Resistance in Poland
In response to the brutality of the Nazi conquest and occupation of Poland in 1938, an extensive and highly effective Polish underground network planned and carried out attacks that just missed their target—Adolf Hitler—in 1939 and 1941-3.
September 1939
A fake Polish radio news broadcast at 8:00 pm on August 1, 1939, was the excuse that propelled massive numbers of infantry across the German-Polish border and triggered rapid gunfire from the deck of the battleship Schleswig-Holstein on the port city of Westerplatte near Danzig early the next morning.
German forces quickly overran major cities, leading to the capitulation of Warsaw less than a month later. In intervening days, the SS Death’s Head Division made the Führer’s judgment of Poles clear—“primitive, stupid, and amorphous.” (Roger Moorhouse: Killing Hitler). Death’s Head killed 800 people in one town, including Boy Scouts between the ages of 12 and 16, a parish priest, and a man too ill to stand upright on his own while he was gunned down. (Killing Hitler)
After the Soviet Union invaded Eastern Poland on September 17, the government of Poland fled initially to Romania and later to France and the UK and operated in exile. An active Resistance nevertheless remained. (The Soviet Union occupied East Poland until the Third Reich declared war in 1941 and Nazi Germany overtook the entire country.)
.Polish Resistance
Underground Resistance groups sprouted from Polish political parties that formed paramilitary units as well as the military. As many as 40 groups operated in Warsaw from September through the end of 1939, 140 by the end of the following year.
Służba Zwycięstwu Polski (Service for Poland’s Victory), established on September 27 under the direction of General Michal Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz, was the core of Armia Krajowa or AK (the Polish Home Army), which took shape in 1942(https://www.historyhit.com/polands-underground-state-1939-90/).
Polish underground groups were highly organized and disciplined, marshalling the work of nearly 200,000 operatives across the country. In addition to maintaining an underground press, members of the Resistance distributed anti-Nazi propaganda and prominently displayed the symbol of the movement—PW for Polska Walcząca or Fighting Poland.
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The Resistance movement also managed informants and couriers. Cichociemni or Polish commandos were trained in the UK and transferred to cities and towns in Poland to guide local Resistance groups and lead intelligence gathering and sabotage. Operatives later provided British intelligence with replicas of the Enigma encryption machine, the location of a German research facility, and a V-2 rocket that had not detonated on impact in Eastern Poland (https://warsawinstitute.org/phenomenon-polish-underground-state/).
Resistance groups sabotaged railways, supply food chains, weapons manufacturing, and fuel dumps, successfully disrupting all rail lines in and around Warsaw for two days in 1942 (Killing Hitler). Estimates indicate that more than 700 trains were blown up and 400 were set on fire between 1941 and 1944, accounting for the destruction of 14,000 train cars and the collapse of 38 bridges. (https://warsawinstitute.org/phenomenon-polish-underground-state/)
Beginning in 1943 Kedyw, the Directorate of Diversion, section of the underground focused on the elimination of traitors through intimidation, observation, underground trials, and sentences of death, and targeted German functionaries for assassination. In 1943 Kedyw members killed one German policeman a day. A year later, they were killing ten policemen a day. In the first six months of 1944, 750 members of the Gestapo were assassinated, and 1000 members of the occupying force were killed or injured each month. (Killing Hitler)
Attempts on Adolf Hitler’s Life
The first of several attacks on Adolf Hitler himself occurred in the early days of Occupation. As the Polish military retreated from Germany’s overpowering numbers, it still managed to stop a convoy carrying Hitler to observe the frontlines. The Polish air force dropped bombs only 3 kilometers away from Hitler’s location near the Vistula River on September 4, and a Polish sniper shot the driver of a German supply lorry, causing the truck to crash into the Hitler convoy near the town of Koronowo. (Killing Hitler)
Former Polish general and leader of the nascent Polish underground, Michal Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, and Maj. Franciszek Niepokólczycki planted explosives at the intersection of two streets on the victory parade route that celebrated the German 8th Army in defeated Warsaw on October 5. One load of 250 kg of TNT was placed near a bank on the western corner of Nowy Świat, the other in a building on the western corner of Aleje Jerozolimskie. Cables ran from the loads to the basement of a building in the area, and men were in position to detonate the explosives. (Killing Hitler, John Grehan: The Hitler Assassination Attempts)
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After reviewing the lines of marching troops with his generals for more than two hours, Hitler entered his vehicle and made a tour of the city, moving slowly among throngs of soldiers and passing—safely--over the intersection where the explosives were buried.
Reasons why? Speculation abounds: Niepokólczycki could not reach the site to order detonation because streets had been closed. The officer in charge at the scene did not confirm Hitler was actually in the automobile until it had passed him by. Wiring leading to the explosives was faulty. With 12 high-ranking Polish government officials held hostage in the basement of City Hall, the risk was too great. (Killing Hitler, The Hitler Assassination Attempts)
Train Targets
Perhaps because of the Polish underground’s history of successful disruptions of railways and transportation, assassination attempts involved Hitler’s train travels in 1941, -42 and -43.
This is not to say that train travel precautions were at all lax. So-called Special train cars were built expressly for Hitler’s use in 1937, -38, and -39 and were made entirely of welded steel. There were two versions of the Führersonderzug (Führer Special Train). The train used during times of peace or in peaceful settings had sleeping cars, a dining compartment, Pullman coach, personnel and press cars. The train used during times of conflict (known as Führerhauptquartier—Fuhrer’s Headquarters—and nicknamed Amerika) had an armored anti-aircraft car manned by a 26-member crew, a car for commandos, and conference car with teletype and communications center with a short-wave transmitter. (Peter Hoffman: Hitler’s Personal Security)
Travel plans were kept secret until a few hours before departure, and advance units were established along the route to close crossing barriers and guard track lines. Onboard railway technicians checked for defects on rail lines as well as the train cars; train stations, platforms on both sides of the tracks, under- and overpasses were heavily guarded. Other trains were sidelined or their departures delayed until the Special train had left the upcoming station, freights or maintenance trains could not run on parallel tracks, and a dummy train typically preceded the Special train that actually transported Hitler. (Hitler’s Personal Security)
Assassination Attempts
Detachments of the Polish Home Army, AK, placed explosives on railroad tracks in West Prussia 20 to 30 minutes before any fast train was scheduled to pass by. The explosives were set to be detonated by a transmitter approximately 400 meters away. The train carrying Hitler did not arrive at the scheduled place and time in the autumn of 1941. It made an unscheduled stop at a nearby station and sat for 20 minutes while Hitler addressed Danish volunteers en route to the Eastern Front. The train that went ahead of the Führersonderzug did crash as a result of the detonations, and 430 of the German passengers were killed. (The Hitler Assassination Attempts)
On June 8, 1942, two AK teams learned that Hitler would be traveling across Poland to Berlin to attend the funeral of the head of Nazi-Occupied Czechoslovakia who had been killed by Czech partisans. Under the code name Wiener Blut (Viennese Blood), Lt. Jan Szalewski directed one of the teams to remove railroad tracks between Tczew and Chojnice and the other to secure the wooded area nearby.
After the apparent dummy train passed by, the team removed the tracks and waited with their compatriots in the woods. When the train they assumed to be Führersonderzug derailed and ran down an embankment, the teams opened fire and killed 200 German soldiers as they fell from the train cars. Hitler was not among them. (Killing Hitler, The Hitler Assassination Attempts)
The deputy commander of the Zagra Lin arm of AK, Bernard Drzyzga, learned two days ahead of time that Hitler’s train would be passing through Bydgoszcz in May, 1943. Acting on his own because of the short time frame, he planted two explosive devices along a bend in the tracks and connected them by electric wire to a detonator. He waited along the tracks at the day and time the Führersonderzug was expected to arrive. The only train to pass by was a freight. (The Hitler Assassination Attempts)
Sources:
https://www.historyhit.com/polands-underground-state-1939-90/
https://warsawinstitute.org/phenomenon-polish-underground-state/
Grehan, John: The Hitler Assassination Attempts, Frontline Books, 2022.
Moorhouse, Roger: Killing Hitler, Bantam Books, 2006
Hoffman, Peter: Hitler’s Personal Security, Da Capo Press, 2000