Blitzkrieg
In the first bombing of the Invasion, 1,200 civilians were killed in the town of Wielun. The citizens of Poland had no idea what was in store for them. Shortly after the bombing, the Schleswig-Holstein, a German battleship, started to fire at the Westerplatte depot in the free city of Danzig. The Polish army wasn't very powerful, so they did what they could to slow Germany down. If you were to compare these two armies, the Polish army would be an infantry soldier trying to defeat a tank. The odds were in Germany's favor. Another disadvantage was the Polish had poor road systems and couldn't afford many motorized vehicles, so they used cavalry units for recon and ambush missions. However, the cavalry units were no match for Germany's Panzer tank divisions.The Germans "Blitzkrieg" or lightning war tactic was quite successful. In the city of Varsovie, the population was approximately one million, and after the liberation there were only 100,000 of the citizens left. These numbers were similiar all over the country of Poland. Hitler's army killed at least twenty percent of Poland's population during the invasion.