The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [10]
1
Four Invasions
September 1939 – April 1940
If we lose this war, then God have mercy on us.
Hermann Göring to Hitler’s interpreter, Paul Schmidt, 3 September 19391
Although the international situation, and his months of sabre-rattling against Poland, meant that his invasion of that country could not be a surprise attack, Hitler hoped, with good reason, that the Wehrmacht’s new Blitzkrieg (lightning war) tactics would deliver a tactical shock to the Poles. Blitzkrieg tactics, which relied on very close, radio-controlled contact between fast-moving tank columns, motorized artillery, Luftwaffe bombers and fighters and truck-borne infantry, swept all before them. Hitler’s dislike of static, attritional warfare was a natural response to his years in the 16th Bavarian Infantry Regiment between 1914 and 1918. His job as a Meldegänger (battalion runner) in that conflict involved waiting for a gap in artillery salvoes and then springing forward in a semi-crouched stance, sprinting from trench to shell-hole taking messages. He was thus brave and conscientious, probably never killed anyone himself, and always refused promotions that would take him away from his comrades because, as his regimental adjutant Fritz Wiedemann later stated, ‘For Gefreiter [Corporal] Hitler, the Regiment was home.’2 He even won two Iron Crosses, Second Class and First Class.
Having survived four years of stalemate and attrition, Hitler had learnt by the age of twenty-nine, when the war ended, that tactical surprise was of inestimable advantage in warfare, and as he was later to write in Mein Kampf: ‘Even a man of thirty will have much to learn in the course of his life, but this will only be a supplement.’ Throughout his political career as a revolutionary, he constantly attempted to employ surprise, usually with great success. The attempted coup of 1923 known as the Beerhall Putsch had surprised even its titular leader, General Ludendorff, and Röhm had had no inkling of the Night of the Long Knives. Yet the Poles were expecting Hitler’s sudden attack, because exactly one week beforehand their country had been invaded by a tiny detachment of Germans who had not been informed of the postponement of the invasion originally planned for dawn on Saturday, 26 August.
Part of Germany’s plan to invade Poland, Fall Weiss (Plan White), involved small groups of Germans dressed in Räuberzivil (robbers’ civvies) crossing the border the night before and seizing key strategic points before dawn on the day of the invasion. The secret Abwehr (German intelligence) battalion detailed to undertake these operations was given the euphemistic title of Construction Training Company 800 for Special Duties. A twenty-four-man group under the command of Leutnant Dr Hans-Albrecht Herzner was instructed to prepare the way for the assault of the 7th Infantry Division by infiltrating the border and capturing a railway station at Mosty in the Jablunka Pass running through the Carpathian mountains, to prevent the destruction of the single-track railway tunnel which was the shortest connection between Warsaw and Vienna.3 Crossing the border into the forests at 00.30 on 26 August, Herzner’s group got lost and was split up in the dark, but Herzner managed to capture the railway station at Mosty with thirteen men at 03.30 and cut the telephone and telegraph lines, only to discover that the Polish detonators had already been removed from the tunnel by the defenders. Polish tunnel guards then attacked his unit, wounding one of his men. Out of contact with the Abwehr, Herzner could not know that, with only a few hours to go, the previous evening Hitler had postponed Plan White until the following week, and that every other commando unit had been informed of this except his. It was not until 09.35 that the Abwehr finally managed to get through and order Herzner, who by then had lost another man wounded and had killed a Pole in the firefight, to release his prisoners and return to base immediately.
After a further series of incidents