The Polish nation is a nation with a long history, and the country of Poland is also a country with a long history. In the Middle Ages, Poland made a fortune from the grain trade. After merging with Lithuania, the King of Lithuania became the King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It once defeated the State of the Teutonic Order, invaded Moscow several times, and installed a Tsar. Even more gloriously, Poland defeated the Ottoman Turkish army under the city of Vienna and saved Europe from crisis.

The partition of Poland by Tsarist Russia, Austria, and Prussia, rather than being a partition, was more like Poland causing trouble and splitting itself up. At that time, Poland's democratic system stipulated that there was absolute democracy in the parliament. As long as there was a single vote against it, the parliament could not pass a resolution. Even the King of Poland could be bought and sold. It would be abnormal for such a country not to be finished. Even if Poland was a weirdo, Tsarist Russia, Austria, and Prussia were not weirdos, or at least not very weird.

To be precise, the Kingdom of Poland did not perish. After the lands pro-Austria and pro-Prussia were partitioned, the King of Poland became a part of Tsarist Russia, and the Tsar himself concurrently served as the King of Poland.

After the end of World War I and the collapse of Tsarist Russia, Poland broke away from Tsarist Russia's control. Shortly after its restoration, Poland invaded Kiev. Even when the Soviet army launched a powerful counterattack, Poland was still able to defeat the Soviet Red Army under the city of Warsaw, once again "saving" the precarious Europe.

Regardless of what other countries think of Poland, Poland itself is extremely satisfied with its own historical contributions.

Poland joining Britain's alliance against China was truly not to attack China. Historically, Polish nobles were vulgar and proud of their illiteracy. This "rough" character has also been inherited, along with the cunning that comes with it. Poland doesn't care where China is. All they want is an alliance with Britain, so that they can logically implement military expansion and war preparations. The Poles are a bit arrogant and a bit weird, but that doesn't mean they are fools.

If Poland suddenly expanded its army and prepared for war on its own, it would just give Germany an excuse for nothing. After forming an alliance with Britain, Poland could use the tiger's skin as a banner. Whether it was expanding the army and preparing for war or threatening Germany, Poland could use Britain to scare Germany.

On March 21, 1939, Germany issued an ultimatum to Poland, demanding the cession of Danzig (Gdańsk) and the right to build roads and railways in the "Polish Corridor", but was rejected by Poland. The Polish side used the military alliance with Britain to scare Little Mustache, demanding that Little Mustache give up his wishful thinking.

If the Poles were facing other Germans instead of Little Mustache, perhaps this approach would have had some effect. But Little Mustache was not a man who believed in heresy. After the death of Poland's dictator Pilsudski, Little Mustache determined that Poland had no leaders to fear. Because after Pilsudski's death, a wave of "democratization" appeared again in Poland, and various factions in the country began to fight frantically. If it weren't for the fact that the "one-vote veto power" of the Polish parliament in history was too notorious, Poland might have had a retro movement.

In short, from mid-February 1939, Poland began to implement general mobilization and expand its army and war preparations on the grounds of declaring war on China. Originally, Poland had 39 infantry divisions, 11 cavalry brigades, 3 mountain infantry brigades, 2 armored motorized brigades, and nearly 80 civil defense battalions. It had 220 light tanks, 650 ultra-light tanks, 4,300 artillery pieces and mortars, and 407 aircraft. The Polish Navy had 16 combat ships and auxiliary vessels, with a total force of about 1 million men.

By June 1939, Poland had expanded its troops to 60 infantry divisions, and with a batch of old aircraft imported from Britain, the total number of aircraft reached 800. The total force expanded to as many as 1.6 million.

As a European country, even if its population is not as large as Japan's, Poland has military strength and mobilization capabilities that are not bad. If there were a Polish-Japanese war, Poland would definitely be at a disadvantage in terms of naval forces, but in terms of army, especially armored forces, Poland is much stronger than Japan.

Facing such a military force that is definitely not weak, originally Little Mustache did not have a plan to annex Poland in the short term. Little Mustache wanted to recover Danzig and other places. As the situation changed, Little Mustache finally decided to solve Poland militarily.

A "Three-Three Fleet" was wiped out in two hours, retreating hundreds of kilometers in a week, and losing Singapore. Britain's performance on the Asian battlefield convinced Little Mustache that the British could not perform well in the Western Pacific. If China could drive the British out of Asia, or at least out of the Middle East, Germany would have full confidence in solving France with its own strength.

Since this is the case, it is no longer a question of sooner or later to attack Poland. All focus is on the extent to which China can strike at British power. Britain must deploy a large amount of naval forces to Asia to contend with China, and Little Mustache is happy to see the Chinese continue to exert their strength.

German and Polish troops were deployed along the border line. After the Polish side expanded its army, many recruits were added to the front line. So the most common thing happened on June 15, 1939. In a confrontation area on the Western Front, Polish artillery novices accidentally fired a shell at Germany during a live-fire drill. This really wasn't the gunner's fault. God knows how a real shell got mixed into the shell box of training rounds. Since it was a training round drill, the firing data was precisely measured. The shell whistled out of the muzzle and accurately hit the camp of an armored unit on the German side of the border.

In this highly tense period, the Germans were shouting about attacking Poland, retaking the Danzig Corridor, and liberating the Germans in Poland. Poland also unhesitatingly shouted about getting rid of German fascism. After shouting for so long, a shell suddenly came from the direction of Poland, and the German armored forces were scared quite a bit. Both sides' armed forces thought the other side had launched an attack, so the ground mobile forces all rushed towards the border line at the fastest speed.

Naturally, it was the armored forces that rushed over from the German side, while the Polish side was the Polish cavalry unit known for inheriting the "Winged Hussars". Both troops saw the other side rushing over aggressively, plus the loud noise caused by that shell. Both sides thought the other side was going to start a war.

The German side took a shell and the armored unit suffered casualties. They naturally felt righteous. Just by looking at the appearance, one could see that the Germans were serious.

The Polish side knew that their industrial capacity was inferior to Germany's, and their mentality was that of a weakling. That is to say, more sensitive and more afraid. The Polish troops had nearly a thousand tanks, so they naturally knew the power of tanks. Seeing a German armored unit approaching aggressively, looking like they were playing for real, the Polish mentality became unbalanced first. In these years, tanks were all thin-skinned tanks. The brave Polish cavalry had also visited their own country's tanks, so they simply launched an attack on the German armored forces.

At the moment when the Polish cavalry troops raised their sabers high and charged at the German tanks, the German-Polish War broke out.

Striking first is one of the basic principles of the military. When the Polish cavalry launched a fierce charge against the German tank units, Poland had "changed" its own history in a sense.

Historically, the Polish campaign broke out after Germany had carefully planned and mobilized troops for several months. The Germans struck first. Now that the Poles have made the first move against the Germans, a completely reversed situation has appeared strategically. The brave Polish cavalry suffered considerable casualties in the charge, but the Polish cavalry carrying grenades and lances rushed to the front of the German tanks and attacked the tracks of the German tanks with grenades and lances.

In this era, no country other than the People's Party has started to produce tanks exceeding 15 tons. Germany's current tanks are still mainly Panzer I tanks. The number of Panzer II tanks is very small.

Germany's Panzer I tank: armed with 2 7.92mm machine guns, 2 crew members, length 4.45 meters, width 2.1 meters, height 1.73 meters, armor thickness 5-35 mm, engine power 100 horsepower gasoline engine, maximum range 155 kilometers, maximum speed 40 kilometers/hour, combat weight 5.5-6 tons. Later, some of these tanks were equipped with 20-caliber artillery.

Tanks of this weight surrounded by a few tall cavalrymen simply couldn't show any advantage. Although the German tank troops also fought bravely, unfortunately, there were only a dozen or so of them. Facing hundreds or thousands of Polish cavalry rushing over, it couldn't even be called ants biting an elephant to death.

The Polish cavalry had quite good combat effectiveness and quickly gained an advantage over the German infantry. Horses dragged machine guns and galloped wildly. After rushing up the high ground, the cavalry stopped their horses, set up heavy machine guns, and began shooting.

When facing German tanks, the Polish cavalry first attacked the German tanks fiercely with lances and sabers. After finding that they could not pierce the outer shell of the German tanks, some skilled cavalrymen jumped directly from their horses onto the tanks. They used sabers to pry open the outer covers of the German tanks. After finding that they couldn't pry them open, they unhooked grenades and tried to stuff them into any gap they could find. Some particularly brave Polish cavalry even climbed onto the muzzles of the German tanks and stuffed their sabers into the muzzles of the 20mm cannons. Some even used pistols to shoot into the muzzles of the German tanks.

The German tanks were beaten into confusion, and their machine gunners simply couldn't pop their heads out to shoot. Especially those tanks that were climbed on by Polish cavalry, hearing the fierce beating sounds coming from everywhere, the tank drivers were even more panicked. These tankers could only choose to retreat quickly.

In this process, the tracks of three tanks were inserted by Poles with hard lances, or attacked by grenades, and the tank tracks were damaged. After a fierce battle, although the Poles paid a huge price in casualties, they also successfully broke into Germany for nearly ten kilometers. The German infantry suffered hundreds of casualties, and the Poles also captured three German tanks and destroyed two. Both of these two were improved types with artillery. Because they didn't notice that the Poles had stuffed things into the tank muzzles, the barrels exploded when they fired indiscriminately.

The brave Polish army paid the price of nearly 800 casualties.

During World War II, a battle of this scale was enough to trigger a war. Both sides threatening each other with troops was itself a quasi-war state. Who fired the first shot was no longer important. As long as it was not the mode of Germany fighting Poland in history, this kind of war was also a common posture in Europe.

Little Mustache soon received the report. Little Mustache really didn't care much about the German army's "defeat". He felt a little regretful in his heart. If he could wait a little longer, the British would likely suffer a greater blow. It would be very advantageous to act at that time. At the same time, Little Mustache also expressed great gratification for the impulsiveness of the Poles. It is very difficult to start a war. The Poles killing their way into Germany completely cleared all obstacles for Little Mustache to declare war on Poland.

On the night of June 15, Germany formally declared war on Poland on the grounds of Poland invading Germany.

On June 16, the British First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill in India received the news. In the intelligence received by Churchill, the British side immediately intervened in the matter. Britain sent a representative to Berlin, demanding that Germany cease fire immediately. Britain stated to Germany that Britain was willing to investigate the matter. In fact, the personnel Britain planted in Poland had already roughly figured out what had happened. The Polish military's internal investigation quickly clarified the matter of their own soldiers accidentally firing a shell.

It's just that this matter simply couldn't be explained to Germany. The Germans had long planned to attack Poland. According to current international conventions, if Poland were to give a "seeking truth from facts" explanation, it would only give Germany a formal reason to seize the Danzig Corridor. Poland resolutely could not accept such a result. Poland simply insisted that Germany launched the attack on Poland first, and the Polish army rose up in counterattack. The Polish side demanded that Britain fulfill its obligations as an ally and declare war on Germany together.

Opinions vary on how that shell got mixed into the training rounds. Those inclined towards the Polish side either said nothing about it or simply proposed a spy conspiracy theory. They believed that German spies mixed the shell into the training rounds and then sent these munitions specifically to the newly enlisted artillerymen.

Opponents, of course, thought this was nonsense. If that were the case, Germany should have had completely different countermeasures. There was no need to fire only one shot, but many. Moreover, the Polish side was the aggressor. If Poland had not taken such drastic countermeasures, although war was inevitable, it could have been delayed for a while.

However, some of these participating Polish soldiers died in battle, and some were abused to death in prisoner-of-war camps. Some fled to Britain and died in a series of subsequent battles launched by Britain. There were also some logistics personnel who were even captured by the Soviets and finally became a group that disappeared. The truth of the matter became a huge mystery.

It was just that Germany declared war, and Poland resolutely refused to admit that it had made any mistakes, so the war that was destined to happen broke out. Both Germany and Poland mobilized troops, and the fighting rapidly expanded. Germany surrounded Poland from three sides, while Poland chose East Prussia as its main direction of attack.

In 1226, a Grand Duke of Poland invited the Teutonic Knights to help them resist the pagans in the Baltic Sea and Prussia, thus beginning the days of bringing a wolf into the house. The Teutonic Knights began to establish a series of strongholds in Poland and finally built the State of the Teutonic Order.

In 1410, the Battle of Grunwald broke out between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the State of the Teutonic Order. In the end, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth defeated the State of the Teutonic Order, ultimately determining the decline of the State of the Teutonic Order. Even so, East Prussia, as the core of the State of the Teutonic Order, remained firmly in the hands of Prussia.

If East Prussia could be captured, it would not only eliminate the threat of being attacked from three sides, but also deal a heavy blow to the confidence of the Germans. At the same time, it could complete Poland's great cause of recovering the land lost nearly a thousand years ago.

However, things were not as simple as imagined. The tank units deployed by Germany on the German-Polish border were mainly Panzer I tanks. This kind of tank, rather than being called a tank, was better described as an armored fighting vehicle. Poland's attack on Germany was quickly contained by the German Air Force and Army. By June 19, Germany began to counterattack. There was also a type of tank in the counterattack, but the Panzer I tank was no longer the main combat force. What appeared in front of the Poles was the Panzer III tank.

This was a technology researched jointly by China and Germany. China, Germany, and the Soviet Union all fully introduced a lot of technology from the United States. And the technical exchange between China and the Soviet Union was quite close. The suspension system introduced by the Soviet Union was also transferred to China. Chen Ke didn't do much research on tanks, and all he could remember were some nouns.

Chinese tanks actually wanted to use hydraulic suspension and transmission technology, but this thing had too high technical requirements. In the end, China still chose suspension technology that was more suitable for the current stage.

However, Chen Ke was a child of a diesel engine factory and a railway family after all, so his understanding of the technology in these two areas was a bit interesting. Especially the direct injection diesel engine, plus the later developed turbocharger device, the engine power of Chinese tanks was higher than that of German engines. Moreover, Chen Ke himself was at least a "pseudo-military fan" and did not appreciate the German style of meticulously crafted tanks. The main battle tank developed by China was a tank similar in appearance to the Type 59.

Chen Ke also proposed the advanced concept of "modular" design. The basis of this concept must be that after building many tanks and smashing countless amounts of money, and having a full understanding of the tank structure, various modules can be produced. China has only been researching tanks for twenty years. Although Chen Ke's "blind command" had the power that no one dared to resist, as a result, Chinese tanks still took a "more tortuous" path.

In order to minimize costs, China cooperated fully with Germany and the Soviet Union, and the two sides cooperated on many technical parameters. This resulted in Germany's tanks being finalized faster. Tank guns were also quickly upgraded to 47 and 50 calibers.

Of course, the Germans did not know that the weight of the main battle "medium" tank that China was still struggling to finalize in 1939 had exceeded 30 tons, and the artillery caliber had reached a terrifying 88 caliber. The 105-caliber tank gun was also being stepped up in development. In the world at this time, no tank could compare with this "medium" tank of China in terms of weight and firepower.

Even so, the weight of Germany's Panzer III tank exceeded 12 tons. Neither firepower nor mobility could be compared with the Panzer I tank. Even if it suffered a preemptive attack from Poland, after the German new tanks entered the battlefield, they still shocked the Polish army.

By June 21, the Germans had not only contained the Polish attack in the direction of East Prussia, but also began to launch attacks on Poland in other aspects.