Filming the Blitzkrieg

              BEFORE THE RAIN OF STEEL
Warsaw's beautiful opera house which stood opposite the  capital's City Hall was both bombed and  shelled  during  the  siege  of the  city.   Today  it lies
practically in ruins.
FILMING    THE
BLITZKRIEG
By HARRISON FORMAN
Photographs by the author
Harrison Forman has an uncanny ability to be on the scene when
trouble breaks out. In 1937 when bombs rained on Shanghai, he sent
the first newsreel pictures of that event to the United States. In September of this year he secured another world scoop when he sent
from Warsaw the first war films taken on the Polish side. In the
following article he describes some of his experiences during those
days when Poland fought so desperately to defend her independence.
Editorial Note.
TEN years in the Orient. Ten turbulent years they were.
Wars, famines, floods.   I was getting tired of all that.
"This year," I told my friends. "I'm going to some other
part of the world, to South America, or Europe perhaps."
"South America's all right," they agreed. "But not Europe.
There's a war brewing there."
"War in Europe ? No. Just war talk. 'Plenty walla-walla,'
the Chinese say, 'nothing happens.'    There'll be no war in
A DIRECT HIT
A five-hundred pound air bomb made a
direct hit on this four-story model
workers apartment house, almost completely destroying it. The twisted lacings of steel strips used to reinforce the
concrete indicate the tremendous explosive   effect   of  the   bomb.
Gdynia   America   Line.
Europe. Another crisis, perhaps. But no
war."
I was so sure of it that I decided to back
my own convictions and went to Europe.
Well, I was wrong! War not only came,
but  it burst right  over my very head!
After a stop for a short visit in France,
Germany and Poland, I went on to Moscow. A month in the Soviet, filming and
gathering material for writings and lectures,
and then I decided to go back to Poland.
I had been much intrigued with Warsaw. It was a beautiful city. Life there
seemed so easy-going, so calm and peaceful. Fine old buildings symbolized dignity
and respectful reserve. It was a city of
parks and fountains with an Opera House
famous the world over; a city of wide,
shaded boulevards on which modern motor
taxis were less numerous than horse-and-
buggy cabs—which unhurried Warsovians
seemed to prefer.
A peaceful setting, indeed. Headlines
might shriek in the world's press of a second world war opening with a horrible air
attack on Warsaw. But they certainly
seemed to take little notice of all that here.
Few people, if any indeed, talked much
about imminent war. Not that they were
afraid to talk about it. You were sure
they meant it when they did say they would
fight, and fight to the bitter end, if it ever
came to a showdown. But the Poles were
too busy living to be bothered much about
19
war talk. That was left to the world outside.
Yes, a peaceful scene, Warsaw in late
August. A quiet, dignified scene, unmoved
by the screaming invectives of a madman
next door.
But one day, the madman broke his bonds
and without warning stormed in upon this
peaceful scene, and literally went berserk.
It was war!
I thought I had seen war, modern war,
in perhaps one of its most horrible phases.
That was in Shanghai, a little over two
years ago. A single aerial bomb had killed
hundreds of innocent refugee men, women
and children. It was a gruesome, never-
to-be-forgotten sight. Unbelievable, if you
hadn't seen it in the newsreels.
But in Warsaw I saw something that, to
me at least, was much more horrible than
the spectacles I filmed in China. It was
the day of the first air raid—the morning
of September first. The siren shrieked its
alarm, and the streets quickly cleared. Men,
women and children scampered for shelter
in the buildings, trenches and bomb-proof
cellars. Like frightened mice, they ran in
all directions until they found some place
which offered a haven from the sudden
death about to be rained down from the
cloudless skies.
And then I saw her, a young mother
frantically tearing at the harness clamps in
the baby's carriage—a carriage too large to
be taken into the dugout. I dashed down
the street to help. By the time I got there
she had already abandoned hope of unsnarling the harness, and was trying to fit
a gas mask over the wailing youngster's
face. She was nearly hysterical by the
time I had cut the straps so that she could
seize the child and run for shelter.
The Germans didn't use gas in their air
raids on Warsaw. But they used something
almost as bad—terror. And used it in liberal and deliberate doses. It was bad enough
for air raid alarms to go off an hour or
more before the planes appeared, so that
people nearly went mad in their cramped,
ill-ventilated holes, waiting, waiting. But
when the roar of the planes overhead finally
was heard, there was the agonizing wait
for the bombs. And you breathed a silent
prayer with every exploding boom, for you
knew that was one that missed you. It
seemed the German airmen knew of this
nerve-trying wait, and we were all certain
they deliberately circled around and around
the city and held off their bombing until the
very last possible moment—when Polish
anti-aircraft shells came a bit too thick and
fast.
Apparently they had a sadistic streak
running through the whole lot of them,
those German pilots. Else how will you
explain the diving down and machine-
gunning of farmers in the fields, cows in the
meadows, horses and wagons on the road,
people in the streets? Scarcely a town or
village in all Poland, no matter how big
or small, escaped them. A bomb or two
here, a spree of machine-gunning there—
just enough to spread terror the length and
breadth of the land.
To be sure, one may expect and accept
A TRIBUTE FROM POLISH-AMERICANS
Ju'st a few days before war broke out on September 1, the Polish-American Society presented
the Polish government and President Moscicki with an American flag and the flag of each
of the forty-eight states of the Union. After the formal presentation by Ambassador Biddle, an
honor guard of picked troops paraded these flags through the streets of Warsaw to the tomb
of the Unknown Soldier.