Gleiwitz incident

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Gliwice Radio Tower. The highest wooden structure in Europe.
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Gliwice Radio Tower. The highest wooden structure in Europe.

The Gleiwitz incident was a staged attack on 31 August 1939 against the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Germany (since 1945: Gliwice, Republic of Poland) on the eve of World War II in Europe.

This provocation was one of several actions in Operation Himmler, a Nazi Germany project to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany, which would be used to justify the subsequent invasion of Poland.

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[edit] Events at Gleiwitz

Much of what is known about the Gleiwitz incident comes from the sworn affidavit of Alfred Naujocks at the Nuremberg Trials. According to his testimony, the incident was organised by Naujocks under orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, the chief of the Gestapo.

On the night of August 31, 1939 a small group of German operatives led by Naujocks seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a message in Polish that urged the Poles living in Silesia to strike against Germans. The Germans' goal was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of anti-German Polish saboteurs.

In order to make the attack scene more convincing, the Germans brought in Franciszek Honiok, a German Silesian known for sympathizing with the Poles, who had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo. Honiok was dressed to look like a saboteur; then killed by lethal injection, given gunshot wounds, and left dead at the scene, so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was subsequently presented as proof of the attack to the police and press.

In addition to Honiok, several other convicts were kept available for this purpose. The Germans referred to them by the code phrase "Konserve" ("canned goods"). For this reason some sources incorrectly refer to the incident as ""Operation Canned Goods".

[edit] Context

At the same time as the Gleiwitz attack there were other incidents orchestrated by Germany along the Polish-German border, such as house torching in the Polish Corridor and spurious propaganda output. The entire project, dubbed Operation Himmler and comprising 21 incidents in all, was intended to give the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany.

On the day following the Gleiwitz attack, 1 September 1939, Germany launched the Fall Weiss operation — the invasion of Poland — initiating World War II in Europe. In a speech in the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler cited the 21 border incidents, with three of them called very serious, as justification for Germany's "defensive" action against Poland.

[edit] Treatment in film

  • Der Fall Gleiwitz, direction: Gerhard Klein (1961), DEFA studios (The Gleiwitz Case; English subtitles), an East German film that reconstructs the events, pronounced in West Germany the best DEFA film.
  • Operacja Himmler - Polart (Polish)
  • Hitler's SS: A Portrait In Evil, direction: Jim Goddard (1985); An American (English language) film which shows part of the Gleiwitz Incident.
  • Die Blechtrommel briefly includes the incident as a part of the film's plot.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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