New York Times reports on German/Polish border clashes, 1 Sep. 1939

All the news that fits.

Border Clashes Increase

Wireless to The New York Times

Berlin, Friday, Sept. 1--An increasing number of border incidents involving shooting and mutual Polish-German casualties are reported by the German press and radio. The most serious is reported from Gleiwitz, a German city on the line where the southwestern portion of Poland meets the Reich.

At 8 P.M., according to the semi-official news agency, a group of Polish insurrectionists forced an entrance into the Gleiwitz radio station, overpowering the watchmen and beating and generally mishandling the attendants. The Gleiwitz station was relaying a Breslau station's program, which was broken off by the Poles.

They proceeded to broadcast a prepared proclamation, partly in Polish and partly in German, announcing themselves as "the Polish Volunteer Corps of Upper Silesia speaking from the Polish station in Gleiwitz." The city, they alleged, was in Polish hands.

Gleiwitz's surprised radio listeners notified the police, who halted the broadcast and exchanged fire with the insurrectionists, killing one and capturing the rest. The police are said to have discovered that the attackers were assisted by regular Polish troops. The Gleiwitz incident is alleged here to have been the signal "for a general attack by Polish franctireurs on German territory."

Two other points--Pitsachen, near Kreuzburg, and Hochlinden, northeast of Ratibor, both in the same vicinity as Gleiwitz, were the scenes of violations of the German boundary, it is claimed, with fighting at both places still under way.

http://movies2.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0901.html

A soldier in my platoon in Korea was born in Munich. He said he remembered the massive air raids by US and British planes. I thought he was too young, but he insisted. His father, he said, was in the Condor Legion in Spain during that civil war. Captured on the Russian front, Horst's father returned to Germany in 1957. Someone one day said something about Germany starting the Second World War. Horst became irate, insisting, "Chermany did not schtart ze var! Poland schtarted ze var!" Right. By not giving Germany everything the Reich demanded, Poland left Germany with no recourse but to invade. German propagandist came up with the raid on a radio station as cause for the invasion.