Hitler's War Against Poland's Partisans: The Battle Behind The Eastern Front, 1939-1945

“…examines an oft-overlooked aspect of WWII and could be used as the basis for a different type of skirmish wargame.”
– Historical Miniatures Gaming Society

From the start of the invasion and occupation of Poland, Nazi Germany waged a vernichtungskrieg – a war of annihilation – in the East. The people of Poland were the first to feel the wrath of Nazi repression in the East in what would serve as a blueprint for the terrors which would be inflicted on other nations when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.

The Germans had prepared carefully for the invasion of Poland. This encompassed securing the newly conquered territories and the premeditated murder of many innocent civilians, and the depopulation of Poles from entire regions of the country. Hitler instructed his henchmen to act ruthlessly, not only against any organized resistance in Poland, but against the Polish civilian population as well. When Polish patriots were stung into organized retaliation, the stage was set for a savage conflict which was waged throughout the war between the Nazi war machine and its immense internal security forces and Poland’s partisans.

To adequately supress the Poles necessitated the transfer of German training, reserve, and replacement troops into Poland, who in normal circumstances would have remained inside the borders of the Reich. Yet, as the Polish patriots increased their attacks against the Nazi oppressor, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler also found it increasingly necessary to reinforce the existing SS and police forces already stationed in Poland. Beginning in the spring of 1942 Polish guerrilla attacks against the Nazi occupation army increased, and by 1943 the Germans were losing, on average, twenty-five to thirty men per day on Polish territory. The culmination of resistance to German rule was the uprising by the Polish Home Army on 1 August 1944 in the Polish capital. The brutal Warsaw Uprising saw the loss of unknown thousands of men on both sides and the death of possibly more than 100,000 civilians.

Employing dozens of actual German Bandenlagekarten wartime anti-partisan maps, plus newly created detailed battle maps and full orders of battle, Dr Muñoz brings this little-known conflict in Poland into hard focus for the very first time, with every major, and some minor, anti-guerrilla operation in Poland being comprehensively presented. Hitler’s War Against Poland’s Partisans is the first time the entire partisan and anti-partisan war in Poland has been fully documented from start to finish.

Dr Antonio J. Muñoz lives in New York City. He is a professor of history at Farmingdale State College in Long Island, New York. He is married, has two daughters and two grandchildren. His last work, published in 2018, covered the history of the German Secret Field Police in Greece, 1941–1944.