Assault on the Gleiwitz transmitter

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The wooden transmission tower in Gleiwitz survived the war unscathed and is still in use today. (2005)

The attack on the Gleiwitz transmitter on August 31, 1939 was one of several actions faked by the SS before the beginning of World War II under the cover name of the Tannenberg company . These incidents served as a propaganda pretext for the attack on Poland at the beginning of the Second World War.

prehistory

In a speech to the commanders-in-chief of the Wehrmacht on August 22, 1939 , Hitler said :

“The conflict will be triggered by appropriate propaganda. The credibility is indifferent, in victory lies the right. "

On 10 August 1939, the head of the'd Security Service of the Reichsfuehrer SS (SD) , Reinhard Heydrich, the SS-Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks ordered an attack on the radio station at Gleiwitz near the Polish pretend border and to make it appear as if were Poland been the attackers. According to Naujocks, Heydrich had said: "Actual evidence of Polish attacks is necessary for the foreign press and for German propaganda."

execution

Alfred Naujocks (1944)

Naujocks had been in the Hotel Haus Oberschlesien in Gleiwitz since mid-August 1939 and was waiting for his assignment. On the afternoon of August 31, 1939 at around 4 p.m. he received a call from Berlin with the code word “Grandmother died”. At around 8 p.m., Naujocks and five or six SS men armed with submachine guns in civilian clothes, depicting Polish irregulars under the “ false flag ” , broke into the station building of the Gleiwitz station . Two police officers at the gate were privy to the action, the porter had left his post. The men overpowered four people in the station's operating room and took them handcuffed to a basement room. The station Gleiwitz did not broadcast its own program, but took over that of the Reich broadcaster Breslau . Therefore, the SS command, in which there was only one telecommunications technician, had to interrupt the feed of the program with some difficulty and gain access to the transmitter via a so-called thunderstorm microphone , which had to be found first. Finally, the station called for an alleged uprising of the Polish minority in German and Polish with the following introductory words : “Attention! Attention! This is Gliwice. The station is in Polish hands […] The hour of freedom has come! ”The broadcast lasted almost four minutes and ended with the call:“ Long live Poland! ”The action lasted only a few minutes, then Naujocks and his men disappeared again .

A dead man remained. It was about the 41-year-old Upper Silesian Franciszek (Franz) Honiok. His body was supposed to serve as evidence of an alleged Polish attack on the transmitter. The Gestapo -friendly representative of agricultural machinery, known to the Gestapo , had only been arrested the day before in a neighboring village of Gleiwitz, because a person was required as the alleged perpetrator who was believed to have attacked the station and made an anti-German speech on the radio. Honiok was brought from custody in the police headquarters to the Gleiwitz transmitter after the SS doctor Horst Straßburger gave him an anesthetic injection. He was dropped unconscious at the transmitter building. Whether he died from this syringe or was murdered by Naujocks or another SS unit present is not known to this day.

Propagandistic exploitation

At 10.30 p.m., the Reichsrundfunk reported for the first time about the attack on the Gleiwitz transmitter and other border incidents. The next day, the news of the alleged attack appeared in the entire German press. The Völkischer Beobachter wrote under the heading “The unheard-of gang attack on the Gleiwitz transmitter” that “the Polish pack” had “allowed themselves to be carried away to cross the Reich border, to attack a German transmitter, and to put the war torch on a powder keg, whose existence the Poles will one day have to answer for before history. "

Hitler did not directly mention Gleiwitz in his Reichstag speech on the radio on the morning of September 1:

“These processes have now been repeated again tonight. After 21 border incidents the other day in a single night, there were 14 tonight, including three very serious ones. […] Poland fired for the first time last night on our own territory with soldiers who were already regulars. They have been firing back since 5:45 a.m. And from now on, bombs will be rewarded with bombs. "

The Foreign Office later published a list of official reports on several dozen serious border incidents with deaths on the German-Polish border since August 25, 1939. Of eleven entries up to the morning of September 1, two relate to incidents near Gleiwitz:

"2. Report from the main customs office in Gleiwitz. At around 2 a.m., a fire attacked the German border guard protecting the Neubersteich customs office from the Polish side . An attack by the Poles on the customs office was prevented by German fire. "

"4. Report from the police chief Gleiwitz. Around 8 p.m., the Gleiwitz transmitter was attacked by a group of Polish insurgents and temporarily occupied. The insurgents were driven out by German border police officers. An insurgent was fatally injured in the defense. "

Since the station Gleiwitz 8 p.m. or Polish insurgents are specified, the Hitler speech with tonight or regular soldiers can hardly refer to message 4, but rather to messages 7 and 8 of the Liegnitz state police station, in each of which death Polish troops are accused by German customs officers:

"7. Report from the state police station in Liegnitz . On the night of August 31st to September 1st, a German customs officer near Pfalzdorf , Grünberg district , about 75 meters from the Polish border, was fatally injured by Polish troops. "

"8th. Report from the state police station in Liegnitz. On the night of August 31st to September 1st, a German customs officer was shot dead by Polish troops while on duty near Röhrsdorf , Fraustadt district , and another customs officer was seriously injured. "

The frequently read statement that the involved SS members wore Polish uniforms is controversial. Although the SS had obtained Polish army uniforms from the Abwehr in the run-up to the action , these were used in one of the other two productions taking place directly on the Polish border that same night: In addition to another "attack" late in the evening on a forester's house in the border region in the small town of Pitschen by “Polish militants” a fire fight between the German border police and Polish troops at the customs house in Hochlinden or “Hoflinden” was simulated around 4 a.m. According to a statement by US auxiliary prosecutor Major Warren F. Farr on December 20, 1945, the members of the SS wore Polish uniforms. In doing so, he relies on the statements of the head of the German sabotage department of the Foreign Office / Defense, Erwin von Lahousen .

Work-up

The event became the subject of the DEFA documentary film Der Fall Gleiwitz in 1961 . After the screening of the film in the Hamburg Film Club in 1963, charges were brought against Naujock and an investigation was opened. Naujocks denied guilt for the death of Franz Honiok. It was difficult to prove Naujocks complicit in the killing of Franz Honiok, since other SS units and SD agents were also involved. In addition, Naujocks died during the investigation, so that the case was discontinued in 1966.

literature

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Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walther Hofer (ed.): The unleashing of the Second World War. Lit Verlag, Berlin, Hamburg, Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-0383-4 , p. 384. online at Google Books .
  2. ↑ ns-archiv.de: Speech Adolf Hitler, recording Admiral Boehm. In: Johannes Hohlfeld (Ed.): The time of the National Socialist dictatorship. Volume V, Berlin 1953, pp. 74-81. Retrieved September 13, 2015.
  3. ↑ ns-archiv.de: Gleiwitz incident. In: Walther Hofer (ed.): The unleashing of the Second World War . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1967. Retrieved September 13, 2015.
  4. ↑ Christian Zentner : The outbreak of war. September 1, 1939: dates, pictures, documents. Ullstein-Buch, Frankfurt am Main / Vienna 1979, ISBN 3548330118 , pp. 191f.
  5. ↑ Eckhard Fuhr: Silesia stays lively. In: Die Welt from September 16, 2005, accessed March 1, 2017.
  6. ↑ Florian Altenhöner: The man who started World War II. Alfred Naujocks: forger, murderer, terrorist. Prospero Verlag, Münster, Berlin 2010. ISBN 978-3-941688-10-0 . P. 111 ff.
  7. ^ Völkischer Beobachter of September 1, 1939, Munich edition, pp. 1 and 2; quoted from Lothar Gruchmann: Total War. From Blitzkrieg to unconditional surrender. Munich 1991, p. 11 f.
  8. ↑ Walther Hofer (Ed.): The unleashing of the Second World War. Lit Verlag, Berlin, Hamburg, Münster 2007. ISBN 978-3-8258-0383-4 . P. 384. online at Google Books.
  9. ^ Adolf Hitler: Declaration of the Reich Government before the German Reichstag. In: 1000dokumente.de. September 1, 1939, accessed October 19, 2014 .
  10. ↑ Walther Hofer (Ed.): The unleashing of the Second World War. Lit Verlag, Berlin, Hamburg, Münster 2007. ISBN 978-3-8258-0383-4 . P. 100. online at Google Books.
  11. ↑ 5. Message from the Chief Finance President Troppau. On the night of August 31st to September 1st, the Hoflinden customs office was attacked by Polish insurgents and temporarily occupied. The rebels were driven out again by a counter-attack by the SS disposable troops. In: Walther Hofer (ed.): The unleashing of the Second World War. Lit Verlag, Berlin, Hamburg, Münster 2007. ISBN 978-3-8258-0383-4 . P. 100. online at Google Books.
  12. ^ International Military Tribunal : The Trial of Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, November 14, 1945 - October 1, 1946. Day twenty-fourth. Thursday, December 20, 1945. Volume 4, Nuremberg 1947. p. 242.
  13. ↑ Berliner Zeitung : Fifty years ago the film "Der Fall Gleiwitz" was released on September 17th, 2011.

Coordinates: 50 ° 18 ′ 48 ″  N , 18 ° 41 ′ 21 ″  E