1939 September Campaign
About 150,000 to 200,000 Polish civilians were killed during the one-month September Campaign, characterized by the indiscriminate and often deliberate targeting of civilians by the invading forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Many of them were killed in the Luftwaffe's terror bombing operations (including the bombing of Frampol and Wieluń,). Massive air raids were conducted on these, and other towns which had no military infrastructure. Columns of fleeing refugees were systematically attacked by the German fighter and dive-bomber aircraft.
From the first day of the war, the round-ups and summary executions of Poles commenced by Wehrmacht, SS and Selbstschutz. Several thousand Polish prisoners of war (POWs) were also murdered.
Read more about this topic: Nazi Crimes Against Ethnic Poles
Famous quotes containing the words september and/or campaign:
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
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