Gleiwitz incident

{{Short description|Staged attack by Nazi forces to begin the invasion of Poland in 1939}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}

{{Infobox operational plan

| name = Gleiwitz incident

| partof = Operation Himmler

| image = File:Radiostacja Gliwice - przemasban101.png

|image_size =

| caption = Gliwice Radio Tower in 2012 Szobiszowice district

| type = False flag attack

| location = Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Nazi Germany (today Gliwice, Poland)

| map_type = Germany 1937

| coordinates = {{coord|50.313370|18.689037|format=dms|display=inline,title}}

| map_size = 200

| map_caption = Location of the Gleiwitz radio tower in Nazi Germany (1937 borders)

| map_label = Gleiwitz Radio Tower

| planned =

| planned_by =

| objective = Pretext for the invasion of Poland

| target =

| date = {{Start date|1939|08|31|df=y}}

| executed_by = German SS

| outcome =

}}

The Gleiwitz incident ({{langx|de|Überfall auf den Sender Gleiwitz}}; {{Langx|pl|prowokacja gliwicka}}) was a false flag attack on the radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz (then Germany and now Gliwice, Poland) staged by Nazi Germany on the night of 31 August 1939. Along with some two dozen similar incidents, the attack was manufactured by Germany as a casus belli to justify the invasion of Poland. Prior to the invasion, Adolf Hitler gave a radio address condemning the acts and announcing German plans to attack Poland, which began the next morning.{{Cite web |title=Address by Adolf Hitler – September 1, 1939 |url=https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/HITLER1.htm |access-date=2022-03-21 |website=fcit.usf.edu}} Despite the German government using the attack as a justification to go to war with Poland, the Gleiwitz assailants were not Polish but were German SS officers wearing Polish uniforms.

During his declaration of war, Hitler did not mention the Gleiwitz incident but grouped all provocations staged by the SS as an alleged "Polish assault" on Germany. The Gleiwitz incident is the best-known action of Operation Himmler, a series of special operations undertaken by the Schutzstaffel (SS) to serve German propaganda at the outbreak of war. The operation was intended to create the appearance of a Polish aggression against Germany to justify the invasion of Poland. On September 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany, and the European theatre of World War II had begun. Manufactured evidence for the Gleiwitz attack by the SS was provided by the undercover German SS officer Alfred Naujocks in 1945.

Events at Gleiwitz

Much of what is known about the Gleiwitz incident comes from the affidavit of SS-Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks at the Nuremberg Trials. In his testimony, he stated that he organised the incident under orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo. On the night of 31 August, a small group of German operatives dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish (sources vary on the content of the message). The operation was named "Grossmutter gestorben" (Grandmother died).{{cite news |title=Grossmutter Gestorben |url=https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-46172747.html |website=Der Spiegel |date=12 November 1963 |publisher=Spiegel-Verlag |access-date=22 November 2020}} The operation was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of Polish anti-German saboteurs. The operation was planned and carried out from the Sławięcice Palace (Schloss Slawentzitz).{{cite news |title=Pałac w Sławięcicach i jego wojenna historia. Miał 45 pokoi i wielką salę balową. Co się z nim stało?' (The palace in Sławięcice and its wartime history. It had 45 rooms and a large ballroom. What has happened to it?) |url=https://kedzierzynkozle.naszemiasto.pl/palac-w-slawiecicach-i-jego-wojenna-historia-mial-45-pokoi/ar/c15-8433385 |website=kedzierzynkozle.naszemiasto.pl |date=1 September 2021 |access-date=28 February 2023}}

To make the attack seem more convincing, the Gestapo executed Franciszek Honiok, a 43-year-old unmarried Upper Silesian[https://web.archive.org/web/20120314190818/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/6106566/World-War-IIs-first-victim.html The World War II's first victim. A farmer was murdered as part of a Nazi plot to provide an excuse to invade Poland, the story of a man forgotten by history.] By Bob Graham, 29 Aug 2009. The Telegraph. Catholic farmer, known for sympathising with the Poles. He had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo and dressed to look like a saboteur, then rendered unconscious by an injection of drugs, then killed by gunshot wounds.{{cite web |url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/6106566/World-War-IIs-first-victim.html |title=World War II's first victim – Telegraph |website=www.telegraph.co.uk |access-date=11 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120314190818/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/6106566/World-War-IIs-first-victim.html |archive-date=14 March 2012 |url-status=dead}} Honiok was left dead at the scene so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was then presented to the police and press as proof of the attack. Several prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp were drugged, shot dead on the site and their faces disfigured to make identification impossible.Thomas Laqueur, [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n18/thomas-laqueur/devoted-to-terror 'Devoted to Terror,'] in London Review of Books, Vol. 37 No. 18–24 September 2015, pp. 9–16. The Germans referred to them by the code phrase "Konserve" (canned goods). Some sources incorrectly refer to the incident as Operation Canned Goods.

In an oral testimony at the Nuremberg Trials, Erwin von Lahousen stated that his division of the Abwehr was one of two that were given the task of providing Polish Army uniforms, equipment and identification cards; he was later told by Wilhelm Canaris that people from concentration camps had been disguised in these uniforms and ordered to attack the radio stations.{{cite web|url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/11-30-45.asp|title=20 Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Volume 2; Friday, 30 November 1945|access-date=8 November 2012|publisher=Avalon Project}}

Oskar Schindler played a role in supplying the Polish uniforms and weapons used in the operation as an agent for the Abwehr.{{Cite web|last=Lebovic|first=Matt|title=80 years ago, how a very different Schindler's 'list' helped ignite WWII|url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/80-years-ago-how-a-very-different-schindlers-list-helped-ignite-wwii/|access-date=2020-10-08|website=www.timesofisrael.com|language=en-US}}

Context

File:Glivice plaque.JPG

The Gleiwitz incident was a part of a larger operation carried out by Abwehr and SS forces. Other orchestrated incidents were conducted along the Polish–German border at the same time as the Gleiwitz attack, such as a house burning in the Polish Corridor and spurious propaganda. The project was called Operation Himmler and comprised incidents intended to give the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany. German newspapers and politicians, including Adolf Hitler, had made accusations against Polish authorities for months before the 1939 invasion of organising or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland. On 1 September, the day following the Gleiwitz attack, Germany launched Fall Weiss (Case White), the strategic plan for the invasion of Poland, which precipitated World War II in Europe. Hitler cited the border incidents in a speech in the Reichstag on the same day, with three of them called very serious, as justification for his invasion of Poland. Hitler had told his generals on 22 August, "I will provide a propagandistic casus belli. Its credibility doesn't matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth".

International reactions

American correspondents were summoned to the scene the next day but no neutral parties were allowed to investigate the incident in detail and the international public was skeptical of the German version of the incident.

See also

References

{{reflist|30em|refs=

Christopher J. Ailsby, The Third Reich Day by Day, Zenith Imprint, 2001, {{ISBN|0-7603-1167-6}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=TMdZSJGWaIYC&dq=Gleiwitz+incident&pg=PA112 Google Print, p. 112]{{Dead link|date=August 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}

{{cite web|url=http://www.muzeum.gliwice.pl/en/radiostacja|title=Museum in Gliwice: What happened here?|publisher=Muzeum.gliwice.pl|access-date=8 March 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061104063227/http://www.muzeum.gliwice.pl/en/radiostacja/|archive-date=4 November 2006|url-status=dead}}

{{cite web|url=http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/1,114873,2243402.html|title=Skrytykowali grę, choć jej nie widzieli|publisher=Wiadomosci.gazeta.pl|date=23 August 2004|access-date=18 May 2012}}

{{cite web|url=http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/imt/nca/ftp.py?imt/nca/nca-06/nca-06-3469-ps-04|title=Holocaust Educational Resource|publisher=Nizkor|access-date=8 March 2014|archive-date=2 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170702084049/http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/imt/nca/ftp.py?imt%2Fnca%2Fnca-06%2Fnca-06-3469-ps-04|url-status=dead}}

{{cite web|url=http://www.fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/resource/document/HITLER1.htm|title=Address by Adolf Hitler|date=1 September 1939|publisher=archives of the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School|access-date=4 June 2015}}

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054864 Der Fall Gleiwitz (1961)], IMDb.com; accessed 4 June 2015.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1287849 Operacja Himmler (TV 1979)], IMDb.com; accessed 4 June 2015.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089279 Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil (TV 1985)], IMDb.com; accessed 4 June 2015.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078875 Die Blechtrommel (1979)], IMDb.com; accessed 4 June 2015.

Bradley Lightbody, The Second World War: Ambitions to Nemesis, Routledge, 2004; {{ISBN|0-415-22405-5}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=wyfgwYOiZasC&dq=Gleiwitz+incident&pg=PA39 Google Print, p. 39]

{{cite web|url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/12-20-45.asp|title=20 Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Volume 4|date=20 December 1945|access-date=12 October 2009|publisher=Avalon Project}}

James J. Wirtz, Roy Godson, Strategic Denial and Deception: The Twenty-First Century Challenge, Transaction Publishers, 2002, {{ISBN|0-7658-0898-6}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=PzfQSlTJTXkC&dq=Gleiwitz+incident&pg=PA100 Google Print, p. 100]

Steven J. Zaloga, Poland 1939: The Birth of Blitzkrieg, [https://books.google.com/books?id=oQeAKAjlEwMC&dq=%22Operation%2BHimmler%22&pg=PA39 Google Print, p. 39]{{Dead link|date=August 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, Osprey Publishing, 2002; {{ISBN|1-84176-408-6}}}}

Further reading

  • John Toland, Adolf Hitler : The Definitive Biography, {{ISBN|0-385-42053-6}}.
  • Dennis Whitehead, "The Gleiwitz Incident", After the Battle Magazine Number 142 (March 2009)
  • Stanley S. Seidner, Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz Rydz and the Defense of Poland, New York, 1978.
  • Spieß / Lichtenstein Unternehmen Tannenberg. Der Anlass zum Zweiten Weltkrieg, Wiesbaden und München 1979.
  • {{cite journal|last=Polak-Springer |first=Peter |s2cid=145321954 |date=April 2013 |title='Jammin' with Karlik': The German-Polish 'Radio War' and the Gleiwitz 'Provocation', 1925–1939 |journal=European History Quarterly |publisher=Sage |volume=43 |issue=2 |pages=279–300 |doi=10.1177/0265691413478095 |url=http://ehq.sagepub.com/content/43/2/279.abstract|url-access=subscription }}