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Eleven stirring, martial notes, the opening phrase of one of Composer Frederic null Chopin's Polonaises, sounded every 30 seconds from the Warsaw radio station all last week to let the world know that Poland's capital was still Polish. Hour after hour, day after day, the notes came like hope rising from an inferno. For the world also knew what other sounds filled Warsaw—the bellow of bombing planes in power dives, the scream of fighting planes on the attack, the sharp whanging of anti-aircraft guns, the mighty thump, boom and roar of half-ton bombs plowing up the city's remaining defenses. To the North, the continuous thunder of artillery made a background for the nearer hammering of defense guns on the East, hurling shells over the rooftops toward the German positions in the western suburbs.
After the bomb explosions came screams of the dying. Hospitals were full; wounded had to be dragged into what was left of private houses. The city was crumbling, but still Warsaw fought on, both sexes and all ages behind the barricades. Mayor Straczynski went down into the streets, picked up a shovel and dug trenches. When German tanks blasted their way into the suburbs, the defense hurled bottles of gasoline against them, trying to set them afire.
Still the Polonaise sounded over the radio, and Warsaw thought it had actually thrown the Germans back. Part of the Army fighting in the narrow pocket to the west of the capital, between the German pincers, fell back into the city, joining the defenders. To the north, Modlin fortress fell and a German force crossed the Bug River east of Warsaw, cutting off retreat. From the southwest, the German drive swung eastward past Radom, crossed the Vistula. Warsaw was surrounded. Once again it faced its historic fate. For ten times Warsaw had been taken by an invader—the last time on August 5, 1915, when Mackensen's army stormed its fortifications and Prince Leopold of Bavaria rode into the city in triumph. But although it was bombed, blasted and all but shattered, Warsaw was still holding out on September 18, 1939.
Before then the German strategy had become apparent even to Warsaw. Sweeping past the capital, an East Prussian Army had struck southeastward to Brest-Litovsk, chief railroad centre between Warsaw and Russia. In the South, three separate drives penetrated deep into the Polish Ukraine. Lwow, the Ukrainian capital, was bombed, strafed, set afire, its water supply cut off, but the invaders did not stop to occupy it. On they plunged, passing to the north and south of Lwow, to the very remotest corner of Poland, where it meets Rumania and
Soviet Russia. Foreign envoys crossed the Dniester into Rumania; the Polish Government, which had holed up in Zaleszczyki on the frontier, hesitated, then fled into Rumania. Cut off from retreat on all sides, the Polish Army was disintegrating into guerrilla bands. While the Poles defended their capital, their country was overrun.