The German Fifth Column in Poland (11 page)

“Close to Solec Kujawski our battery was attacked by subversive agents who fired on us. After scouring the neighbouring woods we found two agents in civilian dress, members of the German minority. They also had new Polish uniforms.”

From a Second Lieutenant in the Polish Infantry:
[86]

“
I was wounded by German agents at Inowroclaw, which I entered with our battalion's advance-guard. The Germans had taken up positions in buildings along the streets of the town; they were armed with machine-guns.”

From a Polish Reserve Sub-
lieutenant:
[87]

“During my regiment’s attack upon Tokary, Rombierz, and Tokary-Mlyny, German subversive agents were hidden so cleverly in the marshes and bogs that our soldiers passed close to them without noticing them. They afterwards attacked our detachments, firing at their backs.”

From a Polish Lieutenant Colonel attached to a Divisional General Staff:
[88]

“On September 7th, 1939, francs-tireurs fired on the 7th Infantry Regiment which had left Łódź and was passing through the village of Nowosolna, which had a majority of German inhabitants.”

From a Sub-lieutenant in the Polish Military Police:
[89]

“In the localities of Izabelów and Annopol (close to Zduńska Wola) shots were fired by the German civilian populations against detachments of the 10th Division.”

From another Polish Sub-
lieutenant:
[90]

“On September 11th, 1939, I was ordered by the General Staff to change my quarters and to go to a spot some two kilometres to the north of Biłgoraj. As the town had been burnt by German spies I could not execute this order.”

From a Lieutenant in a Polish Armoured Group:
[91]

“On September 7th I was sent with a detachment of three armoured cars and a motor-cycle on a reconnaissance from Toruń along the road leading to Chełmno. The road was deserted, and, after covering some ten kilometres, we reached the village of Wypsz, about a kilometre and half from the Wypczyki estate. When we entered the village we were met by the population who complained and lamented, telling us that a German detachment led by the man who rented the said estate and a dairyman named Nitman —both of them Polish citizens of German nationality and long resident in the district—had arrived in the village that morning. These men pointed out the most active of their Polish neighbours to the German soldiers, and the Poles were shot on the spot. I saw their bodies in the houses.”

From a Polish Sub-lieutenant:
[92]

“I know an instance of a murder committed by a German spy. The victim, Captain Tadeusz Jakubowski, of the eighth Field Artillery Regiment (attached to the 7Ist group of heavy artillery), born at Warsaw, and aged 42, was killed by a shot in the back in the evening of September 6th or 7th, at Ciechanowice, near Gostyń. This estate belonged to a German named Keilich.”

From Second Lieutenant of the Polish Infantry:
[93]

“Civil diversionist activity, especially in the frontier zone, seriously hindered military operations. The moment the enemy crossed the frontier the German civilian population living in villages in the vicinity of Leszno openly appeared with machine-guns. Such incidents occurred, inter alia, at the villages of Gronowo and Wloszkowice. It would have been impossible to count the shots fired from carbines and sporting guns. In the neighbourhood of Radzyn diversionist agents punctured with revolver shots two tyres of a lorry transporting troops. The houses occupied by German colonists were left intact. The organization was so good that the German houses were marked on the roofs or by distinctive signs formed of straw placed close to the house. Thus the locality of Aleksandrów, close to Żychlin, and inhabited by a German colony, was unharmed, although all the surrounding villages were devastated.”

From a private citizen:
[94]

“On September 7th or 8th I was travelling with my wife in a car along the road from Lublin to Lwów. On the road, which otherwise was deserted, I was stopped by a heavy open lorry transporting our troops. The men told me that a few moments before an open car with three civilians in it had passed them, and several grenades had been thrown at them. One of the grenades missed, the second only half exploded, and the men showed it to me: it was of German make. A third wounded two soldiers. I took several men, and we raced in pursuit of the aggressors, but failed to overtake them.”

From a Polish Colonel:
[95]

“On the right bank of the river Brda at Bydgoszcz is the river sports club of the Postal Military Training Association. A group of postal employees had gathered there on September 3rd, 1939, when suddenly firing broke out. It came from the left bank of the river, where a group of diversionist agents was lying in ambush. The next day, about six in the afternoon, German civilians fired at and killed a liaison officer who was driving along the road in a car, some ten kilometres from Toruń.

“
In the afternoon of September 6th I saw two villages deliberately set on fire on the road from Biała Podlaska. There were no troops anywhere in the neighbourhood. Not one soldier in either of the two villages. So the only reason for burning them must have been a desire to destroy and devastate the property of the Polish population.”

From a Polish Major:
[96]

“I certify that I saw the case of Lieutenant Kowalski, who was stationed with me at a colony in Wolhynia, in which there were German inhabitants. He washed himself with water which the mistress of the house brought him in a bowl, and immediately his face swelled up terribly. He was taken at once to the hospital at Luck, where it was diagnosed that his burns were due to mustard gas, fortunately in a diluted form.

“
I certify that throughout the campaign in Poland I came across diversionist operations consisting of cutting telephone wires. Also in districts behind the front we were fired on at night, and always where there were German colonies, even in the neighbourhood of Warsaw. I had one characteristic experience: my men informed me that they had seen a peasant ploughing his field in a strange way, tracing zigzags and circles with his plough. After examining the field, I decided that his ploughing had nothing to do with ordinary field labour, and, after tracing on paper the designs he had made, we saw that it was a gigantic figure which he had made for the benefit of enemy airmen.”

From a private citizen:
[97]

“I had to go to Leszno on business. I certify that I saw German inhabitants firing from their windows at Polish troops in retreat. I assisted to disarm a man named Müller—I do not remember his Christian name. He was an artisan living in Leszno, who had gone to Germany a year before the war broke out. He did not turn up again in Leszno until after the outbreak of hostilities, and then he was armed with a machine-gun.”

From a Polish soldier:
[98]

“During the early days of the war I was stationed near Solec in Pomorze. Our armoured cars were standing in the open fields quite a long distance from any houses. During the night I noticed a young man, dressed in civilian clothes, who appeared to be looking for something close to our cars. As I had suspicions of him I arrested him. He was a young man, a German colonist from Solec. On searching him I found some tow and rag soaked in petrol under his jacket. He was unable to give me any logical explanation of his presence at night near our cars, so far from inhabited houses. His name was Johann Bauman, and from the examination of the man we learned that he had fled to Germany six months before the war. He had come back in order to carry out diversionist activity.

“
During the retreat I halted in my native village, Nowy Zbrachlin, in the district of Nieszawa, Warsaw Province. There friends of mine told me, to my great astonishment, that they had surprised two Germans, Karl Bar and Johann Müller, attempting to cut wires. It was surprising because they were the only Germans who had lived in this district for generations, and they had always been regarded as our own people.”

From a Second Lieutenant in the Polish Cavalry:
[99]

“On September 5th, 1939, in the vicinity of Opoczno I was fired at by a German colonist armed with a revolver, but he missed me. He was killed by an artillery officer mounted on a horse, Lieutenant X.”

From another Second Lieutenant in the Polish Calvary:
[100]

“Close to Włoki, where the 23rd Infantry Regiment was acting on the defence, a German in civilian dress, perched on a haystack, made signals to the Germans with a small flag during the attack.

“
On the banks of the Brda, several Polish soldiers who were cut off were massacred by the German minority civilian population. In the woods close to Solec Kujawski German bands in civilian dress attacked troops of the 23rd Infantry Regiment.

“
The German population of Bydgoszcz fired from the windows
of their houses at the third battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment.”

From yet another:
[101]

“A transport of wounded which was travelling in a motor bus was twice attacked during the night of September 10th/11th, I939, close to Siedlce, by German bands of agents. Some of the agents were shot by unwounded and less seriously wounded soldiers.”

And from yet another:
[102]

“Subversive agents fired on the regiments in retreat and on trains transporting evacuated civilians. They impeded road traffic by felling trees (at Olkusz), they fired on officers (at Trzebinia). They were often disguised as military police or as Polish railway officials. At Rabsztyn an agent was disguised as a Polish Sub-lieutenant. Their German documents were concealed in the lining of their clothes. They were armed with carbines, revolvers, and grenades.

“
They operated at night for preference, setting fire to villages, attacking the defenceless civilian population, and sowing panic as the Polish armies retreated.”

From a doctor attached to the Polish Army Staff:
[103]

“
I was attached to the staff of General Bortnowski's army. During the campaign I myself witnessed or received precise information of the following incidents of a subversive nature.

“
At Toruń, thirty-four persons were shot who had been caught in the act of making signals with mirrors or white material during attacks by German bombers.

“
While on my way from Włocławek to Ciechocinek to give the necessary instructions for the evacuation of the military hospital, I met police officers escorting a group of diversionist agents, twenty-three persons altogether, including three women. From what they said it appeared that they had been captured with weapons in their hands. The police officers asked what they were to do, as the men lay down on the ground and refused to go on. I told them they must carry out their orders, which were to conduct the Germans before the requisite authorities.

“
At Gniewkowo I saw a group of men who had barricaded themselves in a half-built house. There were four or five of them, armed with a machine-gun. They had to be tackled with hand-grenades.

“
More than once I saw men who had been dropped by parachute. They were armed with light machine-guns and grenades. Close to Toruń seven were captured in my presence.

“
Corporal St. W., who took part in suppressing the diversionist operations at Bydgoszcz, declares that the Germans had placed a machine-gun on the roof of the Protestant church in Danzig Street, and that all along this street there was firing from windows at passing Polish military forces, and at the civilian population also.

“
During the suppression of the diversionists almost two hundred persons were captured with arms, and were shot. The bodies were laid
out on the square. In all probability the Germans found them still unburied when they entered Bydgoszcz.

“
I saw a number of aeroplanes shot down. In many cases they were piloted by young men who had studied in our schools, Polish citizens who had fled to Germany. They all had the rank of officer. The majority of them were drunk, and frequently they were allowed to take their ‘fiancées’ with them, making a particular display of cruelty at such times.

“
Siedlce was badly devastated, but it was the town of Illow, near Gostynin, which made the most terrible impression upon me. The Staff of our retreating army was to have made its headquarters there. At the last moment the Staff halted in the village of Laski, quite close to Illow. The Germans began to bomb the little town an hour later. The bombing went on for twelve hours, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. When we passed through Illow later it was nothing more than a heap of smoking ruins. This fact sufficiently indicates the information service provided by the local Germans.”

By a Lieutenant Colonel attached to the Polish Army General Staff:
[104]

“
In the area of operations of the army in Pomorze it was discovered that between September 8th and l0th three Germans disguised as Polish officers were driving around in a Buick car bearing the registration number 64028. The men spoke to soldiers, gave them tobacco of Danzig origin, and tried to persuade them to desert.

“
In Pomorze, subversive agents armed with rifles and light machine-guns fired on trains, destroyed telephone cables, etc.