DW Documentaries
Season 2009
TV-PG
Exciting stories on a wide variety of topics from around the globe: DW brings viewers background reports from the worlds of politics, business, science, culture, nature, history, lifestyle and sport.
Where to Watch Season 2009
2 Episodes
- Hitler’s Assault - How World War II Began - Part 01
E1Hitler’s Assault - How World War II Began - Part 01World War Two started on 1 September 1939 when German forces unleashed an attack on the Polish garrison on the Westernplatte peninsular on the territory of what was then the Free German City of Danzig, later Gdansk. But that historical wisdom is not strictly true. The first shots opening Nazi Germany`s war were fired just a few minutes earlier when German Luftwaffe planes launched a ferocious attack on Wieluń, a Polish town which had no military or industrial targets of any significance. This horrific bombing forms the dramatic framework of the film documentary, told from both angles, with German Wehrmacht soldiers elaborating on their first wartime experiences and Poles explaining how, as civilians, they were subjected to aerial attacks, how they fled the fighting, how they were forced to leave their homes: personal memories 70 years after the opening of World War II hostilities. For the first time, in a joint German-Polish project, film makers from both countries describe the events that marked the beginning of Hitler's assault on Poland.
