The German Fifth Column in Poland (5 page)

This treachery was all the easier, since the German colonists scattered over the country were not only organized in various legal societies and bodies, but were to be found in every sphere of social life. The Germans were everywhere: in agriculture, in factories as administrative staff and workers, in all the professions, in foreign-owned enterprises, in commerce and the liberal professions. A foreign-owned enterprise of a formally neutral character often concealed German resources: the huge A.E.G. concern, for instance, or Siemens-Schuckert, or the
I.G. Farbenindustrie
works. In addition the German minority included a numerous teaching staff, and many clergy, both Catholic and Protestant. The organizations of a professional or political nature embraced several hundred thousands of the German minority, certainly some four hundred thousand, and these, established chiefly in the three western regions, constituted a very fine mesh of cells available for conspiratorial espionage and diversionist activities while working within legal bounds.

Through the many German Consulates scattered all over Poland (at Warsaw, Cracow,
Poznań, Katowice, Cieszyn, Lwów, Bydgoszcz, Toruń, Gdynia, Danzig) this mesh of cells converged upon a central point, namely, upon the German Embassy at Warsaw. From this centre, where a whole General Staff of advisers and pseudo-officials who were really intelligence service officers and party dignitaries were occupied with the subversive movement and preparation for future diversionist activities, instructions were sent to all parts of Poland by means of the chain of Consulates. The immunity conferred by diplomatic exterritoriality greatly facilitated the Embassy's task of maintaining contact with the local organizations of the minority. The organizers of this widely flung activity were the Councillor to the German Embassy in Warsaw, Dr. Ewald Krümmer, and his colleague, Dr. G. Struwe. All this organized network was placed at the disposition of the German General Staff on September 1, and fulfilled its task without reservation. The opinions of neutral observers can be cited in support of this statement.

The Swiss Divisional Colonel, M. Bircher, a well-known military writer, gave a very interesting lecture some time ago, on the German campaign in Poland, at the
Allgemeine Offiziersgesellschaft
at Zurich. The
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
published a report of this lecture in its issue, No. 346, for March 7, 1940. (Der Feldzug in Polen).
Inter alia
the colonel said:

“
One of the main causes of the rapid Polish collapse was the perfection with which the extensive espionage system of the German minority in Poland carried out its function; numerous short-wave transmitters kept the German Army command continually informed.”

So that the above judgment considers the subversive activity of the German minority the prime cause (
die erste Ursache
) of the Polish collapse.

On this the Swiss publication
Vaterland,
No. 59, for March 9, 1940, made the following comment:

“
In our view, though we are not experts on the subject, Colonel Bircher's opinion signifies that the German minority, in other words the civil population, fought side by side with the German armies from the first day of the struggle, and in consequence, in conformity with the laws of war, its members must be regarded as francs-tireurs, wherever they are captured with arms in hand.”

The Germans are slanderously accusing the Poles of murdering a large number of the members of the German minority. As already mentioned, the number
“murdered” was first stated to be 2,000, later it suddenly jumped to 58,000, and even 65,000. These figures constitute a growing degree of falsehood in German propaganda.

Today it is no longer necessary to refute these falsehoods. It is sufficient to state that in September, 1939, a certain relatively small number of Germans were shot in execution of sentences of courts martial. Those sentenced to death were not
“innocent members of the German minority,” as the official Nazi propaganda thesis would have it. They were spies, sabotageurs, and diversionists, caught red-handed.

It has to be added that the German authorities in Poland, against all the fundamental principles of international law, are shooting and murdering those Poles who in September, 1939, did their duty to their own country, by pointing out the German spies and diversionists to the Polish authorities or conducting them to the Polish military authorities.

The foregoing Swiss opinion was by no means an isolated instance.
[6]

Thus the Polish soldiers had to fight against the invader not only on the battle-front. Wherever Germans were to be found, whether in the west or the east, whether in large or small numbers, they fired at the Polish soldiers at night, they burned down the buildings in which the troops were quartered, they cut the telephone wires. Often disguised as Polish soldiers or even as officers, the trouble-makers attacked and disorganized the rear. They signalled details of Polish dispositions with the aid of coloured rockets. They ambushed the Polish troops, and frequently mixed mustard-gas in the water they provided for washing purposes.

If there were but two houses occupied by Germans in any village, there was invariably at least one man capable of diversionist activities, and not merely of a sporadic nature, for he was fully prepared, armed, and acquainted with the password used by his kind.

The German armies which invaded Poland were furnished with the requisite instructions concerning the possibility of utilizing the German minority and of recognizing its members, as well as those who were to carry out diversionist activities. One copy of these instructions was found on a dead German airman, a non-commissioned officer named Umbrost.
[7]
The contents of this document need no comment.

It must be noted that during the German-Polish war there was hardly an instance of treason among the members of any minority other
than the German.  This fact intensified the reaction of the Polish community and authorities against the German diversionists, especially in face of a war treacherously forced upon Poland by the Reich. But it must be added that even if, in self-defence, Poles reacted violently against the German minority's treason, there is no evidence whatever to show that any diversionists who fell into the hands of the Polish authorities were treated otherwise than in accordance with the laws of war.

CHAPTER THREE - THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BYDGOSZCZ INCIDENTS

THE German propaganda has endeavoured to convince international opinion that on September 3, 1939, the Poles carried out a wholesale massacre of the innocent German population of Bydgoszcz (Bromberg). The German lies about the alleged Polish atrocities (
Polnische Greueltaten
) have long since been refuted. We give in this chapter a certain number of depositions and eye-witness accounts, which tell the true story of these events. They reveal that, at the beginning of the war, German diversionist agents organized a rising in Bydgoszcz, and that this attempt was partly suppressed the same day in the centre of the town. Taken together, the depositions prove that the total number of German killed in the whole district did not exceed four hundred. 

The first deposition comes from an English lady, Miss Baker-Beall, who was living at Bydgoszcz at the beginning of the war
:

“
Friday, first September, was the first air raid on Bydgoszcz, followed by a second, when I was out in the town. Returning home when it was over I counted six large fires in the town, they seemed to be all civilian buildings. So far as I know no military damage was done. During the last few days large numbers of Germans must have entered Bydgoszcz secretly across the ‘green frontier’ and from Danzig.

“
Evidently large quantities of arms, rifles, and machine-guns had been smuggled across the frontier and concealed in the town or its environs, for from this day on the Germans in large numbers began sniping from the windows of German houses and flats, and continued it day and night till the entry of the German forces; from the third on they also did machine-gunning from the roofs, and fired upon everything, men, women, horses (fortunately children were seldom in the streets). A dead horse lay in our street for two days because it was too dangerous to take it away. Opposite a Red Cross station which I three times visited was a German house and the inhabitants fired on it continually though the Red Cross flag was displayed, when the stretcher-bearers were bringing in casualties.

“
1.9. On this day two Germans, father and son, were shot in our street as they were in possession of hand-grenades, and when challenged by soldiers ran away and fired at them.

“
The soldiers shot them.

“
Also I was told that the German proprietor of a chemist’s shop was arrested and shot for being in possession of a hand-grenade. Another hand-grenade was exploded within a few yards of a shop where I was making purchases.

“
This was only the beginning, afterwards the cases were too numerous to be noted.

“
2.9. There were six or possibly seven air raids on this day. Two were driven off by Polish planes, but the others got in and apparently did little damage.

“It was, I think, on this day, that the decision was made to arm the citizens of the town, as the
soldiers were being withdrawn. The order came from Warsaw to the town President, but there seems to have been some over-haste and perhaps a little confusion in carrying it out, for it was said (and I believe with truth) that many Germans represented themselves as loyal citizens and received arms, for certainly afterwards the sniping seemed to greatly increase.

“T
he President (Mayor of the Town), Mr. Barciszewski, also received the order to go at once to Warsaw with all municipal documents and funds, and left the town in his car just before the Germans entered it.

“
The report was immediately spread by the Germans that he had absconded with all the town treasures and was responsible for the death of many German citizens
.
[8]

“‘Blut Sonntag
.’
3.9. The so-called ‘Bloody Sunday,’ has, of course, been the theme of much lying German propaganda concerning Bromberg-Bydgoszcz, and it was on this day that I was shot at for the first time, but not hurt.

“
I was in the streets off and on from 9 a.m. to about 4 p.m., having gone out to see friends and to enquire how they had got through Saturday's bombing.

“
There was a good deal of bombing on this day and I had to take shelter two or three times, which delayed my return. Between 1 and 2 p.m. I went to the house of an acquaintance as the bombing was beginning again, and there heard that about an hour or so before I arrived a detachment of Polish artillery drove quietly through the main street past this house, evidently in retreat and on their way to join the forces beyond the town. They were followed soon after by a battery at a smart pace which had covered their retreat and were now hastening to rejoin them. As they passed a German house on the opposite side there was a burst of firing from the windows; the officer gave the order to halt, turned a gun upon the house and fired, whereupon the sniping ceased and the battery continued on its way.

“
After this the civilian guards arrested all Germans whom they found with arms in their possession and they were shot out of hand.

“
While we were talking a member of the household came home from church and said that there had been sniping from the turrets of the Jesuit Church in the Old Market, as the congregation left the church,
and here
again arrests were made and the people with arms shot, but I saw no signs of atrocities.

“
The German accounts later spoke of fierce fighting going on in the streets adjacent to the main street where this artillery affair took place, but I stood at the door of a house in one of these streets where I had taken cover from an air raid. Looking out into the sunlit street I saw at one end an old lady and gentleman taking their dog for a walk, and at the other end I saw Polish soldiers going along in single file on both sides of the street close to the houses to get protection from the bombing planes.

“From later reports we learned that the Germans h
ad miscalculated; they had believed that the German troops would enter the town on the 3rd, and hence the augmented shooting, as they threw off all pretence of moderation, but the troops did not appear until the afternoon of the 5th.

“A
bout 4 p.m. I went home up the main street, stopping to watch two guns firing at three planes high overhead, but apart from that the street was perfectly quiet. Later reports explained that the frontier guards and some artillery had held up the enemy on our part of the frontier, hence the delay in their progress.

“
4.9. Was a day of anxious waiting, I do not even remember whether there was an air raid.

“
5.9. More air raids. I was in the town and had to take shelter three times. Finally went to a friend living in the main street. About 2 p.m. the firing became much hotter and seemed to come closer, we still thought it was increased sniping. About half an hour later, as the noise increased, one of our number went down to see what was on, and returned a few minutes later saying that the Germans were in the town.