The site of an Abwehr incursion immediately prior to the
outbreak of World War II, the Jablonka Pass is a key strategic point in the
Carpathian Mountains between Poland and Czechoslovakia. On 26 August 1939, not
having received word of the delay of the Polish invasion, an advance 70-man
unit of the Abwehr under the command of Albrecht Herzner attacked a critical
rail station and tunnel and captured some 800 Polish soldiers. A German combat
division was then prepared to advance from its camp in the High Tatra. This
untimely incursion, however, compromised the effect of Operation Tannenberg-the
plan of the Sicherheitsdienst to paint Poland as the instigator of hostilities.
Once Hitler was certain that an agreement with Stalin was
possible, he established the final timetable for the attack on Poland. On
August 12, 1939, Canaris put all his espionage units on full alert. Two days
later, Hitler met with his Wehrmacht chiefs in his Berghof mountain retreat
outside Munich. The following day, Canaris ordered his commando and sabotage
units to move into position in Poland. On August 19, two trucks from Abwehr II
delivered uniforms to the SD for the 364 Abwehr and SS operatives who were to
take part in the phony assaults just inside Poland. Three days later, Hitler
met again with a larger body of Wehrmacht commanders, including Canaris. Also
in attendance was Hermann Göring, who was about to be named head of the
Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich (Ministerrat für die
Reichsverteidigung) and Hitler’s official successor, and Foreign Minister
Joachim von Ribbentrop. On Hitler’s instructions, all his top officers wore
civilian clothing. At the end of the meeting, which, as usual, the Führer
dominated, he told his military leaders that he expected the attack on Poland
to begin in four days. His parting words: “I have done my duty. Now do
yours.”
At 4:05 P. M. on August 25, the Wehrmacht High Command under
General Wilhelm Keitel issued the order to invade Poland. Canaris immediately
sent his combat and sabotage teams into action. Two and a half hours later,
though, Keitel ordered his units to stand down at 8:30 P. M. because of new
political developments. Great Britain, which Hitler had hoped to isolate
through an alliance offer, instead signed a mutual assistance treaty with
Poland that day. Benito Mussolini, Hitler’s Pact of Steel ally, now informed
the Führer that Italy was militarily unprepared to join in a war that would
probably include Britain and France.
Hitler had never intended to halt his invasion of Poland;
instead, he delayed his assault for a few days to convince the British to
abandon their guarantees to Poland and pressure Mussolini to reconsider his
position about joining Hitler in war. By August 28, Hitler had decided to
invade Poland on September 1.
War’s First Battle
The war in Europe began with the German invasion of Poland
on September 1, 1939. True? Not entirely. The first “battle” of World War II
was fought—in Poland, to be sure—six days earlier. Moreover, the ultimate
commander of the German combat team that fought the little-known Battle of
Mosty in Polish Silesia on August 26, 1939, was a displaced admiral of the
German navy, one Wilhelm Franz Canaris.
Canaris was chief of Nazi Germany’s Abwehr, or military
secret service. With the attack on Poland originally scheduled for 4:15 A.M.,
August 26, a Saturday, the admiral’s Abwehr was supposed to send sixteen
Kampfgruppen (combat teams) into Poland twelve hours ahead of the German armies
for a series of raids on Polish communication and transportation facilities,
such as telephone lines or bridges. In other cases, the special K-teams were to
seize and hold certain facilities intact for their own Wehrmacht’s use.
Late on August 25, the teams were assembled and ready at
their jump-off points—Canaris and his staff had done their homework and
followed their orders explicitly. But an agitated aide from the chief of
staff’s office called to report that Hitler had postponed the invasion because
of political developments. “You must do everything humanly possible to halt
your combat teams,” said the aide.
Fifteen of the K-teams were halted in time, but one, headed
by Lieutenant Albrecht Herzner, already, irrevocably, was on its way. Herzner,
striking out from a German base at Zilina in Slovakia, had been ordered to
seize the railroad station at Mosty and secure the Jablunkov Pass in the
Beskids. The rail line here ran from Slovakia, past Mosty, and on deeper into
Polish Silesia. Following his original orders, Herzner positioned his team and
gave the signal to attack. Opening fire at 1 A.M. on August 26, his K-group
overwhelmed the Poles guarding Mosty, capturing the rail station and securing
the pass as planned.
Leutnant Hans-Albrecht Herzner
Oberst Edwin Lahousen frantically informed Admiral Canaris
that his agents overseeing the attack on the Jablunkov Pass railway tunnel had
lost contact with the sabotage team under Leutnant Hans-Albrecht Herzner. The
fear now was that Herzner’s squad would provoke the very war that the Führer
had just called off. Desperate Abwehr II radio operators in Germany and
northern Slovakia did everything possible to contact the missing unit. Oskar
Schindler’s Commando VIII unit was the main physical link to Herzner’s squad.
On the morning of August 26, Oskar’s team informed Abwehr headquarters that it
had heard reports of heavy rifle fire near the Jablunkov Pass and concluded
that it was probably Leutnant Herzner’s unit.
Hours later, Canaris received more information about
Leutnant Herzner’s activities. At 3:55 A. M. on August 26, Herzner’s unit was
sent to the Eighth Army, which was part of Army Group South; this was the first
official dispatch of World War II. It reported that it had taken nearby Mosty u
Jablunkova station but had failed to take the Jablunkov tunnel Herzner’s squad
then captured a locomotive and tried to enter the tunnel, but the Poles
repelled this effort as well. The Abwehr team, which was now trapped behind
Polish lines, was ordered to fight its way to the Slovak border. It met stiff
resistance from Polish police forces, who now tried to block the German team’s
way out of Poland. By early afternoon, Herzner’s unit remained under heavy
Polish fire as it tried to move across the Slovak border in the Rakova-Madca
region. Just before it entered Slovak territory, General Keitel ordered Herzner
to remain in Poland.
The Germans then settled down to await the expected arrival
of an entire invading division. When no division appeared after a time, the
young German commander approached the Polish colonel he and the K-team had
taken prisoner. What’s going on, Herzner asked, weren’t the two countries at
war? “I told you they aren’t,” the Polish officer replied. He suggested that
Herzner call his home base on the telephone in the station house and find out
the facts. Herzner did—and was told to return to Zilina immediately. The war
had not started after all!
It was a ludicrous situation, but no joke. In the war that
did start six days later, Herzner was among the millions of casualties. So was
Poland, which collapsed in just twenty-seven days of assault by the new German
blitzkrieg.
On the afternoon of August 31, 1939, the special Abwehr, SS,
and SD units that were to initiate the mock attacks were given the code words
Grossmutter gestorben (Grandmother is dead). This was the signal for their
final moves into Poland. A stunned Admiral Canaris, who received his orders for
the initial assaults at 5:30 P. M, broke down and cried. For Canaris, war meant
the end of Germany. Two and a half hours later, Germans dressed in Polish
uniforms fired shots across the Polish border and left the dead prisoners as
“evidence” of Polish aggression. Another group under
SS-Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks attacked and captured the radio station at
Gleiwitz. The phony “Polish” occupiers then announced, in Polish, an
attack on Germany. Hitler now had his justification for war.
The following day, the Völkischer Beobachter informed the German people that Polish rebels had moved into German territory and Adolf Hitler told the Reichstag that the Reich would now respond to fourteen “border incidents” of the previous night. The reality was quite different. Hitler had signed the final directive for the attack on Poland at noon on August 31. Seventeen hours later, five German armies moved into Poland, preceded by several Abwehr commando squads. Over the next few days, Hitler rejected the demands of Britain and France to withdraw as a prelude to negotiations. On September 3, London and Paris declared war on the Third Reich. By the time Soviet forces, after considerable German prodding, began to occupy their portion of eastern Poland, the Wehrmacht had almost completed its conquest of Poland and the destruction of Poland’s once proud military forces. Though some Polish units were able to escape into neutral territory, the Germans were able to defeat those that remained in Poland by October 6, 1939.
