These tumultuous scenes were repeated at the French Embassy, where a crowd sang the Marseillaise. In Warsaw that night, a government bulletin announced triumphantly: ‘Polish cavalry units have thrust through the armoured German lines and are now in East Prussia.’ Across Europe, some enemies of Nazism embraced brief delusions. Mihail Sebastian was a thirty-one-year-old Romanian writer, and a Jew. On 4 September, after hearing news of the British and French declarations of war, he was naïvely astonished that they did not immediately attack in the west. ‘Are they still waiting for something? Is it possible (as some say) that Hitler will immediately fall and be replaced by a military government, which will then settle for peace? Could there be radical changes in Italy? What will Russia do? What’s happening to the Axis, about which there is suddenly silence in both Rome and Berlin? A thousand questions that leave you gasping for breath.’ Amid his own mental turmoil, Sebastian sought relief first in reading Dostoevsky, then Thomas de Quincey in English.
On 7 September, ten French divisions moved cautiously into the German Saarland. After advancing five miles, they halted: this represented the sum of France’s armed demonstration in support of Poland. Gamelin was satisfied that the Poles could hold off Hitler’s Wehrmacht until the French rearmament programme was further advanced. Slowly, the Polish people began to understand that they were alone in their agony. Stefan Starzy
Exhaustion among men and horses soon posed the main threat to the headlong German advance. Cavalryman Lance-Corporal Hornes found his mount Herzog repeatedly stumbling: ‘I called out to the section commander – “Herzog’s had as much as he can take!” I had scarcely got the words out when the poor beast fell to his knees. We’d gone 70km on the first day, then 60 on the second. And on top of that, we’d had the trek over the mountains with the advance patrol galloping…That meant we’d gone nearly 200km in three days without any proper rest! Night had long fallen, and we were still riding.’
The horrors of blitzkrieg mounted: while Warsaw Radio played Chopin’s Military Polonaise, German bombing of the capital was now accompanied by the fire of a thousand guns, delivering 30,000 shells a day, which pounded its magnificent buildings into rubble. ‘The lovely Polish autumn [is] coming,’ fighter pilot Mirosław Feri
A counter-attack on 10 September by eight Polish divisions, across the Bzura river west of Warsaw, briefly disrupted the German offensive and took 1,500 prisoners. Kurt Meyer of the SS Liebstandarte acknowledged with mingled admiration and condescension: ‘The Poles attack with enormous tenacity, proving over and over again that they really know how to die.’ Contrary to legend, on only two occasions did Polish horsemen engage German tanks. One such episode took place on the night of 11 September, when a squadron hurled itself full gallop at the village of Kałuszyn, strongly held by the Germans. Out of eighty-five horsemen who attacked, only thirty-three afterwards rallied. The invaders used their own cavalry to provide reconnaissance and mobility, rather than for assaults. Lance-Corporal Hornes’s unit advanced in column, while two men rode ahead: ‘They would hurry at a gallop from one hill to the next, then wave the troop on. As another precaution, lone horsemen were sent out alongside us on the ridges of the hills. Suddenly, we saw new unfamiliar contours emerging from the thick dust-cloud: small, agile horses with bobbing heads, ridden by Polish Uhlans in their khaki uniforms, long lances held with one end in the stirrup leather and the other slung from the shoulder. Their shining tips bobbed up and down in time with the horses’ hooves. At the same moment, our machine-guns opened fire.’
The Wehrmacht was vastly better armed and armoured than its enemies. Poland was a poor country, with only a few thousand military and civilian trucks; its national budget was smaller than that of the city of Berlin. Given the poor quality and small number of Polish planes compared with those of the Luftwaffe, it is remarkable that the campaign cost Germany 560 aircraft. Lt. Piotr Tarczy
Amid popular rage against the invaders of their homeland, there were scenes of mob violence which conferred no honour upon Poland’s cause. Mass arrests of ethnic Germans – supposed or potential fifth columnists – took place throughout early September. At Bydgoszcz on ‘Bloody Sunday’, 3 September, a thousand German civilians were massacred after allegations that they had fired on Polish troops. Some modern German historians claim that up to 13,000 ethnic Germans were killed during the campaign, most of them innocents. The true figure is almost certainly much lower, but such deaths provided a pretext for appalling and systemic Nazi atrocities towards Poles, and especially Polish Jews, which began within days of the invasion. Hitler told his generals at Obersalzberg: ‘Genghis Khan had millions of women and men killed by his own will and with a light heart. History sees him only as a great state-builder…I have sent my Death’s Head units to the east with the order to kill without mercy men, women and children of the Polish race or language. Only in such a way shall we win the Lebensraum that we need.’
When the Wehrmacht entered Łód