Air raid on Wieluń

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The air raid on Wieluń [ ˈvʲɛluɲ ] was carried out in three waves of 29 Stukas each of the German Air Force in the early morning of September 1, 1939 , with the militarily insignificant Polish town of Wieluń being largely destroyed and an estimated 1,200 people killed. Historians consider the attack to be the first war crime during the German invasion of Poland and, according to witnesses, it occurred before the Westerplatte was bombarded , making it the first military action in World War II .

Air raid

Wieluń after the air raid, September 1939

In the early morning of September 1, 1939, Wieluń was attacked and bombed by German dive bombers. It is apparently the first war crime committed by the Wehrmacht in World War II. According to contemporary witnesses, the attack began at around 04:37 a.m. local time, an hour later according to the German mission report. The first wave of attacks razed the city's hospital to the ground. The completely surprised residents were targeted with guns on board. In a total of three bombing raids during the day, up to 1,200 of the then 16,000 inhabitants died. 70 percent of the city's buildings and 90 percent of the town center were destroyed by fire.

The purpose of the attack is disputed among historians. Rolf-Dieter Müller argues that the air force wanted to eliminate military targets in order to have an immediate effect on the battlefield. On August 31, a Polish division and a cavalry brigade had been identified in Wieluń to carry out the attacks. But because of the ground fog, these goals were missed. Despite the devastating effects, the attack on Wieluń was therefore not a planned terrorist attack. According to Jochen Böhler , the first operational report of the Sturzkampfgeschwader 76 recorded "no enemy observation". Rather, more recent research suggests that the destruction of the city was the aim of the attack in order to test the effectiveness of the German air force. Two weeks before the attack, the Chief of the Army General Staff, Franz Halder , had noted in his war diary: “Red hunt in the Wielun area”. The air force flew further attacks in this area in the first days of the war, including on the small towns of Działoszyn and Kamieńsk, and had "impact pictures" made of other bombed towns. In his war diary, Halder also made a distinction between “terrorist attacks” and military attacks. Hans-Erich Volkmann emphasizes that the German 10th Army , which formed the decisive military factor in this section of the front, did not attach any operational , let alone strategic importance to the village of Wieluń , which could have justified a bombing. The responsible commander of the air force, Wolfram von Richthofen , ordered the attack on his own. Richthofen did not intend a "terror attack", but selected Wieluń as a military exercise target close to the border in order to test the operational capability and functionality of the dive bombers without losing any of their own. Volkmann characterizes the destruction of Wieluń as an attack on a non-military target and therefore a war crime.

literature

  • Tadeusz Olejnik: Wieluń - polska Guernica (Wielun - the Polish Guernica) , Urząd Miejski w Wieluniu et al., Wieluń 2005, ISBN 83-91378-86-1 .
  • Hans-Erich Volkmann: Wolfram von Richthofen, the destruction of Wieluń and the international law of war , Military History Journal, Volume 70, Issue 2, pp. 287–328, ISSN  2193-2336 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Sven Felix Kellerhoff : The War Crime of Wielun , Die Welt , September 2, 2009.
  2. ^ Thomas Urban : Poland: Portrait of a Neighbors , Verlag CH Beck (Beck'sche Reihe Volume 6043), 2012, ISBN 3-406-63326-9 , p. 14 f .; Google Books .
  3. Agnieszka Hreczuk: Beginning of the World War: “Planes, Papa, Planes!” , Der Tagesspiegel , August 30, 2009.
  4. Jens Mattern, Hans Michael Kloth: The beginning of the war in 1939: Stukas via Wielun , one day , August 26, 2009.
  5. a b Jochen Böhler : The Destruction of the Neighborhood - The Beginnings of the War of Extermination in Poland in 1939. In: Mike Schmeitzner , Katarzyna Stokłosa: Partner or Counterparty? German-Polish neighborhood in the century of dictatorships. Central and East Central European Studies Vol. 8, Lit Verlag , Berlin 2008, ISBN 3-8258-1254-5 , p. 82 f.
  6. ^ Joachim Trenkner: Second World War: Destroyed target , Die Zeit 07/2003.
  7. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller : The bomb war 1939-1945 , Ch. Links Verlag , Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-86153-317-7 , p. 54; Horst Boog: Bomb War Legends, in: Military history contributions 9/1995, p. 22.
  8. Hans-Erich Volkmann: Wolfram von Richthofen, the destruction of Wieluń and the international law of war . In: Military History Journal 70 (2011), pp. 287–328.