September 1, 1939 remains a dark day in Poland’s history. No nation would endure more, or lose more of her population during six years of occupation 1939 – 1945. Adam Zamoyski, in his tome “The Polish Way” described it as follows:
On 1 September some 1.8 million German troops invaded from three sides: East Prussia in the north, Germany in the west, and Slovakia in the South. They were supported by 2,600 tanks, of which the Polish army boasted barely 180, and over 2,000 aircraft which quickly wrested control of the skies from the 420 planes of the Polish Air Force. The Polish Army had neither the equipment nor the training to stand up to this hurricane of armour.
James A. Michener put it perfectly, when he coined the following phrase for the prologue to his 1983 novel Poland. “That Poland survived so many fatal reverses was a testimony to its volatile spirit of freedom.”