GERMAN INVASION OF POLAND 1939 WORLD WAR II FILM 78784

This “restricted” United States War Department Film Bulletin provides the viewer with footage of the German Army’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Historians mark the invasion as the start of World War II. “Poland’s 34 million inhabitants, crushed, scattered and enslaved,” the narrator grimly states at mark 00:35. The attack was characterized by extensive bombing to destroy Poland’s air capacity, railroads, communication lines, and munitions dumps. As the narrator points out, it was the world’s introduction to the German word, “blitzkrieg.” Utilizing footage that was captured by German frontline cameramen, the film shows columns of German tanks rolling through fields at mark 01:00 on their way to the invasion. In Danzig (what today is Gdansk, Poland), the film shows the German “liberation” of the city, and at mark 02:30, captures German soldiers setting fire to a building that held the city’s few remaining defenders. “World War II is a reality,” we are told. With little to stand in thei