Late evening on Thursday, 31 August 1939 the
audience was listening to Gleiwitz, a radio-station on the
Germano-Polish frontier but just inside Germany. Suddenly the
musical programme broke and excited German voices announced that the
town of Gleiwitz had been invaded by Polish irregular formations
marching towards the emitting station. Then the station "went dead".
When received again, Polish was being spoken. An inflammatory
statement was broadcast urging Polish minority in Silesia to take up
arms against Adolf Hitler. Radio Cologne gave out that German police
was repelling the attackers at Gleiwitz. The BBC also broadcast a
statement, which read:
There have been reports of an attack
on a radio station in Gleiwitz, which is just across the Polish
border in Silesia. The German News Agency reports that the attack
came at about 8.00pm this evening when the Poles forced their way
into the studio and began broadcasting a statement in Polish. Within
quarter of an hour, says reports, the Poles were overpowered by
German police, who opened fire on them. Several of the Poles were
reported killed, but the numbers are not yet known. [ 1]
This
was the excuse Hitler needed to invade Poland on the next day, 1
September 1939. The incident, which triggered the Second World War
could have remained obscure, had it not surfaced during the
proceedings of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in
1945. A written affidavit was then taken from
SS-Sturmbannführer Naujocks, which indicated that the attack
on the Gleiwitz radio-station was staged by the Gestapo and
SD, and was one of numerous "border incidents" fabricated for the
purpose of furnishing Hitler with such excuses, and creating an
atmosphere of distrust and suspicion as to Poland's intentions.
Alfred Helmut Naujocks was born on 20 September 1911 and died in
1960. His NSDAP membership card bore number 26240; SS number -
624279. His career is rather sketchy, but he is referred to in
virtually every book about the Nazi Reich. William Shirer
characterized him as a sort of intellectual gangster, [2] and
Heinz Hohne in The Order of the Death Head nicknamed Naujocks
as the man who started the Second World War. [1] He
studied engineering at Kiel University, joined the SS in 1931 and
was brought in by Reinhardt Heydrich in 1934 to help in locating
Otto Strasser's "black radio" in Prague. Naujocks became an official
of the Amt VI of the SS (Security Service - SD) and was one
of the most audacious commanders of the SD. He wasn't an intelligent
leader and lacked the mental capacity for creating plans such as
those which Heydrich conceived. However he was an expert at carrying
out an operation once it was explained. He helped Heydrich to
fabricate compromising materials against the Soviet Marshal Mikhail
Tukhachevskiy, who was effectively tried and executed in infamous
Stalin's purges. In 1939 Heydrich gave him details of a simulated
Polish attack on a small German radio station at Gleiwitz near the
Polish border. This was to give the Führer the excuse for his
attack on Poland.
The plan, known as the operation Himmler was conceived
early in August 1939. Since 10 August Naujocks' men had been waiting
at Gleiwitz, Beuthen, Hindenburg and elsewhere near the Polish
frontier, in order to stage a faked Polish attack on the German
radio station there. They carried out necessary preparations and
reconnaissance. To add authenticity it was planned to take certain
prisoners from concentration camps, kill them by use of hypodermic
injections, and leave their bodies, clad in Polish uniforms, at the
various places where the incidents were planned to occur. The chief
of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, took a directing hand in
those actions. At 4:00 on 31 August the executive order to begin the
invasion was confirmed, and troops and equipment began moving up to
forward positions near the frontier. Simultaneously special orders
were transmitted to Naujocks; his men were to attack the forestry
station, destroy the German customs building, and, most important,
briefly occupy the German radio station at Gleiwitz. After shouting
anti-German slogans into the microphone the "Poles" would retreat,
leaving behind a number of dead bodies as proof that a fight had
taken place. The bodies presented no problem. Naujocks picked them
up at 8:00 already unconscious - in SS jargon they were mockingly
called "canned goods". The SS-men seized the radio station as
ordered, broadcast the speech, fired some shots and left. But before
they left they shot the bodies and placed placed them in strategic
positions around the radio-station. After the incident, journalists
and members of the diplomatic corps were taken to the scene of the
incident, where they were presented "proofs" of the "Polish
aggression".
Naujocks was also involved in the Venlo incident, where he and 16
other SD men abducted two British intelligence officers, Captain
Sigismund Payne Best and Major Richard Henry Stevens. A story was
then told that these officers had directed a bomb plot to kill
Hitler. The Venlo incident was to be the excuse for invading the Low
Countries. He was also involved in operation Bernhard, the
operation of faking British bank notes by inmates of the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In the SD Naujocks also
specialized in forging passports. The Nazi authorities were so
pleased with the results that 12 prisoners, three of whom were Jews,
were awarded the War Merit Medal. After being dismissed by the SD
for disobedience, Naujocks joined the Waffen-SS. In 1943 he
was on the Eastern Front. In 1944 he was an economic administrator
in Belgium, and then went to sort out the resistance in Denmark and
was responsible for the murder of members of the Danish resistance.
He deserted to the Americans in October 1944, but escaped from the
POW camp. After the war he settled in Hamburg as a businessman. He
was alleged to have been involved with Otto Skorzeny after the war
in running the secret organization of former SS members - ODESSA.
Skorzeny handled the contracts with the Spanish government, and
passports and funds were arranged for escaping SS to South America.
The radio-station in Gleiwitz (nowadays Gliwice in Poland)
originally was located in Funkstraße (nowadays Radiowa Street) and
possessed two transmitters for broadcasting in long waves. In 1935 a
new radio-transmitter (Gleiwitzer Sender) was built by the
company Lorenz AG from Tempelhof near Berlin (nowadays a
district in the German capital). Its facilities, located in
Tarnowitzstraße (Tarnogórska Street), comprised broadcasting,
administration and living facilities, as well as a mast supporting
antennas. Nowadays the mast is still in place. It is 110m tall and
is built of materials, which in 1930's constituted a technical
novelty: high quality arbutus wood joint by brass and wooden pins.
The old masts were demolished, and the buildings were connected
through cable. In a way that jepoardized the task of Naujock's men,
who could not at once find radio studios, could not find the right
microphone etc. [3] Systematically
maintained in good condition, the Gleiwitz Sender is a unique
monument of technics, still working. The radio-station facilities
are also operable and harbour a small local museum of
radio-broadcasting equipment. Admission is free and guidance is
available in Polish and English.
- H. Hohne, The
Order of the Death Head
- W. L. Shirer, The
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
- Information provided by Mr. Leszek Jodlinski, Director General
of the Museum of Gliwice, in private correspondence. The picture
of the Gleiwitz Sender was kindly provided by Mr. Marcin
Golaszewski.
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