"At 4.45 a.m. on September 1, 1939, the tranquillity of daybreak in Western Poland was shattered by a deafening military thunderclap. Five German armies comprising more than 1.8 million men swept across the Polish borders, launched from ideally situated bridgeheads in Western Pomerania, East Prussia, Upper Silesia and German-controlled Slovakia. Almost as loud as the barrages of the German artillery were the roars of engines; the German advance was spearheaded by more than three thousand tanks and hundreds of armoured cars and personnel carriers. From the sky, Ju-87 dive-bombers shrieked down on the hastily mobilizing Poles, their precision bombs destroying bridges, roads and supply convoys, their terrifying sirens sowing panic among the defending forces. The aim was to avoid the protracted attrition of the last war by achieving rapid penetration of territory and swift, annihilating encirclements of enemy forces. With its devastating combination of artillery, infantry, armour and air power, this was precisely what the blitzkrieg made possible."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), pp. 385-386
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland
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Invasion of Poland
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