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It is hard to imagine more nonsense. Eight months earlier, Hitler had no dilemmas. As soon as he was sure that Poland’s fate was sealed, he ordered all the bells in Germany to ring for a week in victory. Then he himself set off for the Vistula River.
Führer with binoculars
He had already managed to get to know the Polish capital well, albeit from a distance. When the Wehrmacht approached Warsaw on September 8, the commanders were so confident that it was officially announced that the city had been captured. The Italians expressed admiration, Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s chief diplomat, congratulated the success and hailed the victorious government of the Third Reich.
In fact, the fighting for the city was just beginning. The defense was so fierce that Hitler decided to go to the siege line himself and make sure that his own soldiers were involved. It is assumed that during the entire September campaign the Führer made about ten visits to the front. Of these, he tried to come to Warsaw three times.
The Polish air force was destroyed, so the dictator no longer had to travel in an armored train, as he had in the early days of the war. On September 22, he left Sopot and landed on the outskirts of Prague. From the tower of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Poland in Marysin Wawerski, he observed the city through binoculars, as can be seen in one of the surviving photographs. Another taken from the same spot shows his closest acolytes and most important commanders.
The bombing did not bring the desired results. The attackers did not avoid losses. Hitler was informed that Generaloberst Werner von Fritsch had just died, not far from a sniper’s bullet or a stray machine-gun bullet. The second German general killed in this war. The Führer received the report, then returned to the airport and from there to Sopot.
Three days later, on September 25, he flew again. The resistance in the capital was dying, but it had not yet been crushed. From Grodzisk Mazowiecki, where the commanders of the 8th and 10th Armies attacking Warsaw were located, Hitler watched the massive bombing of the capital. After reveling in the fires that consumed the city, he flew to Lębork.
Despite the enemy’s overwhelming advantage, the Poles fought for three more days. Only on September 28 was the capitulation announced.
Hysterical tired
It was October 5, 11:30 a.m. This time, the commander’s plane landed not at the peripheral military airstrip, but at Okęcie itself. Hitler was greeted with pomp and humble respect. Waiting at the airport were Gerd von Rundstedt (Chief of the Supreme Command in the East), Walther von Brauchitsch (Commander-in-Chief of the Land Forces), Johannes Blaskowitz (8th Army) and Walther von Reichenau (10th Army).
After a hurried greeting, the dictator got into a six-wheeled Mercedes and, with a large escort, headed towards the city center.
“A large column of motorcycles with trailers came out,” witness Ksawery Świerkowski, a teacher, reported. “German policemen in huge helmets, dressed in navy blue coats, were sitting on saddles. On the trailers, the policemen were half-lying on their left sides, facing backwards, with rifles in their hands and their fingers on the trigger. Behind the column was a huge old-fashioned armored car with a hatch above the deck, and a soldier also facing backwards with his finger on the trigger of a machine gun.
Next came three open cars. First, a car with officers, with an anti-aircraft gun attached. Behind it is a limousine carrying a group of generals. Finally: the most important and unwelcome guest. “In the third [samochodzie] “Suddenly I saw Hitler,” Świerkowski recalled. “He was wearing a politischer leiter coat and had a young aide to his right. Pale, with his lips tightly bitten, he struck me as hysterical, tired and completely indifferent to everything.
A city doomed to destruction
In fact, in the photographs taken in Warsaw in October, the Führer appears gloomy, exhausted and, ultimately, angry. No mementos of his visit have survived, so it is impossible to say what impression the city made on him. On the way, he saw mostly ruins. A German soldier passing through Warsaw that same day remarked: “I have not seen a single house that has not been at least partially destroyed.” “Who has the money to install new windows, to pay for the wires, to repair the roofs? Nobody! Warsaw is a city and its population is doomed to extermination,” one of the Wehrmacht generals agreed with him.
The cavalcade passed through several neighborhoods, only to stop in front of the Saxon Palace, in a square that could no longer bear Piłsudski’s name, but which only a year later would be called Adolf-Hitler-Platz. The dictator greeted the members of the selected troops standing up, then sat back in the carriage and drove off in a cloud of dust.
The actual celebrations were planned 2km away, at Aleje Ujazdowskie. “A podium was built among the ruins of once elegant villas and former embassies,” explains British historian Roger Moorhouse. “Behind it, among the golden trees, fluttered a large German war flag.”
The parade began as soon as the leader took his assigned place. Infantry, cavalry, motorized artillery… In the available films, Aleje Ujazdowskie is drowning in a sea of helmets and uniforms. One by one, the regiments rapidly advance in front of the Führer. The stream of people, machines and horses seems endless. The leader admires clean-shaven guys, trucks, heavy machine guns, tankettes. The cameramen take close-ups of the fierce faces of the soldiers. But especially against Hitler himself, who repeatedly raised his hand in the Nazi salute.
Forbidden magazine
The organizers were keen to immortalize every aspect of the propaganda spectacle. Photos were taken from the grandstand, from the sidewalks and, finally, from the upper floors of the buildings that survived the siege. Several film crews were at work. The parade was filmed from the ground, but also by a camera mounted on the back of a car that passed parallel to the marching soldiers. Plans were already underway to release albums, produce propaganda films and hastily broadcast a chronicle of the war.
Only one is not visible in the photographs. Any spectators. There is a tangle of uniform caps on the stands. The sidewalks were alternately empty or filled with… soldiers celebrating other soldiers. Here and there, single Germans in civilian clothes watch military displays. However, it is in vain to look for ordinary Warsaw residents.
“The inhabitants were forbidden, under threat of being shot at, from approaching the marching soldiers,” explains German historian Jochen Böhler. “The entire city was put on hold,” adds Moorhouse. The center of the capital was sealed off and all residents were temporarily displaced from several streets in the city center. Every corner was manned by patrols.
Along the march route, guards were stationed every two meters. Even approaching a window could result in death. The chronicler of occupied Warsaw, Władysław Bartoszewski, wrote about preventive raids. Moorhouse specifies that in particular “important people were taken hostage to ensure the proper behavior of others.” About four hundred people were taken prisoner, including representatives of the city government, headed by Mayor Stefan Starzyński. Ordinary Warsaw residents were terrified by the sudden hardening of the regime. Mainly because they did not know its causes.
The Chancellor of the Third Reich felt so confident that after leaving the podium he got back into his open-top car. He visited the Belvedere Palace and the office of Józef Piłsudski. The German dictator’s biographer, Peter Longerich, states that in this way Hitler “paid homage to a statesman he admired”.
The generals wanted to show the leader the rest of the city at his feet and, above all, to offer a banquet in his honor, but the Führer no longer intended to honor them with his presence.
The Chancellor hurried to the airport. The high-speed cavalcade passed through Nowy Świat towards the intersection with Aleje Jerozolimskie. This is the place where Adolf Hitler was supposed to die.
A second of hesitation
The decision was made a few days earlier. The city had not yet capitulated, and the emerging Polish Victory Conspiracy Service had already begun planning an attack on the German leader. The orders were given by General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski. Sapper Major Franciszek Niepokólczycki and a group of his subordinates were directly involved. They were brave, even daring people, although many would say they were a bit crazy.
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On September 25th – when the Luftwaffe, to the delight of Hitler stationed in Grodzisk, dropped hundreds of tons of incendiary and high-explosive bombs on the dying metropolis – a group of soldiers were ordered to transport a huge load of TNT across the city center. A total of 500 kilograms of explosives were loaded onto the trucks. The transport traveled 5 km through ash and rubble-strewn streets before reaching its designated destination. The TNT was buried in two trenches in Nowy Świat – 250 kilograms on one side of the street, the same amount on the other. The charges were connected with cables, and the detonator was hidden under a nearby café. By October 4th, everything was ready for the assassination attempt on Hitler.
The soldiers knew their task and were ready to sacrifice their lives just to kill the dictator. However, they did not know the Führer’s route and were not convinced that he would reach the city on October 5. The obsessive security measures paid off. Faced with blockades and patrols, Major Niepokólczycki was unable to reach the scene of the action. And the sapper who was on duty at the station… did not press the detonator. Although he heard the column passing by, he was not sure whether it was carrying Hitler himself. And he preferred not to take the risk. “Today it is difficult to guess what the war would have been like if it had not been for that second of hesitation,” Jan Nowak-Jeziorański commented years later.
Soup instead of a feast
The visit lasted only a few hours. Adam Czerniaków, chairman of the Jewish community and president of the newly created Judenrat, noted that on the morning of October 5 it was impossible to pass through Aleje Jerozolimskie. According to his notes, the blockade lasted until 1 pm. Similar news was published in the newspapers the following day. Only from them did the people of Warsaw officially learn about the “great review of German troops”. And that the last restrictions were lifted around 3 pm.
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By then Hitler was already in Okęcie and his plane was preparing to take off. Andrew Nagorski, an American journalist of Polish origin, claims that before his departure, the Führer managed to insult his own generals in his typical way. The army leadership was waiting for him in the hangar, at a table covered with a white tablecloth and decorated with flowers. Hitler did not sit with them, but went outside the building and had soup with ordinary soldiers, chatting with them. And when he was sure that the propaganda goal had been achieved, he headed for the runway. He was in a hurry to get to Berlin, where the next day he would give an important speech in the Reichstag. In it, he called on the Western powers to end the “unnecessary war”.
