Abstract
On 1 September 1939, the German air force attacked Poland destroying most of the Polish aeroplanes on the ground and bombing road and railway communications. Dive-bombers hunted for columns of marching men, while at the same time fleeing civilians were strafed with machine-gun fire. On land there was a Blitzkrieg, a lightening war, as German mechanized units with light tanks and motorized artillery advanced rapidly; they were quickly followed by heavy tanks and artillery which completed the military occupation of the area, and then the same pattern of advance was repeated. Cities such as Warsaw were relentlessly pounded by artillery without regard to the number of civilian casualties inflicted. Around Poznan in western Poland 19 divisions of the Polish army were trapped and in the ensuing battle 170,000 Polish soldiers were taken prisoner.1
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Notes
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© 2008 John Cooper
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Cooper, J. (2008). Escape from Poland. In: Raphael Lemkin and the Struggle for the Genocide Convention. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230582736_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230582736_3
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