Canned Goods
Himmler's Handiwork
In the tense months leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War, Nazi Germany sought not only military victory but also a justification for war that could be presented to both the German public and the international community.
To achieve this, Heinrich Himmler devised a secret series of false-flag operations known as Operation Himmler, or Operation Konserve.
The objective was simple yet sinister: create the illusion that Poland had launched aggressive attacks against Germany, thereby providing Hitler with a pretext for invading Poland.
Heinrich Himmler, one of Nazi Germany's most fanatical leaders, devised Operation Himmler, a series of staged attacks designed to portray Poland as the aggressor. The most notorious was the Gleiwitz Incident on 31 August 1939, where SS agents disguised as Polish soldiers seized a German radio station. These fabricated provocations provided Hitler with propaganda to justify the invasion of Poland the following day, helping trigger the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe.
...relentlessly accused Poland of persecuting ethnic Germans...
SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich directed Operation Himmler, including the Gleiwitz Incident of 31 August 1939. The carefully staged false-flag attack portrayed Poland as the aggressor, helping provide Nazi Germany with a propaganda pretext for invading Poland.
The operation was planned under the supervision of Reinhard Heydrich and managed by Heinrich Müller.
At the same time, German propaganda relentlessly accused Poland of persecuting ethnic Germans and threatening German security.
These claims helped prepare public opinion for conflict, while Operation Himmler was designed to provide dramatic "evidence" to support those accusations.
On 31 August 1939, with the invasion of Poland only hours away, SS and SD agents carried out a series of staged attacks along the German-Polish border.
German operatives, dressed in Polish uniforms, assaulted selected targets, vandalised property, fired weapons, and then withdrew, leaving behind supposed proof of Polish involvement.
To strengthen the deception, concentration camp prisoners were murdered, dressed as Polish soldiers, and left at the scenes as fabricated casualties.
Inmates at Dachau concentration camp. In planning the Gleiwitz Incident, Nazi authorities exploited concentration camp prisoners as part of their deception. Selected inmates were murdered, dressed in Polish uniforms, and left at the attack scene to serve as fabricated evidence of Polish aggression. Referred to by planners as Konserve ("canned goods"), these victims became a grim element of Operation Himmler.
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The planners cynically referred to these victims as Konserve or "canned goods", a term that later inspired the operation's alternative name.
Several locations were targeted, but the most famous was the Gleiwitz Incident, in which German agents seized a radio station and broadcast a brief anti-German message intended to appear as a Polish attack.
Other staged incidents occurred at customs posts, railway stations, communications facilities, and border installations.
Although the deception failed to convince many foreign observers, it provided Hitler with the propaganda material he desired.
Within hours, Germany launched its invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, igniting the European phase of the Second World War and demonstrating how manufactured incidents could be exploited to justify aggression.
German soldiers remove the Polish border crossing in Sopot during the first stages of the Invasion of Poland in September 1939.
Prelude
In the summer of 1939, Europe stood on the brink of war.
The diplomatic settlement created after the First World War was under increasing strain as Nazi Germany pursued an aggressive revision of the Treaty of Versailles.
Under Adolf Hitler, Germany had already remilitarised the Rhineland, annexed Austria, and absorbed Czechoslovakia.
These successes, achieved with limited resistance from Britain and France, encouraged the German leadership to believe that further territorial demands could be achieved through pressure or force.
German Leader, Adolf Hitler
Austrian pro-Anschluss post card, 1938. The Anschluss of March 1938 marked a major step in Hitler's expansionist policy and strengthened Germany's position in Central Europe. The annexation of Austria was achieved without military opposition, reinforcing Hitler's belief that bold actions would meet little resistance from the Western powers. This success was followed by the acquisition of the Sudetenland and the destruction of Czechoslovakia, further increasing German confidence. By 1939, attention turned to Poland, where demands over Danzig and the Polish Corridor escalated tensions. When diplomatic pressure failed, Nazi leaders prepared a pretext for war. The Gleiwitz incident became the manufactured justification for the invasion that followed.
...would have compromised its sovereignty...
Passport of the Free City of Danzig
Poland became the next target.
Germany demanded the return of the Free City of Danzig, a predominantly German-speaking city placed under League of Nations protection after 1919, and sought extraterritorial road and rail links across the Polish Corridor.
For Poland, accepting these demands would have compromised its sovereignty and access to the Baltic Sea.
The Polish government therefore rejected German proposals, convinced that further concessions would only invite additional demands.
The Polish Corridor was a strip of territory created after the First World War to give the newly independent Polish state access to the Baltic Sea. It separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany and became a major source of tension between Berlin and Warsaw. Adolf Hitler demanded the return of the corridor and the city of Danzig, but Poland refused, fearing the loss of its independence. As relations deteriorated, Nazi Germany planned a false-flag operation at Gleiwitz on 31 August 1939. German agents staged an apparent Polish attack on a radio station, providing a pretext for Germany's invasion of Poland the following day.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/centralaustralia/53310539154/in/photostream/
...portrayed ethnic Germans living in Poland as victims of persecution...
Relations between Berlin and Warsaw deteriorated rapidly during 1939.
German propaganda increasingly portrayed ethnic Germans living in Poland as victims of persecution, while the Polish government began partial military preparations.
In March 1939 Britain and France issued guarantees to defend Polish independence, significantly raising the stakes of any future conflict.
Despite these assurances, neither Western power was immediately capable of providing effective military assistance.
French soldiers from the mechanized infantry posing for the newspaper "Paris soir". Some of them are still wearing WW1 tank leather jackets (black collar and double breasted). Some of them are also wearing the M19 Adrian helmet issued to tank crews. By September 1939, Britain and France had guaranteed Polish independence but were not fully prepared for a major continental war. Both nations had increased military spending during the 1930s, yet their armed forces were still mobilising when Germany invaded Poland. France relied heavily on defensive strategy and the protection of the Maginot Line, while Britain's army remained relatively small compared to the forces Germany could deploy. The photo was taken by André Zucca in October 1939.
...effectively removed the danger of a two-front war for Germany...
A decisive turning point came on 23 August 1939 with the signing of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, commonly known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Secret clauses divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence and effectively removed the danger of a two-front war for Germany. With Soviet neutrality secured, Hitler became confident that an invasion of Poland could proceed.
As German forces prepared for war, the Nazi regime sought a justification for military action.
Operation Himmler was conceived as a series of false-flag incidents designed to create the appearance of Polish aggression.
The most famous of these would be the Gleiwitz incident.
The Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov signing the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, as the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, standing third from left, and Stalin, fourth from left. The pact, signed on 23 August 1939, removed the threat of a two-front war for Germany by securing Soviet neutrality and secretly dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence. Confident that the Soviet Union would not intervene, Hitler prepared to invade Poland.
Heinrich Hoffmann/ullstein bild, via Getty Images
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Sturmbannführer (Major) Alfred Naujocks, who led the attack on Gleiwitz radio station. Much of what we know about the Gliewitz Inicident comes from his testimony at the Nuremberg Trials which took place at the end of the Second World War.
In the months before the invasion, the Nazis had ensured that the media had whipped up a frenzy of hostility towards the Poles, with lurid tales of Polish mistreatment of ethnic Germans living in Poland.
With the German public now believing tales of Polish hostility towards Germans, the stage was now set.
Gliewitz in 2020
Canned goods
On 31 August 1939, the plan was executed by German agents dressed as Polish Soldiers, led by Alfred Naujocks, a German SS-Sturmbannführer (Major). They pretended to attack border buildings, fired indiscriminate shots, carried out acts of vandalism – generally cause a lot of fuss and noise without actually causing much actual damage. However, in order to add to the authenticity of the scheme, several unfortunate prisoners from concentration camps were sacrificed.
Dressed in Polish uniforms, they were given lethal injections before their corpses were then shot to give the impression they had died in combat. (The name ‘Canned Goods’ came from this aspect of the operation due to the condemned prisoners being referred to as ‘Konserve’ – i.e canned goods.)
Plaque at Gliewitz which commemorates the incident.
The main part of the operation was the attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz, but several other incidents formed part of the operation, including ‘attacks’ on the German customs station at Hochlinden and the forest service station in Pitschen.
Unsurprisingly, the Nazis limited press coverage of the incident, only allowing journalists from the USA to visit the scene but no detailed investigation of the incident was allowed. However, despite the Nazi’s efforts, the international media largely disbelieved the Nazi’s version of events.
Acting suitably outraged by this ‘incident’, Hitler made the following speech on the 1 September 1939:
The radio station at Gleiwitz.
Additionally, thousands of ethnic Germans living in Poland had been preparing for the forthcoming invasion, ready to carry out acts of sabotage and guerrilla warfare and assisted by the by the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence); These German agents assisted the invading German forces during the invasion of Poland, leading to some reprisals by the Poles, which were then in turn highly exaggerated by the German Nazi propaganda.
Bloody Sunday
A notable example of this was the Bydgoszcz ‘Bloody Sunday’ (the term ‘Bloody Sunday’ was created and promoted by Nazi propaganda officials). An instruction issued by the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda for the press said:
After an exchange of fire between Polish troops and ethnic Germans in the town of Bydgoszcz during the invasion, it was reported that the captured Germans were captured and executed on the spot with others being summarily lynched. A German army investigation of the event concluded that the incident was caused by confusion and alarm amongst the Polish troops. (An investigation in 2004 estimated that 30 – 40 Poles died and around 100 – 300 Germans).
In retaliation, the Wehrmacht carried out - according to Polish historian Czesław Madajczyk:
However, to this day, there is still disagreement amongst historians as to the exact number of victims of Bloody Sunday.
Foreign journalists at the site of the alleged Polish atrocities.
Aftermath
It soon became apparent to the rest of the world that a major incident had occurred. German media sources were spinning the incident as a Polish attack. The BBC reported:
The next day – September 1st 1939 – the Second World War started.
Sources:
Archives of the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School. Address by Adolf Hitler - September 1, 1939 (usf.edu))
(James J. Wirtz, Roy Godson, Strategic Denial and Deception: The Twenty-First Century Challenge, Transaction Publishers, 2002)
military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident
A. K. Kunert, Z. Walkowski, Kronika kampanii wrześniowej 1939, Wydawnictwo Edipresse Polska, Warszawa 2005, ISBN 83-60160-99-6, p. 35.
Jeanette Lamb Fake News is Nothing New: 5 'Black Propaganda' Operations From the 1930s and 1940s (historycollection.com)
Lock, Stock, and History — The Gleiwitz Incident A false flag operation is a... (tumblr.com)
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, item number CW-004
How a False Flag Sparked World War Two: The Gleiwitz Incident Explained | History Hit