Bloody Sunday (1939)

Bloody Sunday (German: Bromberger Blutsonntag; Polish: Krwawa Niedziela) is the term used to describe an incident that took place at the beginning of World War II. On September 3, 1939, two days after the German invasion of Poland, a highly controversial massacre occurred in and around the town of Bydgoszcz (German: Bromberg), a Polish town with a sizable German minority, located in the Pomeranian Voivodeship. The number of casualties, as well as the extent of involvement by the German agents and the Selbstschutz involved is disputed by historians.

Background

As part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the region including the town of Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) was annexed in 1772 by the Kingdom of Prussia in the First Partition of Poland. It belonged to the German Empire from 1871 till the end of World War I. In February 1920, the Treaty of Versailles awarded the region to the Second Polish Republic. The city maintained a German majority (in contrast to the cities of Poznań and Gniezno that had always retained a clear ethnic Polish majority). The German government began to encourage German professionals such as doctors and lawyers, to leave the region, believing that it would result in the "brain drain" and lead to instability in Poland. Other ethnic Germans left the Polish state because they did not want to serve in the Polish army. This resulted in a number of ethnic Germans leaving the region for Germany. Hence, over the interwar period the German majority slowly decreased.

During the interwar period, minority rights in both the Second Republic of Poland and Weimar Germany were to be based on amicable relations between the two countries. However, while the rights of ethnic minorities were legally protected in Poland, the Polish minority in Germany did not enjoy such protection. Poland recognized the appendix of the Treaty of Versailles concerning minority rights until 1934, the same year that the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations. In addition, Poland's fragile economic position proved fertile grounds for ethnic divisions to subsist at the expense of national solidarity. This was not only in regards to the Polish Germans; other minorities vocalized their sentiments, whether they were in support of an independent "greater Ukraine", a separate Belarus, or even an autonomous Jewish entity. The result was a rise in Polish patriotism and nationalism (similar to the situation in most other contemporary European countries). The German minority of western Poland, maintaining its separate identity and close ties with Germany, was increasingly seen as a fifth column. The rise of the Nazi Party only complicated matters. Adolf Hitler revitalized the Völkisch movement, making an appeal to the Germans living outside of Germany's post-World War I borders. Also, it was Hitler's explicit goal to reverse the work of the Treaty of Versailles and create a Greater German State. By March 1939, these ambitions, charges of atrocities on both sides of the border, distrust, and rising nationalist sentiment led to the complete deterioration of Polish-German relations. Hitler demands for the Polish Corridor, Polish opposition to appease him, and finally the German invasion of Poland fueled this vicious cycle.

Bloody Sunday

Before and shortly after armed conflict erupted on September 1, 1939, both sides reported a number of atrocities. The Nazi Reich, which carried out a top secret false flag Operation Himmler to create an illusion of Polish aggression against Germany claimed that the worst persecutions of ethnic Germans took place between August 31 and September 6. However, the most influential event, shrouded in controversy, was that which occurred on September 3, in Bydgoszcz.

A number of Polish witnesses testified that early in the day, as a contingent of the Polish Army from Pomerania (elements of 15th Infantry Division) was withdrawing through Bydgoszcz, it was attacked by Germans from within the area, reported to be shooting at soldiers and civilians from rooftops and church towers. They returned fire, and in the ensuing fight both sides suffered some casualties. Nazi propaganda denied this, spinning a story that Polish troops - due to confusion or outright malice - massacred German civilians.

Aftermath

In an act of retaliation, 2,000 Polish civilians were picked at random and executed by German military, with further reprisals soon to follow. According to the book Masters of Death (published by Richard Rhodes in the New York Times), some of these victims

were a number of Boy Scouts, from twelve to sixteen years of age, who were set up in the marketplace against a wall and shot. No reason was given. A devoted priest who rushed to administer the Last Sacrament was shot too. He received five wounds. A Pole said afterwards that the sight of those children lying dead was the most piteous of all the horrors he saw. That week the murders continued. Thirty-four of the leading tradespeople and merchants of the town were shot, and many other leading citizens. The square was surrounded by troops with machine-guns.

The troops then attacked the Jesuits, looting and ransacking the church. The priests were taken to a barn, where the local Jewish population was already imprisoned, and were all subjected to abuse.

The early Polish report of German atrocities against Poles in Bydgoszcz were cited as evidence given to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals. A document produced by the Polish authorities reads:

On September 3 1939, at 1015 in the morning, German Fifth Columnists attacked Polish units withdrawing from Bydgoszcz. During the fighting, 238 Polish soldiers and 223 German Fifth Columnists were killed. As a consequence of the entry of German troops into the town, mass executions, arrests, and deportations of Polish citizens to concentration camps took place, which were carried out by German authorities, the SS and Gestapo. 10,500 were murdered, and a further 13,000 died in the camps.

The debate in scholarship

Nazi records announced a death toll of approximately 58,000 as a result of anti-German violence. Hitler personally raised that number to over 60,000. There is a consensus that the Nazi estimates were seriously overblown.

It is hard to say how many Germans died exclusively during marches; a few German historians claim the number as high as 1,700 and attribute it mainly to Polish atrocities; German author Peter Aurich gave a number of German civilian deaths in Bydgoszcz as 366 deaths. A German amateur historian, Hugo Rasmus, attributes the situation to confusion and the disorganized state of the Polish paramilitary forces in the city. There is an argument Polish troops were being targeted by advanced units of German regular army (Wehrmacht), or that the shots were fired in the confusion of the mass withdrawal by other Polish soldiers. Another argument for the lack of German provocation against the Polish army is the contention that no Germans in Poland had been allowed to possess weapons for years. There are no known instructions for the German population in Bydgoszcz to contribute to the German military campaign in such a manner, and no ethnic Germans - even after the Wehrmacht passed through the town - spoke of participation in the event. There have also been no recovered documents about any German secret operation in Bydgoszcz.

The Polish historians point out that since these losses occurred during actual combat, most of the civilian losses should be attributed to accidents common in urban combat conditions; further they argue that civilian losses might have occurred when the town was attacked by the German airforce (Luftwaffe); many German witnesses confirm that towns or refugee columns were attacked by the German pilots (see for example bombing of Wieluń). The German documents confirming the saboteur actions of armed German Poles in other cities contradict the argument of the ban on weapon possession, no such documents are preserved in case of Bydgoszcz, though there is the possibility that German agents and the Selbstschutz were operating in the area. In the 1960s, Polish historian Karol Pospieszalski challenged this figure, presenting an estimate to as low as 2,000. Pospieszalski also argued that the German Fifth Column agents (or their higher ups) might have been deliberately aiming to produce a situation likely to result in German civilian casualties to fuel Nazi propaganda (see also Operation Himmler). In 2004 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance issued a report related to that matter.

Overall, German and Polish historians continue to argue with one another over the validity of their claims.

References

• Template:Pl icon Wojan, Ryszard (1959). "Bydgoszcz Niedziela 3 września 1939". Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie.
• Template:Pl icon Jastrzębski, Włodzimierz (1988). "Dywersja czy masakra. Cywilna obrona Bydgoszczy we wrześniu 1939 r.". Gdańsk: KAW. ISBN 83-03-02193-1.
• Template:De icon Schubert, Günter (1989). "Das Unternehmen „Bromberger Blutsonntag". Köln: Bund-Vlg.

External links

• Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, question to Goering (Nizkor)
• Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, question to Goering (Yale) (same material as above)
• Template:De icon A documentary about Bromberg/Bydgoszcz from a Polish/German cooperation