Chapter 192: The Polish Counter-Attack

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A Polish soldier frantically pushed open the door of an office. As the commander of the Pomeranian Army, General Bortnowski was currently in a requisitioned room, commanding the retreat of his several hundred thousand troops. The Germans were in hot pursuit behind him, causing his army group to suffer heavy losses with each day’s retreat. But he knew he could not stop to rest and counter-attack; if he did, his army group would be divided, surrounded, and annihilated one by one.

The German Air Force had used a new weapon, napalm, on the permanent fortifications in northern Poland, breaking through the difficult Polish defensive line in one fell swoop. 110,000 German Wehrmacht soldiers had crossed the Polish line and were heading south. The Modlin Army had been completely crushed, and 230,000 Polish defenders had become German prisoners.

Further north, Poland’s Narew Army had been driven by the German army all the way to the east of Warsaw, getting farther and farther away from its own capital. Moreover, due to the Soviet army’s attack, the Narew Army had already detached half of its men to support the southeastern border and had little combat capability left.

In addition, the Pomeranian Army, which had originally been deployed in the Danzig Corridor and was commanded by General Bortnowski himself, had retreated all the way to the flank and rear of the Poznań Army. He had originally hoped to use the help of the Poznań Army to stabilize his defensive line, but unfortunately, this hope had now been dashed.

This was because just one day before, the German forces in the central sector had formed a pincer offensive, encircling the Polish army on the north-central border in one go. The main Polish force on the northern part of the central defensive line, the Poznań Army, was completely wiped out, with a full 500,000 men captured.

By this calculation, in the northern region of Poland, there were no longer any field armies that could stop the German advance. Therefore, Bortnowski, as the frontline commander-in-chief appointed by the Polish government, proposed his crucial plan to save Poland.

Not all resistance was in vain. The Poles were still stubbornly resisting the German army’s offensive in various regions. In the far north, at Gdynia in the Danzig Corridor, the Polish army was tenaciously holding its positions. They used old coastal artillery to repel the German Navy’s fleet and even sank a German destroyer.

On September 22, a Polish sniper who had learned on the job achieved Poland’s first important result of the war in the northern region: from two hundred meters away, he shot and killed a German officer he saw. The officer he killed also became the highest-ranking German officer to be killed in action since the war began.

Walther von Fritsch was a senior army officer from a Junker aristocratic family. Originally on a smooth path to promotion to major general, he had been demoted again and again by the military ministry because he was very dissatisfied with Akado’s purge of the Junker aristocrats, and was sent to the front to command an artillery unit.

This unlucky Major General von Fritsch, afraid of getting his expensive, custom-made aristocratic dress uniform dirty, had refused to take cover while inspecting the front lines. As a result, he was killed by a Polish sniper’s bullet. By the time his adjutant and several soldiers had scrambled to drag the shot Fritsch back into the trench, he had long since died from excessive blood loss.

These achievements encouraged the Polish resistance. Even with heavy casualties, they were still fighting to the death to stop the German army’s advance. Although their results were minimal, they did indeed persist with a tenacious will, continuing to hope in despair for the promised attack on Germany by their allies, France and Britain.

The French did indeed attack the German border on September 21, 1937. They sent seven divisions and fired more than fifty large-caliber shells at the edge of the Siegfried Line, but they were subsequently driven back across the border by the German army. The German Western Front did not even mobilize for such an attack, let alone transfer troops back from the Polish region.

The British were even more disappointing to the Poles. They sent out the Royal Air Force’s bombers, which scattered some leaflets on the German border near Belgium and dropped about 20 tons of aerial bombs, destroying a farmhouse. After that, these planes were chased away by the German Air Force’s Fw-190D fighters and scattered in all directions. In their haste to escape, they even dropped their remaining bombs inside Belgian territory.

“Sir! Your plan has been approved by Warsaw!” the soldier said, handing the telegram in his hand to General Bortnowski. He then turned and walked out of the office. Inside the office were an air force liaison officer and the commanders of several corps. They were clearly holding a small meeting.

“Our main force must continue south,” Bortnowski said, explaining his detailed plan. “This way, we can rendezvous with the forces of the Łódź Army. This temporarily formed army group will then push south to cut the supply lines of the German southern armies.”

He pointed to the map and said to the generals under his command, “This way, in coordination with the still-holding Carpathian Army, we can inflict heavy damage on the German forces deployed in the south.”

“The advantage is that once we achieve this campaign objective, the German southern army will halt its attack, and the Łódź and Carpathian Armies will have a chance to withdraw to Warsaw, creating favorable conditions to continue the war,” he said finally.

“The number of fighters we can gather now is only about 140. If we commit all of them to this operation… will it be…” an air force officer raised his doubts. The combat effectiveness displayed by the German Air Force in the last few days was something this air force liaison officer had never heard of. In some local areas, the German Air Force had even achieved an incredibly high combat record of 20 to 0.

“Even if these fighters were to fly back to Warsaw, they wouldn’t be of much use,” Bortnowski said, shaking his head. “It would be better to concentrate them and use them to ensure local air superiority in the southern offensive operational area!”

“In terms of tanks and vehicles, we have scraped together almost all the equipment we can get our hands on,” another army major general reported. “We have 79 tanks. Including the 110 tanks from the Łódź Army, the number of tanks that can immediately join the battle is about 189. This is the greatest force we can concentrate.”

“Find a way to round it up to a whole number and send it to the commander of the Łódź Army,” Bortnowski said after a moment’s thought. “And add 5,000 cavalry and as many motorized units as possible. The German army is a mobile force composed of cars and tanks. If we can’t move as fast as them, we can’t possibly defeat them.”

“But even if our army cuts off the supply to the German armored forces in the south, we don’t have the ability to annihilate the surrounded German army,” an officer raised his doubts. This was clearly a fatal problem. The 30,000 German armored troops in the encirclement, that is, the 1st Panzer Corps commanded by Guderian, were not to be underestimated in their combat effectiveness. Poland really had no good way to destroy this huge army.

“At that time, we can only hope that the German reserve forces cannot rescue them in time, and that our Carpathian Army will attack the Germans fiercely from the other side,” Bortnowski said, pushing the hope of victory onto the now-preoccupied Carpathian Army and that yet-to-be-formed mechanized main army group.

Even he himself did not quite believe that the Germans could be so easily defeated. In a real battle example from the northern region, after the retreating Polish army had hastily blown up a large bridge, it had taken the German Wehrmacht’s combat engineer units just over two hours to build a pontoon bridge over the river that could support tanks.

In the northern region, Rommel’s troops had given the world a master class in blitzkrieg. The tank units bypassed the fortresses held by Polish soldiers and continued to advance without fear. Then, swarms of Stuka bombers would appear in the sky, screaming as they dived from high altitude to fiercely bomb the Polish defenders. The infantry that followed would then drive the pitiful defenders out of the ruins and annihilate them. Except for when they ran out of fuel, the German army rarely even stopped.

Bortnowski knew that in the face of such a well-trained and well-equipped army, all his efforts were in vain. But as a Polish soldier, when his motherland was being invaded, he still had to stand up and make some insignificant effort to resist the aggressors.

In fact, on the surface, the operational plan drawn up by Bortnowski still had a certain degree of feasibility. When the northern front could no longer be saved, concentrating superior forces for a decisive battle on the southern front was practically a miracle cure that could bring the Polish war situation back from the dead. If successful, they could at least withdraw the Carpathian Army to stabilize the northern region and save Warsaw and other major northern cities.

However, there is no perfect operational plan in this world. This plan also had various drawbacks. The two main problems were the defense of Warsaw and the achievement of the southern campaign objectives. If Warsaw were to be captured by the Germans first, then the Polish army in the south would inevitably collapse. Or, if the Polish army fighting in the south could not inflict heavy damage on the German army, the Polish campaign could also be declared over ahead of schedule.

Therefore, Bortnowski clearly knew that the southern decisive battle that this plan would ultimately trigger could be said to be the fateful battle between Poland and Germany. The fates of both nations were tied to the outcome of this battle.

The Polish troops who received the order did not rest. After collecting some ammunition, these units began to head south in batches, hoping to rendezvous with the Łódź Army in central Poland. Thus, the entire Pomeranian Army became even weaker.

Of course, the Łódź Army also brought out the best they could muster. Approximately 110 French FT-17 tanks (most of these were domestically produced Polish copies, with slightly better performance than the original foreign models after improvements) began to deploy southward, preparing to challenge the German 1st Panzer Corps commanded by Guderian.

And just as the Polish army was preparing to make a final, desperate stand, most of Poland’s leaders were packing their bags, preparing to flee to Britain. The nominal commander-in-chief of the Polish armed forces, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły, without informing his government or his army, fled to Romania with a stash of cash.