Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity (Modern War Studies)

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Summary: Graphic Account of Poland Invasion
Review: This book goes into great detail of how Germany invaded Poland by employing its "blitzkrieg" tactics and the atrocities that accompanied the invasion. Some of the horrors inflicted on the Polish, particularly Polish Jews, are unthinkable. I really liked how Rossini describes the various factions within the SS and the major players involved throughout the entire process to create "Lebensraum" (living space) for the German peoples. I also find it quite ironic that the Polish are described by many of the SS barbarians as "violent." My only complaint was that the author could have described the military tactics from the Polish perspective a bit more. In other words, why was the German army able to steamroll the Polish military so easily. A few accounts from Polish officers would have helped, though we did get quite a few accounts from Polish civilians.

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Summary: Understanding atrocities
Review: This is a serious history book but easy to read. I read this book to better understand how people can come to do such evil things. I have a personal interest in this as I am of Polish descent and my wife is partially of German descent. The book mentions atrocities committed by both Germans and Poles prior to the Nazi invasion of 1939. In fact a relative (German) of my wife was murdered by members of the Polish Army (or at least wearing the uniform of the Polish Army).

The book gives a thorough picture of the brutal methods used by the SS and condoned by the German Army. It also explains the social conditions and attitudes that made these actions seem acceptable to Germans.

What I found most disturbing is that I have family members who are advocating using the same brutal methods used by the Nazis against the warlords in Afghanistan in order to find Bin Laden. Reading this book and seeing how good people today can go down that same path is disturbing.

This is a book everyone should read because it is a history lesson everyone should understand. If we do not learn the lessons of history, we will be forced to repeat them. This is, indeed, one of those lessons that should be learned from history not from experience.


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Summary: How about some Polish atrocities at Bydgoszcz?
Review: This is an atrocious book pandering to the Polish egoistical point of view. The author has apparently forgotten to mention that interwar Poland was a messy, military, proto-fascist dictatorship, and her criminal treatment of minorities had been conveniently omitted, as were the massacres of ethnic Germans (over 6,00 at Bydgoszcz alone) once hostilities began, and the willing murder of Jewish neighbours by their fellow Polish villagers, without prompting or coercion, when Poland was under German occupation.

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Summary: Poland: More Than a Speed Bump
Review: When German armies poured into Poland in 1939, the destruction was so swift, so complete, and so foreshadowing of similar such invasions, that there is a tendency to measure the rout of the Polish military in terms of chronology. So many days for the breach to be made, so many for the encirclement of key Polish targets, and so many for the destruction of those targets. Truly, the German invasion was one of the few times in military history that a massive assault not only met its temporal objectives but exceeded them. Students of the Polish campaign, like Alexander B Rossino in his HITLER STRIKES POLAND, tend to view the entire five week campaign in terms of Rossino's subtitle: "Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity." There is little doubt that the combined Wehrmacht and SS whirlwind heralded a new type of warfare. Hitler's panzer armies were striking not only at a demoralized and outnumbered Polish military but also at a race of Slavs that for years had been demonized as subhuman. Rossino lists numerous examples of massacres of Polish civilians and behind the lines Polish army regulars who continued to fight even when it was clear that such isolated encounters could have no effect on the entire campaign. Rossino's main thrusts cover areas that the erudite reader has read before, but here he focuses on the entire spectrum of a battle that need not have turned out as catastrophic as it did. In an alternate universe, the Polish government might have suspected that an attack was coming, especially given the many warnings that Hitler provided: his stated intentions to destroy Poland in MEIN KAMPF and his movement of troops to the Polsh border that could not have been a secret. The destruction of the four Polish armies whose function was to protect Poland is well documented. The value of Rossino's book is that he explains clearly how and why Poland was put to the quick torch. Still, I would have appreciated how--given things might have been--Poland could have avoided collapse long enough to keep the Germans at bay for just a few months more. It is not well known that the quick German victory was fortuitous for Hitler in that he expected a quick victory. His supply columns for his Panzers and mechanized trucks were quite limited. He had to win via a quick ko or risk getting bogged down against a Polish military that fought valiantly and would have given a better acount of themselves if their leaders had had a little more foresight. The unspoken premise of HITLER STRIKES POLAND is that much of Hitler's spectacular successes between 1939 and 1942 were based more on his opponents' ineptitude than on his own sense of a misguided ideological and genocidal vision.