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By Root 1262 0

and the murderous adventure in which they had become his accomplices. Gen. Erich von Manstein is widely regarded as the finest German general of the war; afterwards, he took pride in pretensions to have done his part as an officer and gentleman. However, his writings during the Polish campaign, as well as later, reveal the insensitivity characteristic of his caste. He was delighted by the invasion: “It’s a grand decision of the Führer in view of the attitude of the Western Powers up till now. His offer to solve the Polish question was so obliging that England and France—if they really wanted peace—should have pushed Poland into accepting.” Soon after the campaign began, Manstein visited a formation which he himself had recently commanded: “It was touching to see the staff so pleased when I suddenly appeared … Cranz [his successor] told me it was a pleasure to command such a well-trained division in war.”

In a letter to his wife, Manstein described his personal routine during the campaign, in which he served as Gen. Gerd von Rundstedt’s chief of staff at Army Group South: “I get up at 6:30, plunge into the water [for a swim], into the office by 7:00. Morning reports, coffee, then work or trips with R[undstedt]. Midday, field kitchens here. Then half an hour break. In the evening after supper, which we eat together with the general staff officers as at lunch, the evening reports come in. And so it goes on to 11:30.” The contrast is stark, between the serenity of army headquarters and the vast human tragedy its operations had precipitated. Manstein signed an order for the German forces encircling Warsaw to fire upon any refugees who attempted to leave: it was deemed easier to force a swift outcome of the campaign, and to avoid a battle in the streets, if the inhabitants were unable to escape the capital’s bombardment. Yet he was a man of such personal fastidiousness that he sometimes quit rooms in which von Rundstedt was speaking, because he recoiled from his chief’s obscene language. On 25 September, he basked in a congratulatory visit from Hitler, writing to his wife: “It was nice to see how the soldiers rejoiced everywhere as the Führer drove past.” In 1939, the officer corps of the Wehrmacht already displayed the moral bankruptcy that would characterise its conduct until 1945.

A Polish cavalry officer, Klemens Rudnicki, described the plight of his regiment and its beloved mounts in Warsaw on 27 September, the last night before the city fell: “Red, glittering flames illuminated our horses, standing quiet and motionless along the walls of the Łazienki Park, resembling saddled skeletons. A few were dead; some were bleeding, exposing huge, gaping wounds. Kowalski’s horse Cenzor was still alive, but lay with his bowels ripped out. Not long ago he had won the Army’s Challenge Cup at Tarnopol. He had been our pride. A shot in the ear ended his sufferings. Next day, probably, somebody needing to assuage his hunger would cut a joint from his loins.”

Warsaw capitulated on 28 September. Little Captain Krysk of Rudnicki’s 3rd Squadron declared emotionally that he rejected the order: “Tomorrow morning we shall charge the Germans to preserve the regimental tradition that the 9th Lancers never surrender.” Rudnicki dissuaded him; together, the regiment’s officers secreted their colours in the church of St. Anthony on Senatorska Street, the only building still intact amid acres of rubble. Rudnicki reflected ruefully that the Polish army should have deployed in depth for a protracted defensive action, instead of manning a weak forward line that was certain to be broken. This, however, would have been “at variance with our natural aspiration—and with our military traditions and hopes of becoming a great Power.”

On 29 September the Modlin army, north of Warsaw, surrendered to the Germans, who took 30,000 prisoners. Organised resistance petered out, the Hel Peninsula falling on 1 October; the last recorded engagement took place at Kock, north of Lublin, on the fifth. Hundreds of thousands of men fell into German hands, while many more struggled