The German Fifth Column in Poland (4 page)

All these German minority organizations, scattered throughout Polish territory, were linked up through various intermediaries with a special under-secretariat of State in Berlin, which acted as a department for German affairs abroad.
At the head of this department, which was also a branch of the German 2nd Bureau (secret service—
Abwehrabteilung
) was a German named Bohle. Here were centralized all the threads of the subversive and espionage activities to which the whole of the German minority in Poland was harnessed.

The scope of these activities is indicated by the
fact that, despite the Polish Government’s efforts not to endanger Polish-German good neighbourly relations, during the last few years before the war the Polish courts had to handle some three hundred espionage cases per annum. And during the last six months prior to September, 1939, this figure was almost doubled.

In the Pomorze area M. von Gersdorff was the head of the
Deutsche Vereinigung
. He was the most open of all the leaders of the German espionage. His activities were so unconcealed that they even caused disagreements between the Gestapo at Koenigsberg and the Military Intelligence Service at Berlin.

Some six months before the outbreak of war the Polish secret police came upon the track of espionage activities in which the leading figure was one Baldyga, a criminal who had escaped from Poland to Germany to evade a fifteen-year sentence. After keeping him under observation for some time the German Intelligence Service decided to use him for espionage work in Poland. His capture there led to the discovery of a number of very important elements in German espionage, including the names of German Polish citizens engaged in such activities while following their respective professions. Among others an official of the Polish Military Geographical Institute, a certain Reszka, was arrested. Baldyga's confession threw very interesting light on the specific methods employed in the area of the Polish No.
1 District Corps Command and the province of Warsaw by the German Intelligence Service. It came out that in these operations use was made of the so-called wandering German teachers (
Wanderlehrer
), and many of these were arrested in various localities.

Needless to say, these wandering espionage elements were not only in contact with innumerable fixed centres, but also were acting under the orders of Colonel Gerstenberg, the Military Attaché to the German Embassy in Warsaw. He was also occupied
with espionage on his own account, employing German elements. Two months before the war one of his aides, a Second Lieutenant of the German Air Force who was also on the diplomatic list, was arrested in the act of photographing military objects. He had operated in the vicinity of Mielec, Sandomierz, Starachowice, and Ostrowiec. Besides a roll of films and a Leica camera, compromising notes regarding objects photographed, as well as remarks of a general nature, were found on him. This officer reported,
inter alia
, that in face of the strongly anti-German feeling among the Poles the war against Poland should be waged with the utmost brutality, in order to smash all possibility of effective resistance from the very beginning. Of course, Colonel Gerstenberg informed the Polish authorities that his assistant had been acting on his own responsibility.

Such characteristic activities as the foregoing were
carried on everywhere. The closer drew the moment of conflict, so the more and more open grew the subversive and espionage preparations for the war. German transit traffic across Pomorze was more and more frankly exploited in the interests of German propaganda. Germans travelling across Pomorze increasingly violated the prescribed regulations for transit traffic. There was a considerable growth in the numbers of “tourists,” who were sent for the purpose of strengthening the morale of the Germans in Poland and assuring them that the day of “reunion with the Reich” was imminent. Simultaneously excursions made by German youth via Danzig to the Reich to take courses in
Heimatslehre
(elementary training in espionage) increased to mass proportions. Flights from Poland to Germany developed on the same scale.  Such flights had two objects. On the one hand they had a certain propaganda value.  The fleeing Germans arrived with part of their possessions in the Reich and spread stories of how they had been victimized by the Polish terror, thus helping to create the requisite war spirit in the population. In reality, apart from sporadic breaking of German windows by hot-blooded Polish elements, there was no question of any terrorism whatever. Other flights were organized for the definite purpose of joining the German Army or some paramilitary organization. During the last few weeks before the war thousands of Germans fled from Poland to the Reich.

The ramifications of the German subversive and espionage activities were bound to come to light at various points, so furnishing the Polish authorities with ever-increasing evidence of the treachery of the German minority. A few weeks before the outbreak of war there was an attempt to blow up the railway station at
Tarnów. An investigation was made, but without result. At about the same time there was an incident at a frontier post in the region of Piekary, not far from Katowice. The Polish frontier guard who had examined the identification papers of a group of people crossing into Poland felt suspicious of them, and recalled two of the men for further inquiry. As he was questioning them he was struck on the head with a hard object and fell stunned. When he came round he saw one of the two men pointing a revolver at him. He managed to knock the man's hand away, and the shot struck the assailant himself: The rest of the party took to flight, abandoning various articles as they ran. The one who was killed proved to be a Polish citizen. Among the objects abandoned were pistols of the
Orgesch
type, and Czech
Zbrojowki.
Documents found on the man provided clues which led the police authorities to Piekary, where arrests were made. As one German was being conducted to the inquiry two other Germans attacked the policeman and killed him. Fortunately, one murderer was apprehended by passers-by. This man gave valuable evidence, revealing,
inter alia
, that arms were stored in the church at Piekary and at other places near Kielce. All these secret stores were seized.

The inquiry into this affair resulted in the incrimination of a certain German who had been long suspected by the police. But for some time he evaded arrest. By the merest chance, shortly afterwards, the German Consul at Katowice motored to Bytom (Beuthen), accompanied by a man provided with a German passport. A Polish agent on the
frontier recognized this man as the wanted German, and arrested him, despite the Consul's protests.

The documents captured in consequence of all these discoveries proved that the Polish authorities had happened upon a diversionist organization engaged in terroristic activities with high explosives, including the attempt at
Tarnów. The inquiry revealed that this outrage had been committed by a minority German agent, who was employed by the Polish State Railways at Nowy Sącz. Further attempts to employ high explosives came to nothing. All the Germans arrested were Polish citizens, and some of them had received special “training” at Oppeln. In the course of the investigation the former Senator Wiesner was incriminated. Feeling that affairs were taking a bad turn he reported to the police authorities and declared that he had nothing whatever to do with the business. But a little later he fled to Germany.

The Polish police came upon further traces of this same organization at Wrzesnia, some weeks before
the outbreak of war.  They arrested some twenty Germans, finding pistols of the same type as before, several automatic pistols, and also explosive materials, in tins bearing the label of the well-known
Pudliszki
canning factory. All the prisoners made complete confessions, which revealed that these weapons had been supplied by Senator Wambeck who, accompanied by his daughter, had brought them in his car. It is interesting to note that in the previous session of the Senate Wambeck had been nominated a senator by the President of the Republic, and had played the part of a German loyal to Poland, who, because of his loyalty, had grown unpopular among German minority circles with pro-Hitler sympathies.

The police also unearthed a subversive organization at Mala Solna, near
Łódź. A telegram was sent from Ostrow in Posnania to Mala Solna, reading: “Mother dead; order wreaths.”  On the strength of this message a search was made at Mala Solna, and minority Germans were arrested as they were actually assembling. And once more both ordinary and automatic pistols were found on them, as well as the
Pudliszki
cans of explosives, etc. “Order wreaths” had been the signal for them to begin their subversive activities.

In the instructions laying down how the Germans were to behave when war broke out it was emphasized that so long as the German Army was some way off from the locality of the particular subversive group this latter must maintain an ultra-loyal attitude, offering the Polish soldiers food, affording them quarters, etc. Only when the German Army was in the vicinity (between five and twenty kilometres) was diversionist activity to begin.

It is striking that preparations for sabotage and diversionist activities were carried out everywhere in an identical manner and according to a single plan. It was so in Bydgoszcz, and also at Łódź, where, as soon as they had news of the approach of the German troops, the diversionist agents assembled in the forests of Tomaszow and fired on the Polish soldiers. The same thing occurred in Silesia and in many other localities throughout Poland.

The diversionists everywhere distinguished themselves by particular bestiality. A very characteristic incident occurred on the eve of the war. A soldier belonging to the 2nd battalion of the Polish Chasseurs regiment lost his way on the road between Tczew and Danzig, penetrating into Danzig territory. He was shot by a German sentry, and later the Germans handed over his body to the Polish authorities, who ordered an autopsy.
The examination revealed filth, straw, and other matter in the man's stomach. The body had been sadistically profaned. This incident was a foretaste of the course the German-Polish struggle would take and of the bestial methods later adopted by the German occupation authorities in Poland, on orders from Berlin.

Nobody in Poland had any illusions as to the nature of all these incidents. The very tolerance of the Polish authorities rendered it easy to follow all the diverse channels of German subversive activity. The more the authorities confined themselves to keeping watch
on these various activities, the more impudent became the machinations of the German minority leaders. At the bar of the Senate they went on making their complaints right down to the last moment, appealing to the Constitution, to their “proved” loyalty to the State, without considering, in their effrontery, that every one of their visits to the German Embassy or to any of the German Consulates was diligently noted, and that the Polish authorities were informed of their every trip to Berlin or to Frontier centres of German subversive work.  The Polish authorities watched equally closely every prearranged “escape” and the famous “excursions” of the young Germans travelling from Poland to the Reich to take courses of party and military instruction. Complete lists of these trainees were in the possession of every district department of Public Safety as well as every frontier police post. In a word, nobody in Poland had any illusions about the fact that the German minority organizations of all kinds, with such societies as the
Deutsche Vereinigung
and the
Jungdeutsche Partei
at the head, were only branches of the Reich N.S.D.A.P., subordinated to that party's department concerned with Germans abroad.

For the sake of maintaining neighbourly relations with the Reich, Poland had tolerated the hostile activities of its citizens of German
nationality for many years. But the view was growing in the country that this state of affairs must be ended. This step would certainly have been taken in 1939, in other words, as soon as the future lines of battle had begun to be clearly defined. For liberalism must end when treason begins. Then Poland would not have been open to the reproach of “intolerance,” which German-inspired charge had, unhappily, been so often made against her by other countries, even by France and England, since the end of the Great War. And she would have been able to unmask all the extent of the treason committed against her by her several hundred thousand German minority citizens dominated by the psychology of the Prussian jackboot.

But the sudden invasion of Poland prevented this plan from being realized. And the Germans of the minority were able to occupy positions prepared in advance, and in the struggle which raged over Poland to range themselves openly on the side of the invaders, so contributing enormously to the hastening of Poland's military defeat. The Polish Army, which was not
mobilized to the full extent possible, was undoubtedly defeated because of the overwhelming numerical preponderance of the German Armies, by those armies’ superiority in tanks and bombing aeroplanes. But there was also the active contribution which the army of spies made to the Germans in this unequal struggle. These Polish citizens of German nationality were active all over the Polish territory, from Puck and Gdynia to Katowice, Czortków, and Zaleszczyki; from Wilno, Pinsk, and Luck to Poznań and Zbąszyń, not excluding the capital, Warsaw, and its vicinity.

Of course, not all the Germans in Poland participated in these subversive activities, but practically all the German organizations, except for certain Catholic and Socialist groups, were dominated by elements with a traitorous attitude to the Polish State.