31 Aug 1939 - The Gleiwitz Incident - to spark WWII

[TonyGosling]

Events at Gleiwitz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident


Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0IcA7A0y78

Much of what is known about the Gleiwitz incident comes from the sworn affidavit of Alfred Naujocks at the Nuremberg Trials. According to his testimony, the incident was organized by Naujocks under orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, the chief of the Gestapo.[1]

On the night of August 31, 1939 a small group of German operatives, dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks[2] seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish (sources vary on the content on the message). The Germans' goal was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of anti-German Polish saboteurs.[3][2]

In order to make the attack seem more convincing, the Germans brought in Franciszek Honiok, a German Silesian known for sympathizing with the Poles, who had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo. Honiok was dressed to look like a saboteur; then killed by lethal injection, given gunshot wounds, and left dead at the scene, so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was subsequently presented as proof of the attack to the police and press.[4]

In addition to Honiok, several other convicts from the Dachau concentration camp[2] were kept available for this purpose.[3] The Germans referred to them by the code phrase "Konserve" ("canned goods"). For this reason some sources incorrectly refer to the incident as "Operation Canned Goods."[5]

Context

The Gleiwitz incident was only a part of a larger operation, carried out by Abwehr and SS forces.[3] At the same time as the Gleiwitz attack there were other incidents orchestrated by Germany along the Polish-German border, such as house torching in the Polish Corridor and spurious propaganda output. The entire project, dubbed Operation Himmler and comprising 21 incidents in all,[6] was intended to give the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany.[5]

For months prior to the 1939 invasion German newspapers and politicians like Adolf Hitler accused Polish authorities of organizing or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland.[6][7]

On the day following the Gleiwitz attack, 1 September 1939, Germany launched the Fall Weiss operation — the invasion of Poland — initiating World War II in Europe. On the same day, in a speech in the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler cited the 21 border incidents, with three of them called very serious, as justification for Germany's "defensive" action against Poland.[6] Just a few days earlier, on 22 August, he told his generals "I shall give a propaganda reason for starting the war; whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth."[3][5]

International reactions

American correspondents were summoned to the scene next day,[3] but no neutral parties were allowed to investigate the incident in detail and the international public was sceptical of the German version of the incident.[8] A few days after the Invasion of Poland, the international public and press realized the huge scale of the German "defensive action" in the days immediately after the Gleiwitz incident meant that the operation had to be planned months in advance.[citation needed]

[Alexander]

I don't know the truth of what went on that night but apparently the Naujocks Nuremberg testimony was not accepted by the court. This is according to David Hoggan's book A Forced War.

So all we have really is the Naujocks Nuremberg affitdavit to support this story. Naujocks did not appear in person on the stand and who knows what kind of treatment he may have received before signing his affitdavit to the Court.

Accepting Wikipedia's version of history might not be the best idea. I assume they don't say that Atta and his cohorts were the equivalent of the drugged and later shot, German Silesian Polish sympathizer Honiok

btw I had believed that the Germans had dressed-up the Honioks as Polish soldiers. This is contradicted in the Naujocks affitdavit where he states that Honiok(he doesn't name him as such) was in "civilian clothes".

[TonyGosling]

You better dig this Naujocks item up and present it here.

All the contemporary postwar accounts I've come across agree on this incident being a false flag.

I don't think you're helping anyone here except the Nazis by flippantly casting shadows without hard evidence to overturn the historical record.

[Alexander]

You'll find a link to the Naujocks affidavit in the Wikipedia link you posted in your first post.

[TonyGosling]

I know.


That link doesn't prove anything as 1) it is a major public exposee and 2) not the only evidence.
Now expand if you will on why you personally think it didn't happen and post war writers as well as the historians around the universities of the world have got it wrong.
Any more limp Nazi apologism here and you'll be banned.

[Disco_Destroyer]

I'm glad someone else pulled this up
I had an interesting chat to a Polish guy about my age where I used to work and he didnt know for sure the events of the day but suspected what is told is untrue. What he did say however that they are now teaching in Polish Schools that they fired the 1st shots, which I thought very interesting but altogether no longer suprising

[Disco_Destroyer]

[TonyGosling]

as far as I'm concerned this IS Nazi apologism.

I'm not saying don't discuss it simply get the sort of evidence that fits the subject matter.
ie. weighty and very clear

this is idle and unreferenced speculation

[Disco_Destroyer]

True but the ban warning was a little ott in my opinion

[TonyGosling]

Do you mean it is more important to raise that than to discuss this incident?

Please don't answer

This thread and new section is not for petty gripes but for mature discussion on the historical record.

[Alexander]

"Mature discussion on the historical record". What utter nonsense, as most of the gush you come out with is. You don't want a free debate on the Holocaust and other World War 2 issues as you have swallowed hook, line and sinker the propaganda force-fed into the people of this country over the last 75 years

First of all you ask me to present this Naujocks affidavit. You say I "better" come up with it. When I tell you your first post has a link to it you say you "know".

Then you threaten me with being banned for "Nazi apologism" and talk of the "historical record" in reverential tones as though you have studied this "record" in great depth and have all the answers(which you don't present of course).

Just as you failed to answer Anthony Lawson's queries into what evidence you had to support your Holocaust beliefs you assure us of the existence of such evidence of the Gleiwitz attack but don't provide it. I've read AJP Taylor's Origins of the Second World War. There is not a single mention of Gleiwitz or Naujocks. War was seen as an inevitablity following the Versaille settlement where large chunks of Germany were carved up and given to other countries such as the newly constituted Poland.

Danzig, the Polish Corridor and the lack of access to East Prussia(as well as the treatment of ethnic Germans living in the new Polish territories) were the real drivers for war. It was an opinion widely believed in Britain that Germany had a very good case and that it was Poland which was being intransigent over the Danzig issue. When Chamberlain(and France)gave Poland the War Guarantee pledging that Britain would come to her aid in the event of a German attack a war in the West became inevitable.

Without that guarantee there would have been no war in the West.

Taylor blamed Poland for the breakout of World War 2 but that does not form part of your cherished "historical record" where out of the blue an "incident" is needed to suddenly galvanize the German people into supporting a war with the World.

Your "historical record" must always be a politically correct one just as your conspiracy theories need to be also. So you cling to the flimsy Naujocks affidavit just as you cling to the crumbling Holocaust myth.

I will be glad to be the latest in the growing list of people banned from this site as I can't thole reading any more of the tripe you present as fact while expecting other people to fall into fawning obeisance to your wisdom.

Goodbye.

[Nambo]

I dont know the truth about the flase flag operation, I had read it in the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reigh.

I dont see the point in it though, as one thing from this topic that I can confirm, My Grandparents where ethnic Germans, they had to flee what had become Poland due to the Ethnic cleansing of Germans.
Untold thousands managaged to flee, those that didnt where butchered, man woman and child.

[wepmob2000]

[Disco_Destroyer]

Like we have been trying to point out, it is a simple fact of life. Only the victors ever get the chance to write the history. If you can go on to prove that the books are all unbiased thats fair play!
If we are to believe all that is written then is it not fair to say all non Romans were Barbaric
Germany seems full of Germanic people, are they all Nazis?
Oh you do try and make it so Black and White

p.s. I dont know what to believe surrounding WW2 but I do know of the immense lies being spun to justify more war in the Middle East as it is happening arond me

[TonyGosling]

Disco I think you made that point now look at the mess this thread is in

Are you proud of yourself weighing in with not a shred of evidence to defend the Nazis?

[Disco_Destroyer]

There isn't much evidence left to defend anyone just as there isn't much evidence to defend Saddam and the Ba'ath party. That is all I'm saying.

[TonyGosling]

Now shall we start again from here?
Anyone who wants to fire some high explosive into this particular bit of false flag historical fact who doesn't bother to deal with the facts so kindly layed before us here by webmob will be deleted and 'marked' as a Nazi apologist.
You've poisoned a potentially ground-breaking discussion just like a certain Rory Winter was wont to do.

[Dogsmilk]

[TonyGosling]

Gleiwitz Case (The)

Directed by Gerhard Klein. Screenplay by Wolfgang Kohlhaase. With Hannjo Hasse, Herwart Grosse, Hilmar Thate.

Considered one of the most modern and experimental films in DEFA’s history, the eccentric Gleiwitz Case, also scripted by Wolfgang Kohlhaase, is a detailed reconstruction of the 1939 surprise attack by a Nazi unit on the radio station at Gleiwitz, a German town on the Polish border. The attack, blamed on Polish forces, served as Hitler’s justification for marching into Poland—thus starting World War II.

http://www.networkdvd.net/product_info.php?cPath=27&products_id=332

[TonyGosling]

German who fired first shot of Second World War claims Hitler lied about time conflict began
26 Aug 2013 00:00 Sunday Mirror
Sailor Hermann Gerdau claims the war got underway 55 minutes earlier that the Fuhrer said it had
The German who fired the first shots of the Second World War has claimed Hitler lied about the time the conflict started.
Sailor Hermann Gerdau, now 100, was a 26-year-old gunner on Nazi battleship Schleswig-Holstein when it targeted a Polish navy base on September 1, 1939.
Speaking for the first time of his role, he said: “Hitler told the world the bombardment began at 5.45am, but that was untrue. It began at 4.50am – I know because I was there.”
Hermann, now in a Hamburg care home, added: “We were so close it was impossible to miss. I was bound up in the euphoria of victory.
“We were all seized by the Nazi regime but I was not enthusiastic about the war in general. Soon there was only horror.”
Schleswig-Holstein – eventually sunk in 1944 – became a training ship and 800 of its crew were transferred to doomed battleship Bismarck in 1941.
Hermann instead went to U-boats and earned the Iron Cross in 1943. But he hated the conflict that killed 60 million.
The widower added: “A whole generation were burned by the Nazis.”
Hermann was captured as a PoW in 1945 and later worked on civilian ships.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/german-who-fired-first-shot-22223 49

[TonyGosling]

Chapter 7 - "I STARTED WORLD WAR II"
http://hitlermystery.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/nazi-underground-empire.ht ml

The two German businessmen met in Madrid last year, at the air-conditioned bar of a downtown hotel. Over iced drinks, they discovered they had quite a lot in common. They were both former National Socialists, both S.S. veterans. The older man, short, bald and asthmatic, had been a colonel in the Waffen S.S. His round face glowed like a polished apple as he recalled the "good old days" in wartime France. His drinking companion was a tall, lean man of about fifty with the saddle-leather complexion of one who has spent much time in the tropical sun. Tiny wrinkles lined the corners of his dark, alert eyes. His nose was long and slightly flat. He wore a lightweight suit of dark blue English worsted, tailored in Cairo. The jacket was carefully cut to conceal the holster slung beneath his left armpit. "What did you do in the war?" the colonel asked after their fifth round. The younger man smiled. "I started it," he replied. In a way, Alfred Naujocks was telling the truth. One of his most important missions for the S.D., Nazi Security Service, was the Polish border incident that set off World War II. This is his account of the incident, as told at the Nuremberg war crimes trials: On or about Aug. 10, 1939, the Chief of Sipo (Security Police) and S.D., Heydrich, personally ordered me to simulate an attack on the radio station near Gleiwitz (Germany), near the Polish border, and to make it appear that the attacking force consisted of Poles. Heydrich said: 'Actual proof of these attacks by the Poles is needed for the foreign press as well as for German propaganda purposes.' I was directed to go to Gleiwitz with five or six S.D. men and wait there until I received a code word from Heydrich indicating that the attack should take place . . . My instructions were to seize the radio station and to hold it long enough to permit a Polish-speaking German, who would be put at my disposal, to broad
65

66

Hitler's Heirs cast a speech in Polish. Heydrich told me that this speech should state that the time had come for conflict between Germans and Poles. Heydrich also told me that he expected an attack on Poland by Germany in a few days. I went to Gleiwitz and waited there 14 days. Between the 25th and 31st of August, I went to see Heinrich Mueller, head of the Gestapo, who was then nearby at Oppeln. In my presence, Mueller discussed with a man named Melhorn plans for another border incident in which it would be made to appear that Polish soldiers were attacking German troops. Mueller stated that he had twelve or thirteen condemned criminals who were to be dressed in Polish uniforms and left dead on the ground at the scene of the incident to show that they had been killed while attacking. For this purpose they were to be given fatal injections by a doctor employed by Heydrich. Then they were also to be given gunshot wounds. After the incident, members of the press and other persons were to be taken to the scene. . . Mueller told me he had an order from Heydrich to make one of those criminals available to me for the action at Gleiwitz. The code name by which he referred to these criminals was 'Canned Goods.' The incident at Gleiwitz in which I participated was carried out on the evening preceding the attack on Poland. As I recall, war broke out on September 1, 1939. At noon on August 31, I received by telephone from Heydrich the code word for the attack which was to take place at 8 o'clock that evening. Heydrich said; In order to carry out this attack, report to Mueller for Canned Goods.' I did this and gave Mueller instructions to deliver the man near the radio station. I received this man and had him laid in the entrance to the station. He was alive, but he was completely unconscious. I tried to open his eyes. I could not recognize by his eyes that he was alive, but only by his breathing. I did not see the gunshot wounds, but a lot of blood was smeared across his face and chest. He was in civilian clothes. We seized the radio station as ordered, broadcast

"I Started World War II" a speech of three to four minutes over an emergency transmitter, fired some pistol shots and left.

67

The fake frontier raid, known to the Nazi high command as "Operation Himmler," provided Hitler with an excuse for attacking Poland and plunging the world into war. Naujocks played his part so well that he was given a leading role in another frontier incident the following year. He commanded a special S.D. unit whose members were disguised as Dutch and Belgian border guards for the Nazi invasion of the West in May, 1940. These and other undercover actions made Naujocks a master of intrigue, deceit, doublecross and mass murder. In other words, he had all the qualities required for leadership in the Third Reich. Tough and intelligent, he had studied engineering at Kiel University, where he joined the Nazi Party and had his nose broken in a battle between Nazis and Communists. He became an S.S. goon in 1931 and was assigned to the S.D. shortly after the counterintelligence service was organized in 1934. After war was declared, he was placed in charge of an S.D. section which forged identity papers, passports and foreign currencies. This office printed bogus bills that the Nazis used to pay off informers, buy war supplies from neutral nations and purchase other badly-needed goods. Naujocks turned out thousands of counterfeit British banknotes and proposed dropping them on England from German bombers to wreck the British economy. His superiors vetoed this scheme, however. Heydrich eventually tired of him and shipped Naujocks off to the Russian front with a Waffen S.S. regiment. He was wounded and returned to Germany to recuperate. Then he was sent to Denmark to supervise the roundup and liquidation of Danish freedom fighters. For every German slain in occupied Denmark, at least ten Danes were executed. Most of the victims were not even members of the resistance movement. Naujocks' last wartime post assignment was in Belgium, where he served as an "economic administrator." One of his duties was the recruitment of workers for Germany's slave labor camps. This job was important, but he much preferred undercover assignments like "Operation Himmler" and the notorious "Venlo Incident" in which he helped kidnap two British intelligence agents.

Hitler's Heirs The Venlo affair was the outgrowth of an attempt to assassinate Hitler. On November 8, 1939, the Fuehrer made his annual speech to the party Old Guard in the Munich beer hall where his 1923 putsch occurred. Minutes after Hitler left the hall, a bomb exploded behind the speakers' platform, killing seven men and wounding 65 others. Nazi leaders immediately blamed the British Secret Service in order to stir up hatred for England and support for Hitler. Within three hours after the blast, Himmler phoned his Secret Service commander, General Schellenberg, in Dusseldorf and ordered him to go to Holland the next day and arrest two British agents with whom he had been in contact. Posing as an anti-Nazi German major, Schellenberg had crossed the border several times for talks with Capt. S. Payne Best and Major R. H. Stevens of the British Military Intelligence. They had agreed to meet again on the afternoon of November 9. Himmler's new orders shocked Scbellenberg, but left him no alternative. He immediately notified Naujocks, who was in charge of a special S.S. detachment assigned to protect Schellenberg. The two men made hasty plans to seize the British agents on the Dutch side of the border and kidnap them to Germany. Around two o'clock the following afternoon, Schellenberg and one of his agents crossed the Dutch border near Venlo. Leaving their car in a parking lot, they entered a cafe about 150 feet inside Holland, near the Dutch customs office. They ordered an apertif and settled down to wait. At 3:20, Best and Stevens drove up in a big Buick with Lieutenant Klop, a Dutch intelligence agent. As the Buick pulled into the parking lot behind the cafe, a Mercedes-Benz sedan loaded with German agents crashed through the border barrier. A volley of pistol shots scattered the Dutch frontier guards. Schellenberg left the cafe and walked toward the Buick. This is Schellenberg's account of what happened next:
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Captain Best was driving the Buick and Lieutenant Coppens [the alias used by Lieutenant Klop] was sitting beside him. Coppens jumped out of the car at once, at the same time drawing out a heavy service revolver which he pointed at me. I, being completely unarmed, jumped to one side and tried to present a less prominent target. At this moment the S.S. car came skidding around the corner into the car park. Coppens, recognizing

"I Started World War II" 69 it as the greater danger, turned and fired several shots into the windshield. I saw the glass shatter and crystalline threads spreading from the bullet holes ... I was certain Coppens must have hit the driver and the S.S. leader [Naujocks] sitting beside him. Yet it seemed like an eternity before anything else happened. Then suddenly I saw the lithe figure of the leader leap from the car. He had also drawn his pistol and a regular duel developed between him and Coppens . . . Both men shot with deliberation, aiming carefully. Then Coppens slowly lowered his gun and sank down on his knees. I heard the leader shouting at me, "Will you get the hell out of this! God knows why you haven't been hit." I turned and ran around the corner of the cafe toward my car. Looking back, I saw Best and Stevens being hauled out of the Buick like bundles of hay. The two British agents and the fatally-wounded Klop were tossed into the S.S. car. The big black Mercedes then roared back across the border before the Dutch guards knew what was happening. Not a shot was fired by the frontier guards. Klop was taken to a Dusseldorf hospital, where he died a few hours later. Best and Stevens were sent to Berlin for interrogation by Gestapo Mueller and Hangman Heydrich. Then they were interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp for the duration of the war. On November 21, Hitler announced that the bomb plot had been solved with the arrests of Best and Stevens "on the Dutch-German frontier" the day after the bombing. Actually the bomb was assembled and planted by a German Communist, George Elser. A Munich carpenter, he had no connection with British Intelligence. While Schellenberg was decorated by Hitler for masterminding the Venlo Incident, it was Naujocks who carried it off and saved Schellenberg's life in the process. Five years later, on October 19, 1944, Naujocks deserted his post in Belgium and surrendered to American authorities. He testified against brother Nazis at Nuremberg and bragged of his own daredevil escapades. Held for trial as a war criminal, he broke out of a heavily-guarded internment camp in 1956 with the help of German guerillas. Then he hitched a ride on the "underground railway." He was never apprehended. Unlike Skorzeny, Rudel and

70 Hitler's Heirs other famous Swastika swashbucklers, he never returned to address Nazi alumni reunions. He remained underground as a traveling trouble-shooter for Die Spinne. Today, Naujocks is believed to be in the Middle East. He has also been reported seen in Tangier, Spain and South America. Presumably, he is a courier for Martin Bormann. Still an undercover agent, the man who started World War II is now working on World War III.

[TonyGosling]

How a False Flag Sparked World War Two: The Gleiwitz Incident Explained
Cassie Pope 31 Aug 2018
https://www.historyhit.com/gleiwitz-incident-explained/

In the days prior to the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Nazis initiated a campaign designed to persuade the international community that Germany was the victim of Polish aggression. Adolf Hitler intended to use this aggression to justify the invasion.

In the German press, reports appeared claiming that German nationals living in Poland had been subjected to torture. But something more eye-catching was needed to convince the world of Poland’s provocation.

In early August, Schutzstaffel (SS) leader Reinhard Heydrich had gathered together a select number of SS officers at a hotel in Gleiwitz. He informed them of a plan to stage a series of border incidents – so called “false flag” operations.

By 31 August, German tanks were massed on the Polish border and the SS – with assistance from the Abwehr (German intelligence) – put its plan into action.


German intentions were becoming increasingly clear in the days before the invasion of Poland. On 29 August, war correspondent Claire Hollingworth wrote in The Daily Telegraph of 10 mobile divisions massed on the border.
This plan included an attack on the customs house at the then German border village of Hochlinden, in which six inmates from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp were dressed up in Polish uniforms and shot. A second similar operation was carried out against the Pitschen forestry lodge. But perhaps the most famous incident took place in Gleiwitz.



The Gleiwitz Incident
Today, Gleiwitz is known as Gliwice and lies within the borders of Poland. But in 1939 it was a German border town.

In 1933, the Gleiwitz Radio Station was identified as an important hub for the dissemination of propaganda and the Germans constructed a new transmission tower and antenna there. The wooden tower, measuring 111 metres, is still standing today.

On the evening of 31 August 1939, a seven-man SS team stormed the transmitter station disguised as Polish insurgents. They pushed past the German staff, seized a microphone, and announced in Polish:

“Attention! This is Gliwice. The broadcasting station is in Polish hands.”

The day before, the SS team had arrested a 43-year-old unmarried German farmer named Franciszek Honiok. To complete their deception at Gleiwitz, the SS officers dressed Honiok in a Polish uniform, murdered him, and left his body at the entrance of the transmitter station.


Germany was not the only country to use deception in World War Two. Find out about the SAS’s diversion tactics during Operation Overlord in the documentary Great SAS Missions: Deception on D-Day on HistoryHit.TV.WATCH NOW
The aftermath
Within hours, German radio stations were reporting on the incident at Gleiwitz. The station had been hijacked by Polish soldiers, they said, with a body left on the steps.

News of the incident spread abroad, with the BBC broadcasting the following:

There have been reports of an attack on a radio station in Gliwice, which is just across the Polish border in Germany.

The German News Agency reports the attack came at about 8pm this evening when the Poles forced their way into the studio and began broadcasting a statement in Polish. Within a quarter of an hour, say reports, the Poles were overpowered by German police who opened fire on them. Several of the Poles were reported killed but the numbers are not yet known.

The following day, 1 September, German forces invaded Poland. World War Two had begun.