Free Republic

As night began to fall on 31 August, 1939, a small, hand-picked team of SS troops crept into the then German city of Gleiwitz. Disguised as Polish saboteurs, their mission was to launch an attack on the city's main radio station to give Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler a justification for invading Poland. It was part of what was codenamed Operation Himmler - the false flag attacks carried out by the Fuhrer's military intelligence service the Abwehr, along with the feared SS and the Gestapo to give the impression of Polish aggression towards Germany. Entering through the back door, they locked...

As the rays of early evening sun lingered over the giant wooden mast that protruded through the pine forest, two cars passed through the gates of the German radio station and sto1pped outside the three-storey transmission building. n the following minutes, seven SS officers posing as Polish partisans, would carry out a simple act that would leave one man dead on the station steps – and provide Adolf Hitler with the excuse to invade Poland , plunging the world into six dark years of conflict. The events that took place in the fading light of August 31, 1939 around Gliwice...