On August the 25th, 1939, the German Battleship HMS Schleswig-Holstein entired the Danzig (today’s Gdansk) harbor on a goodwill visit. This was not unusual as Danzig was a heavily German populated city. It was declared a free city by the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I, belonging to neither Germany or Poland. What was unusual was that in her belly that vessel held assault troops for Hitler’s planned invasion of Poland on the next day. All civilian visits aboard ship, as was the custom from its earlier visits, were cancelled.

When Britain declared they would come to Poland’s aid if Germany attacked her, Hitler delayed the invasion to September 1. The ship’s delayed departure was attributed its needing routine repairs.

I have visited Gdansk, and the harbor there is very tight. In fact, the cruise line I was on tied up just down river from one of the two Polish entities that were allowed by the Treaty of Versailles – The Westerplatte. This was a small outpost of less than 200 soldiers along the peninsula that separates the mouth of the Vistula River from the Baltic Sea. Everyone there was expecting war, but was certainly still hopeful of it never coming to Poland’s soil.

In thee predawn hours of September 1, 1939, the HMS Schleswig-Holstein slipped away from its berth in Danzig and headed to the open sea, it trained its massive guns on the Westerplatte complex. At 4:47 Am, the firing of its shells sounded the opening salvo of World War II from essential point blank range. The Westerplatte was only expected to hold out for 12 hours. Thanks to the bravery and selfless actions of the Poles stationed there, it held out for seven days outnumbered by attacking forces 10 to 1, and facing an even more lopsided disparity in firepower. They held out as a symbol of resistance to the Polish nation. They held out long enough to hear Britain and France declare war on Nazi Germny, but nowhere near long enough to benefit from their aide. That aide would take months in coming, and never reach Poland itself. Today a monument on the hill above the Westerplatte marks the heroics of these souls.

The other Polish soil permitted in Gdansk was the Polish Post Office. It came under brutal attack from SS forces, who saw it as a visage of Poland’s independence to be wiped away. Despite the civilians there being armed only with machine guns and a few grenades, they also fought valiantly. As the building came under increasingly heavy mortar fire, the civilians retreated to its basement. Then the SS brought in a truck filled with gasoline, pumped it into the basement through the shattered windows and threw in grenades to light it aflame. The Poles surrendered after holding off the SS for 15 hours. The first two Poles to emerge under a white flag of surrender were shot and killed in cold blood. A 10 year old girl was also among those killed that day.

There is, is some quarters, a rewriting of history that wishes to place blame on the Poles for the onset of World War II. There are also those who want the world to believe that Poland collaborated with Nazi Germany. Nothing could be further from the truth. Poland was the first to fight the Nazi’s, and they continued to fight them all throughout the war.

Polish soldiers fought in the snowy mountains around Narvik in Norway. They fought in the sands of North Africa near Tobruk. Their pilots fought in the air during the Battle of Britain. Their II Corp fought at Monte Cassino after walking across Russia to regroup in Persia. They fought on the beaches of D-day, and they fought on a bridge too far in Arnhem.

But they also fought at home, in the forests of their homeland, risking lives to bring the first notice of the Holocaust to the West, and in the 63 days of the August Uprising of 1944 that would leave Warsaw in rubble. The Poles never stopped fighting, and for that I am most proud to be a Polish American.

Of course, the Poles greatest contribution to the war effort was in just over a month before the invasion, sharing with the French and British how they, the Poles, had cracked the ENIGMA CODE six years earlier. I shudder to think what might have transpired had they not.

The soul of Poland is indestructible… she will rise again as a rock, which may for a spell be submerged by a tidal wave, but which remains a rock. Winston Churchill, in the House of Commons, 1 October 1939.