Germany won the Battle of Wizna in September 1939, but only after a few hundred Polish soldiers held a line of bunkers on the Narew river for three days against a vastly larger German force from Guderian's panzer corps. Refusing to surrender, the tiny garrison made a stand remembered as the Polish Thermopylae.
In September 1939, a few hundred Polish soldiers held a line of bunkers near the village of Wizna against a German force many times their size, part of Guderian's advancing panzer corps. For three days the tiny garrison held the crossing of the Narew river, refusing to surrender, before it was finally overwhelmed. The stand is remembered as the Polish Thermopylae, and its commander chose death over surrender.
The bunkers on the Narew
Wizna guarded an important crossing of the Narew river1 on the northern approach into central Poland. A short line of concrete bunkers held a small garrison under Captain Wladyslaw Raginis, who took an oath to hold the position as long as he lived2.
A corps against a garrison
In the second week of the German invasion, part of General Heinz Guderian's panzer corps, many times the defenders' number and backed by tanks, artillery and aircraft, drove against the Wizna position on its way to encircle Polish forces further south3.
Three days
Against the odds, the handful of defenders in their bunkers held far longer than anyone expected, slowing the German advance for some three days. Under relentless shelling and air attack, bunker after bunker was knocked out and the defenders were killed or wounded, their ammunition running low.
Death before surrender
With the position lost and most of his men dead or wounded, Captain Raginis, true to his oath, is said to have killed himself with a grenade rather than surrender the last bunker4. The stand delayed a whole corps and became a lasting symbol of Polish defiance in 1939, widely known as the Polish Thermopylae.
Legend and numbers
Wizna is often summed up as about 720 Poles against 40,000 Germans.5 Historians caution that the defenders' exact strength is uncertain5 and that only part of Guderian's corps was actually engaged at any moment, but they agree that a small garrison held up a far larger force for three days. The stand reached a worldwide audience in 2008, when the Swedish band Sabaton recorded the song6 "40:1" about it. Captain Raginis's remains were later located, and in 2011 he was reburied with military honours5 in the ruins of his command bunker at Góra Strękowa, together with his deputy, Lieutenant Stanisław Brykalski.
