Towards nine o’clock on the evening of 3 September, Hitler boarded his special armoured train in Berlin’s Stettiner Bahnhof and left for the front. 3 For much of the following three weeks, the train — standing initially in Pomerania (Hinterpommern), then later in Upper Silesia — formed the first wartime ‘Führer Headquarters’. 4 Among Hitler’s accompaniment were two personal adjutants, for the most part Wilhelm Brückner and Julius Schaub, two secretaries (Christa Schroeder and Gerda Daranowski), two man-servants, his doctor, Karl Brandt (or sometimes his deputy, Hans-Karl von Hasselbach), and his four military adjutants (Rudolf Schmundt, Karl-Jesko von Puttkamer, Gerhard Engel, and Nicolaus von Below). 5 Behind Hitler’s carriage, the first on the train, containing his spacious ‘living-room’, sleeping compartment, and bathroom, together with compartments for his adjutants, was the command carriage that held communications equipment and a conference room for meetings with military leaders. In the next carriage Martin Bormann had his quarters.6 On the day of the invasion of Poland, he had informed Lammers that he would ‘continue permanently to belong to the Führer’s entourage’.7 From now on, he was never far from Hitler’s side — echoing the Führer’s wishes, and constantly reminding him of the need to keep up the ideological drive of the regime.
The Polish troops, ill-equipped for modern warfare, were from the outset no match for the invaders.8 Within the first two days, most aerodromes and almost the whole of the Polish air-force were wiped out.9 The Polish defences were rapidly overrun, the army swiftly in disarray. Already on 5 September Chief of Staff Haider noted: ‘Enemy practically defeated.’10 By the second week of fighting, German forces had advanced to the outskirts of Warsaw.11 Hitler seldom intervened in the military command.12 But he took the keenest interest in the progress of the war. He would leave his train most mornings by car to view a different part of the front line.13 His secretaries, left behind to spend boring days in the airless railway carriage parked in the glare of the blazing sun, tried to dissuade him from touring the battle scenes standing in his car, as he did in Germany.14 But Hitler was in his element. He was invigorated by war.
On 17 September, in the move which Hitler had impatiently awaited, Stalin’s army invaded Poland from the east. German generals, kept in the dark until then about the precise details of the demarcation line drawn up in the secret protocol to the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, did not conceal their anger at having to withdraw from territories way beyond the agreed line that had cost casualties to capture. ‘A day of disgrace for the German political leadership’ was how Haider recorded it.15
Two days later, Hitler entered Danzig to indescribable scenes of jubilation. He took up accommodation for the next week in the Casino-Hotel at the adjacent resort of Zoppot.16 From there, on the 22nd and again on the 25th, he flew to the outskirts of Warsaw to view the devastation wrought on the city of a million souls by the bombing and shelling he had ordered. By 27 September, when the military commander of Warsaw eventually surrendered the city, he was back in Berlin, returning quietly with no prearranged hero’s reception.17 Poland no longer existed. An estimated 700,000 Polish soldiers were taken prisoners of war.18 Around 70,000 were killed in action, and a further 133,000 wounded.19 German fatalities numbered about 11,000, with 30,000 wounded, and a further 3,400 missing.20
Among the German dead was Colonel-General Werner von Fritsch, unexpectedly caught in heavy Polish fire on 22 September on an inspection of the front where his artillery regiment was fighting.21 Typical of the mentality of conservative nationalists who had deep reservations about Hitler but rejoiced in the territorial gains he had brought about, Fritsch had commented in his last letter from the front that victory in the war would bring ‘the united states of Central Europe in a strong continental block under Germany’s leadership’.22 Hitler scarcely reacted when informed of Fritsch’s death.23 Publicity was kept to a minimum.24 On the anniversary of Fritsch’s death a year later Hitler expressly banned any floral tributes.25
