10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About World War II

2. The Germans Never Really Defeated Poland

In September 1939 Hitler's SS army would pull a dirty trick to get the war going in Europe. Their first objective was neighboring Poland, a multi-national country like Hitler's native Austria, which had been given its independence from the German Empire at the end of World War I. Needless to say the Nazi leader was holding a grudge. SS Soldiers dressed like Polish Infantry sneaked across the border and opened fire on their own outposts. These attacks were sporadic and no Germans were injured, however they caused the reaction Hitler needed. Within hours Poland was invaded by the full might of the German mechanized infantry with hardly any idea as to why. What is commonly believed to happen next is Poland armed with little more than outdated rifles and calvary units was bitterly defeated within three weeks. However, that is not true. The flaw in Germany's blitzkrieg tactic was once you bypassed your enemy's defenses to reach your main objective you still had to deal with their army. Cut off from any means of escape the Polish military went underground where it continued to wage all out war against the occupying Germans. With a force equalling about half a million men the Polish resistance stayed in uniform like a regular army fighting a hopeless battle. After five years of desperate fighting the Polish prayed the Russians would liberate them. They weren't. When the Russians invaded they executed all Polish Resistance Members known to them and treated the people even worse than the Germans. The persecution of many groups of people including Polish Jews was continued under the reign of Stalin. The remaining members of the Polish Resistance, now called the Cursed Soldiers, would fight the Soviets in the same manner they had the Germans until the last of them, Jozef Franczak, was killed in 1963. Meaning some of Cursed Soldiers spent more years in their lives being resistance fighters caught in a desperate struggle than they did being anything else.