Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Dec 2022The Błyskawica (“Lightning”) is an SMG developed in occupied Poland to be issued out to Home Army units during Operation Tempest: the liberation uprisings planned for the advance of the Red Army into Poland.
The gun was developed starting in September 1942 by two engineers, Wacław Zawrotny and Seweryn Wielanier. Both were smart and talented, but neither had previous experience in arms design. The design they created is both innovative in some areas and inferior in others as a result, with major inspiration coming from the Sten and the MP40. Production was undertaken in the harshest conditions of occupied Warsaw, where just possession of cutting tools required German military permission.* It is a credit to the skill and dedication of the Home Army team that some 750 Błyskawica guns were made; the largest mass production of any underground weapon that I am aware of.
Ultimately, Operation Tempest did not come to full fruition, as the NKVD’s treatment of Polish fighters as collaborators destroyed Home Army interest in cooperation. The Błyskawica guns were never issued as planned, with only the few dozen last made being used in the Warsaw Uprising. The remaining 700-odd examples have never been found — perhaps they remain in long-forgotten caches still to this day?
For the full story of the Błyskawica, see Leszek Erenfeicht’s excellent article:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/subm…Many thanks to the Polish Army Museum for giving me access to film this exceptionally rare item for you! Check them out at: http://www.muzeumwp.pl/?language=EN
* This created some interesting situations in which a shop might take a contract to make material for the Wehrmacht as a way to get access to the tools needed for Błyskawica component production. To those who did not know the whole story, such a shop was collaborationist.
April 8, 2023
Błyskawica: The Polish Home Army’s Clandestine SMG
March 27, 2023
Why Russia Lost the Polish-Soviet War
The Great War
Published 24 Mar 2023
The Polish-Soviet War was one of the most important conflicts in the aftermath of the First World War when Eastern Europe was in flux. Both the Polish and the Bolshevik Army had the advantage numerous times and at the Battle of Warsaw is looked like the Bolsheviks would carry the revolution into Western Europe.
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May 23, 2022
Drowning Germans, Burning Jews – WAH 061 – May 22, 1943
World War Two
Published 22 May 2022When Air Marshal Arthur Harris and Reichspropagandaminister Joseph Goebbels agree that a lot of death and destruction is not enough death and destruction, the world is in trouble.
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May 16, 2022
Heaviest Air Raid in Human History – WAH 060 – May 15, 1943
World War Two
Published 15 May 2022As the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is being quashed, there are renewed Japanese atrocities in China, and the RAF sets a world record by bombing German civilians.
(more…)
May 9, 2022
Barbie and the Trail of Blood – WAH 059 – May 8, 1943
World War Two
Published 8 May 2022Europe is burning and it seems there is little that will end the suffering except victory over Naziism.
(more…)
May 2, 2022
Dead Refugees Are Better Than New Immigrants – WAH 058 – May 1, 1943
World War Two
Published 1 May 2022As the SS continues to crack down on the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, Great Britain and the US decide not to help Jewish refugees.
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April 25, 2022
The Jews Fight Back – WAH 057 – April 24, 1943
World War Two
Published 24 Apr 2022The war against Naziism is escalating on all fronts — in the War Against Humanity the main battleground is now the Warsaw Ghetto.
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January 28, 2022
The Warsaw Ghetto: The Jews Strike Back – WAH 51 – January 1943, Pt. 2
World War Two
Published 27 Jan 2022In early 1943 Nazi German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels is preparing to rally the German people behind an unrestrained war — or “total war” as he puts it. It’s unclear what that means, Nazi Germany has long been waging an unrestrained war, and it seems that the United Nations alliance is now ready to do the same on Germany.
(more…)
August 11, 2021
The Symphony That Defeated the Wehrmacht – WAH 040 – August 1942, Pt .1
World War Two
Pubished 10 Aug 2021The Big Action at the Warsaw Ghetto continues, while The Japanese carry out retaliations against the Chinese for aiding American airmen. Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Symphony no. 7” premieres in the besieged city of Leningrad.
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July 30, 2021
The 100 Deadliest Days of the Holocaust Begin… – WAH 039 – July 1942, Pt .2
World War Two
Published 29 Jul 2021The extermination camps of Operation Reinhard are ready to start killing hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto, starting the deadliest 100 days of the Holocaust.
(more…)
August 30, 2020
Battle of Warsaw – Turning Point of Polish-Soviet War I THE GREAT WAR 1920
The Great War
Published 29 Aug 2020Sign up for Curiosity Stream and get Nebula bundled in: https://curiositystream.com/thegreatwar
In the summer of 1920 the new Poland under Josef Pilsudksi stood with their backs to Warsaw against the Red Army. The Bolsheviks had advanced in the North and in the South and some of the Soviet leadership wanted to carry the revolution into Western Europe.
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Borzecki, Jerzy. The Polish-Soviet Peace of 1921 and the Creation of Interwar Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008)
Engelstein, Laura. Russia in Flames (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Lehnstaedt, Stephan. Der Vergessene Sieg. Der Polnisch-Sowjetische Krieg 1919-1921 und die Entstehung des modernen Osteuropa (CH Beck, 2019)
Davies, Norman. White Eagle Red Star (Random House, 2003 (1972)
Böhler, Jochen. Civil War in Central Europe, 1918-1921 (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Hux Reed, Vivian, ed. An American in Warsaw (University of Rochester Press, 2018)» MORE THE GREAT WAR
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August 21, 2020
“Uprising” Pt. 2 – The Liberation of Paris 1944 – Sabaton History 081 [Official]
Sabaton History
Posted 20 Aug 2020Mid-August 1944. The battle for France enters its decisive phase. With the Allied spearheads just 100 km away from Paris, the Résistance prepares for its long-awaited uprising. While collaborators and fascist officials flee the city in panic, many insurgents are eager to immediately rise up against the occupation and fight the Germans in the streets. But there is need for caution. The Germans are still there in force, and they have tanks and machine guns. The fear that this might turn into “another Warsaw” if the Allies don’t show up in time is very real.
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Listen to “Uprising” on the album Coat Of Arms:
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All music by SabatonSources:
– Imperial War Museum: B 9298
– Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0: Bild_101I-027-1477-16, Bild_183-2008-0710-500, Bild_183-2003-1112-500
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August 14, 2020
Warsaw, 1920 – “Smash a Bolshevik!”
Arthur Chrenkoff on the important but little-known Russo-Polish conflict a century ago:
Polish propaganda poster “Smash a Bolshevik”
Image via Daily Chrenk.
The Polish-Russian war of 1919-20 was the last major conflict where massed cavalry played an important role. Unlike the static Western Front a few years earlier (but similarly to the much more mobile Eastern Front) it was a war of maneuver and speed, conducted over vast swathes of territory. While still fought in a pre-armour era, its conduct directly and indirectly inspired the major proponents of the future tank warfare and the doctrine of blitzkrieg, from the young De Gaulle (who was one of the official French Army observers in Poland at the time) through Tukhachevsky in the Soviet Union to Guderian in Germany. Two million troops from both sides took part in the conflict, making it the most significant foreign intervention against the newly installed Bolshevik regime over the course of the Russian Civil War. It might have even succeeded in strangling communism in its cradle; what prevented the cooperation with the counter-revolutionary White forces was their old imperial hostility to independent Poland (coincidentally, the anti-Hitler German opposition of 1944 was likewise unfriendly to the idea).
The basic story of the war is easily enough told. After 123 years of partition between Russia, Prussia and Austria-Hungary, Poland was recreated (or, really, recreated herself) among the chaos of the late 1918, with the collapse of all three of her occupying empires. The new “Versailles” Poland was smaller than in the past, which led the new government to try to restore by force what has been denied to her at the negotiating table (where Poles had no seat in any case). The Russian Revolution (or rather the Bolshevik coup d’etat) and the following civil war provided a perfect opportunity. Throughout 1919, the reconstituted Polish Army under the command of Marshall Jozef Pilsudski fought against and took over the briefly independent Western Ukraine republic and then marched on Kiev, this time in alliance with the forces of also briefly independent Eastern Ukraine republic (it was Pilsudski’s intention to recreate some form of an independent Ukrainian state – minus the predominantly Polish areas – as part of his larger project to create the Miedzymorze (Intermarum) Confederation of both anti-Russian and anti-German states stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea).
But the Polish Army became overstretched and the Soviet government, now having defeated its major White opponents, found itself willing and able to stand up to and roll back what they saw as the Polish aggression against historically Russian territories. The Red Army, which sporadically skirmished with the Poles over the previous year, now counter-attacked across the whole wide front across what is now Belarus and Ukraine, driving the Polish Army back at an unprecedented pace of 30 kilometres a day. Soviet Marshall Tukhachevsky ordered his troops “To the West! Over the corpse of White Poland lies the road to worldwide conflagration. March on Vilno, Minsk, Warsaw!” and “onward to Berlin over the corpse of Poland!” Pravda newspaper echoed “Through the corpse of the White Poland lies the way to World Inferno. On bayonets we will carry happiness and peace to working humanity”. British Labour Party and French Socialists vowed not to support “reactionary” Poland; German and Czech unions sabotaged the delivery of crucial military supplies to the beleaguered Poland.
On 10 August, Cossack units of Tukhachevsky’s northern Army crossed the Vistula River north of Warsaw in at attempt to envelop the capital. This was a mistake, as the southern Army, under Budyonny, was still stuck around Lwow, three hundred kilometres to the south-east. For weeks preparing in secret, the last Polish reserves punched through the centre, first cutting off the two Soviet fronts from each other and then in a series of counter-enveloping maneuvers routing three Soviet armies. Now it was the Poles’ turn to advance 30 kilometres per day, as the Red Army collapsed and retreated in chaotic circumstances. The Polish counter-strike subsequently became known as “Cud nad Wisla” (Miracle of the Vistula), but it was less of a supernatural intervention and more a combination of several favourable factors: Soviet missteps, good Polish organisation, the growing hostility between Stalin and Trotsky as well as various military commanders, which hampered the cooperation between the Soviet fronts. Last but not least, and this was only revealed in 2004, Polish cryptographers had managed to break the Red Army codes – just as they would later be instrumental in breaking the German Enigma.
August 13, 2020
Warsaw, August 1920
Lawrence W. Reed discusses one of the most historically significant battles of the 20th century:
Initial Soviet advances during the Battle of Warsaw, 12 August, 1920.
Map by Halibutt via Wikimedia Commons.
This month marks the 100th anniversary of one of the most important military engagements of the 20th Century. It will be celebrated in Poland, the country which won it decisively. The country which lost it, Vladimir Lenin’s nightmarish gulag known as the Soviet Union, is thankfully extinct. Free people everywhere should be grateful to the Poles for the victory.
From 1795 until 1918, Poland disappeared as Austria, Prussia, and Russia partitioned it into pieces for themselves. Upon its re-emergence as an independent nation (an outcome of World War I), a reconstituted Poland immediately faced an existential challenge from Moscow. Lenin’s Bolsheviks were still consolidating power at home but their territorial appetites were well known to Poles and their new Chief of State, Józef Piłsudski. The fateful Polish-Soviet War broke out in February 1919.
Making war on Poland was more than a local affair to the Soviets. They made it plain that the Poles were simply in the way of their larger goal: exporting communism to the rest of Western Europe. Germany, gripped by post-war economic and political chaos, seemed ripe for a Marxist revolution if only Soviet troops could move in and assist, but Poland would have to be disposed of first.
Nicknamed “the Red Napoleon,” Soviet commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky ordered, “To the West! Over the corpse of Poland lies the road to worldwide conflagration. March upon Vilnius, Minsk, Warsaw and onward to Berlin over the corpse of Poland!” Bolshevik theoretician and Lenin confidant Nikolai Bukharin publicly declared that the campaign would take communist forces “straight to London and Paris.” In a letter to Joseph Stalin, Lenin himself suggested the Red Army should attack Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary for the purpose of provoking a communist revolution in Italy, to which Stalin replied in the affirmative.
Both Tukhachevsky and Bukharin, by the way, were executed during Stalin’s purges in 1938 but they were at Lenin’s side and at the pinnacle of Soviet power in 1920. Lenin died in 1924 and was eventually succeeded by Stalin.
Soviet victories in the summer of 1920 looked unstoppable, as Moscow’s Red Army pushed to within striking distance of the Polish capital. From August 12-25, the Battle of Warsaw raged. Foreign observers expected the imminent collapse of Poland. Then, the tactical brilliance of Pilsudski and his chief of staff Tadeusz Jordan-Rozwadowski plus the legendary courage of Polish fighters combined to produce what Poles call “the Miracle on the Vistula.” Author Michael Peck writes in The National Interest:
Just as all seemed lost, Marshal Pilsudski unleashed his masterstroke, a move worthy of Robert E. Lee or Rommel. While the central Russian armies were fixated on Warsaw, a Polish strike force side-slipped to the south of the city, and then turned north in a left hook into the exposed Russian flank. Surprised, demoralized, and outmaneuvered, the Russian armies disintegrated, with some retreating back to Russia and others fleeing to German territory to be interned. Pilsudski’s counteroffensive was assisted by the breaking of Russian codes, a Polish specialty that they later used to crack the Nazi Enigma machine.
Piłsudski’s attack from the Wieprz river area on August 15, 1920.
Map by Halibutt via Wikimedia Commons.
July 17, 2020
“Uprising” – The 1944 Warsaw Uprising – Sabaton History 076 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published 16 Jul 2020August 1944. After nearly 5 years of suffering and oppression at the hands of the Nazis, the Polish resistance in Warsaw was ready to rise up against the German occupation. With the Red Army approaching towards the Vistula from the east, the insurgents planned to take over much of the Polish capital and hold it until help from their Allies arrived. In the early morning hours of August 1, groups of armed young men broke the curfew and stormed official buildings and German warehouses. But as insurgents fought for their lives and future, the outside world however, remained eerily quiet to their pleas for help.
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Music by SabatonColorizations by Mikołaj Kaczmarek – Kolor Historii – https://www.facebook.com/KolorHistorii/
Sources:
– Imperial War Museum: H 4963.
– Mil.ru
– Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0: Bild_183-S73507, Bild_146-2005-0038, Bild_101I-695-0411-02A, Bild_183-97906, Bild 101I-695-0425-13, Bild_146-1973-113-23, Bild_146-1996-057, Bild_146-1994-054-30
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