A CLASH AT KROJANTY
In the early morning hours of September 1, 1939, military forcesof Nazi
Germany invaded Poland. Later that day, events unfolded that would lead to
one of the most fanciful and enduring legends of World War II.
The Polish 4th Army, or
Army Pomorse, had been placed in the Pomeranian area known as the Polish
Corridor to prevent Hitler from taking this northwest section of Poland
unopposed as he had done in the Czech Sudetenland a year earlier. However,
since a full-blown war had broken out, the Army Pomorse was in the process
of withdrawing while continuing to oppose the German advance.
By late afternoon of that
first day, the German 20th Motorized Infantry Division was approaching the
city of Chojnice, in the Tuchola Forest, about 165 miles northwest of
Warsaw, and it was threatening a key railroad junction in the village of
Krojanty about 4 miles northeast of Chojnice. Army Pomorse forces in this
area consisted primarily of the 18th Lancer Regiment of the Pomorse Cavalry
Brigade, commanded by Colonel Kazimierz Mastelarz.
Having been ordered to
hold the area, Colonel Mastelarz decided to take the regiment’s 1st and 2nd
Squadrons through the forest and attempt to attack the German infantry
positions from the rear. That evening, Mastelarz’s two cavalry squadrons
surprised a German infantry battalion in an open area.
Ordinarily, after
cavalrymen had arrived at a battle area, they would dismount and use their
rifles and other weapons to engage the enemy. However, in this case,
Mastelarz had the advantage of both surprise and mobility, so he ordered a
mounted saber attack against the German infantry.
The 1st and 2nd
Squadrons, a force of about 250, charged out of the forest across an open
area and into the German formation. With only a few casualties, the Poles
quickly gained the advantage during the close-in fighting, and the Germans
started falling back.
Just when it looked like
the Poles were going to win the skirmish, several German armored cars
equipped with machine guns and automatic cannon appeared and opened fire on
the Polish cavalry who then broke off the attack and retreated from the
battle scene. Losses to the Polish squadrons were about 20 killed, including
Colonel Mastelarz, and an unknown number, probably about 60, wounded or
captured. This was the first cavalry charge of World War II.
A MYTH IS BORN
Two days later, General Heinz Guderian, commander of the 19th Corps, of
which the German 20th Motorized Division was a part, wrote that, “...we
succeeded in totally encircling the enemy on our front in the wooded country
north of Schwetz and west of Graudenz. The Polish Pomorska Cavalry Brigade,
in ignorance of the nature of our tanks, had charged them with swords and
lances and had suffered tremendous losses.”
The incident was not
unlike other reported occasions where Polish cavalry, rather than
surrendering, attempted to break through the encircling German forces giving
Guderian’s troops the impression that the Poles were attacking the tanks
rather than trying to dash between them.
Afterwards, German
military officials brought war correspondents William L Shirer and Indro
Montanelli to the scene, and told them that the carnage they saw before them
was the result of Polish cavalry attacking German tanks. Neither reporter
witnessed the actual battle, so they could only report what they were told
and the aftermath that they saw. From this, and the report of General
Guderian, came the myth of the Polish Cavalry charge against German tanks
that was to endure to this very day.
Shirer mentioned his
experience in his 1941, Berlin Diary. Then, in his 1959 book, The Rise And
Fall Of The Third Reich, he wrote: “Horses against tanks! The cavalryman’s
long lance against the tank’s long canon! Brave and valiant and foolhardy
though they were, the Poles were simply overwhelmed by the
German onslaught.”
References to the
legendary charge occurred repeatedly since then in books, magazines, and
so-called documentaries that included staged scenes of Polish cavalry
charging German tanks. As recently as 2007, a World War II Magazine Special
Collector’s Edition article entitled Blitzkreig contained a photograph of
the Pomorska Cavalry Brigade on maneuvers taken eight months before the war
began. It was captioned: “The Pomorska Cavalry Brigade gallops to the front
wielding sabers and lances like their medieval forebears.”
FAR FROM MEDIEVAL
The myth led to the belief that the Poles had no armored vehicles, and
that they were so primitive that they thought military tanks could be
attacked and destroyed with saber and lance. The truth, however, is quite
the opposite. Polish cavalry units were trained and equipped to combat both
tanks and infantry.
Polish cavalrymen were
essentially mounted infantrymen using their horses to move quickly from one
location to another, and the weapons that they normally used against enemy
infantry were their rifles. Sabers and lances were seldom used in combat
except for close-in fighting from horseback where they were more effective
than rifles with affixed bayonets.
However, there was no
need for the Polish cavalry to use sabers or lances against German tanks.
Each cavalry battalion carried deadly Swedish Bofors 37mm anti-tank guns and
Polish-designed Maroszek WZ 35anti-tank rifles for use against enemy tanks.
A projectile from the Polish anti-tank rifle, with a muzzle velocity of over
4000 feet per second, could penetrate the armor of any German tank in the
field. Polish anti-tank rifles were so effective that hundreds of them
captured by Germany were reissued to German military units that then used
them against French tanks when Germany invaded that country in 1940.
Nor was there reason to
believe that the Poles were ignorant of the nature of tanks. In 1939, Poland
had more than 600 tanks. Most of them were small tankettes armed with only
machine guns. In addition to these, Poland fielded 38 British-built Vickers
6 ton tanks and 135 7TP tanks of Polish design based on the Vickers tank.
Each single- turret version of these Polish 7TP tanks carried a 37mm main
gun and up to 17mm of armor plate. They were superior in both armor and
armament to most of the invading German tanks, and they were the world’s
first diesel powered tanks to see action.
Another, perhaps less
familiar, fact regarding Polish knowledge of tank technology is that the
rotating Vickers Tank Periscope used in 40,000 allied tanks during the war
was originally called the Gundlach Peryskop obrotowy and was invented in
Poland in 1936. It was the first periscope to provide a tank commander a
360-degree view without turning his head.
CAVALRY VERSUS TANKS!
While the battles at Krojanty and Graudenz ended badly for the Polish
cavalry, this was not always the case. On September 1, the same day of the
Battle of Krojanty, the German 4th Panzer Division clashed with the Polish
Wołyńska Cavalry Brigade at the village of Mokra, about 126 miles southwest
of Warsaw. The German 4th Panzer Division lost over 100 armored fighting
vehicles including at least 50 tanks. During the thirty-six day 1939
campaign against Poland, Germany lost 674 tanks and 319 armored cars.
However, the mechanized
German war machine did prevail over Poland’s mounted cavalry, but it was not
because the Poles were ignorant of the nature of tanks or that they could
not design a suitable tank.
To view Poland’s cavalry
from an historical perspective, it should be pointed out that all of the
other major combatants also deployed mounted cavalry during World War II
including Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the
United States, whose last horse-mounted cavalry charge took place near
Morong, the Philippines, on January 16, 1942. Contrary to the myth that the
entire German army raced across Europe on modern vehicles, most of Germany’s
ammunition and equipment was transported by the Third Reich’s 2,750,000
horses and mules.
Early successes with its
tanks prompted Germany to start dismantling its cavalry force. However,
after 1942, the German army started increasing the number of its mounted
cavalry units for some of the same reasons that Poland had initially
employed its cavalry — insufficient industrial production capability, and
the need to fight the Soviet Union on the great trackless wasteland,
impassable marshes, and forests of Eastern Europe.
Ironically, as Germany
was rebuilding its cavalry in Europe, the Poles were in Great Britain
rebuilding their tank force. Ultimately, tankers of the Polish 1st Armored
Division fought their way from Normandy to Wilhelmshaven where they entered
the German port city on May 5, 1945. There they accepted the surrender of
its German garrison and naval fleet of over 200 warships and vessels.
