Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity

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It was one of the most ruthlessly conceived and executed invasions in the annals of warfare. Hitler’s Polish campaign unleashed a blitzkrieg in which SS troops, police squads, and the army itself waged an ethnic war of unprecedented brutality. Tens of thousands of Poles—roughly 80 percent of whom were Christian—were summarily executed in acts of collective punishment. After six weeks, a country was crushed and the world was at war.

Usually given short shrift in most h...