On September 8, 1939, German armored units reached Warsaw..
On September 8, 1939, German armored units reached Warsaw, and for Hitler’s forces it seemed that the rapid campaign had finally brought them to the gates of a capital they … Continue reading
20 August 1944 – Warsaw Uprising
On 20 August 1944, Warsaw was not a city in the usual sense anymore. It was a battlefield reduced to fragments of streets, broken walls, and underground passages where life … Continue reading
Understanding an Occupation Unlike Most Others
by Edward Reid Only in German Occupied Poland? When people speak about occupied Europe during the Second World War, they sometimes imagine that every nation experienced German rule in roughly … Continue reading
Stolen Childhood: The Polish Children of World War II
Among the most tragic victims of the German occupation of Poland were children. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the war did not spare the young. Instead, children were … Continue reading
The Blueprint of Destruction: Zamość and the Eastern Plan
Operation Zamość was one of the most brutal and least known German actions of the war, a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing designed to erase an entire Polish region and … Continue reading
German propaganda during the Second World War
German propaganda during the Second World War leaned heavily on racial ideology and worked relentlessly to portray Poles as Untermenschen, or sub-humans. In 1940, Hans Frank, the Governor-General of occupied … Continue reading
Historical silence becomes a second death
Edward Reid I write about Polish history not to compare tragedies or measure one nation’s suffering against another, but because silence becomes a second death. When a nation loses six … Continue reading
The Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz in occupied Poland
The Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz (“ethnic Germans’ self-protection”) was a paramilitary organization consisting of ethnic German mobilized from among the German minority in Poland. The Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz operated before and during the … Continue reading
NSZ in War: NSZ Guerrilla Combat Action. Poles and Not Only Jews Lost Their Property.
All Guerillas Were Bandits a Myth. Rutkowski Z Ziemi Swietokrzyskiej Na Ziemi Odzyskane: Wspomnienia, by Marian Rutkowski. 2014. Oficyna Wydawnicza Politechniki Wroclawskiej, Wroclaw The NSZ in War Against the German … Continue reading
Children’s Day Nazi German style in occupied Poland
“My sister tightly held onto my mother’s neck. The German grabbed her hand and brutally pushed her into the field . Then he aimed the rifle and fired at my … Continue reading

