The Crushing Of Poland (Images Of War - Rare Photographs From Wartime Archives)

After staging several false incidents to try and make out that acts of unprovoked Polish aggression were now being carried out against the Reich, and with the signing of the secret accord between Russia and Germany in Moscow, an official communique was released in August 1939 to Poland 'that its patience was now at an end'. A few days later at 0445 Hours on 1 September 1939 The Third Reich's Forces responded to 'Polish provocations' by starting to carry out Unternehmen Fall Weiß - The Invasion of Poland. The result of several months of planning by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, and a plan whose lineage could be traced back to as far as 1928, it was chiefly the brainchild of three senior German Officers - Thomas Ludwig Werner Freiherr von Fritsch (1880-1939), Günther Alois Friedrich Blumentritt (1892-1967) and Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Manstein (1887-1973). During July 1939 the final version of the plan was worked on and completed by Franz Halder (1884-1972) and Walther Heinrich Alfred Hermann von Brauchitsch (1881-1948), submitted to Adolf Hitler it was approved in August. The plan commenced without any kind of formal declaration of war by the Reich, when the Kriegsmarine Deutschland Class Dreadnought, KMS Schleswig-Holstein, docked at Danzig for a 'friendly visit' began to bombard Polish shore defences with her main and secondary armament. A few hours later the Luftwaffe launched the first of a series of air raids on civilian and military targets, as part of its own contribution and from 0800 onwards German land forces started to cross the boarder into Poland on three separate fronts - from the North, South and West. Accompanying the Wehrmacht's units into battle were unarmed photographers from the Propagandakompanie whose role was to document and record what took place, and it is their work that Author Ian Baxter has used to illustrate this at times confronting history.