This week, seventy years ago, the City of Warsaw became the first of many European capitals to surrender to the German Wehrmacht.  It was only the first if Vienna and Prague are not counted. The first welcomed their German cousins enthusiastically, while the second provided no resistance. It was also the first major European city to be bombed into submission. This was the second time, in the 20th Century, that German forces had captured the city, which they had done in 1915.
    The population of the Polish capital, on the eve of war, had been 1,300,000. By war’s end it had dropped by more than two-thirds. Today, its population is close to 3,000,000.
    Since the initial assault on Poland, its capital had been targeted daily by the German Luftwaffe. When, on September the 17th, the Red Army, in compliance with the secret provisions of the Treaty between the German Reich and the Soviet Union, occupied the eastern portion of Poland, any hope that the Poles had of preventing the complete collapse of their Country was eliminated.  
    Poland’s Commander-in-Chief, Marshal of Poland, Edward Smigly-Rydz, had, on September 3rd appointed General Walerian Czuma as Commander of the forces defending Warsaw. Colonel Tadeusz Tomaszewski was named Chief of Staff.  Three days later, Marshal Smigly-Rydz ordered the government to evacuate the city.
    Initially, the forces available for the defense of Warsaw were sparse - four infantry battalions and an artillery battery.  However, as the Polish Armies began to fall back, more units began to collect at Warsaw. General Czuma appointed the Mayor of Warsaw, Stefan Starzynski as the Civilian Commissar, who organized civilians into work brigades, constructing barricades and adding tank barriers on the outskirts of the city. On September 7, the “Children of Lwów” Regiment, under the command of Lt. Colonel Jósef Kalandyk, joined the city’s defenders. A monument now stands at an intersection defended by it.
    By September 8, 1939, advance units of General Walther von Reichnau’s Tenth Army had reached the southeastern suburbs of Warsaw. The city’s suburbs of Grójec, Radziejowice, Nadarzyn, Raszyn, and Piaseczno were occupied by XVI Panzer Corps.  The next day the Tenth Army’s Fourth Panzer Division, under the command of Major-General Georg-Hans Reinhardt, launched an attack against the city which was repulsed. The following day, the Fourth mounted another assault, with the same results. The two attempts had cost it 80 of its 225 tanks. It was subsequently withdrawn and sent into the Battle of the Bzura. Its place, in the line, was taken by the 31st Infantry Division, commanded by Rudolf Kämpf.  
    Marshal Smigly-Rydz, safely out of the capital, on September 11, ordered it be held at all costs. The next day, elements of the German Third Army, under the command of General Georg von Küchler, began crossing the Narew River, and by September 15, were in place, east of the city.
     On September 13th, the Germans crossed the Vistula River, south of Warsaw.  By September 16th Warsaw was surrounded, but refused the Germans’ surrender demand. German forces under General Johannes Blaskowitz unsuccessfully attempted the capture of the borough of Praga. The result was the annihilation of the 23rd Infantry Regiment by the elite “Children of Warsaw” Regiment, commanded by Colonel Stanislaw Sosabowski. The Colonel escaped from German captivity, made his way to England and during Operation Market Garden, in September 1944, commanded the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, and was portrayed by Gene Hackman in the movie, “A Bridge Too Far.”
    The eastern part of Poland was occupied by the Red Army on September 17.  
    With the end of the Battle of Bzura, on September 19, elements of the Poznan and Pomorze Armies arrived in the city, to bring its effective defense force to approximately 120,000 soldiers. Facing the defenders were more than 175,000 well-equipped German soldiers.
    On September 24, all German forces surrounding Warsaw were put under the command of General Blaskowitz. In the early morning hours of the next day, General Blaskowitz hurled nine German infantry divisions against the Polish capital. When they were repulsed, some of the German generals advised Hitler to starve the city into submission, rather than cause further destruction to the historic capital. He declined their advice, and instead sent in Baron von Richthofen’s bombers in Operation Coast.
    The next day, Polish General Tadeusz Kutrzeba opened surrender discussions with the Germans. The situation in the city was becoming intolerable for the civilians. However, the bombing continued. At noon, on September 27, a cease-fire agreement was signed, and the fighting, shelling and bombing ceased. Even then, the Germans did not enter the city for another three days. The Poles said that they were afraid to enter a city without electricity and water! On September 30, the remaining Polish soldiers began their new lives as POWs.
    On October 5, 1939, an exultant German Führer watched as the soldiers of the triumphant Wehrmacht marched in review through the streets of the Polish capital. Commissar Starzynski, and other important Polish figures were arrested and held to guarantee the safety of der Führer.  They were released after his departure. German soldiers kept the Poles a block away from the victorious leader. Simultaneously, Slovakian armed forces staged parades in Brataslava and Poprad.
    The defense of Warsaw cost the Polish Army six thousand killed in action and sixteen thousand wounded. Upon capitulation, five thousand officers and ninety seven-thousand Polish soldiers marched into German captivity. Twenty-five thousand, eight hundred civilians lost their lives and fifty thousand were wounded. Twelve percent of the City’s buildings were completely destroyed.
    The next six years were probably the most unpleasant in the city’s 1,000 years of existence, as it endured the brutal German occupation, life in the Ghetto for the Jews, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and the Soviet “liberation.” By that time, the beautiful old city had been utterly destroyed. Because it has been completely rebuilt, it is known as the “Phoenix city.”
    For their service on The Eastern Front, Generals von Reichnau, von Richthofen, and von Kückler would receive the coveted baton of the German Field Marshal. Field Marshal von Reichnau died of a heart attack shortly after receiving his baton. Although he survived the war, Field Marshal von Richthofen died of brain cancer in an Allied P.O.W. camp. Field Marshal von Kückler, Generals Blaskowitz and Reinhardt were charged with war crimes. Field Marshal von Kückler and General Reinhardt were convicted and sentenced to 20 and 15 years, respectively.  General  von Blaskowitz committed suicide before he could be tried. Ironically, he had been the most vociferous German general in his complaints regarding “excesses” of the “pacification” squads which followed the frontline troops into Poland, probably to the detriment of his career.
    Marshal Smigly-Rydz died of heart failure in 1941, while fighting as a common soldier in the Polish resistance. Generals Czuma and Kutrzeba spent the rest of the war as prisoners of the Germans, until liberated by the Allies.

"The Fall of Warsaw"
(Sarah Louisa P. Hickman Smith)
Through Warsaw there is weeping,
And a voice of sorrow now,
For the hero who is sleeping,
With death upon his brow;
The trumpet-tone will waken
No more his martial tread,
Nor the battle-ground be shaken,
When his banner is outspread!
Now let our hymn
Float through the aisle,
Faintly and dim,
Where moonbeams smile;
Sisters, let our solemn strain
Breathe a blessing o'er the slain!
There's a voice of grief in Warsaw,
The mourning of the brave
O'er the chieftain who is gather'd
Unto his honour'd grave;
Who now will face the foeman?
Who break the tyrant's chain?
Their bravest one lies fallen,
And sleeping with the slain.
Now let our hymn
Float through the aisle,
Faintly and dim,
Where moonbeams smile;
Sisters, let our dirge be said
Slowly o'er the sainted dead!
There's a voice of woman weeping,
In Warsaw heard to-night,
And eyes close not in sleeping,
That late with joy were bright;
No Festal torch is lighted,
No notes of music swell;
Their country's hope was blighted,
When that son of freedom fell!
Now let our hymn
Float through the aisle
Faintly and dim,
Where moonbeams smile;
Sisters, let our hymn arise
Sadly to the midnight skies!
And a voice of love undying,
From the tomb of other years,
Like the west wind's summer sighing
It blends with manhood's tears;
It whispers not of glory,
Nor fame's unfading youth,
But lingers o'er a story
Of young affection's truth.
Now let our hymn
Float through the aisle,
Faintly and dim,
Where moonbeams smile;
Sisters, let our solemn strain
Breathe a blessing o'er the slain!

Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.