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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Campaign Study,
By
This review is from: The German campaign in Poland (1939)
The Hardcover book I read was the Original Department of the Army Pamphlet No. 20-255 published 18 April 1956. This book is of great value to anyone who is interested in military affairs of this era.The German attack on Poland precipitated the conflict of 1939-1945, World War II. This book starts off explaining the geo-political situation that existed from the Versailles Treaty and the Rise of Hitler. And how he bluffed his way into the perfect position for an invasion of Poland. It's main focus is to show us the German military operations against Poland, based on source material from captured records, monographs prepared by a number of former German general officers and such Polish accounts as were available. This book has three main parts: The Background of the Conflict, Poland's Position and Germany's Preperations for the Attack, and Operations in Poland. There are many charts, maps and illustrations contained within the book to reference. This is a must read book. I plan to get a hold of the other books in the German Report Series the Department of the Army published.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Incomplete, and Over-Reliant on German Sources,
By
This review is from: The German campaign in Poland (1939)
This US Army study of the September-October 1939 German conquest of Poland, first published in 1956, purports to rely on both German and Polish sources. It becomes clear to the informed reader, however, that it is excessively reliant on German sources.Kennedy lays the geopolitical groundwork for the years just prior to the start of WWII. He notes that, shortly before his death, Pilsudski warned the Poles that German attitudes towards Danzig (Gdansk) were not an end in itself. They were nothing less than a barometer of German attitudes towards the Polish state as a whole. Some modern authors have tried to make Poland into a co-aggressor with Germany against Czechoslovakia (1938) because of the Polish seizure of Cieszyn (Teschen), and even to equate Polish conduct with the following years' German-Soviet partition of Poland. Against such nonsense, Kennedy makes it clear that Teschen was just a tiny border area (200 square miles) that had a mixed Polish-Czech population. Kennedy then discusses the German blitzkrieg. He mentions the fact that Polish forces were deployed all over Poland, which made it easy for the fast-moving German columns to cut them off from each other and then to encircle and subdue them one-by-one. But he fails to discuss the reasons for this deployment: The Polish authorities were unsure whether Germany would attack all of Poland, or only Danzig (Gdansk), the Corridor, and former west-Prussian areas. For this reason, they could not afford to let the latter regions go unguarded, even though this would have made better strategic sense for the all-out invasion of Poland that Germany actually launched. Kennedy elaborates on German strategic bombing of Polish military targets, but fails to discuss deliberate German aerial attacks on cultural shrines and other civilian areas that had no military significance. One should also note the systematic strafing of columns of Polish civilian refugees by the Luftwaffe. With reference to "Bloody Sunday", Kennedy mentions the fact that some German civilians in Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) engaged in fifth-column activities, and for this were executed by the Polish authorities. But Kennedy fails to inform the reader of the ghastly and disproportionate German reprisal. Upon seizing Bydgoszcz, the German forces murdered over 2,000 innocent Polish civilians in cold blood. To his credit, Kennedy refrains from mentioning the myth of Polish cavalry charging German tanks. But, unfortunately, he repeats the myth of the Polish air force being largely destroyed on the ground in the first day of the German campaign. In actuality, most Polish airplanes had been relocated and camouflaged in secret airfields just before the German attack on Poland against this very possibility. A few tens of Polish airplanes were still able to get airborne and engage their German counterparts as late as two weeks into the German invasion, at which time the Soviet Union stabbed Poland in the back. Kennedy mentions certain Polish successes, such as the bombings of East Prussia and parts of Silesia, and locally-effective Polish night attacks against German forces. However, he devotes almost no attention to the briefly-successful Polish counteroffensive at the Bzura River.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Campaign Study,
By It's main focus is to show us the German military operations against Poland, based on source material from captured records, monographs prepared by a number of former German general officers and such Polish accounts as were available. This book has three main parts: The Background of the Conflict, Poland's Position and Germany's Preperations for the Attack, and Operations in Poland. There are many charts, maps and illustrations contained within the book to reference. This is a must read book. I plan to get a hold of the other books in the German Report Series the Department of the Army published.
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