In mid-August 1939, two Polish underground organizations from East Prussia proposed to the Polish General Staff to carry out a series of acts of sabotage against military and transport facilities throughout the region. Cheeky? Undoubtedly. But what else could one expect from the Poles who advocated secession in favor of Poland of the entire southern part of East Prussia and, of course, the final transfer to Poland of the "free city" of Danzig-Gdansk? More precisely, the entire small region, now called Tricity or Tricity, consisting of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot, where the Polish and Polish-speaking population always predominated.
The actions proposed by the underground were supposed to disrupt the upcoming German aggression and facilitate the offensive of the Polish troops in this region and towards Danzig. By that time, this controversial "free" city had already been completely seized by local Nazis led by Albert Forster. This ardent anti-Semite literally a week before the start of the war - on August 23, was elected the "state leader" ("Staatsführer") of Danzig.
Nevertheless, the Polish General Staff ordered: "Be ready," without answering either "yes" or "no" about this dashing initiative. Already on September 3, when the battles with the Germans were in full swing, the same organizations repeated their proposals. But this time the answer was just as evasive (they say, "all the details of the operations need to be coordinated and clarified").
In the first decade of September 1939, the Poles frankly missed the chance to take advantage of the geographical advantage, which provided a real opportunity for a successful Polish counteroffensive in East Prussia. Moreover, even before the Germans approached from the west, it was possible to reach both nearby Danzig and the Lithuanian port of Memel, occupied by Germany (in March 1939).
Let us remind you that Memel is the former and present Lithuanian Klaipeda. And again it became Lithuanian only thanks to the liberation from the Nazis by the Soviet army in February 1945. Likewise, the Polish leaders missed opportunities due to the fact that Lithuania immediately declared neutrality in the German-Polish war.
As you know, in Berlin, Lithuania was offered to send its troops to the nearby Vilnius region, which had been captured by Poland 20 years earlier. Kaunas, on the other hand, strictly observed the declared neutrality, providing Poland with a relatively calm rear. The rear from the Ukrainian side was also provided for two and a half weeks, until Moscow decided on the well-known "Liberation campaign".
Defensiva - a branch of the Gestapo?
However, on September 5-7, both of those organizations were defeated by the Gestapo. According to Boleslav Bierut, the Polish "defensive", who participated in the development of the projects of the Polish-German "March to the East", was probably involved in this. Moreover, as noted by Bierut, she was stuffed with German agents ahead of time, and the Polish authorities, knowing this, deliberately did not identify her and did not interfere with her.
The first of these organizations bore a distinctly Polish name - "1772". It was created in 1933 and initially advocated the re-establishment of Poland within its borders on the eve of its first partition in 1772 by Russia, Prussia and Austria. However, not in the form of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with an elected king, but in republican status. The second underground office was openly monarchist, and was called "Nasza moc" ("Our state"). It was created a little earlier, in 1930, and for a long time deliberately distanced itself from the official Warsaw.
The formation of the Polish paramilitary underground in East Prussia was initiated by the creator of the new Poland, Józef Pilsudski. He, not without reason, considered it a lever of pressure on Berlin, but for a long time held back the activity of these groups so as not to provoke Germany to invade Poland.
At the same time, if the first was not against the limited autonomy of the then Eastern Polish regions (excluding, allegedly, the "primordially Polish" Vilna region), then the second categorically rejected even propaganda hints at the very possibility of any national autonomy in Poland within the same borders " to sections ". Both underground groups unambiguously demanded a military campaign by Warsaw against Danzig and the expropriation of all of East Prussia.
Nazis and nations
In this regard, a detailed overview of the national composition of this region is of interest: see "East Prussia", statistical review (materials with the stamp of DSP), People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR, 1945:
"The named areas (Danzig, Memel, Masuria, Suwalkia. - Approx. Auth.) Remained Polish until the partitions of Poland in 1772-1793, when they became part of the Prussian Kingdom. From that time to the 20th century, the forced Germanization of the Polish and remnants continued. of the Lithuanian population in East Prussia. However, the Polish and Lithuanian population remained there. There is no exact information about its number, since the German censuses deliberately bypass the question of the nationality of the population and are limited only to questions about the native language and religion."
Further - in more detail:
The Polish population is concentrated:
a) in the north-west of East Prussia - in the regions of Marienwerder, Marienburg, Sturm, Rosenberg and Elbing; it is represented here by the descendants of the Pomors - the Kashubians, whose language is a dialect of the Polish language;
b) in the south - in the Allenstein district, in the Olecko region and partly in Marienwerder, there are Mazurians - Poles who speak mainly the same dialect of Polish as the peasants to the north of Warsaw;
c) in the north of East Prussia - in the region of Ermland (Warmia) there is a Polish population."
This review also noted the presence of the Lithuanian population in the region, despite the Prussian, Kaiser and then Nazi ethnocide:
“Along the lower reaches of the Neman River - in the districts of Tilsit, Ragnit, Niderung and Heidekrug, adjacent to the Klaipeda region, which was captured by Germany in 1939 from Lithuania, a compact Lithuanian population remained. oblasts - about 80 thousand). In rural areas of those areas, Lithuanians make up about 60% of the population, in cities - about 10%."
It is also noteworthy that the East Prussian Poles, incl. Kashubians and Lithuanians, "according to German statistics, are mostly Catholics, but Mazurians are mostly Lutherans."
Meanwhile, even the apparently pro-German authorities of Hungary, under various pretexts, did not allow two German divisions on their railways to the Hungarian-Polish (in the ex-Czechoslovak Transcarpathia) and Slovak-Polish borders in early September (but the puppet neighboring Slovakia was already there without that. " crammed with "Reich troops for operations in southern Poland).
Hungary's unreliability was briefly but clearly stated in the preamble of the Weiss plan (April 1939):
"In destroying Poland's military might and solving the Polish problem, the German side cannot count on Hungary as an unconditional ally."
In a word, the catastrophe of interwar Poland in September 1939 was largely prepared as a result of the pro-German, and in fact anti-Polish, policy of its own authorities. The successors of Józef Pilsudski turned out to be not just bad patriots, but rather national traitors.
In any case, the already mentioned leader of the Danzig wing of the NSDAP Albert Forster, having returned to Danzig on August 10, 1939 after meeting (August 8) with the Fuhrer, said that a new meeting with him "will soon take place in German Danzig." And so it happened …
