Battle of Westerplatte
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The Battle of Westerplatte was the first major battle of the Invasion of Poland in the first week of September 1939 and Second World War
A completely surrounded Polish Military Transit Depot (WST) on Westerplatte, manned by 182 soldiers, held alone for a seven days in face of the overhelming Nazi forces attacking from land, sea and air. The defense of Westerplatte inspired Poland at the time of mostly relatively easy German advances elsewhere, and helped the garrison of Hel Peninsula to defend until early October 1939.
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[edit] Polish military transit depot on Westerplatte
In 1925 the Council of the League of Nations allowed Poland to keep 88 soldiers on the peninsula of Westerplatte. The Polish garrison was separated from Free City of Danzig (Gdańsk) city by the harbour channel, with only a small pier connecting them to the mainland. The Polish-held part of the Westerplatte was separated from Danzig by a brick wall.
By August 1939 the crew of Westerplatte had increased to 182 soldiers (there were also 27 civilian workers), armed with one 75 mm field gun, two 37 mm anti-tank (AT) guns, four mortars, and 41 light, medium, and heavy machine guns. There were no underground fortifications built on Westerplatte, only five small concrete posts (guardhouses) hidden in the peninsula's forest and the large barracks prepared for defense, supported by a network of trenches and barricades. In case of war, the defenders were supposed to withstand a sustained attack for 12 hours; during this time, the aid from the Polish main forces was supposed to reach them. The Polish garrison's commanding officer was Major Henryk Sucharski, the executive officer was Captain Franciszek Dąbrowski. (According to the recently discovered version, Captain Dąbrowski was also the actual commander, following Sucharski's nervous breakdown after the German air strike on the second day of the battle.)
[edit] German units
- Kriegsmarine
- 3. Marine-Stoßtrupp-Kompanie (naval infantry company, later Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 531)
- The crews of the three naval vessels, including a training pre-dreadnought battleship
- Eberhardt group
- A Wehrmacht's Pionier (combat engineer) company from Dessau-Roßlau
- Haubitzen-Abt. (Wehrmacht's independent howitzer battalion)
- Küstenschutz der Danziger Polizei (a coast guard unit of the Danzig police)
- Ordnungspolizei units
- SS Heimwehr Danzig SS militia (including SS Wachsturmbann Eimann, already part of the forming SS Division Totenkopf division)
- Luftwaffe
- II & III Gruppe StG 2 Immelmann
- 4.(St)/TrGr 186
[edit] Equipment
[edit] German
- Naval
- Battleship Schleswig-Holstein and two torpedo boats (T-963 and Von der Groeben).
- Land
- Several ADGZ heavy armoured cars, about 65 artillery pieces (2 cm FlaK 30 AA guns, 3.7 cm PaK 36 AT guns, 10.5 cm leFH 18 light howitzers, 21 cm Mörser 18 heavy howitzers), numerous infantry mortars, over 150 machine guns and several Flammenwerfer 35 flamethrowers.
- Air
- 40-60 Junkers Ju 87 dive bombers and seven other aircraft (Heinkel He 51, Junkers Ju 52).
[edit] Polish
A 75 mm wz. 02/26 field gun, two Bofors 37 mm wz. 36 AT guns, four Stokes 81 mm wz. 31 mortars, and 41 machine guns (including 16 heavy machine guns).
[edit] The battle
At the end of August 1939 the German pre-dreadnought battleship Schleswig-Holstein came to Danzig (Gdańsk) under the pretext of a "courtesy visit" and anchored in the channel near Westerplatte. On September 1, 1939, at 0445 local time, as Germany began its invasion of Poland, Schleswig-Holstein suddenly started to shell the Polish garrison with its 280 mm and 150 mm guns.
This sneak attack was followed by an attack by German naval infantry who were hoping for an easy victory, but soon after crossing the artillery fire-breached brick wall they were ambushed and repelled by the Polish small arms, mortar, and machine gun fire from a concealed and well-positioned firing points (crossfire tactics). Another two assaults that day were repelled as well, with the Germans suffering unexpected losses. The only Polish field gun was put out of the action after firing 28 shells at German positions across the channel (silencing several firing positions and hitting a command post). Defenders also counter-attacked and destroyed a German police guard post using hand grenades, but two Poles were mortally wounded in this action. On the first day, the Polish side lost one men killed and seven wounded (three of which died later, including two captured who died in a German hospital), while the German marines alone lost 17 men killed and 54 seriously wounded out of 225 men deployed (company commander too was mortally wounded); in all, 40-50 troops were killed according the German sources.[2] The German losses would be even greater if not the order by Sucharski for the very effective mortars to cease the rapid fire and conserve ammunition after just a few salvos (because of this order only 104 out of 860 grenades were fired when the mortars were destroyed the next day).
Over the coming days, the Germans bombarded the peninsula with naval and heavy field artillery, including 210 mm howitzers. A devastating dive-bombing raid by Ju 87 Stukas on September 2 (26.5 tons of bombs in two waves) destroyed the Polish mortars, directly hit one guardhouse with a 500 kg bomb (destroying it completely), killed at least eight soldiers, and shocked Major Sucharski, after which Captain Dąbrowski took over command of Westerplatte. After the Stuka raids, which covered the whole area in an enormous cloud of smoke, the Germans believed that no one could possibly have survived it; however, it later turned out the relatively few Polish soldiers were killed and the defence was not broken. Repeated day-time and night-time attacks by the German naval infantry, Danzig SS and police, and Wehrmacht (including an attempt of a cross-channel desant), were again repelled by the Poles with a considerable German losses, but nowhere close to the scale of the disaster suffered on September 1. A German armoured draisine was also hit and destroyed by a Polish AT gun.
In all, approximately 3,400 Germans (including support troops) were tied-up by being engaged in a week-long action against the 182-strong Polish garrison. On September 7, Major Sucharski reclaimed some of his mental stability and decided to quit what he decided was the hopeless fight. Even though many of his officers and soldiers were against the idea, he surrendered the Military Transit Depot on the same day. The Polish defence impressed the German commanders so much that the German commander, General Friedrich Eberhardt (later the military governor of Kiev during the Soviet-German War), allowed Sucharski to retain his ceremonial szabla (Polish sabre) in captivity.
[edit] Casualties
[edit] German
The exact number of German losses remains unknown, but are often estimated to be in range of 200-400 (some of them from the friendly fire of their own artillery) or sometimes more (People's Republic of Poland authorities claimed the Germans suffered 300 killed and 700 wounded, but this claim is rather dubious).
[edit] Polish
Polish casualties were much lower - 15-20 killed (there's a controversy regarding the graves of five unidentified Polish soldiers discovered 1939-1940, possibly executed for an attempted desertion) and some 53 wounded in action.
List of the Polish soldiers killed in action: Private Jan Ciwil, Corporal Jan Gebura, Działonowy (artilleryman) Władysław Jakubiak, Private Konstanty Jezierski, Private Józef Kita, Corporal Andrzej Kowalczyk, Private Mieczysław Krzak, Sergeant Wojciech Najsarek, Private Władysław Okraszewski, Corporal Bronisław Perucki, Master Corporal Adolf Petzelt, Private Antoni Piróg, Sergeant Kazimierz Rasiński, Private Bronisław Uss, Private Ignacy Zatorski, Private Zygmunt Zięba.
An additional victim, Sergeant Kazimierz Rasiński, the radio telephone operator, was murdered by the Gestapo after the capitulation after refusing to give the radio codes to the Germans (however, according to some, he instead defected to the German Kriegsmarine service). Eight other prisoners were also said to not survive the captivity.
[edit] Aftermath
The Polish poet Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński wrote a widely known poem about this battle, A Song of the Soldiers of Westerplatte (Pieśń o żołnierzach Westerplatte). The poem reflected a widespread Polish myth of the later years of the WWII that all defenders died in the battle, fighting to the last man. A Polish People's Army military unit was named in 1943 in memory of the soldiers (Polish 1st Armoured Brigade of the defenders of Westerplatte).
Major Sucharski, who survived the war but died in 1946, was promoted to the rank of Generał brygady and given the highest Polish military award of Virtuti Militari, although he became a very controversional figure more recently as the previously-unknown facts about his role in the battle were uncovered in the 1990s (after the death of Captain Dąbrowski, as the other Polish officers vowed among themselved for their honor to not disclose in their lifetimes that their nominal commander was shell-shocked for the most of the battle).
In the years after war, several dozen schools and few ships in Poland were also christened after the "Heroes of" or "Defenders of Westerplatte". The ruins of the peninsula's barracks and guardhouses are still there. After the war one of the guardhouses has been converted into a museum. Two shells from the Schleswig-Holstein's 280 mm guns prop up its entrance.
