September 1, 1939 is a glorious late summer day in northern Germany with temperatures around 27 degrees and a mild north-westerly wind. Those who can afford it go to the coast for the weekend or visit the city's parks and swimming pools. Of course, this only applies to those residents who are of "Aryan descent" according to the Nuremberg Race Laws of the Nazis:Jews were forbidden to visit baths and health resorts as early as 1937.
Battleship sails to Poland under false pretense
In the seaside resort of Swinemünde on Usedom, people boast of having hoisted swastika flags as early as the 1920s and gradually making the place "Judenrein". The German war and training ship "Schleswig-Holstein" left the port there on August 24, 1939 - officially to pay a "friendly visit" to the free city of Danzig. Unofficially, the ship took 225 East Prussian marines on board on the high seas in the night of August 24th to 25th. Captain Gustav Kleikamp had already been summoned to the Naval High Command in Berlin on August 16, where he was initiated into the attack plans against Poland.
"Home to the Reich":The "liberation" of Danzig
After the First World War, Danzig, with its predominantly German population, was declared a free state under the protection of the League of Nations and has since been enclosed by Polish territory between the provinces of East Prussia and Pomerania, which belong to the German Reich. The status of the city has long been a thorn in the side of the National Socialists and the center of a propaganda battle waged by Joseph Goebbels, who loudly calls for Danzig to "go home to the Reich". Adolf Hitler made it clear to senior officers on May 23, 1939 on the Obersalzberg that this was only used as a pretext for an attack:"Danzig is not the object at stake. It is about expanding the living space in the East ."
The course of the attack on Poland:the first shots
On the morning of August 25, 1939, the "Schleswig-Holstein" reached the port of Danzig. Hans Lots from Edemissen near Peine, who was on board at the time as the engineer, later remembered:"No one was allowed on land, not the marines anyway. If they even wanted to be on deck, they had to borrow clothing from us to camouflage. After a A few days later it was said:'All hands out, we've been deployed to liberate Danzig!'" At 4.45 a.m. on September 1, 1939, the attack on Westerplatte begins, a peninsula in front of Danzig on which the Polish army has a fortified ammunition depot with approx 218 man crew maintains. The shots fired by the "Schleswig-Holstein" are still considered the beginning of the Second World War.
"Since 5:45 a.m. they've been firing back!"
On September 1, 1939, Chancellor Adolf Hitler announced the beginning of the war in front of the Reichstag.In Germany, the population is asked over the radio to appear in front of the radio receivers for a speech by the Führer. Around ten o'clock in the morning Adolf Hitler is driven to the Reichstag in Berlin. Then he speaks the now notorious sentences, which mean a complete reversal of real events and are intended to make the Germans believe that a just defensive war is being waged:"I don't want to fight women and children. I have given my air force the task to confine themselves to military objects in their attacks. But if the enemy thinks they can read carte blanche to fight with the reverse methods on his part, then he will receive an answer that will make him lose his hearing! Poland has tonight to fired on our own territory for the first time with already regular soldiers. Since 5.45 a.m. they have been shooting back!"
Start of World War II:the elderly are skeptical
Even if Hitler, for unexplained reasons, missed an hour, the speech did not fail to have an impact, especially among the younger generation. Ralph Brauer, born in Hamburg in 1927, reports on his mood:"When my mother told me in the summer of 1939 that there was going to be war, I was happy. Nobody was there to say it was going to be a catastrophe." On the other hand, there is no general enthusiasm for war, as was sometimes the case at the beginning of the First World War, especially among the elderly. At that time, Werner Mork was an employee in a radio shop and prepared the so-called community reception of the Führer's speech. He says:"Everyone stood up calmly when that had faded away, it was an embarrassed silence. To be honest, that didn't seem enough to me at the time. So I went up to the attic to get the black, white and red flag and the swastika flag. because I thought it was time to raise the flag."
Nazis maintain supplies
With the beginning of the war, the Nazis used even more forced laborers, for example for work in armaments factories.Everyday life also changed on the "home front" with the start of the Polish campaign:ration cards for fat and meat, dairy products and sugar were introduced as early as September 1, 1939, and from October also for clothing. Unlike in the First World War, the Nazis were able to largely maintain the supply of the population. This is also ensured by the ruthless exploitation of the occupied eastern territories and the deportation of millions of people to "work assignments in the Reich", which begins immediately with the beginning of the war and costs countless lives. From 1939 onwards the number of forced laborers increased steadily, by the end of the war around 500,000 people were doing forced labor in Hamburg alone, mostly slave labor under inhumane conditions.
War of annihilation against Poland:Luftwaffe attacks first
In Poland, the Wehrmacht waged a war of annihilation from the start. Even before the shots were fired from the "Schleswig-Holstein", the Luftwaffe attacked. Around four in the morning, a squadron of so-called dive bombers (Stukas) took off from Schönwald Castle in Silesia. Their destination:the militarily completely insignificant Polish town of Wielun not far from the border. The city is completely unfortified, with no garrison, anti-aircraft defenses or bunkers. At about four-thirty in the morning, the bombing terror begins:in three waves of attacks, the German planes drop 380 bombs with a combined explosive force of more than 45,000 kilograms. Around 1,200 people are killed, and 90 percent of the city is destroyed by the hail of bombs and the subsequent fires. And that, although even the commander of the squadron could report "no particular enemy observations".
Terror against the Polish civilian population
So while Hitler was still announcing in Berlin that the Luftwaffe would be limited to military objectives, the units under Hermann Goering's command had already committed their first massacre. The historian Jochen Böhler states:"The air raids on Poland were not planned from the outset as purely military attacks, but as terrorist attacks. In the first weeks of the war, hundreds of towns were bombed, regardless of whether they were occupied by Polish soldiers or not. "
In the end, death returns home
After the Allied air raids, many German cities, such as Hamburg, lay in ruins.Incidentally, after the occupation of Poland, the regime did not hide its murderous warfare:Propaganda Minister Goebbels enthusiastically had a film made "about the tremendous achievements of the Luftwaffe," which he cynically called "The Baptism of Fire." However, the film sometimes fails to make an impact, because the secret reports of the SS security service say that the images of the destruction caused "voices of pity for the Poles" and a "depressing, frightened mood," especially among women. Perhaps some of the cinema-goers already suspect that the horrors of war will return home one day:When Lübeck, Hamburg, Hanover, Bremen and other German cities sink in the hail of bombs from 1942 onwards, the population horribly reaps the fruits of the terror that their leadership and Army on September 1, 1939.