Defense of the Polish Post Office in Danzig
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| Defense of the Polish Post Office in Danzig | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Invasion of Poland | |||||||
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| Combatants | |||||||
 Poland |
 Nazi Germany |
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| Commanders | |||||||
| Konrad Guderski † Alfons Flisykowski |
Willi Bethke |
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| Strength | |||||||
| 55 post office employees 1 Danzig railwayman [1] Armament: 3 x Browning wz.1928 LMGs About 40 pistols Some carbines and numerous grenades [2] |
180 SS (Waffen-SS and Ordnungspolizei) with at least 3 armoured cars A Wehrmacht detachment with 3 artillery pieces |
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| Casualties | |||||||
| 6 KIA 2 killed while surrendering 5 WIA (died in hospital) 38 captured and executed 4 successfully escaped Entire equipment lost |
~10 KIA, 25 WIA | ||||||
| Invasion of Poland |
|---|
| Westerplatte – Danzig – The Border - Krojanty – Lasy Królewskie – Mokra – Gdańsk Bay – Pszczyna – Mława – Tuchola Forest – Jordanów – Borowa Góra – Mikołów – Węgierska Górka – Tomaszów Mazowiecki – Wizna – Łódź – Przemyśl – Piotrków – Różan – Radom – Łomża – Wola Cyrusowa – Warsaw – Gdynia – Hel – Bzura – Jarosław – Kałuszyn – Węgrów – Wilno – Lwów – Modlin – Kobryń – Brześć – Kępa Oksywska – Tomaszów Lubelski – Wólka Węglowa – Kampinos Forest – Janów, Wereszyca, and Hołosko – Krasnystaw – Grodno – Cześniki – Krasnobród – Władypol – Szack – Wytyczno – Parczew – Kock |
The Defense of the Polish Post Office in Danzig (today Gdańsk) was one of the first battles of the Invasion of Poland, and of the World War II in Europe.
On September 1, 1939, Polish civilian employees defended the building for some 15 hours against assaults by the German SS (Schutzstaffel) and special units of Ordnungspolizei (Danzig police). All but four of the defenders who escaped from the building during the surrender were sentenced to death by a Nazi German court and executed on October 5 as partisans.
Although it was a brief and small-scale battle, it became known not only as one of the first battles of the Second World War, but one that was waged by elite SS troops against civilians.
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[edit] Prelude
The Polish Post Office (Poczta Polska) in the Free City of Danzig was created in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles, and its buildings were considered extraterritorial Polish property. The Polish Post Office in Danzig comprised several buildings. In 1930 the "Gdańsk 1" building on Heweliusz Square in the Old Town became the primary Polish post office, with a direct telephone line to Poland. In 1939 it employed slightly over 100 people. Some employees at the Polish Post Office belonged to a self-defence and security organization, and many were also members of the Polish Związek Strzelecki (Riflemen's Association). According to the testimony of Edmund Charaszkiewicz, the Polish Post Office was from 1935 an important component of the Polish Intelligence organization, "Group Zygmunt."
As tensions between Poland and Germany grew, in April 1939 the Polish High Command detached engineer and Reserves Sublieutenant Konrad Guderski to the Baltic Sea coast. With Alfons Flisykowski and others, he helped organize the official and volunteer security staff at the Polish Post Office in Danzig, and prepare them for eventual hostilities. In addition to training the staff, he prepared the defenses in and around the building: nearby trees were removed, and the entrance was fortified. In mid-August, ten additional employees were sent to the post office from Polish Post offices in Gdynia and Bydgoszcz.
In the building of the Polish post on 1 September there were 57 people: Konrad Guderski (the only person who was not a civilian), 42 local Polish employees, 10 employees from Gdynia and Bydgoszcz, and the building keeper with his wife and 10-year old daughter (who lived in the building). Polish employees had a cache of weapons, mostly pistols, three light machine guns and some hand grenades. The Polish defence plan assigned the defenders the role of keeping Germans from the building for 6 hours, where a relief force from Armia Pomorze was supposed to secure the area.
The German attack plan, devised in July 1939, estimated that the building defenders would be stormed from two directions: a diversionary attack would be carried out at the front entrance, while the main force would break through the wall from the neighbouring Work Office and attack from the side.
[edit] The battle
At 0400 Germans cut the phone and electricity lines to the building. At 0445, just as the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein started shelling the nearby Polish Army fortified region at Westerplatte, German units began their assault on the Polish Post. German units detached for this task were composed of the special unit of Danzig police and SS units SS Wachsturmbann "E" and SS Heimwehr Danzig. German units had support of several formerly Austrian ADGZ armored cars. The attack was commanded by German police colonel, Willi Bethke.
The first German attack, from the front, was repelled, although Germans managed to break through the entrance and briefly enter the building. The second attack, from the Work Office, was also repelled. The commander of Polish defence, Konrad Guderski, was killed during that second attack.
At 1100 German units were reinforced with two 75 mm artillery pieces, but the second attack, even with the artillery support, was also repulsed. At 1500 Germans declared a two hour ceasefire and demanded that Polish forces surrender, which they refused. In the meantime, Germans received additional reinforcements: a 105 mm artillery piece, and a unit of sappers, which dug under the walls and prepared a 600 kg explosive device. At 1700 the bomb was set off, collapsing part of the wall, and German forces under the cover of three artillery pieces attacked again, this time capturing most of the building with the exception of the basement.
At 1800 Germans brought automatic pumps, gasoline tanks and flamethrowers, which they used to flood the basements with burning gasoline. After five Poles were burned alive, the rest decided to capitulate. The first two people to leave the building — director Dr. Jan Michoń, carrying a white flag, and commandant (naczelnik) Józef Wąsik — were shot by the Germans (according to one version, Dr. Michoń was attacked with a flamethrower). The rest of the Poles were allowed to surrender.
[edit] Aftermath
Six people managed to escape from the building, although two of them were captured the following day. 16 wounded were sent to the city's hospital, where six subsequently died (five because of the burns, including the 10-year old Erwina). The other 28 were first imprisoned in the police building, and after a few days sent to Victoriaschule, where they were interrogated and tortured, together with many[citation needed] other Polish inhabitants of Danzig.
All the prisoners were put on trial: first the 28 imprisoned in Victoriaschule on 8 September, and then the 10 who recovered in the hospital, on 30 September. All were sentenced to death for being partisans, under the German special military penal law of 1938. The sentence was demanded by the prosecutor Hans Giesecke, declared by presiding judge Kurt Bode, and signed by general Walther von Brauchitsch. There was no defence lawyer. The Polish militarymen (working as postmen) were executed by firing squad on 5 October. A similar fate awaited Polish railway workers south of the city after they foiled an attempt to use an armored train to seize a bridge over the Vistula.[3]
Giesecke and Bode were never held responsible for this episode or held accountable for Justizmord. They were denazified after the war and continued their careers as lawyers. Both died of natural causes in 1970s. Only in 1995 did the German court at Lübeck invalidate the 1939 ruling and rehabilitate the "postmen", citing among the reasons for the ruling that it was a violation of the Hague Convention.
In Poland, the whole episode has become one of the better known episodes of the Polish September Campaign and it is usually portrayed as a heroic story of David and Goliath proportions. In this view, it was a group of "harmless postmen" who held out against German SS troops for almost an entire day. In 1979 in the People's Republic of Poland a Defenders of the Polish Post Monument was unveiled in Gdańsk.[4]
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text translated from the corresponding Polish Wikipedia article as of 8 May 2006.
[edit] Further reading
- Adam Bartoszewski, Wiesław Gomulski, "Żolnierze w pocztowych mundurach" (Soldiers in the postal uniforms), Gdańsk, 1969.
- F.Bogucki, "Poczta Polska w Gdańsku" (Polish Post in Gdańsk)
- Dieter Schenk "Die Post von Danzig. Geschichte eines deutschen Justizmords" [Post-Office of Gdańsk. History of a German Justice Murder], 1995
- Günter Grass "Die Blechtrommel" (The Tin Drum), 1959
[edit] External links
- (Polish) Obrona Poczty Polskiej w Gdańsku, 1939.pl
- (Polish) Miłosz Sosnowski, OBRONA POCZTY POLSKIEJ W GDAŃSKU 1939 R., Polskiejutro.com
- (Polish) Bogusław Kubisz, Obrońcy Poczty Polskiej: Chwała i Zbronia, Mówią Wieki
