Military
September Campaign
Poland’s defensive war of 1939 against Germany, aided by Slovakia, and from 17 September also against the Soviet Union. It lasted from 1 September to 6 October, when the last large unit surrendered at Kock.
On 1 September 1939 the Wehrmacht struck Poland from East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, Moravia and Slovakia. Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September but launched no offensive in the West. The Polish Army, outnumbered, outgunned and not fully mobilised, lost the frontier battles and fought on in encirclements, on the Bzura, in Warsaw and Modlin, around Lwów and on the Hel Peninsula.
On 17 September the Red Army invaded, carrying out the secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Warsaw surrendered on 28 September, and on 6 October the Independent Operational Group ‘Polesie’ laid down its arms at Kock. The Polish state never signed a capitulation: the president, the government and tens of thousands of soldiers escaped abroad to fight on, and an underground began to form at home.
Sources
In the chronicle
(31)31 articles use this term.
1939
- 1 SeptemberGermany invades Poland
- 1 SeptemberBattle of Mława
- 1 SeptemberInvasion of Poland
- 1 SeptemberBattle of Hel
- 1 SeptemberBattle of Westerplatte
- 3 SeptemberThe sinking of Wicher and Gryf
- 3 SeptemberThe Legion of Czechs and Slovaks
- 9 SeptemberBattle of the Bzura
- 13 SeptemberExplosion aboard the cruiser Pluton
- 17 SeptemberThe Soviet invasion of Poland
- 17 SeptemberSoviet invasion of Poland
- 24 SeptemberDönitz intensifies the U-boat war
- 27 SeptemberThe Phoney War
- 28 SeptemberThe German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty
- 2 OctoberThe surrender of Hel
- 2 OctoberBattle of Kock
- 6 OctoberThe surrender at Kock
- 6 OctoberHitler offers peace
- 9 OctoberThe Case Yellow directive
- 31 OctoberThe Manstein Plan
- 31 DecemberGoebbels’s New Year speech
1940