# WWII: Was Poland always screwed? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 2, 2012, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657 "2012-11-02T13:17:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/21 "2012-11-03T05:02:00Z")
Poland, the little nation that could… do what exactly? Get occupied? Get half it’s population killed?Have the country literally migrate west? While the average Polish soldier was certainly brave, WWII is unlikely to be remembered as Polands greatest hour. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/22 "2012-11-03T07:15:00Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Be prepared to invade Germany in September of 1939. > > Realistically, that was their shot. Had the Allies attacked in force Germany would either not have been prepared or, likelier still, would have had no choice but to concentrate their forces on the Western front instead of against Poland. Without the German invasion it’s possible the Soviets would not have invaded. > > Of course France and the UK just weren’t going to do that. Better yet, Britain and France should have resisted Hitler before 1939. Stalin asked for a Triple Alliance with the West, was rebuffed, and finally agreed to a pact with Hitler only in late August 1939. Of course Poland still gets screwed in scenarios where a triple alliance invades Germany early – but screwed by Soviet armies occupying Poland en route to Germany. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/23 "2012-11-03T09:45:07Z")
There was a thread about this in GQ a while back, **Bartman’s** post there was particularly informative on the problem Poland [faced](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15378925&postcount=4): [Quote=greenslime1951] Blitzkrieg was much more effective from a psychological than a military standpoint. In Poland, the leading edge of tanks was very thin; the Wehrmacht was primarily a horse-drawn and footsoldier army at that point. The reason blitzkrieg succeeded in Poland relates to the proper tactics against it. What an army should do against a blitzkrieging foe is prepare “defenses in depth.” The inital, counterintuitive reaction to a blitzkrieg attack should be not to oppose it head-on, but to step aside, to delay it, much as a jiu-jitsu fighter deals with a direct blow. The Poles, however, insisted on setting up a forward defense and because their tactical doctrine was drawn from nineteenth-century cavalry practices, they didn’t voluntarily yield ground or retreat, even when it would have been prudent to do so. [/quote] > [@Bartman](#): > > Allowing an advance and then encircling the forward elements was always the Polish plan. The plan called for defense to hold strong lines in depth to the North and South of the Vistula, near Posen and Thorn. The center line between was weaker. The idea was that the Germans would be channeled along the direct line from Berlin to Warsaw. Then Armies Pomorze and Poznan would close the gap and Army Prusy would smash the advanced units. > > The Polish problems were many: > First - They were grossly outgunned. The Poles had the best tank in the campaign, the 7TP. But they only had about 140 of them. And only 900 total. Against three times as many. They only had about 400 aircraft against about six times as many. In theory they had 39 divisions. But in an attempt to head off war politically, they hadn’t fully mobilized. So in practice they had about half that. It took the Germans nearly two months to cross Belgium in WWI. So the Poles thought they would have at least two weeks to finish mobilizing. Of course two weeks in the Germans had already smashed across the boarder everywhere. And had isolated or destroyed every Polish army. And Army Prusy never even formed. So the theoretical 39 divisions against 60 divisions never took place. And even if it had. A german division had more men, more artillery, more of everything. So instead of the 3-2 battle the Poles were expecting, it was more like 3-1 division to division and 5-1 in actual combat capability. > > Second- The majority of the population and the majority of the industry were in the West. So Polish doctrine demanded that the line hold in the South. They had a mobile doctrine, but a strategic situation the demanded a static defense. Not a good combo. > > Third- They were not only outnumbered and pinned in place by a need to defend significant points, they were surrounded on three sides (four eventually when the Soviets joined in), and they had no good natural defense lines. They had no mountain lines, and the rivers all ran parallel to the German advance, not across it. So there was no defense line to build on. > > In the end the Poles were doomed. They were attacked by a vastly superior force. The fact that the Germans had developed the new tactical doctrine of Blitzkreig, probably cut the length of the campaign in half. But Poland was in a fight it couldn’t win. Falling back to establish a defended line based on the confluence of the [Wisla, Bzura and Wurta Rivers](http://www.interklasa.pl/meteo/kw/regulars/mapa.jpg) (this map clearly shows how Poland was surrounded on three sides by Germany) was probably their best bet for prolonging the fight, but as \*\*Bartman \*\*noted this would have meant abandoning the most populated, industrialized, and resource rich regions to the Germans from the start, something that was politically unacceptable. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/24 "2012-11-03T09:53:14Z")
Just missed the edit, but: ETA: Oh, and to note there was nothing 19th century about Polish cavalry doctrine. The Polish cavalry brigades were slowly in the process of upgrading to mechanized brigades, they trained in mobile operations and tactical retreats, had a greater allotment of anti-tank guns than infantry formations of similiar size, and when foot bound infantry divisions were frequently overrun by the Germans the cavalry brigades were able to break contact and avoid being overrun due to thier superior mobility. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2012, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/25 "2012-11-04T12:52:09Z")
The Polish Army Signals Dept. was the first Western intelligence agency to crack the German “Enigma” coding scheme-were they able to read Wehrmacht communications in 1939? Had they had better intelligence, they (the Poles) might have deployed their forces more effectively. And the Polish Airforce-while overwhelmed, they did have modern “Elk” high speed (for 1939) bombers-why weren’t they employed to greater effect? ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/26 "2012-11-05T00:52:16Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Poland, the little nation that could… do what exactly? Get occupied? Get half it’s population killed?Have the country literally migrate west? While the average Polish soldier was certainly brave, WWII is unlikely to be remembered as Polands greatest hour. The little nation that stood. The nation that didn’t surrender, no matter what the odds. The nation that fought two massive powers surrounded on opposite fronts because they were invaded and didn’t quit even facing insurmountable odds even after they were over ran. The nation that sponsored some of the best fighting men in the war even though through most of it they were subordinated to foreign command and foreign interest. As a nation they have more to hang their hat on than many in that war. Because I am a gentleman, I will only declare you are uninformed. Sir. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/27 "2012-11-05T07:52:26Z")
They were once a great empire on their own and they escaped the plague. That should be enough. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/28 "2012-11-05T11:08:36Z")
The Poles were also the first to crack the Enigma (and shared their progress with the British and French in 1932); unfortunately in 1938 and 1939 the Germans improved the Enigma by adding more rotors and plugboard connections. Despite this, [ > [@](#): > > The German attack on Poland came as no surprise to the Polish General Staff. The results that had been obtained by Polish intelligence, according to Leśniak, “absolutely exceeded what would normally have been possible.”[39] ]([Cipher Bureau (Poland) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Cipher_Bureau)) Unfortunately for the Poles their [strategy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_West) largely relied on the British and French not only honouring their commitment to declare war, which to Adolf’s surprise they did, but also actually lifting a finger to help out their nominal allies…[not so much.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_betrayal) They also failed to anticipate the Soviet invasion, which really shafted them since they would eventually get stuck with Soviet control anyway. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2012, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/29 "2012-11-06T19:53:36Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > While the average Polish soldier was certainly brave, WWII is unlikely to be remembered as Polands greatest hour. I remember one of the jokesI had heard in my youth that struck me as extremely funny: “What is the shortest book in the world? ‘Polish War Heroes.’” I was easily entertained in my youth. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2012, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/30 "2012-11-06T22:35:39Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > I remember one of the jokesI had heard in my youth that struck me as extremely funny: “What is the shortest book in the world? ‘Polish War Heroes.’” A lot of people in France and the U.K. would have begged to differ. The contributions of Polish airmen to the Battle of Britain were [highly appreciated](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Air_Forces_in_France_and_Great_Britain): _“Polish flying skills were well-developed from the Invasion of Poland and the pilots were regarded as fearless and sometimes bordering on reckless. Their success rates were very high in comparison to the less-experienced British Commonwealth pilots. The 303 squadron became the most efficient RAF fighter unit at that time.”_ ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2012, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/31 "2012-11-06T23:10:16Z")
Why does the new Italian navy have glass-bottom boats? ---
**Author:** ![Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8c91f0/32.png) [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Throatwarbler_Mangrove)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2012, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/32 "2012-11-07T08:23:21Z")
The Poles(and Hungary and Romania) joined with Germany to dismember Czechoslovakia in 1938. > **[Trans-Olza |](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaolzie#Part_of_Poland_.281938.E2.80.931939.29)** > > Within the region originally demanded from Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany in 1938 was the important railway junction city of Bohumín (Polish: Bogumin). The Poles regarded the city as of crucial importance to the area and to Polish interests. On 28 September, Edvard Beneš composed a note to the Polish administration offering to reopen the debate surrounding the territorial demarcation in Těšínsko in the interest of mutual relations, but he delayed in sending it in hopes of good news from London an... I bet that was awkward after the war. ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2012, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657/33 "2012-11-07T14:42:34Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > I remember one of the jokesI had heard in my youth that struck me as extremely funny: “What is the shortest book in the world? ‘Polish War Heroes.’” The book would begin with [this guy.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosabowski) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-was-poland-always-screwed/639657.md?page=1)