty-six Polish naval staff officers – including their commanding officer, Rear-Admiral Xawery Czernicki – disappeared into Soviet captivity. They were later murdered in the Katyń massacres.96 Among the few officers to avoid capture that day was Rear-Admiral Jerzy Świrski, who had been travelling separately in a commandeered car as he wanted to remain close to the General Staff. Sometimes it was on such tiny decisions that survival rested.97