SOVIET INVASION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 October 1939, Page 7

SOVIET INVASION

BLAMED FOR POLISH DEFEAT ARMIES WOULD HAVE HELD OUT. BUT FOR ATTACK IN REAR. The first full Polish statement about the course of the war in Poland up till the time the Russians crossed the eastern frontier is given, a Daventry broadcast states, by Dr E. Lipinski who states that at 11 p.m. on September 16 he reported to the President, after a visit to the High Command, that the position held by the Polish army was good. The Polish army were holding their positions, and the German raiding columns were being rounded up. The impression of the High Command was that the German plan had been spent, for they had lost heavily and had advanced rapidly over roads they themselves had destroyed, with the result that supplies could not be brought up quickly enough. The High Command was confident, of holding out for months, but at 6.30 o’clock the next morning, September 17, the Russians crossed the eastern frontier.

Dr Lipinski explained that the Polish High Command had planned a war of movement during the first part of the campaign, since Poland’s immense frontiers could not be defended, and that they proposed to turn the war of movement later into trench warfare. He spoke of the immense amount of material the Germans had sent across the frontier by land and air. The Germans had been helped by the driest summer for fifty or sixty years; even so, the High Command believed that, they could have held the prepared positions if the Russians bad not attacked them in the rear.