On the evening of August 31, 1939, members of the SS seized the German radio station in Gliwice, Upper Silesia (now Gliwice, Poland) and broadcast a message in Polish calling for armed action against Nazi Germany. The purpose is to cultivate the impression that Polish soldiers captured the German transmitter. The staged attack was part of a series of similar challenges along the border. Adolf Hitler, who dreamed of new “living space” for the Germans in the East, wanted an excuse to attack the neighboring country.

Less than 24 hours later, on the morning of September 1, the Wehrmacht invades Poland, without declaring war. On the same day, Hitler in his speech to the parliament in Berlin, which is broadcast on the radio, informs that since dawn the German army has been “returning fire”. At the same time, the Reich Ministry of Propaganda forbids the press from using the term “war” allowing only the word “counterattack” used by Hitler in his speech to the Reichstag. The staged attack ultimately leads to World War II. Nazi Germany appears as the victim, when in fact it is the perpetrator.

Germany and the Soviet Union divided the Polish territories

The staged attack on the Gleiwitz radio station served three purposes, writes DW Matthias Oppermann, head of the modern history department of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation close to the German Christian Democrats: “First, the German population, which did not want to get involved in war , had to be convinced that the Poland caused the war, which was therefore inevitable. Second, third countries, notably Great Britain and France, also had to be persuaded by the Nazi narrative. And thirdly, Hitler wanted a propaganda occasion, which by no means had to be credible, since, as we know, history is written by the victors.”

France and Britain, however, were not convinced by the Nazi version, so two days after the invasion they declared war on Germany, without sending military aid to Poland. On September 17the Soviet Red Army invades eastern Poland. Shortly before the war, Hitler and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had agreed in the so-called Hitler-Stalin Pact not to attack each other and to divide Polish lands between them.

A month after the invasion of Nazi Germany, Poland capitulates and the Nazis celebrate the “tactics of Blitzkrieg”, lightning war. The German invasion and occupation claimed the lives of more than five million Polish citizens, the majority of whom were civilians. Jews and many other people from all over Europe were murdered in the concentration camps set up by the Nazis. About half of the six million Jews exterminated were Polish citizens. The German attack and occupation continues to burden German-Polish relations to this day.

Only decisive reaction can stop a dictator

Further that the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust continue to influence the foreign and defense policy of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is another reason why military aid to Ukraine after the Russian invasion in 2022 is the subject of such intense public debate. Many Germans are horrified at the idea that once again German tanks will enter foreign soil.

How difficult it is today for Germany to formulate a policy, precisely because of its historical responsibility, can also be seen from the handling of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, which connected Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea. Historian Matthias Oppermann: “We must not forget that the Hitler-Stalin Pact was a condition for Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland. I therefore consider it politically, morally and psychologically imperative that Germany not distinguish between its own security interests and those of Poland. If Warsaw is warning Russia, then it knows well why. This is another reason why it was a fatal mistake of German foreign policy to insist on the Nord Stream 2 project.”

Historical experience can be a decisive point of orientation for contemporary politics. “The most important lesson is that Western democracies should not believe that they can deal with a tyrant, at the head of a regime that wants war,” explains Matthias Oppermann from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation: “You cannot achieve this goal with political concessions, territorial or economic. The only thing that works is deterrence without regressions and the readiness to use military means in extreme cases.”

Editor: Stefanos Georgakopoulos