[ExI] two years in the slammer for blammisphy?

[Tomasz Rola]

On Wed, 19 May 2010, BillK wrote:

> On 5/19/10, ddraig wrote:
> > My brother knows a guy whose father was in one of the german tank units. The
> > story he told is that the poles were told that the german tanks were fakes,
> > wooden bodies on top of car chassis. They galloped at full charge at the
> > tanks, the germans sitting in them astonished at what they were seeing and
> > wondering what on EARTH the poles were up to. The officer in charge galloped
> > up to the lead tank, said "See! Wood!", slashed at the tank with his sabre,
> > which broke.
> >
> > He at that point realised that the tank was real, and he had led his men
> > into a slaughter. At which point he pulled out his pistol and shot himself.
> > The germans promptly killed all of the poles.
> >
> > No idea if this is true or not, but it makes more sense than "brave poles
> > died in futile suicide charge against modern tanks"
> >
> > Are you sure you have seen a picture? Not just heard a story or seen it in a
> > movie?
> >
> >
> 
> 
> Wikipedia says it was all made up for Nazi war propaganda.
> 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cavalry>

Thanks, BillK. I was just yesterday wondering if I would have an occasion 
to mention it :-).

Oh my, wooden tanks?

First of all, this is how I imagine it:

1. The wooden tanks could be (more or less) easily finished off with 
mortars and heavy machine guns from as far away as 500m, I believe. Not to 
forget about sniper rifle with incendiary ammo :-).

2. If this wouldn't work (proving they were harder than wood), they could 
be "tried" with our unique anti-tank rifle wz. 35 at distances starting 
from 300m (at this point, it was effective against PzI and some PzII, that 
is, against about half - or maybe more - of German tanks used in Poland in 
1939). At 100m it was able to penetrate 30mm armour. German tanks of the 
era had 7-30mm armours and Soviet had 15-20mm. After the September, it had 
been captured by Germans in some quantity and used by their parachutists 
during Benelux invasion and after that it went on to Italian army and was 
used by them everywhere. Italian instruction gives it ability to penetrate 
40mm armour from 100m.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wz._35_anti-tank_rifle

3. In a case that Kb ur did not manage, we still had anti tank 37mm Bofors 
gun. Although it started to show its age before the war, it was still 
usefull against what Germans and Soviets had.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_37_mm

Actually, a 20mm anti aircraft gun was usefull, too. Go figure.

Bofors could do a lot of good things to enemy tanks as far away as 4000m. 
But, let's agree its use was practical starting from 1000m. It is said to 
penetrate 40mm armour from 100m.

Next, when exactly this whole story is supposed to have taken place? We 
were "doing tanks" from the very beginning:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mokra

As one can see, our cavalry (as well as infantry) could engage German 
panzers and were a good match to them. However, as our situation went 
worse and our resources depleted, this wasn't as good anymore. But at that 
time, everybody should have already known tanks were not made of wood, eh?

As of this "wooden tanks" thing. I can hardly imagine anybody in the Army 
believed this. I mean, ok, a number of people considered Hitler to be nut, 
especially if he planned to attack Poland and provoking France and Great 
Britain to help us (this was guaranteed on paper by them, as well as our 
help if he attacked them first). Well, he knew better, didn't he? But, 
nobody considered him to be such a big nut as to using wooden tanks in 
real fight - and do what, laughing us to the death?

Sorry man, I am not attacking you personally, nor your relatives, their 
friends and so on, but so long, the story doesn't hold water.

Our intelligence was quite good at this time (and remainded to be such 
until very recently - there is not much published from newer times, so 
nothing to be talked about). A good image of what could be done are books 
of Sergiusz Piasecki, for example. He was fluent in Belarussian and 
Russian (how else, he learnt them at home) and he was able to penetrate 
deeply into Soviet Union, posing as a technician, working as radio and 
telegraph operator on Soviet post office etc. He also had a number of 
friends that had been left "on the other side", so he could simply get in 
touch and ask for help with getting legal papers etc.

The other interesting example, albeit more anecdotical one, was work of 
Stefan Witkowski, engineer, inventor and, it seems, very talented intel 
officer. Back in 1939 or 1940, he created intel-oriented underground group 
under the name of Musketeers. He himself is told to frequently travel into 
Germany and further West, pretending to be baron August von Thierbach, SS 
officer (he was apparently visiting our cells there). His coworker of the 
same organisation, Kazimierz Leski, went on a trip to France in 1941, 
posing as Wehrmacht Lieutnant (but later he decided he should be promoted 
to be able to travel in a first class - he had been recovering from 
wounds at a time - so he "promoted" himself to the rank of Generalmajor). 
In 1942, as General Julius von Halmann, he had been invited by a "fellow" 
German general to inspect Atlantic Wall, line of fortifications being 
built in France.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Leski

Most of the account and achievements of those brave people are forgotten 
and lost. They never had much publicity for obvious reasons, and besides, 
there wasn't many people who would like to show them to the public (here 
we get into sucking marshes of politics). I would even go as far as to 
say, there was a tendency to downplay the whole story of Polish 
intelligence, because there wasn't much that downplayers could show as 
their own successes.

Downplayers were, not fools, however. For example, they promptly used V1 
and V2 parts retrieved by Home Army from German proving grounds, but 
choosed to ignore reports on Katyn massacre or concentration camps (at 
least for some time, they probably were convinced that "those Poles are 
making this all up").

A good example is Jan Karski, who voluntarily went to Warsaw Ghetto as 
well as to a concentration camp, to witness the situation there and serve 
as information source (but there wasn't much interest in his story, it 
seems):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Karski
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Army_and_V1_and_V2

Similarly, there was one writer, Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski, who survived 
few years in Soviet gulag and described his experiences in a book "Inny 
swiat" ("A world apart"). Whatever he wrote, had been downplayed by some
western critics, because as Pole, he was supposed to lie about Russians 
(surprise me more). Until Aleksander Solzhenitsyn wrote his own books, 
giving very similar description and finally forcing those Soviet lackeys 
to accept the truth.

In rare cases where those men survived the war and lived long enough, 
there are some written accounts given by them. In other cases, all that is 
left are military archives, sometimes incomplete, and anecdotical evidence 
(as in case of Stefan Witkowski, who has been shot in uncertain 
circumstances).

So, I believe, we were very well informed about what Germans really had. 
As well as what Soviets could do (not much more than in 1920, it seems). I 
mean, if we were able to establish a network of agents during WW2, guess 
what was possible before this. Also, some other clues, like production of 
our new anti tank 47mm gun planned to start in 1940, show that we were 
expecting to use it on something heavier than old furniture.

On the other hand, western diplomats seem to have been scared to shit by 
Stalin-made performances showing Soviet might and force. I don't deny they 
could look great during exercises but this wasn't proved later on, as 
history shows us. A great look not always lives up to its promise, and 
lowly look of cavalry not always means grown-ups fantasising about their 
superhuman bullet-catching abilities. And a lot of German tanks could have 
been engaged and put off (and were) by a well prepared infantry. But we 
don't hear stories about Polish infantry trying to fight off tanks with 
their bayonets, do we?

> (But everybody likes death or glory myths, don't they?).

Depends... If it makes you look like some kind of suicidal jerk, only 
good to be LOLed at...

Just in case anybody would like to tell another story like this, please be 
more specific, would you? Give more details, the minimum I want is date of 
event (doesn't have to be very exact) and what type of tank was involved. 
If someone was driving a tank, I would expect him to know it's name at least 
(not to mention some other data, like armour, armament or how many crew 
members total there was inside).

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
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**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **