Chapter 4
THE DESTRUCTION OF POLAND
ON 24 AUGUST 1939 Sepp Dietrich received orders to take Leibstandarte SS “Adolf Hitler” from Berlin to its assembly area just north of Bromberg on the Polish border. Any movement of Leibstandarte attracted attention, so deployment orders had been left to the last minute, with the invasion planned for 26 August. Standartenführer Felix Steiner’s “Deutschland” Regiment experienced a more leisurely transit to the invasion zone, when in late July its troops and vehicles sailed from Stettin to the port of Königsberg in East Prussia, separated from the rest of Germany by the Polish Corridor.
Although on the verge of achieving divisional status, the units of the SS-VT were divided between the two army groups facing Poland. Army Group South, deployed along Germany’s eastern border and in former Czechoslovakia, included Leibstandarte and “Germania” regiments, the latter very much in a support role. Army Group North, stationed in Pomerania and East Prussia, included the remaining SS-VT units (with the exception of the newly raised “Der Führer,” held back in reserve in the West).
To improve its mobility, Third Army, based in East Prussia, formed an improvised armored division, named after its commander, Major-General Werner Kempf. The army’s 7th Panzer Regiment was combined with the motorized infantry of “Deutschland,” as well as the new SS artillery regiment, the SS reconnaissance battalion, and an SS antiaircraft unit. The remaining support units came from the army. For a formation assembled in such haste, it was perhaps inevitable that Panzer Division Kempf would undergo teething problems once in action.
The German plan of attack exploited the strategic advantage of surrounding Poland on three sides. It comprised a series of concentric thrusts by the two army groups that would both surround the main Polish forces in western Poland and encircle the capital, Warsaw, cutting it off from the rest of the country. The German armed forces were far superior to those of Poland, in terms of both quality and quantity. The Poles’ already desperate position was made hopeless by the terms of the secret nonaggression pact signed between Germany and the Soviet Union on 23 August 1939, which, in the event of war, agreed to divide the Polish state between the two powers.
In late August Panzer Division Kempf secretly moved up to the border, its troops hidden in nearby forests. The divisional staff covertly reconnoitered the Polish defenses on the far side of the line, General Kempf and his senior staff officer even dressing up as hunters on a day’s shoot to disguise their presence from Polish border guards. The attack on 26 August was canceled as a consequence of last-minute diplomatic wrangling, causing much confusion to the advancing troops who suddenly had to retreat back to their start lines in the hope that they hadn’t been noticed by the Poles. By the thirty-first Hitler felt sufficiently confident to send the irrevocable order to attack. At 4:45 A.M. on 1 September 1939, German forces crossed the Polish border.
Covered by the fire of 10.5cm howitzers, I and III Battalions of “Deutschland” spearheaded the advance of Panzer Division Kempf. Opposition was light, and it was only when the advancing SS infantry were several miles inside Polish territory that they came under sustained fire. “Deutschland” had spent nearly six years training for such a moment, but actual combat on the battlefield was far removed from practice on training grounds, no matter how realistic. Peter Zahnfeld, a junior officer in “Deutschland,” recalled his first engagement: “Several men went down as we rushed forward in a great dash to capture some ruined homes where a number of Poles had a set up a strong point. When we reached the ruins we discovered several corpses. These were the first dead we had seen and we were quite sickened by them, but soon pulled ourselves together.”1
The men of “Deutschland” had successfully passed their first test of combat, and supported by artillery and Stuka dive-bombers they pressed forward through the Polish frontline defenses toward their objective for the day, the town of Mlawa. Although the Germans were aware that Mlawa was a Polish stronghold, they were caught out by the effectiveness of its defenses and the determination of the Poles to hold the position. A series of linked bunkers allowed the defenders to pour down well-directed fire against the Germans. By midday “Deutschland’s” attack was losing momentum, the SS troops forced to dig for cover.
Bringing up reinforcements, the German corps commander ordered a renewed frontal attack for 3:00 P.M. To provide close fire support 7th Panzer Regiment moved up alongside the SS infantrymen, but the proposed tank advance had been poorly reconnoitered, and once the assault got under way the tanks blundered into a series of antitank obstacles. Unable to advance, they milled around hopelessly, allowing themselves to become targets for the Polish guns. Approximately forty tanks were either knocked out or severely damaged before the regiment was forced to retreat. The men of “Deutschland” pushed forward but were repulsed by withering fire from the seemingly unassailable Polish bunkers. At 10:00 P.M. the exposed infantry were ordered to retire under cover of darkness to take up a new security line, where they would remain throughout the following day.2
The failure to take Mlawa was no reflection on the capability of Steiner’s troops but instead represented the weakness of corps and divisional commands to properly coordinate their various units. A frontal attack against a fortified position was always a hazardous operation, made worse by the inclusion of armored vehicles in a highly constricted environment. Elsewhere, German forces had broken through the Polish defenses, and on 3 September Panzer Division Kempf had to accept the ignominy of being withdrawn and redeployed to follow the units leading the breakthrough.
AS THE GERMAN armies pushed into Poland, Adolf Hitler boarded his special train and steamed eastward from Berlin, regularly stopping off to inspect his forces and pose for propaganda newsreels. He kept a special interest in Leibstandarte; a marker on the war maps had “SEPP” written on it, charting the progress of the regiment.
Leibstandarte had been assigned to General Blaskowitz’s Eighth Army, whose role was to act as a flank guard to the more powerful Tenth Army leading the drive toward Warsaw. As the only motorized unit in Eighth Army, Leibstandarte was expected to push ahead while maintaining a link with Tenth Army on its right flank. To give the regiment more firepower, it was loaned an artillery battalion from the army.
As the men of Leibstandarte approached the border they were greeted by Dietrich, a familiar and steadying presence for young troops without battlefield experience. Hidden by a light early-morning mist, the advance was unopposed until the armored cars of the reconnaissance company were hit by antitank shells from a concealed Polish defensive position by the village of Boleslawecz. Hauptsturmführer Kurt Meyer, commander of the antitank company, had gone forward to witness the reconnaissance troops in action. His dramatic account demonstrates the shock of combat for the first time:
Round after round penetrated the vehicles; machine-gun bursts swept down the street, forcing us to take cover, we heard the cries from the Panzeraufklärer [armored recon crew] trapped in the armored cars and were forced to watch without being able to go to their aid. Each time a round penetrated the armored car’s interior the shrieks of our mortally wounded comrades grew louder. The machine-gun fire mowed down the Panzeraufklärer who managed to get out of the armored cars. The moans in the vehicle grew weaker. Spellbound, I watched blood dripping from the fissures in the first vehicle. I was paralyzed. I had not seen a live Polish soldier, but my comrades were already lying dead, right in front of me.3
The Polish defense revealed serious shortcomings in Leibstandarte’s tactical skills and leadership, from the divisional commander downward. A damning report from XIII Army Corps described the regiment’s failings at Boleslawecz:
There the unit suffered its first casualties and let itself get embroiled in frontal house-to-house combat with weak enemy forces but to which the Leibstandarte was not equal in regard to infantry combat training. The bulk of the Leibstandarte was not put into action. The possibility of going around the enemy to the east of Boleslawecz was not
exploited: the heavy artillery was used for shelling from house to house, and the unit only moved forward when all life appeared to have been destroyed. In this manner, the battle was only conducted with the foremost companies; the rest of the Standarte stayed right behind them. Actual leadership did not exist.4
The following day, to Leibstandarte’s relief, the Poles fell back from Boleslawecz in the face of an assault by the German 17th Infantry Division. Linking up with the division, Leibstandarte marched toward the River Warta, which was to be bridged before the Poles could establish a defensive line.
AFTER ITS WITHDRAWAL from the Mlawa position, Panzer Division Kempf was transferred to General Wodrig’s Special Purpose Corps and ordered to exploit the rupture in the Polish border defenses. To promote operational flexibility, the “teeth” elements of the panzer division were divided into three Kampfgruppen, or combat groups: Kampfgruppe Steiner, Kampfgruppe Kleinheisterkamp (commanding officer of III Battalion “Deutschland”), and Kampfgruppe Schmidt (CO of 7th Panzer Regiment). The combat groups comprised individual units of infantry, artillery, and tanks, plus supporting troops. Steiner’s was the lead group, reinforced by the SS reconnaissance battalion. That a fundamental structural change could have been made at such short notice was a reflection of the inherent organizational flexibility of the German armed forces.
By nightfall on 3 September the German advance had completely outflanked the Mlawa position, and the SS men had the satisfaction of hearing that the Polish defenders were now fleeing from the town to avoid complete encirclement. Over the next few days Steiner led his forces deeper into Poland, engaging in skirmishes with retreating Polish troops. Yet progress was not as swift as he had hoped.
As well as the natural congestion of too many troops struggling along too few roads, the condition of the roads themselves was a problem. The divisional history noted that they “were in incredibly bad condition in comparison to our concept of a road. They were made up almost exclusively of pot holes.”5 At times the trucks were often forced to stay in first gear, less mobile than the Polish cavalry squadrons acting as a rearguard for their retreating infantry.
The unsurfaced roads and the unusual heat of an extended summer saw great clouds of dust rising into the air, making it hard to distinguish friend from foe, especially as the German Army was unfamiliar with the camouflage helmet covers and smocks worn by the SS. On at least one occasion German cavalry patrols fired on “Deutschland” troops in the belief they were Polish.6
By 5 September the Poles had fallen back across the River Narew. The mixed army-SS combat groups of Panzer Division Kempf were ordered to capture Rozan, a fortified town on the near bank of the Narew. The Germans had underestimated the strength of the Polish defenses. A mixed infantry-armor assault soon found itself in difficulty, unable to make any progress. A Polish counterattack then drove the infantry and remaining tanks back toward their start line. For the attacking forces the action seemed like a depressing repeat of Mlawa. The divisional history concluded, “This was one of the most difficult days of combat during the entire campaign for the tankers and the soldiers of II/Deutschland.”7
The assault on Rozan had at least drawn in Polish reserves to help the German forces to cross the Narew on either side of the town, with the SS pioneers and reconnaissance battalion in the forefront of the crossing. To avoid encirclement, the defenders of Rozan then withdrew, allowing the bulk of Panzer Division Kempf an easy passage through the town. Once on the far side of the river, Steiner was ordered to swing northward to attack the rear of the Polish troops defending Lomza, already under threat from other German units.
Steiner’s Combat Group, reinforced with SS and army artillery batteries and a battalion of tanks, advanced northward, fought a confused action against Polish forces that were falling back from Lomza on 10 September. As Steiner began reorganizing his troops after the battle, news arrived of another, very different, problem.
In the village of Goworowo a sergeant in the SS artillery regiment along with fellow SS gunners (and an army military policeman) had run amuck, killing fifty Jews from the village as well as preparing to set alight the local synagogue containing more Jews. Only the chance intervention of an army officer prevented the immolation of the synagogue captives.
Despite the brutality of the Wehrmacht’s official policy regarding the people of Poland, it took exception to this atrocity. Major General Kempf referred the matter to his corps commander, who in turn alerted the commander of Third Army, General von Kückler. He demanded an investigation that led to the arrest and imprisonment of those involved (all subsequently released through Hitler’s October amnesty order).8
This incident did nothing to aid the cause of the SS-VT units within Panzer Division Kempf, whose generally lackluster performance in the first week of combat had raised concerns within Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), the army’s high command. There had even been talk of disbanding the division to reallocate the panzer regiment as reinforcements for the 10th Panzer Division while sending the SS units back into Army Group North’s general reserve.9 Nothing came of this, however, and the reprieved Panzer Division Kempf continued to press the Poles back toward the River Bug.
THE PERFORMANCE OF Leibstandarte also incurred further army criticism. Leibstandarte has been assigned to XIII Corps (10th and 17th Infantry Divisions), which was to earn a reputation for the destructiveness of its advance through western Poland.10 The town of Zloczew suffered particularly heavily, with almost 200 civilians being killed by soldiers from Leibstandarte and the 95th Infantry Regiment.11
Major General Loch, commander of the 17th Infantry Division, complained of Leibstandarte’s tendency for “wild shooting and burning of villages” during the advance.12 Given the widespread involvement of his own troops in these actions, Loch’s criticisms appear hypocritical, but his reprimand was based not on moral concerns but on operational requirements. Such behavior undermined discipline and slowed the advance. It was this latter point that formed the crux of the army’s displeasure with Leibstandarte. It was only late in the day on 4 September that SS troops reached the River Warta, which had already been crossed by Tenth Army. As a consequence, Eighth Army commander General Blaskowitz faced potential censure for not keeping up with Reichenau, and with Leibstandarte his only effective mobile unit he expected it to be in touch with Tenth Army.
Once over the Warta, Leibstandarte was ordered to race toward the city of Łodz as part of a maneuver to trap Polish forces in what would eventually become the Bzura pocket. Speed was of the essence, but the SS regiment’s advance was sluggish, slowed by the loose, sandy soil that at times reduced movement to little more than a walking pace. Dietrich blamed the inadequacy of his vehicles for his tardy progress, but whatever the reason the motorized regiment got in the way of the two hard-marching infantry divisions following behind.
On 7 September XIII Corps reached the town of Pabiance, to the southwest of Łodz, and encountered stiff Polish resistance. Leibstandarte’s I Battalion and armored vehicles from the 23rd Panzer Regiment opened the assault but were repulsed with heavy losses, the thin armor of the German light tanks fatally vulnerable to Polish antitank rifles. Leibstandarte’s other two battalions were then thrown into the attack but fared little better.
A Polish counterattack caused a moment of crisis, with the regiment virtually surrounded and Dietrich’s command post under threat. Fortunately for Dietrich’s beleaguered soldiers, a regiment from the 10th Infantry Division came to their rescue and beat back the Polish attack.13 Fighting for Pabiance continued into the night; by dawn on the eighth the town was in German hands.
The ensuing attack on Łodz was conducted by XIII Corps without Leibstandarte, which was held back for security operations to the south of the city. On 9 September it ended its unhappy tenure with XIII Corps and was transferred to Lieutenant General Reinhardt’s 4th Panzer Division, part of Tenth Army.
The southward advance of Army Group North had squeezed as many as 170,000 Polish troops int
o a small area to the west of Warsaw, bounded to the south by the River Bzura. OKH sensed the possibility of a vast encirclement maneuver and directed forces from Army Group South to complete the ring around the beleaguered enemy. Virtually surrounded, the Poles attempted to break eastward toward Warsaw, only to encounter the blocking force provided by Tenth Army.
Driven by desperation, the Polish forces threw themselves at the German lines. On the night of 12–13 September, Leibstandarte fought a ferocious defensive action. The II Battalion’s 6th Company was briefly overrun in one attack and its commander killed, but, ultimately, the Polish efforts were doomed. Kurt Meyer recalled the enemy’s bravery: “The Poles attacked with great stubbornness and proved repeatedly that they knew how to die. The fighting on the Bzura was desperate and intense. The best Polish blood was mixed with the river water.”14
Further Polish attempts to break out of the pocket were again repulsed with heavy losses, allowing the surrounding Germans to go over to the offensive, squeezing the Poles into an ever-smaller area. On 17 September Polish defenses began to collapse. The only troops to escape were individuals or small groups, slipping through the cover provided by the Kampinos Forest. The German Army now turned its attention toward Warsaw, pounding it with artillery, while the Luftwaffe bombed it from the air. This marked the end of Leibstandarte’s active involvement in the campaign, the regiment held back in reserve thereafter. A company of Leibstandarte provided an honor guard for Hitler when he visited Eighth and Tenth Armies on 25 September.
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