In the late night of Thursday, August 31, 1939, German undercover

Documnetary History Channel In the late night of Thursday, August 31, 1939, German undercover agents claiming to be Polish terrorists grabbed the Gleiwitz radio station in the German/Poland outskirt district of Silesia.

The station's music program went to an unexpected end, trailed by frenzied German voices declaring that Polish developments were walking toward town; Germany was being attacked by Poland!

At that point, similar to an awful impersonation of the earlier year's scandalous War of the Worlds telecast, the transmission went dead for a minute of sensational quiet.

Expression of Gleiwitz Reaches Rest of World

Before long, the wireless transmissions popped and crackled to life once more, and this time Polish voices (astute little fallen angels, those Germans...) required all Poles in the telecast zone to wage war and assault Germany.

In a matter of moments, radio stations crosswise over more prominent Europe grabbed the story. The BBC telecast this announcement:

There have been reports of an assault on a radio station in Gleiwitz, which is right over the Polish outskirt in Silesia. The German News Agency reports that the assault came at around 8.00pm tonight when the Poles constrained their way into the studio and started television an announcement in Polish. Inside quarter of 60 minutes, says reports, the Poles were overwhelmed by German police, who opened flame on them. A few of the Poles were accounted for murdered, yet the numbers are not yet known.

What's more, in this way, Hitler imagined a reason to attack Poland, which he did the following day: September 1, 1939. The day World War II started.

Alfred Naujocks: The Man Who Started World War II

Alfred Helmut Naujocks was a scholarly go-to extreme man. It was Naujocks who got the requests from Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, to put the organized terrorist assault together at the Gleiwitz station.

Available to Naujock were what the Germans had codenamed "canned merchandise," which were protesters and hoodlums kept alive in confinement camps until the Gestapo required a warm dead body. To add cogency to the Gleiwitz assault, Naujocks brought along one such canned great: Franciszek Honiok.

Honiok, a German from the Silesian locale, was a known Polish sympathizer. Before landing at the station, the Gestapo gave him a deadly infusion. At that point, they dressed him up like a Polish terrorist, and conveyed him to the front of the radio station. Naujocks later affirmed that the man was oblivious, yet not dead yet, when he was shot brimming with gun rounds. At the point when the police and squeeze discovered Honiok's body, they accepted he'd been one of the anecdotal Polish terrorists that assaulted the station.

Operation Himmler

On the whole, there were 21 fake fear activities along the fringe that same night, a considerable lot of them utilizing "canned merchandise" from German penitentiaries so there would be a lot of bodies in the morning- - proof of Polish aggressors that had been shot in self protection. The activities were all a player in a bigger arrangement, called Operation Himmler.

The following day, in the wake of a monotonous night loaded with fake fear, Hitler gave a discourse to the German Army, complete with engineered outrage:

The Polish State has rejected the quiet settlement of relations which I craved, and has spoke to arms. Germans in Poland are abused with wicked dread and driven from their homes. A progression of infringement of the outskirts, unbearable to an awesome Power, demonstrate that Poland is no more eager to regard the wilderness of the Reich.

To put a conclusion to this lunacy, I have no other decision than to meet power with power starting now and into the foreseeable future. The German Army will battle the fight for the honor and the basic privileges of reawakened Germany with hard determination. I expect that each fighter, aware of the considerable customs of interminable German soldiery, will ever stay cognizant that he is a delegate of the National-Socialist Greater Germany. Long experience our kin and our Reich!

Therefore, the subjects of Germany trusted it was all Poland's shortcoming. With the advantage of insight into the past, we ought to figure out how war was begun under the reason of shielding the country. What's more, we ought to figure out how a mental case appears like a friend in need to the hoodwinks he claims to secure. What's more, we ought to pay consideration on the over and over again rehashed lessons of history...

Where Are They Now?

Had it not been for the Nuremberg trials in 1945, the genuine story behind the Gleiwitz assault may have never been revealed. It was there that the operation's pioneer, Alfred Naujocks, let the cat out of the bag in a composed affirmation.

After that game changing night, Naujocks had a few more years of undertakings with the Nazis. At that point he abandoned Germany and turned himself over to Allied powers in 1944. He was held as a war criminal until the war was over. In the wake of affirming at the Nuremberg Trials, he turned into a businessperson in Hamburg, and may have helped a few Nazis break to South America as an afterthought. He kicked the bucket in 1966.