Wanted to see what you guys think of the Gleiwitz Incident, the German "false flag" operation on their own radio station in which Polish "soldiers" allegedly attacked the station. This gave Germany an excuse for invading Poland, which they did soon thereafter.
The story goes that the Germans faked the attack, shot some concentration camp prisoners, dressed them in Polish units and staged them in order to take pictures and spread the lie. I remember when I was A&M, stumbling on a contemporary book published by the German Propaganda Ministry (and distributed to the A&M college) showing the "evidence." Of course, I knew the story, so I thought, yeah, what bull*****
Except there's almost no proof for it. The entire story, which virtually every history book reprints, is based not on any captured German documents or archival sources, or any of that, but the post-capture interrogation report of one SS officer, a guy named Alfred Naujocks. He claimed he was involved in staging the attack in several interrogations. He then escaped and later wrote a book about it.
While this sounds EXACTLY like what Hitler would do, that is not proof, and in fact, this is a prime contender for confirmation bias: seeing evidence that you were looking for and deciding its true on that basis, not objective criteria.
A few years back, I read THIS BOOK which in a very blase part essentially states that the whole thing is not true, that the attack was in fact a genuine Polish attack, and furthermore, that's how they got their hands on an Enigma machine. Now, from my own research, I know the Poles did get Enigma examples, but I'm not sure how. But the idea that they may have done it in connection with this incident was news to me. Sadly, for such a startling and controversial statement, the author doesn't provide footnotes, so I can't see his sources. But he's not just a fly-by-night author, he wrote many books on the U-Boat war, his dad being a U-Boat captain, I believe.
Now, there are a lot of ways this story could be false. Granted. But again, stripping aside what we want to believe, the objective evidence doesn't allow any proof one way or another. There is no reason to think the author wrong (other than the possiblity that he made it up or is sloppy in research, or bought a conspiracy theory he heard somewhere). But the fact that he doesn't play it up takes out any real incentive to lie. On the other hands, the "official" story we all accept is from an SS officer who was being tried for war crimes and needed testimony that would allow him to cheat death and be more importand and valuable than he really was. So while he may be true, that is mere assumption, but the fact we can say for sure is that he did have a motivation to lie.
Has anyone else heard about this possibility? It seems like such an important thing someone would have run it to the ground. They might have tried, just failed due to lack of evidence. I'm not sure how you would prove it. German archives? Polish archives? Captured German docs that we have (or once had and lost)? If there were any leads on it, it might be worth pursuing from a research standpoint, but I'm not aware of any.
The story goes that the Germans faked the attack, shot some concentration camp prisoners, dressed them in Polish units and staged them in order to take pictures and spread the lie. I remember when I was A&M, stumbling on a contemporary book published by the German Propaganda Ministry (and distributed to the A&M college) showing the "evidence." Of course, I knew the story, so I thought, yeah, what bull*****
Except there's almost no proof for it. The entire story, which virtually every history book reprints, is based not on any captured German documents or archival sources, or any of that, but the post-capture interrogation report of one SS officer, a guy named Alfred Naujocks. He claimed he was involved in staging the attack in several interrogations. He then escaped and later wrote a book about it.
While this sounds EXACTLY like what Hitler would do, that is not proof, and in fact, this is a prime contender for confirmation bias: seeing evidence that you were looking for and deciding its true on that basis, not objective criteria.
A few years back, I read THIS BOOK which in a very blase part essentially states that the whole thing is not true, that the attack was in fact a genuine Polish attack, and furthermore, that's how they got their hands on an Enigma machine. Now, from my own research, I know the Poles did get Enigma examples, but I'm not sure how. But the idea that they may have done it in connection with this incident was news to me. Sadly, for such a startling and controversial statement, the author doesn't provide footnotes, so I can't see his sources. But he's not just a fly-by-night author, he wrote many books on the U-Boat war, his dad being a U-Boat captain, I believe.
Now, there are a lot of ways this story could be false. Granted. But again, stripping aside what we want to believe, the objective evidence doesn't allow any proof one way or another. There is no reason to think the author wrong (other than the possiblity that he made it up or is sloppy in research, or bought a conspiracy theory he heard somewhere). But the fact that he doesn't play it up takes out any real incentive to lie. On the other hands, the "official" story we all accept is from an SS officer who was being tried for war crimes and needed testimony that would allow him to cheat death and be more importand and valuable than he really was. So while he may be true, that is mere assumption, but the fact we can say for sure is that he did have a motivation to lie.
Has anyone else heard about this possibility? It seems like such an important thing someone would have run it to the ground. They might have tried, just failed due to lack of evidence. I'm not sure how you would prove it. German archives? Polish archives? Captured German docs that we have (or once had and lost)? If there were any leads on it, it might be worth pursuing from a research standpoint, but I'm not aware of any.
