thumb|An ethnic German identifying a Pole as an alleged participant in anti-German violence in Bydgoszcz during "Bloody Sunday". Poles denounced in this way were usually shot on the spot.

Bloody Sunday (; ) was a sequence of violent events that took place in Bydgoszcz (), a Polish city with a sizable German minority, between 3 and 4 September 1939, during the German invasion of Poland.

Standing in the path of the German army's advance during the early days of the invasion, tensions quickly escalated in Bydgoszcz between the city's sizable German-speaking minority and its Polish majority. An instruction issued to the press said, "... must show news on the barbarism of Poles against Germans in Bromberg. The expression 'Bloody Sunday' must enter as a permanent term in the dictionary and circumnavigate the globe. For that reason, this term must be continuously underlined." It was Hitler's explicit goal to create a Greater German State by annexing territories of other countries inhabited by German minorities. By March 1939, these ambitions, charges of atrocities on both sides of the German-Polish border, distrust, and rising nationalist sentiment in Nazi Germany led to the complete deterioration of Polish-German relations. Hitler's demands for the Polish inhabited Polish Corridor and Polish resistance to Nazi annexation fueled ethnic tensions. For months prior to the 1939 German invasion of Poland, German newspapers and politicians like Adolf Hitler had carried out a national and international propaganda campaign accusing Polish authorities of organizing or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland.

After Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, ethnic Germans living in Poland were in many places subjected to attacks, and the Polish government arrested ten to fifteen thousand on suspicion of being loyal to Germany, marching them toward the east of the country.

The incident

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-2008-0415-505, Bromberg, Leichen getöteter Volksdeutscher.jpg|300px|thumb|Wehrmacht soldiers and journalists with German victims of Bloody Sunday.

The killings were incited by fifth column attacks by ethnic German partisans against the Polish garrison.

Besides these sabotage groups in Bydgoszcz, the Abwehr also recorded in its documents paramilitary groups that were formed in the city. According to German records stored in Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg they counted 150 members in Kampf-Organisation under leadership of a local German named Kleiss and were part of a larger military formation coordinated from Poznan which altogether had 2,077 members. In addition to this group a 10-member combat unit under command of a German named Otto Meister was also formed in Bydgoszcz and received orders from Wrocław local office of Abwehr.

During the night between 2 and 3 September a number of German saboteurs dressed up in Polish uniforms woke up inhabitants of two districts in Bydgoszcz telling them to run as Poland has been defeated, and as a result a significant number of civilians panicked and started fleeing the city. The chaotic flight disrupted and restricted movements of the Polish military on the roads.

By the morning of 3 September a certain few Germans who were in good relationship with their Polish neighbors started warning them to hide as "something bad will happen in the city", offering them shelter under the condition that they must hide by 10 AM, but stated they could not disclose details on what would take place. The Citizen Watch in Bydgoszcz relinquished its weapons after receiving assurances from General Eccard von Gablenz, commander of the Kampgruppe "Netze", that its members would be treated in accordance with international law as POWs.

German propaganda

Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry heavily exploited the events to try to gain support in Germany for the invasion. As British historian Ian Kershaw wrote:

Hitler's secret decree of 4 October 1939 stated that all crimes committed by the Germans between 1 September 1939 and 4 October 1939 were not to be prosecuted.

The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau investigation in 1939–1940 claimed that the events were a result of panic and confusion among the Polish troops.

Additionally, in the Boryszew massacre fifty Polish prisoners of war from Bydgoszcz were accused by Nazi summary courts for taking part in "Bloody Sunday" and shot.

According to a German version, Polish snipers attacked German troops in Bydgoszcz for several days (Polish sources and witnesses do not confirm this). More than 20,000 Polish citizens of Bydgoszcz (14% of the population) were either shot or died in concentration camps during the occupation. This debate has been resolved by investigation of German archives, which confirmed existence of several diversion and saboteur groups in Bydgoszcz overseen by intelligence organizations by Nazi Germany. Among the Germans killed in the fighting historians identified Otto Niefeldt who was an Abwehr agent from Szczecin. In the post-war collaboration trials, no ethnic German was charged in relation to Bloody Sunday.). The Poles retaliated, killing many and executing prisoners afterwards.

In 2004, historian Tomasz Chinciński in a publication of Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) summarized recent research related to Bloody Sunday, confirming that the majority of historians agree that an "insurrection" by agents who had arrived from the Third Reich as well as some German inhabitants of Bydgoszcz took place.

See also

  • Valley of Death
  • Stanisław Wiórek
  • Tongzhou mutiny

References

Literature

  • MacAlister Brown, 'The Third Reich's Mobilization of the German Fifth Column in Eastern Europe', The Journal for Central European Affairs 19/2 (Jul. 1959)
  • T. Esman, W. Jastrzębski, Pierwsze miesiące okupacji hitlerowskiej w Bydgoszczy w źródeł dokumentów niemieckich, Bydgoszcz, 1967
  • Włodzimierz Jastrzębski, Tzw. Bydgoska Krwawa Niedziela w Świetle Zachodnioniemieckiej Literatury Historycznej, 1983
  • Szymon Datner, Z dziejow dywersji niemieckiej w czasie kampanii wrześniowej, Wojskowy Przeglad Historyczny 4/1959
  • Marian Wojciechowski, Geneza dywersji hitlerowskiej w Bydgoszczy w świetle historiografii i publicystyki polskiej,, Bygdoskie Towarzystwo Naukowe, Prace Komisji Historii, 1967
  • Edmund Zarzycki, La Diversion Allemande le 3 Septembre 1939 a Bydgoszcz à la Lumiere des Actes du Tribunal Special Hitlerien de la Ville, 279–94 in Polish Western Affairs/La Pologne et les Affaires Occidentales 22/2(1981)
  • Tadeusz Jasowski, 'La Diversion Hitlerienne le 3 Septembre 1939 a Bydgoszcz,' 295–308, in Polish Western Affairs/La Pologne et les Affaires Occidentales 22/2(1981)
  • A documentary about Bromberg/Bydgoszcz from a Polish/German cooperation
  • Witold Kulesza, "I Don’t Want to Polemise with the Myth of the Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) Bloody Sunday", Bulletin of the Institute of National Remembrance, issue: 121 / 2003/2004
  • Wydarzenia 3 i 4 września 1939 r. w Bydgoszczy – "Blutsonntag" , reproduction of text from Historia Bydgoszczy, Tom II, część druga 1939–1945, Marian Biskup (ed.), Bydgoszcz 2004
  • Katarzyna Staszak, Bogusław Kunach, Krwawa niedziela poprawia Niemcom samopoczucie. Romowa z Guenterem Schubertem
  • Selection of Polish articles (regional press) on Bloody Sunday: Express Bydgoski, Ofiaromwojny.republika.pl , Gazeta Pomorska 22, Ofiaromwojny.republika.pl