A regular reader of my blog (B. Zelewski), who reads and understands Polish, sent me the link to a YouTube video which shows the proof that Poland fired the first shots of World War II, not Germany. On the video, you can hear a broadcast from Polish Radio in which the Poles are claiming that Germany has just attacked Poland — but this broadcast had been pre-recorded.
“Pełny komunikat o wybuchu II Wojny Światowej, z dnia 1 września 1939 roku. Komunikat czyta Zbigniew Świętochowski, komunikat specjalny nagrany 29 sierpnia czyta Józef Małgorzewski”
This was the full communique about the outbreak of WWII, as of the 1st of September 1939. The first speaker on the video is Zbigniew Świętochowski, and the special communique, recorded on August 29th, is read by Józef Małgorzewski.
This comment on the video was made by an apparently confused Polish reader:
“Może już ktoś zadawał takie pytanie – ale czemu jest napisane, że komunikat został nagrany 29 sierpnia, kiedy atak rozpoczął się 1 września? womekklol”
Translation:
“Maybe someone has asked this question already, but why it is written that the communique was recorded on August 29th, while the attack began on September 1st?”
B. Zelewski, the person who sent this information to me, knows the answer to the question; he wrote this in an e-mail to me:
The passionate message of Józef Małgorzewski (the second reader) was pre-recorded, since the Polish leaders knew there would be a war with Germany. Poland desired this war. The Poles had been promised all the help, assistance (Lend-Lease) and direct involvement (of the British and French) in a German-Polish war.
The “patriotic” messages for the broadcast had been pre-recorded. As simple as that!
The first radio-host (Zbigniew Świętochowski) blurted out that “the Germans attacked them “in the fifth hour this morning”. “The fifth hour (w piatoj godzinie)” means between 4:00 A.M. and 5.00 A.M.
Here are the words of Adolf Hitler’s speech on September 1, 1939:
“This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our territory. Since 5:45 a.m.we have been returning fire, and from now on bombs will be met by bombs.”
Wait a minute! Hitler said that he had ordered (his soldiers) to return fire only as of 5:45 AM Central European time. Poland is located East of Germany; Germany and Poland are in the same time zone.
Hitler could not have lied about this. Everyone had heard his orders and no German soldier would have opened fire before 5:45 A.M. on that day. The first shot from the German side came from the training battleship “Schleswig-Holstein” two minutes later.
It is now obvious that it was Poland that started the war. Poland attacked first!
The Bible of World War II is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, written by William L. Shirer, an American correspondent in Berlin in 1939. I have a first edition of his book from 1959. At the time that I purchased and read his best-selling book, I was totally uneducated with regard to World War II, and I did not detect that his version of history was very biased; he was on the side of the Allies and very much against Germany.
This quote is from page 598 of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:
“Having lied so often on his way to power and in his consolidation of power, Hitler could not refrain at this serious moment in history from thundering a few more lies to the gullible German people in justification of his wanton act.”
In his book, Shirer quoted from Hitler’s speech on Sept. 1, 1939:
“You know the endless attempts I made for a peaceful clarification and understanding of the problem of Austria, and later the problem of the Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia. It was all in vain…
[…]
“This night, for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our own territory. Since 5:45 a.m. we have been returning fire, and from now on bombs will be met with bombs.
Shirer then wrote this in explanation for his claim that Hitler was lying:
“This was the faked German attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz, which we have seen was carried out by S.S. men in Polish uniforms under the direction of Neujocks, used by the Chancellor of Germany as justification of his cold-blooded aggression against Poland.”
Scrapbookpages Blog 
As the comment form is closed in the article “Alfred Naujocks and the start of World War II”, I post this here:
In the above mentioned article you write “Alfred Naujocks signed an affidavit in which he told all about how he had helped to perpetrate a fake attack on a radio station in Gleiwitz”. But how do you know he signed the document? I ask because I always thought that the document in question does not bear any signature. Unfortunately I do not know anymore where I got this idea from. But on my quest I also wasn’t able to confirm THAT it was signed by anyone, since Volume 5 of “Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression” (http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_Nazi_Vol-V.pdf) as well as Volume 31 of “Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal” (http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_Vol-XXXI.pdf) only contain transcripts of 2751-PS, and the Nuremberg Trials Project of Harvard Law School, which contains a number of digital copies of carbon copies of documents used as evidence at the IMT, does not have a copy of 2751-PS (See http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/php/search.php?DI=1&FieldFlag=11&NMTID=2&MTNo=2751&MTNoSuff=).
Comment by Herr Soundso — September 2, 2014 @ 5:56 am
I just assumed that the document had been signed by Neujocks. Can an affidavit be introduced into a trial without being signed? An affidavit is used when the witness cannot give testimony in person at a trial. If the affidavit is not signed, I don’t see how it can be used as evidence.
I did some research and found the full text of the affidavit on this website: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/12-20-45.asp
The website does not mention that the affidavit was not signed. However, this is an official True Believer website, which would not have mentioned that the affidavit was unsigned, if that is the case. It is bad enough that Neujocks never appeared in person at the trial, but disappeared, never to be heard from again. It is very suspicious that he never appeared in person and was never heard from again. To introduce an unsigned affidavit into a trial would be even more suspicious. Couldn’t the Allies have, at least, faked a signature?
I have extended the comments on old posts, but it is probably better to comment here on a later post, as you have done.
Comment by furtherglory — September 2, 2014 @ 8:56 am
Can an affidavit be introduced into a trial without being signed? At the IMT everything seems to have been possible. It was common to introduce transcripts or carbon copies of supposed originals (See Carlos W. Porter’s “Not guilty in Nuremberg” for a discussion of documents used at the IMT). And since Naujock (supposedly) was in US-custody it is strange, as you said, that he never appeared in front of the court. Just as strange as that a digital copy (in contrast to a transcript) of this important document is nowhere to be found. Until we are presented with a digital copy and are told, where the original is located, every discussion of this document is moot. And I prefer not to assume anything in this case…
Comment by Herr Soundso — September 3, 2014 @ 12:34 pm
And something else: The supposed affidavit with the signature would probably have been written in German. And then the English text introduced before the court would have been a translation, probably without Naujocks signature. But the question remains: Where is the document with Naujocks signature?
In this context I find it very interesting that the British already knew the whole story on 9th September 1939, more than five years before Naujocks defected, as another commenter pointed out earlier (“Germany started War with a Lie” – http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/75868006?searchTerm=GLEIWITZ&searchLimits=sortby=dateDesc).
Comment by Herr Soundso — September 3, 2014 @ 1:07 pm
Hermann Gerdau was a gunner aboard the Nazi battleship Schleswig Holstein and claims the first shot was actually fired at 4:50am.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2402032/WWII-started-55-minutes-earlier-Hitler-claimed-Extraordinary-confession-Nazi-battleship-gunner-fired-shots-Polish-Naval-base.html
Comment by Kageki — August 26, 2013 @ 3:39 pm
The British propagandists already tried to make the Gleiwitz incident look fake on 9th September 1939 (“Germany started War with a Lie” – http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/75868006?searchTerm=GLEIWITZ&searchLimits=sortby=dateDesc). After that they had 5 years and half to make up their story and find their Messiah Naujocks in order to to credit their lie.
Comment by hermie — December 21, 2012 @ 8:44 am
if you read the rise and fall of the third reich by william shirer sorry about the wrongly spelled last name, you will get a whole different story. and the nazis wanted it to appear that poland started this. but anyhow i think it was really just a continuation of ww1 after the intermission.and that began when the archduke was assasinated in austria by some serbian fellows, isn’t that true?
Comment by fire wilson — September 12, 2011 @ 1:33 am
I have made a little research on Franziszek Honiok and didn’t find much besides this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/world-war-2/6106566/World-War-IIs-first-victim.html
This story is made up and there are nothing else to support this claim. Plus, it contradicts the story told by Naujocks in his affidavit:
“I did this and gave Muller instructions to deliver the man near the radio station. I received this man and had him laid down at the entrance to the station. He was alive, but he was completely unconscious. I tried to open his eyes. I could not recognize by his eyes that he was alive, only by his breathing. I did not see the shot wounds, but a lot of blood was smeared across his face. He was in CIVILIAN CLOTHES.”
And from the article:
” It was shortly before 8pm that SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Alfred Naujocks and his elite six-man team drove into the radio station. In one of the cars was Franciszek Honiok, a 43-year-old unmarried Catholic farmer. He had been arrested by the SS in the village of Polomia on August 30, and ruthlessly selected as the person who would provide the ”proof” of Polish aggression against Germany.”
“Before the SS team left, they shot Honiok through the forehead, and left his body, DRESSED IN POLISH ARMY UNIFORM, they had previously stolen, draped across the entrance steps.”
The article and affidavit are not in agreement, whether Honiok was “delivered” to the station, or Naujocks had brought him in the car. And most important: Naujocks insist that the man was civilian uniform, while author of the article disagrees.
Naujocks did not testify at the Nuremberg trials and his affidavit with more than questionable information was accepted without any analytical criticism.
So, did the attack on Gleiwitz station ever happen? Yes it did happen, but now I believe it was not false flag operation, but real provocation from the Poles. Here is the video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2346449808768659716#
Around 2:00 of running time, the commentator said: ”
“After attack on Gleiwitz Transmitter, the Poles started to shoot at town of Beuthen using bombs and grenades”.
You may notice in this video, that lighting of Beuthen episode is relatively dark. That means: it was filmed in the early hours of September 1, 1939, probably around 5:00 AM or earlier. So it was not the Gleiwitz station, that enraged Hitler, attack on Beuthen and probably other places. Beuthen (now Bytom, Poland) is located less than 10 miles from Gleiwitz (Gliwice).
It is very possible that real Franziszek Honiok had participated in the plot against radio transmitter, if he indeed was a polish sympathizer. However, Naujocks lied in his affidavit about the events. Most likely, he wasn’t even there. The Honiok’s name surfaced just few years ago. Apparently someone was trying to connect dots to make Naujocks testimony more or less credible.
Comment by Gasan — July 28, 2011 @ 6:54 pm
Aren’t you forgetting the events at Gleiwitz?
From the Wikipedia entry…”Much of what is known about the Gleiwitz incident comes from the sworn affidavit of Alfred Naujocks at the Nuremberg Trials. In his testimony, he states that he organized the incident under orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, the chief of the Gestapo.[1]
On the night of 31 August 1939, a small group of German operatives, dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks[2] seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish (sources vary on the content of the message). The Germans’ goal was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of anti-German Polish saboteurs.[2][3]
To make the attack seem more convincing, the Germans brought in Franciszek Honiok, a German Silesian known for sympathizing with the Poles, who had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo. Honiok was dressed to look like a saboteur; then killed by lethal injection, given gunshot wounds, and left dead at the scene, so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was subsequently presented as proof of the attack to the police and press.[4]
In addition to Honiok, several other prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp[2] were kept available for this purpose.[3] The Germans referred to them by the code phrase “Konserve” (“canned goods”). For this reason, some sources incorrectly refer to the incident as “Operation Canned Goods.”[5]
Comment by who+ dares +wings — July 28, 2011 @ 8:00 am
I previously blogged about the events at Gleiwitz at https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/alfred-naujocks-and-the-start-of-world-war-ii/
Comment by furtherglory — July 28, 2011 @ 9:19 am
I have added an update to my post to explain how the fake attack on the radio station was used to claim that Germany started the war by faking an attack. I didn’t know that the name of the man who was killed at the radio station was known. Thanks for giving us this information.
Comment by furtherglory — July 28, 2011 @ 9:50 am