Preface

I never imagined it would turn out this way. After the First World War, Germany was thrown into chaos. There were riots in the streets, a Socialist Revolution boiling in Berlin, thousands of ex-soldiers formed violent paramilitary groups to fight the revolution, and over 30 political parties existed that acted like savage warring tribes. No one could have guessed that one of the most obscure groups of people with an obscure leader would gather so much strength, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and these were desperate times. In 1929, our economy all but collapsed and it seemed there were only two ways out: Nazism or Socialism. We watched in awe as Hitler captivated the split nation and drove out anyone who opposed him.

He became chancellor out of pressure from the people and the shared national fear and hate for the communists and the Jews. He was loved by all; he was going to right the wrongs of the territorial settlement at the end of the First World War, and the world let him. No one wanted another war, but we all wanted our land, so he expanded our territory by simply asking nicely. He was a peaceful man, he only shot those who disagreed with him and approved the murdering of those impure. But now, he wanted to take it a step further, and like before, we went along with it. The countries of France and Britain warned that if he invaded Poland, there would be war.

So, on the first of September, 1939, we invaded Poland.

World War II

September 19, 1939

I stared down the barrel of my rifle, through the dust and debris, aiming at a Pole hiding in the grass on a small hill. When my gun went off his body fell back with a sickening thud and an inhuman scream. I cracked a smile. This was war, an art I had perfected.

Artillery fired all around us, buildings burned, and machine guns roared. Shells exploded and hit trees, Polish cannons, and Polish men. It seemed that the smoke never cleared and fighting could be heard behind every cloud and explosion. There was yelling all over, screams of orders and screams for mercy. It would unnerve anyone, but me, no, I thrived off of the chaos of war. I pushed myself off the ground and forward into the battlefield where I was met with an uplifting scene, my men picking off the last fighters. Every shot I heard lifted my spirits as the wind picked up and the smoke cleared.

A horse that once must have been pulling cannons, was running, panicked by the chaos. I watched as the mare was shot and ended up on the ground with the rest of the bodies. The shooters laughed and I couldn't help but chuckle as well. After ten days of back and forth fighting all along the Bzura River, we pushed on to Warsaw.

Poland in mid-September was a beautiful thing. The trees began to change color and birds chirped over the noise of tanks moving at a speed never before seen in an army so large. Most towns we passed by were all obliterated by the Luftwaffe that came through before us and nothing stood in our way as we rolled through the fields of Poland. We marched on collected, composed, and stoic for less than a day before we began seeing the signs of the city ahead.

The dirt roads made way into cobblestone and then to debris. Dust and ash fell from the sky as the south side of Warsaw came into view. Everything was gone. Never in my entire life had I seen such destruction. It looked as if God himself had reached down and flattened parts of the city with his fist. I felt pride rise up inside me as I remembered that this was us. We did this. As we made our way closer I saw no one but the dead and the dying. Men with their limbs crushed, women with bullets in their chests, and children crying over their mutilated parents. I sat still in our halftrack and felt every bump as we rolled on.

I spotted him after almost half an hour of navigating through the soldiers of the 10th Army lined up just outside the city, my brother. He was surrounded by other soldiers. I began shouting and waving as I ran toward him at lightning speed.

"Tell me everything!" We spoke at the same time which caused a fit of laughter. Germany spoke first, yelling over the sound of planes.

"The Polish just won't give up. You should have seen it! The planes came in and bombed everything. We held our defenses here and, and, wow." He was so ecstatic, like a little boy playing with toys on Christmas Eve, his eyes were all lit up. "Look at what we did!" I looked around, he had hit the heart of Poland in no less than eight days. It was not at all like the First World War, quite the opposite in fact. That relieved me. I would not be watching my soldiers, my people, and my friends die slow, agonizing deaths. This was going to be a good thing.

"Look at what you did, Germany. I'm proud of you." I gestured to nothing in particular, but found myself accidentally pointing at a large hole in the ground. A German plane erupted into flames in the distance and another flew low, followed by machine gun fire and distant screams. "When do we enter?"

"When they can't take the bombs anymore."

That night whole sections of the city burned as incendiary bombs were dropped. I turned to my brother, "how long has the city been burning?

"Every night."

"Wow." I stared up at the tops of burning buildings.

"Mhm," he nodded.

"It's so different, you know, from any other wars I've ever been in. It would take months to get this far, stalemates could last for weeks or even years, but you're well aware of that." We held a shared look of concern and understanding.

"Blitzkrieg. That's what people have been calling it."

"Lighting war, I like it. It's quick and fast and casualties are low. You know, I think Hitler was right, this is going to be good." I looked at the city as another incendiary bomb was dropped. "It does look a little like lighting."

We spent several days like this, watching the city slowly crumble while we lost so few men. That didn't last much longer when we were ordered to attack on the 23 of September. The Polish held their own and we were successfully repulsed; however, three days later, after another bombardment, we pushed once more. Germany and I were sent to the west side of Warsaw with five divisions tasked with the mission to take the forts of Mokotów, Dąbrowski, and Czerniaków as four others closed in to do the same on the east side. This day would live in infamy for years to come.

It was armageddon from the start. My brother and I went with mechanized infantry and were met with hellfire almost immediately. Bullets whizzed passed my face and hit the pavement somewhere behind me. I dove behind the carcass of a horse and instructed the men behind me to take cover as well. Just as I had peeked out to take aim at the shooters, the building the volley had been coming from burst into flames and shrapnel. The world muffled and shook but I managed to find the source of the explosions. Hundreds upon hundreds of planes swarmed in like locust and my men and I jumped out from our hiding places, advancing farther into the broken city.

As part of the front lines we were the closest to the bombs dropped. They made devilish noises, like having cotton tear inside your ears but a hundred times louder. The bombs left nothing untouched and seeing dead children smothered further by falling buildings, was almost crushing. Almost.

Smoke filled the sky from the flames that trickled down from the open windows of skeletal buildings and snaked upwards.

A solo soldier went ahead to prepare for our next advancement but as soon as he left the cover of a broken building's stone wall, a disgusting crack rang out and he dropped. Blood pooled around him.

"Everyone, get the hell back!" Like any rational person, I assumed that the shots had come from somewhere behind the wall, where we were lucky to be sheltered. But of course, God was not on my side that day and I became well aware of that when the man standing next to me fell like a sack of flour.

Men scattered in all directions, searching for cover along the wall that stretched for a distance too far to make it away unscathed. I slammed myself into the rocks behind an almost too small mound of rubble and pulled my brother to cover as well.

I watched in horror as my outfit fell like birds being shot out of the sky. A private I had had a drink with just the day before lay dead next to a boy-soldier I had met only briefly.

This young man frantically began to crawl his way to the relative safety of our mound. So, without exactly thinking, I wasn't much of a fan of that, I scrambled along the debris and grabbed his wrist. Bullets kicked up rocks as they struck the rubble around me and somehow, I managed to pull him back unscathed.

The boy couldn't have been any older than 18 and the shook as he held onto my arm for dear life.

This war was good I kept telling myself, this war was good.

I looked towards my brother who appeared terrified as he spoke: "What do we do?"

I peeked out from behind our mound and said, "We just have to push o- Germany?!" I stared through the haze in shock as my brother ran towards the gunner's building. Bullets exploded as they made contact with the ground all around him.

Although I had practically shit myself watching my little brother run into a spray of bullets, war had conditioned my brain to take advantage of moments like this. While the gunner was distracted, I rushed all abled men to safety inside the building and convinced a few to help pull the wounded inside. The not-so-distant shots echoed out on the other side of the wall until they didn't. They stopped just as suddenly as they came on.

I peered out from behind the entrance to the building and saw no sign of the gunner; or my brother. Doing my best to ignore the worst possible outcome that was now gnawing at my conscious, I walked back to the men.

Every footstep echoed like gunshots as I walked past a fellow soldier and friend I knew well. One look at him and I knew he was dead. I walked on.

I spotted the boy-soldier sitting nestled between the back wall and a boulder. He flinched as I walked over and took a seat next to him. I patted his back in the most comforting way I could, which was not at all comforting, and made him cower even more. Was he cowardly or was I jaded?

The screaming of a soldier near us as someone pressed hard onto a bullet wound in his calf was background noise as I listened intently for any sign of Germany, or god forbid the enemy.

I wasn't stupid enough to leave my men and go run after my brother, whom I trusted to be smart. I raised him to be calm and brave and he's grown to be just that. It may not have seemed to my fellow soldiers I cared much for my brother, for I had coldly let him run into a spray of bullets to his certain death and now seemed to sit here completely unfazed, but he would be fine. I kept telling myself. He would be fine. He was my brother after all.

The screaming from the opposite side of the ruined building hadn't ceased. The mens' cussing made me chuckle slightly before I looked away and towards a sight that made me cuss myself. Germany was walking calmly toward our outfit. He smiled through the dirt and small specks of blood that covered his face.

I think he was about to say something but by the time he had opened his mouth I had already began crushing him in my arms. I may have let him run into a spray of bullets to his certain death, but the love was there.

Germany never got his words out before I spotted several German soldiers coming our way. "Hey do know where we are?" I shouted at them. I had gotten so turned around in the city ruins that we could have been in Oz for all I knew.

A high ranking soldier gestured for the help of my wounded men. "This is Mokotów."

It took a few seconds before I realized what that meant. No one was here, we'd only run into about a dozen fierce Polish soldiers, and everything just seemed so abandoned.

I turned to my brother. "It's over. Poland is ours."