Gleiwitz incident

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Gliwice Radio Tower today. It is the highest wooden structure in Europe.

The Gleiwitz incident, sometimes incorrectly referred to as Operation Canned Goods, was a staged attack on 31 August 1939 against the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Germany (since 1945: Gliwice, Poland) on the eve of World War II in Europe.

This provocation was the best known of several actions in Operation Himmler, a Nazi Germany SS project to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany, which would be used to justify the subsequent invasion of Poland.

Contents

[edit] Events at Gleiwitz

Much of what is known about the Gleiwitz incident comes from the sworn affidavit of Alfred Naujocks at the Nuremberg Trials. In his testimony, he states that he organized the incident under orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, the chief of the Gestapo.[1]

On the night of August 31, 1939 a small group of German operatives, dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks[2] seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish (sources vary on the content on the message). The Germans' goal was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of anti-German Polish saboteurs.[3][2]

In order to make the attack seem more convincing, the Germans brought in Franciszek Honiok, a German Silesian known for sympathizing with the Poles, who had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo. Honiok was dressed to look like a saboteur; then killed by lethal injection, given gunshot wounds, and left dead at the scene, so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was subsequently presented as proof of the attack to the police and press.[4]

In addition to Honiok, several other convicts from the Dachau concentration camp[2] were kept available for this purpose.[3] The Germans referred to them by the code phrase "Konserve" ("canned goods"). For this reason some sources incorrectly refer to the incident as "Operation Canned Goods."[5]

[edit] Context

The Gleiwitz incident was only a part of a larger operation, carried out by Abwehr and SS forces.[3] At the same time as the Gleiwitz attack there were other incidents orchestrated by Germany along the Polish-German border, such as house torching in the Polish Corridor and spurious propaganda output. The entire project, dubbed Operation Himmler and comprising 21 incidents in all,[6] was intended to give the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany.[5]

For months prior to the 1939 invasion German newspapers and politicians like Adolf Hitler accused Polish authorities of organizing or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland.[6][7]

On the day following the Gleiwitz attack, 1 September 1939, Germany launched the Fall Weiss operation — the invasion of Poland — initiating World War II in Europe. On the same day, in a speech in the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler cited the 21 border incidents, with three of them called very serious, as justification for Germany's "defensive" action against Poland.[6] Just a few days earlier, on 22 August, he told his generals "I shall give a propaganda reason for starting the war; whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth."[3][5]

[edit] International reactions

American correspondents were summoned to the scene next day,[3] but no neutral parties were allowed to investigate the incident in detail and the international public was skeptical of the German version of the incident.[8] A few days after the Invasion of Poland, the international public and press realized the huge scale of the German "defensive action" in the days immediately after the Gleiwitz incident meant that the operation had to be planned months in advance.[citation needed]

[edit] Treatment in popular culture

  • Der Fall Gleiwitz, direction: Gerhard Klein (1961), DEFA studios (The Gleiwitz Case; English subtitles), an East German film that reconstructs the events, pronounced in West Germany the best DEFA film.
  • Operacja Himmler - Polart (Polish)
  • Hitler's SS: A Portrait In Evil, direction: Jim Goddard (1985); An American (English language) film which shows part of the Gleiwitz Incident.
  • Die Blechtrommel briefly includes the incident as a part of the film's plot.
  • Codename Panzers is a video game, not a film. It stirred up controversy in Poland because uninformed players interpreted authentic German propaganda about the incident reproduced in the game as a statement of historical truth.

[edit] References

  1. ^ 20 Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Volume 4; Thursday, 20 December 1945. The Avalon Project. Retrieved on 4 August, 2007.
  2. ^ a b c Christopher J. Ailsby, The Third Reich Day by Day, Zenith Imprint, 2001, ISBN 0760311676, Google Print, p.112
  3. ^ a b c d e James J. Wirtz, Roy Godson, Strategic Denial and Deception: The Twenty-First Century Challenge, Transaction Publishers, 2002, ISBN 0765808986, Google Print, p.100
  4. ^ Museum in Gliwice: WHAT HAPPENED HERE?
  5. ^ a b c Bradley Lightbody, The Second World War: Ambitions to Nemesis, Routledge, 2004, ISBN 0415224055, Google Print, p.39
  6. ^ a b c Address by Adolf Hitler - September 1, 1939; retrieved from the archives of the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School.
  7. ^ [1]German newspaper editor outlining the claims of Polish atrocities against minorities
  8. ^ Steven J. Zaloga, The Poland 1939: The Birth of Blitzkrieg, Google Print, p.39, Osprey Publishing, 2002, ISBN 1841764086

[edit] Further reading

  • John Toland, Adolf Hitler : The Definitive Biography, ISBN 0-385-42053-6.
  • "The Gleiwitz Incident", After the Battle Magazine Number 142 (March 2009)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Coordinates: 50°18′48″N 18°41′21″E / 50.313370°N 18.689037°E / 50.313370; 18.689037

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