Quoting William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pages 518–520, 594–596:

[A]s the second half of August 1939 began, the [Wehrmacht] chiefs pushed forward with their plans to annihilate Poland and to protect the western Reich just in case the [pseudo]democracies, contrary to all evidence, did intervene. On August 15 the annual Nuremberg Party Rally, which Hitler on April 1 had proclaimed as the “Party Rally of Peace” and which was scheduled to begin the first week in September, was secretly canceled. A quarter of a million men were called up for the armies of the west.

Advance mobilization orders to the railways were given. Plans were made to move Army headquarters to Zossen, east of Berlin. And on the same day, August 15, the Navy reported that the pocket battleships Graf Spee and Deutschland and twenty‐one submarines were ready to sail for their stations in the Atlantic.

On August 17 General Haider made a strange entry in his diary: “Canaris checked with Section I [Operations]. Himmler, Heydrich, Obersalzberg: 150 Polish uniforms with accessories for Upper Silesia.”

What did it mean? It was only after the war that it became clear. It concerned one of the most bizarre incidents ever arranged by the [Fascists]. Just as Hitler and his Army chiefs, it will be remembered, had considered cooking up an “incident,” such as the assassination of the [Reich’s] minister, in order to justify their invading Austria and Czechoslovakia, so now they concerned themselves, as time began to run out, with concocting an incident which would, at least in their opinion, justify before the world the planned aggression against Poland.

The code name was “Operation Himmler” and the idea was quite simple—and crude. The S.S.–Gestapo would stage a faked attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz, near the Polish border, using condemned concentration camp inmates outfitted in Polish Army uniforms. Thus Poland could be blamed for attacking [the Third Reich]. Early in August Admiral Canaris, chief of the Abwehr Section of OKW, had received an order from Hitler himself to deliver to Himmler and Heydrich 150 Polish uniforms and some Polish small arms.

This struck him as a strange business and on August 17 he asked General Keitel about it. While the spineless OKW Chief declared he did not think much of “actions of this kind,” he nevertheless told the Admiral that “nothing could be done,” since the order had come from the Fuehrer.⁸ Repelled though he was, Canaris obeyed his instructions and turned the uniforms over to Heydrich.

The chief of the S.D. chose as the man to carry out the operation a young S.S. secret‐service veteran by the name of Alfred Helmut Naujocks.

This was not the first of such assignments given this weird individual nor would it be the last. Early in March of 1939, shortly before the [Fascist] occupation of Czechoslovakia, Naujocks, at Heydrich’s instigation, had busied himself running explosives into Slovakia, where they were used, as he later testified, to “create incidents.”

Alfred Naujocks was a typical product of the S.S.–Gestapo, a sort of intellectual gangster. He had studied engineering at Kiel University, where he got his first taste of brawling with anti[fa]; on one occasion he had his nose bashed in by Communists. He had joined the S.S. in 1931 and was attached to the S.D. from its inception in 1934.

Like so many other young men around Heydrich he dabbled in what passed as intellectual pursuits in the S.S.—“history” and “philosophy” especially while rapidly emerging as a tough young man (Skorzeny was another) who could be entrusted with the carrying out of the less savory projects dreamed up by Himmler and Heydrich.*

On October 19, 1944, Naujocks deserted to the Americans and at Nuremberg a year later made a number of sworn affidavits, in one of which he preserved for history the account of the “incident” which Hitler used to justify his attack on Poland.

On or about August 10, 1939, the chief of the S.D., Heydrich, personally ordered me to simulate an attack on the radio station near Gleiwitz near the Polish border [Naujocks related in an affidavit signed in Nuremberg November 20, 1945] and to make it appear that the attacking force consisted of Poles. Heydrich said: “Practical proof is needed for these attacks of the Poles for the foreign press as well as for German propaganda.” […]

My instructions were to seize the radio station and to hold it long enough to permit a Polish‐speaking German who would be put at my disposal to broadcast a speech in Polish. Heydrich told me that this speech should state that the time had come for conflict between Germans and Poles […] Heydrich also told me that he expected an attack on Poland by Germany in a few days.

I went to Gleiwitz and waited there fourteen days […] Between the 25th and 31st of August, I went to see Heinrich Mueller, head of the Gestapo, who was then nearby at Oppeln. In my presence, Mueller discussed with a man named Mehlhorn* plans for another border incident, in which it should be made to appear that Polish soldiers were attacking German troops […] Mueller stated that he had 12 to 13 condemned criminals who were to be dressed in Polish uniforms and left dead on the ground of the scene of the incident to show they had been killed while attacking. For this purpose they were to be given fatal injections by a doctor employed by Heydrich. Then they were also to be given gunshot wounds. After the incident members of the press and other persons were to be taken to the spot of the incident […]

Mueller told me he had an order from Heydrich to make one of those criminals available to me for the action at Gleiwitz. The code name by which he referred to these criminals was “Canned Goods.”⁹

While Himmler, Heydrich and Mueller, at Hitler’s command, were arranging for the use of “Canned Goods” to fake an excuse for [Fascist] aggression against Poland, the Fuehrer made his first decisive move to deploy his armed forces for a possibly bigger war. On August 19—another fateful day—orders to sail were issued to the [Kriegsmarine].

Twenty‐one submarines were directed to put out for positions north and northwest of the British Isles, the pocket battleship Graf Spee to depart for waters off the Brazilian coast and her sister ship, the Deutschland, to take a position athwart the British sea lanes in the North Atlantic.†

[…]

Having convinced the German people (and of this the writer can testify from personal observation) that the Poles had rejected the Fuehrer’s generous peace offer, there remained only the concocting of a deed which would “prove” that not Germany but Poland had attacked first.

For this last shady business, it will be remembered, the Germans, at Hitler’s direction, had made careful preparation.* For six days Alfred Naujocks, the intellectual S.S. ruffian, had been waiting at Gleiwitz on the Polish border to carry out a simulated Polish attack on the German radio station there.

The plan had been revised. S.S. men outfitted in Polish Army uniforms were to do the shooting, and drugged concentration camp inmates were to be left dying as “casualties”—this last delectable part of the operation had, as we have seen, the expressive code name “Canned Goods.” There were to be several such faked “Polish attacks” but the principal one was to be on the radio station at Gleiwitz.

At noon on August 31 [Naujocks related in his Nuremberg affidavit] I received from Heydrich the code word for the attack which was to take place at 8’o clock that evening. Heydrich said: “In order to carry out this attack report to Mueller for Canned Goods.” I did this and gave Mueller instructions to deliver the man near the radio station. I received this man and had him laid down at the entrance to the station. He was alive but completely unconscious. I tried to open his eyes. I could not recognize by his eyes that he was alive, only by his breathing. I did not see the gun wounds but a lot of blood was smeared across his face. He was in civilian clothes.

We seized the radio station, as ordered, broadcast a speech of three to four minutes over an emergency transmitter,* fired some pistol shots and left.†⁷⁹

Berlin that evening was largely shut off from the outside world, except for outgoing press dispatches and broadcasts which reported the Fuehrer’s “offer” to Poland and the German allegations of Polish “attacks” on German territory.

I tried to get through on the telephone to Warsaw, London and Paris but was told that communications with these capitals were cut. Berlin itself was quite normal in appearance. There had been no evacuation of women and children, as there had been in Paris and London, nor any sandbagging of storefront windows, as was reported from the other capitals.

Toward 4 A.M. on September 1, after my last broadcast, I drove back from Broadcasting House to the Adlon Hotel. There was no traffic. The houses were dark. The people were asleep and perhaps—for all I knew—had gone to bed hoping for the best, for peace.

Hitler himself had been in fine fettle all day. At 6 P.M. on August 31 General Haider noted in his diary, “Fuehrer calm; has slept well […] Decision against evacuation [in the west] shows that he expects France and England will not take action.”*

Admiral Canaris, chief of the Abwehr in OKW and one of the key anti‐Nazi conspirators, was in a different mood. Though [the Fascist bourgeoisie] was carrying Germany into war, an action which the Canaris circle had supposedly sworn to prevent by getting rid of the dictator, there was no conspiracy in being now that the moment for it had arrived.

Later in the afternoon Gisevius had been summoned to OKW headquarters by Colonel Oster. This nerve center of Germany’s military might was humming with activity. Canaris drew Gisevius down a dimly lit corridor. In a voice choked with emotion he said:

“This means the end of Germany.”⁸¹

The choice of Gleiwitz (Gliwice) for a staged assault was not aleatory. In particular, Polish nationalists had unintentionally made the Third Reich’s claims easier to believe with some provocative actions earlier that year. Quoting Peter Polak‐Springer’s ‘Jammin’ with Karlik’: The German–Polish ‘Radio War’ and the Gleiwitz ‘Provocation’, 1925–1939:

In an effort to stem the tide of popular defection to [the Third Reich], to counter [its] propaganda’s aims of demoralizing the public on the Polish side of the border, and also to deliver a response to German radio’s irredentist aggression, the PRK [Polish Radio Katowice] promoted its own muscle‐flexing gestures.

While claiming to be reading from a letter sent by a fan in occupied Czechoslovakia during one of his broadcasts, Ligón announced that ‘it was better to fall in battle than to become a part of the Protectorate’, thus dismissing the option of also surrendering to Germany.⁷¹

His broadcasts did much to convey the message that war with the Third Reich was imminent, and that Poland should prepare for this. From informing the public that [the Third Reich’s] propaganda on Danzig is ‘already a war game’, to holding a fund‐raiser for the Polish military forces during August of 1939, ‘Karlik’ made it quite clear that war was to come.⁷²

And he did this in a confident and high‐spirited manner, warning the [German Fascists] to ‘get your behinds ready [for punishment]’, and that ‘they [the Germans] should just come and we will tear out their bloody and crusty claws’.⁷³

He even made gestures in the direction of Poland’s making the first move. Referring to the fortifications the [German Fascists] were building on their side of the border during this time, Ligón commented that this was ‘so that they will be able to hide their behinds when we come’.⁷⁴

When the Germans expressed their annoyance with such statements, Polish officials accused them of not being able to take a joke. According to the Grażyńskiite daily newspaper, Polska Zachodnia, ‘how tense must the nerves of the “fuehrers” [sic] be if they are bothered even by humour and laughs’.⁷⁵

If Ligón could always excuse his statements as mere jokes, the actors of Grażyński’s highhanded militant ceremonies held at the border on the eve of the war certainly could not. Since coming into power, the voivode had been holding rallies of this nature usually several times a year to praise and commemorate both the second and third Polish Silesian insurgencies against Germany after World War I, and proudly display his paramilitary force, the ‘Insurgent Union’ (Związek Powstańców, ZP), largely made up of the veteran fighters of these uprisings.⁷⁶

During the first decade after the partition, the bombastic militant character of these stirred much uproar in the Provinz, and even raised fears among ordinary locals that the Poles were going to invade. Eventually, such rallies became a commonplace ‘tradition’ and hardly drew attention from the German media. This changed in the last year before the war, when the [Reich’s] propaganda bureau was searching for any ‘evidence’ to support its propaganda of Polish aggression.

Surely aware of this, in the summer of 1939, Grażyński, the ZP, local administrators, and units of regular soldiers nevertheless staged several of these official gestures of military aggression and open irredentism. In early June of 1939, the voivode himself presided over the unveiling of a statue of the insurgent in Ruda Śląska (Friedrichsdorf) about 220 yards from the border.

As was common for these statues, a number of which been erected around the border area since the late 1920s, this one pointed to the German side of the border as a public reminder of Poland’s still unfulfilled irredentist mission. During this ceremony, which the PRK broadcast over the airwaves, and at which units of the ZP and also the Polish army surrounded Grażyński, the latter vowed that ‘what the heroes of the third insurgency did not complete will be finished by us’ — in other words, the seizure of western Upper Silesia by military force.⁷⁷

Such statements of the voivode, had been repeated for years and had become quite banal by this time, as were other ‘invented traditions’ that were officially observed that summer, including the unveiling of another statue of the insurgent at the end of June in the border village of Boruszowice, a monument that was 33 feet high and clearly visible from the German side.⁷⁸

In addition, in mid‐August, the ZP staged their annual ‘March to the Oder’, a march from Poland’s border with Germany to that with Czechoslovakia (this time including the Teschen/Zaolzia area that the Polish state had annexed in October of 1938), to commemorate the second insurgency of August 1919 with warmongering militancy.⁷⁹ Indeed, the German media had a field day exposing these rallies under provocative headlines such as ‘the insurgents want to “take back” Silesia — the agitation has made Poland crazy’.⁸⁰

This [Fascist] propaganda on Poland’s intention to capture all of the German eastern provinces up to the Oder River inadvertently gave the well‐known Gleiwitz ‘provocation’ on the last day before the war’s outbreak at least some foundation of logic. The attack on the newly built relay station, with its awe‐aspiring 361‐foot‐high wooden broadcasting tower, had been orchestrated by the SS, which dressed up its agents and Polish‐minority members, who were concentration camp prisoners, in Polish military uniforms.

However, the German media’s account of the event strove to give it credibility by linking it to Grażyńskiite irredentism towards western Upper Silesia. And so, the official accounts reported that ‘bands of the “Insurgent Union”’ accompanied by regular soldiers had performed the deed.⁸¹ Having broadcast official rallies commemorating the Polish Silesian insurgencies of 1919–1921, along with other propaganda that lauded Poland’s taking of all of Upper Silesia by force, the PRK had helped to make a Polish attack on the Provinz at least conceivable.

The heated military muscle‐flexing that both German and Polish radios interactively promoted on the airwaves in the last months before the war likewise provided the [Third Reich] with a suitable atmosphere to stage this final propaganda event to legitimate the invasion of Poland.

(Emphasis added.)

1923: The Fascists invaded Corfu.
1932: The Fascist cruiser Bolzano was launched at Genoa.
1933: Werner von Blomberg received the rank of Generaloberst.
1935: In an attempt to stay out of the growing tensions concerning the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan, Washington passed the first of its Neutrality Acts.
1936: The Fascist submarine Iride attacked British destroyer HMS Havock off Spain, and HMS Havock responded with depth charges, but neither incurred any damage. On the other hand, the Battle of the Sierra Guadalupe ended in a tactical Nationalist victory, and a Nationalist radio broadcast from Seville announced the executions of sixty‐seven miners at Rio Tinto for supplying Republican forces with munitions. Coincidentally, an explosion at a mine in Bochum killed twenty‐nine workers. The Japanese Navy Kanoya Air Group, based in Taiwan, launched nine Type 96 G3M2 bombers to attack Guangzhou.
1938: Winston Churchill suggested that if United Kingdom, United States, and Soviet Union collectively asserted pressure on the Third Reich, Berlin might abandon its claims for the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, yet he was unable to persuade fellow British politicians! Aside from that, the Fascists commissioned Aviere into service, and Akagi completed her modernization, emerging with the three flight decks removed. In their place was a single flight deck running nearly the length of the ship, and aircraft capacity increased from sixty‐one to ninety‐one.
1939: Berlin made an offer to London: the Third Reich would not risk war if Poland was willing to turn over Danzig and a small section of the Polish Corridor, and Poland was to allow a plebiscite for the remainder of the Polish Corridor in the near future; British Ambassador in Germany Nevile Henderson expressed that the United Kingdom, while desiring peace, could not sacrifice Poland to achieve that goal. Meanwhile, Henderson continued to press Poland to send a delegation to the Third Reich in a last attempt to negotiate peace over Danzig and the Polish Corridor. When Polish Ambassador in Germany Józef Lipski attempted to send Henderson’s message to Poland later in the evening, he found that the Fascists had cut telephone and telegraph communications to Poland.

In the Kingdom of Italy, Galeazzo Ciano sent the United Kingdom and France a secret message noting that Kingdom of Italy would not fight should the Third Reich start a war over Poland, and Fascist official Hermann Göring hosted British Ambassador Nevile Henderson and Swedish businessman Birger Dahlerus at his home in Berlin for tea between 1700 and 1900 hours, during which the latter two made a last attempt to broker peace, but Berlin still formally ordered the Fascist invasion of Poland, and made specific instructions for Wehrmacht troops on the western border to avoid conflict with the United Kingdom, France, and the Low Countries. Lastly, the Imperialists lost their 23rd Infantry Division at Nomonhan.
1940: At 0206 hours, Fascist submarine U‐59 sank British ship Bibury, killing the entire crew of thirty‐eight and one gunner. At 0615 hours, Fascist submarine U‐38 sank British ship Har Zion; thirty‐three died but somebody survived (rescued by Polish destroyer Blyskawica on the next day). Northwest of Ireland, Fascist submarine U‐46 sank Belgian passenger ship Ville de Hasselt, but the entire crew survived on four lifeboats. Before noon, two hundred Fascist bombers attacked Essex; № 56 Squadron RAF shot down one bomber but lost four fighters to Fascist escort fighters from III./ZG26 and III./JG26. Debden, North Weald, Eastchurch, Dietling (strafed by fighters), Croydon (bombed by Bf 109 fighter‐bombers of Erprobungsgruppe 210), and Hornchurch were all attacked in the morning. In the afternoon, the Fascists reattacked Hornchurch, destroying two Spitfire fighters on the ground but at the cost of five Bf 109 fighters. At 1800 hours, the Fascists bombed Biggin Hill from low level, destroying two of the three remaining hangars, cutting telephone lines, and destroying the operations room. On this day, the Luftwaffe lost fifty‐six fighters and twenty‐nine bombers. After sundown, the Fascists bombed Liverpool for the fourth consecutive night; other cities received bombs, too.
1941: Axis bombers attacked Alexandria, Egypt, killing two British Royal Navy officers but otherwise doing little to no damage to ships and port facilities, which were the primary targets. The Wehrmacht also lost the Battle of Loznica to Serbian paramilitary forces.
1942: Berlin ordered Wilhelm List to launch a major offensive to gain the Caucasus region in southern Russia, and tanks from the 4th Panzer Army reached the Stalingrad–Morozovsk railway on Stalingrad’s outskirts. Hans‐Joachim Marseille shot down two Hurricane fighters during the morning sortie over El Alamein, Egypt at 1003 and 1004 hours. In the afternoon sortie, he shot down a Spitfire fighter over Alam Halfa, Libya at 1825 hours. His score by the end of the day stood at 104. Axis and British tanks meanwhile engaged in combat near Alam el Halfa, Egypt, reaching no conclusion by nightfall as the British refused to fight in open terrain as the Axis wanted. The Axis broke off the attack at sundown after losing twenty‐two tanks.
1943: Berlin authorized limited withdrawals in Ukraine, and Heinrich Prinz zu Sayn‐Wittgenstein received Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross. The Axis submarine U‐703 arrived at Narvik, Norway and dropped off four survivors of the Soviet freighter Dekabrist.
1944: In the early morning hours between 0300 and 0630 hours, German Air Force III K/G3 launched twenty V‐1 flying bombs with Gloucester, England as the target. Only eight got across and over the coast and six of these fell to earth in Suffolk and the other two in Essex. One of the bombs injured seven people in Suffolk near to Harleston. One bomb brought down by a fighter near the coast impacted near Whitstable in Kent seriously injuring four. One of the Heinkel bombers flown by Unteroffizier Lorenz Gruber crashed at Vossenberg in Belgium on the return flight, all the crew perished. This was the final operation of the of the month by the aircraft of III K/G3, they had flown 228 sorties for the loss of three aircraft, a better return from the previous month. As well, the Wehrmacht disarmed two divisions of Slovakian resistance fighters at Presov, Czechoslovakia.
1945: Tatsunosuke Ariizumi suicided aboard submarine I‐401 by taking a pistol to his mouth at 0420 hours. At 0500 hours, this submarine lowered its naval ensign while in Sagami Wan. Nobukiyo Nambu, the submarine’s commanding officer, secretly ordered his signal officer to burn the flag to prevent Allied capture.