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Special Units · Invasion of Poland, 1939
The 18th Pomeranian Uhlans
A cavalry regiment from Grudziądz charged and scattered a German infantry battalion near Krojanty on the evening of 1 September 1939. The charge was real. The tanks of the legend were not there.
- Polish Army · Pomeranian Cavalry Brigade
- Chojnice and the Tuchola Forest
- 1–4 September 1939
A regiment from the Vistula
The 18th Pomeranian Uhlans (18 Pułk Ułanów Pomorskich) were raised during the Polish–Soviet War. On 29 May 1923, at Toruń, the regiment received the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari, Poland’s highest award for valor in war, for its banner. Between the wars it was garrisoned at Grudziądz on the Vistula, in Polish Pomerania (Chapter 3).
A Polish cavalry regiment of 1939 was not the force of the later legend. Its brigade rode to battle and fought on foot, as mobile infantry, with 37 mm Bofors antitank guns, 75 mm horse artillery, machine guns, tankettes and the wz. 35 antitank rifle, a weapon so secret that it was issued in sealed crates. The men still carried sabers and still trained for the mounted charge, but they used it only against infantry or cavalry caught in the open (Chapter 3).
The regiment belonged to the Pomeranian Cavalry Brigade under Col. Adam Zakrzewski, part of the Czersk Operational Group of Gen. Stanisław Grzmot-Skotnicki in Army Pomorze. The army’s commander, Gen. Władysław Bortnowski, had opposed placing large forces in the Corridor, a strip about 30 to 90 km wide with Germany on one side and East Prussia on the other; he was overruled. On 26 August 1939, under Col. Kazimierz Mastalerz, the 18th Uhlans were assigned to the group covering Chojnice and Rytel, on the western edge of the Corridor where the railway came in from Germany.
Chojnice, 1 September
The Germans attacked at Chojnice at about 05:00 on 1 September. Against the uhlans and the infantry beside them came the 20th Motorized Infantry Division under Lt. Gen. Mauritz von Wiktorin, part of Gen. Heinz Guderian’s XIX Corps, the armored spearhead of the Fourth Army’s drive across the Corridor. Through the day the Polish line was forced back. Late in the afternoon the Polish command ordered a counterattack to slow the German advance and cover the withdrawal of the 1st Rifle Battalion and the rest of the Czersk group (Chapter 3).
The charge at Krojanty
Near the village of Krojanty, a few miles northeast of Chojnice, Polish patrols found a battalion of the German 76th Infantry Regiment (Col. Hans Gollnick) halted in a clearing at the edge of the woods. The regiment’s 1st and 2nd Squadrons, about 250 men, mounted and charged at about 19:00. The surprise was complete. The German infantry, caught in the open by horsemen with drawn sabers, broke and scattered.
Then German armored reconnaissance vehicles, probably of the 20th Motorized Division’s reconnaissance battalion, came out of the trees and opened fire with machine guns and 20 mm cannon. The uhlans had nowhere to go but back across the open field. Rotmistrz (cavalry captain) Eugeniusz Świeściak, commanding the 1st Squadron, was killed. Mastalerz rode forward to help him and was killed beside him. Polish losses are given as 19 to 25 killed and 40 to 50 wounded, about a third of the force; German losses as 11 killed and 9 wounded.
The survivors regrouped, and the German advance was held up for several hours. Guderian’s memoirs describe a moment of real alarm at his headquarters that evening, with staff officers in steel helmets and an antitank gun brought up against a cavalry attack that never came (Chapter 3).
Judged by the doctrine the uhlans had trained under, the charge was a textbook use of the saber: a mounted attack against infantry caught in the open, launched by surprise to win time for a withdrawal. It did what it was meant to do. The German battalion was scattered, the advance stopped for the evening, and the Czersk group gained hours it badly needed. What went wrong was what the uhlans could not see from the field, a reconnaissance unit with armored cars in the woods beyond the clearing. The price was a third of the two squadrons and the regiment’s commander on the first day of the war.
How a charge against infantry became a charge against tanks
On 2 September German war correspondents and two Italian journalists were taken to the field. They saw dead uhlans and dead horses and, by then, German tanks that had arrived after the fight, and they put the pieces together in the way that suited them. The Italian journalist Indro Montanelli wrote a dispatch describing Polish cavalry charging German tanks with sabers and lances. German propaganda took up the picture with enthusiasm: the magazine Die Wehrmacht reported the “charge” on 13 September, and the story ran in Hitler Youth publications and newsreels as evidence of Polish backwardness and folly. Guderian repeated it in his own memoirs.
in ignorance of the nature of our tanks, had charged them with swords and lances
The myth had a long life outside Germany. The American correspondent William L. Shirer was among the writers who described the Pomeranian fighting in sensational terms, and lances against tanks passed into British and American popular histories and textbooks. The Soviet Union and the Polish communist regime used it as a picture of a brave but hopelessly romantic prewar officer class, and Andrzej Wajda’s film Lotna (1959) showed uhlans attacking tanks. As late as 2011 the Guardian printed a correction admitting that it had “repeated a myth of the second world war, fostered by Nazi propagandists” (History News Network).
The record is plain. About 250 uhlans charged an infantry battalion caught in the open and scattered it; armored cars then drove them off; about 20 of them and their colonel were killed. No tanks were present during the charge. When Polish cavalry fought tanks, as the Volhynian Cavalry Brigade did at Mokra the same day, it fought dismounted, with antitank guns and rifles (Chapter 3; FAQ).
The Tuchola Forest and after
On 2 September Grzmot-Skotnicki awarded his own Virtuti Militari cross to the 18th Pomeranian Uhlans. The battle in the Corridor was already lost. Guderian’s 3rd Panzer Division had crossed the Brda on 1 September and pushed into the great pine woods of the Tuchola Forest; the Polish 9th Division and the Pomeranian Cavalry Brigade counterattacked on 2 September, but the armor was through, and by 3 September German divisions had reached the Vistula near Świecie and closed a ring around the Polish forces in the forest. The Germans counted about 4,000 prisoners by the end of that day.
After more fighting in the Tuchola Forest and an air attack near Drzycim, the regiment ceased to exist as a cohesive unit on 4 September. Its survivors did not stop. They fought on with other cavalry units into the Battle of the Bzura, the largest Polish counterstroke of the campaign, and the defense of Warsaw (Chapter 6). Grzmot-Skotnicki was mortally wounded on the Bzura later that month.
Mastalerz was born on 20 November 1894 in the Zagłębie coal country, in Czeladź or Sosnowiec by different accounts. He had joined the cavalry of the Polish Legions in 1914, fought for Lwów and in the Polish–Soviet War, and won the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari. He is buried in Chojnice and was awarded the Gold Cross posthumously. A monument to the charge stands beside the road from Chojnice to Czersk, where an annual commemoration with a mounted reenactment draws large crowds (dzieje.pl, cited in Chapter 3).
The insignia, rendered
Illustration Original insignia-style artwork made for the Lake Norman Brief. It is not the unit’s official emblem.
Timeline
- The regiment receives the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari for its banner at Toruń.
- Under Col. Mastalerz it is assigned to cover Chojnice and Rytel.
- The German 20th Motorized Infantry Division attacks at Chojnice.
- The 1st and 2nd Squadrons charge a battalion of the 76th Infantry Regiment near Krojanty; armored cars drive them off; Mastalerz and Świeściak are killed.
- Journalists are shown the field; Gen. Grzmot-Skotnicki gives his own Virtuti Militari to the regiment.
- German divisions reach the Vistula near Świecie and close the Tuchola Forest pocket.
- After an air attack near Drzycim the regiment ceases to exist as a cohesive unit.
- Die Wehrmacht publishes the story of a cavalry “charge” against tanks.
- The Guardian prints a correction for repeating the myth.
People of the unit
Read the full story
- Chapter 3: The Frontier Battles: Wieluń, Mokra, Mława, Krojanty and the Corridor
- Chapter 6: The Bzura and the Siege of Warsaw
- Invasion of Poland: questions readers ask
- The Invasion of Poland collection and atlas
By the numbers
The 18th Pomeranian Uhlans by the numbers
The charge at Krojanty, 1 September 1939
Killed and wounded on both sides. Polish figures are ranges in the sources; the midpoint sets the bar.
Source: Zaloga, Poland 1939 (2002); Forczyk, Case White (2019); Wikipedia, “Charge at Krojanty”.
What the charge cost the two squadrons
Men in the charge and men lost (approximate)
Source: Zaloga, Poland 1939 (2002); Forczyk, Case White (2019); Wikipedia, “Charge at Krojanty”.
In pictures
More photographs
In the art of World War II
Insignia, posters and art
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Sources
- Steven J. Zaloga, Poland 1939: The Birth of Blitzkrieg (Osprey, 2002); Robert Forczyk, Case White: The Invasion of Poland 1939 (Osprey, 2019).
- Roger Moorhouse, First to Fight: The Polish War 1939 (2019; U.S. edition Poland 1939, 2020); Halik Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed (2012).
- Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader (Michael Joseph, 1952); Robert M. Citino, “Polish Cavalry Charges Tanks?”, HistoryNet.
- The Second World War (thesecondworldwar.org), “Charge at Krojanty”; dzieje.pl, on the Krojanty commemoration (in Polish); History News Network, “Debunking Polish stereotypes” (reprinting the Guardian, 2011).
- Wikipedia: “Charge at Krojanty,” “18th Pomeranian Uhlan Regiment,” “Pomeranian Cavalry Brigade,” “Battle of Tuchola Forest,” “Kazimierz Mastalerz.”
- Further reading: Polskie Siły Zbrojne w drugiej wojnie światowej, vol. 1, Kampania wrześniowa 1939 (Sikorski Institute, London).