Sabre Against The Germans In WW2: Polish WZ.34 Szabla

[Music] gen doppler mattiece and his colleague a vittoria and today we're going to look at the famous 1934 polish sabre habla now this is an incredibly iconic sword and very important in Poland's history because it was the really the last military sword that Poland designed and used in warfare it has come back today as a ceremonial model used by the Polish army but this was the sword that was carried in 1939 when the Germans invaded and it was also the product of a line of development that came from older polish Sabres from the 18th century right the way through to the 1921 model which was devised after World War one and after essentially Poland became a country again in 1918 and the subsequent polish-soviet war so let's just deal with its characteristics in simple terms firstly before I go a little bit more into the history and the characteristics and development of the weapon and so it is as you can see as somewhat certainly from almost middle of the 20th century in 912 at least the first third 1934 it is quite an archaic looking sword but one thing you have to recognize is that cavalry warfare in Central and Eastern Europe was still very much more a thing during World War one and after World War one then it was maybe from a Western perspective looking at you know people's typical ideas of trench warfare for example so and cavalry swords were still used even up until the Second World War and during the Second World War so this is based on earlier models or earlier styles of Sabre shall we say so it does look as I say quite archaic doesn't necessarily look like something from the 1930s it looks like a sword from from the 18th century in some ways except for when we get into some details of its hilt design which we'll look at at a moment so the basic characteristics are it has a predominantly single edged saber blade which is moderately curved it's not greatly curved like 1796 like cavalry saber for example or shamshir or kill it or anything like that it's a gentle curve it's more or less straight for about the first 12 inches or 30 centimeters and then it curves equally and gradually after that and terminates in a spear point that is the point as I've spoken about in previous videos is in align with the center of the blade it's not orientated towards the back of the blade which would be a hatchet point so it's a spear point and then it has a full sedge of around 7 inches or 15 centimeters on the back here it has a predominantly single broad fuller in the center of the blade but you'll notice it has a narrow fuller at the back of the blade which if this was a French sword would be known as a Montmorency fuller so secondary narrow fuller at the spine of the blade in fact you do find that feature on earlier polish swords and swords from other parts of Central and Eastern Europe as well you find a Russian swords Hungarian swords and so on and so forth it has a small ricasso although it's not particularly defined ricasso so hopefully you can see that area blunt there it has a characteristic single knuckle bow with no side guards and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second a rear quill on which unusually has a aperture or hole through it in its a teardrop shape I'll talk about the grip in a second and then it has a pommel cap which is actually kind of a real pommel and that's actually somewhat unusual for certainly for sabers of this period for the pommel to be an actual pommel but it's a pommel and the pommel and the knuckle bow and guard with the land gets and the very characteristic Lang gets just look at them here rare characteristic Lang gets again which emulating the style of earlier polish and and other swords and they are made of sort of copper alloy I would describe as bronze pretty much it's it's much more of a bronzey color than a brassy color on the originals there are replicas made of these and they tend to use brass on the modern ones but the tend to be a darker they they get a patina on them which is darker than brass normally gets in my experience and opinion and the grip okay the grip is very characteristic and it's one of the main things that can show you the difference between this in the earlier 1921 model and it's made of two wooden slabs a bit like a bayonet grip that are held by locking what are nothing involved essentially but with a like a screw head on the top here and then a recessed circular a recessed circular nut embedded into the wooden grip here with these characteristic grooves to assist grip and you can see the join at the front of the grip here okay I will put a link below this video incidentally to my listing on my website so this sword is currently at the time of filming this video up for sale on Eastern antique arms website was from my antique business which from my kind of day job as it were aside from making videos and this by the time you watch this video this may have been sold already these have become incredibly desirable and relatively rare actually they're not super super rare but they are so sought-after by collectors that their value has skyrocketed and they're very sought-after things a for a number of reasons are partly they are very nice swords partly there aren't a huge number of them around and partly they are very important to polish history so let's just unpack those things for a second so first of all is this a nice sword so yes it is and I saw this very robust it's not hugely long okay it's not it's not a big big cavalry sword it's not hugely light but it's not hugely heavy either it tracks and moves very very nimble II and nicely it has a lot of authority in the cut so the point of balance is fairly far from the hand partly due to the fact that we have a rail actively light hills we don't have a very big guard we don't have side and bars on the guard and this kind of stuff so it balances nicely and it has a lot of authority in the cutting portion of the blade and this was famed and even today is recognized as a very good cutting sword on a par with something like the 1796 light cavalry saber with which it shares some characteristics is a different shaped blade but it has a similar sort of authority in the cut based on my experience of condemned swords from different countries for military swords from the 19th century the closest parallel to this sword are actually the Italian model 1833 which I recently did a video about the British 1788 which was the precursor to the 1796 light cavalry saber the light cavalry version I was talking map and also some austro-hungarian sabers of the 19th century now whilst Australian Austrian and austro-hungarian sabers tend to have more in the way of protection for the hands they didn't have at some forms of shell hilt or 3-bar hilts or other types of guard which have more protection they do feel in the hand somewhat similar to this and I have had and do have Austrian 1858 and 61 I think they're all 68 pattern swords and they do feel similar to this so I think it's not a coincidence and there is a relationship of development there it is not a coincidence that the polish sword that was developed in 1934 I think has some relationship to the swords that perhaps were being emulated which went before in Poland and also kind of related types of swords particularly in the austro-hungarian Empire as well and to some degree with Russian swords as well the shashka and has some similarities with this although I must say this is much much better build quality than the Russian swords that I have mostly been exposed to so yes it handles very very nicely it's not the most nimble sword in the world but it as you can see I can move it fairly nimbly and fairly quickly from different angles and I can check which it tracks nicely and it moves around very nicely so it is relatively nimble for a cavalry sword but it is a cavalry sword so you shouldn't expect it to be as nimble as a you know an infantry officers sword or speed rune or anything like this it is an authoritative powerful cutting and of course you can trust as well but it's got a lot of authority in the cut as a cavalry weapon and that is what it was designed as so the next thing is why is it so important to why is this model of sword so important in Polish history well quite simply because it owes a lot to polish swords that went before and you know Poland's history has been very turbulent and for a certain period of time there in the nineteenth century Poland wasn't really recognized as a country so it's it's been kind of in this push and pull and geographically it's been stuck between these great military powers either side of it and Poland of course Polish soldiers Polish cavalry have fought for other nations so famously the Polish Lancers fighting for Napoleon for example in the Napoleonic Wars so in fact there are accounts of of combats and encounters with Polish cavalry if in British accounts from the Napoleonic Wars because there were Polish troops in Napoleon's army but by 1918 Poland essentially was a country again was an independent country and was basically looking to re-establish its identity its national identity patriotic pride and this kind of stuff so what came next with the 1921 sword and then in 1934 sword were really about trying to have a characteristically Polish style sword and the Sabre the shabwa is an incredibly important icon in Polish history that goes all the way back to resistance against all sorts of enemies back into the 15th century pretty much and the sadler really came into its own in Poland in the 16th 17th century and was famously carried by the wing glances for example they had different types of sword but they carried a type of saver they also carried a type of vest stock and of course lances and so the lance and the Sabre particularly are kind of very beloved in Poland and seen very much as national weapons so when after the sector after the first world war and concluded 1918 Poland's reestablishing it's sort of national identity and one of the things which relates to which very much national identity has been manifested in is military equipment and anybody who knows anything about helmets from the first and second world war for example the famous Tommy helmet the the type of the pickle hub Prussian helmets and then the later types of Stalin helm I think I called the German helmets which are based a little bit on on saleh's and stuff like this you will know that military equipment obviously uniforms but helmets even things like bayonets and swords Oh a lot to sort of national identity so when you look at 19th century swords for example Australia Hungary was next to the German States but for the most part German swords obviously German Germany wasn't unified until later the 19th century but and from what we now call Germany German swords look very distinctively different from austro-hungarian swords mostly and so you know a Prussian infantry officers sword looked very different to an austro-hungarian infantry officers sword similarly France and England are next to each other but French swords and British swords look completely different and you know the French had a love of brass hilts and particular designs but 1822 behind me has a very long service life and in Breton we we did have some swords with brass sills but certainly for cavalry we went for steel hilts and you know if you just look at the Napoleonic era for example the 1796 light and heavy swords are very very different to their French equivalent the I see a sword for example is very iconic and again had a sort of national identity attached to it and had a very long service life from the Napoleonic period right the way through to World War one so you do absolutely get all military equipment it's not only about function but with this sword with the 1934 sword they actually brought a function back in in a very very strong way which I'm going to explain in a second the 1921 model was really the sword that Poland brought in to re-establish its national identity in there if you look at the 1921 model sword it is very much modeled on 18th century polish savers of Chablis it is basically a sort of replica of almost of earlier models of sword but the 1934 model is a step away from that and it is purely about military we're not purely but it's very much more about military efficiency quality of manufacturing and effectiveness so it's almost like the marriage between these two things you have a the 1921 sword which is bringing back the kind of national pride and looking at a sort of an earlier style of Polish saber which is seen as a conic related to the glories of times gone by Polish cavalry and then in 1934 they revised this and brought in certain aspects of design and construction and quality control which were really purely about the modern mechanized fighting machine now I should mention that so Poland obviously like all countries realized that warfare had gone in the direction of tanks and planes let's call it tanks and planes so World War one had been you know at the beginning of World War one to the end of World War one a huge amount of technological development you know literally you know if we take the British Army the first British kill and world war one was done with a cavalry sword and by the end of World War one the British armies got loads of Tanks and all different types of aeroplanes with you know bombers and fighters and fighter bombers and and you know obviously submarine warfare had come forward a lot well and over on the sea naval warfare as well so World War one saw a huge leap forward in technological development and a change in the face of warfare but now as I mentioned on the front wind on the eastern front essentially in with the Russian Revolution and then the subsequent conflict between the Soviet Union and its neighbors there was still a lot of cavalry action because there weren't loads of tanks and planes out there so if you don't have loads of tanks and planes and you've got large open plains and open spaces cavalry is still super important and the Polish military considered in 1934 that swords were still an important thing of course 1939 in the invasion of Poland and the the German advance armored advance hadn't happened yet so we know history panned out differently but based on what they had seen before it wasn't an unreasonable assumption to make that cavalry had played an important part up to that point and would play an important part in the war to come and in fact contrary to popular belief and there's a lot of urban myths about World War 2 polish cavalry in World War 2 during the German invasion did actually play quite an important part and were used to some degree effectively against German forces which I'm not going to go into that's for people who are more knowledgeable on that subject in that period than me so this was a sword that was intended not as a parade item it was a sword that was intended as a sword for killing people okay it was a sword for fighting with and it's very comparable in all of its main characteristics to swords from the Napoleonic era as I say it's not dissimilar to the British 1788 from 1788 so it is a fighting sword now one of the other reasons that this saber is so highly respected is because it was held to very high production quality and quality control and was also tested very very rigorously which in this period certainly was very unusual for swords because of course in most of you swords it passed out of regular kind of use in warfare so this was subjected to tests that I propose have their closest parallel in the testing of firearms and bayonets at this time and indeed during a little bit earlier during World War one so this sword was unusual and different to its predecessors in ponent in this it was only made by one armaments factory now that fact that maker in fact which is written on underneath the blanket on the sword here we just get this camera to focus is actually hidden underneath the ylang-ylang gate but they are hooter ludovic off I think I'm saying that correctly I'm sure I'm not but it was only produced by one factory and that has a lot of advantages for manufacturing something because if you have a standard patent it means that you can make every item to that exact patents are they all exactly the same weight exactly same length exactly the same distal taper exactly the same testing they go through and the failures get thrown away literally so you get far more regularity of your object that you're making bit of bayonet of rifle or a sword but in addition to that they were subjected to very rigorous tests and that's one of the reasons that is just so highly respected because not only is it just a nice feeling nice looking sword but in addition to that you know there is gone through these tests which a lot of modern lives and swords wouldn't necessarily survive and as I say if they didn't survive the test they were thrown away they didn't pass they didn't get the the approval so so what were these tests now it has to be said that these tests for some degree are perhaps based on tests that have being done on swords in some again perhaps maybe on the Wilkinson Sword test so they're not without parallel there were 19th century swords that were being tested in similar ways to this but the the polish tests were reckoned to be particularly brutal so what are those tests well so the first one and that we're gonna list is the sword had to be dropped pointed down literally dropped onto a steel plate of two millimeters thick presumably mild steel but the point had to one important thing these were factory sharpened okay so unlike British swords which we usually serve a sharp and these were sharpened in the factory so it had to be dropped down onto its point onto a steel plate and it had to penetrate that plate make some degree of hole in that steel place two to two millimeter thick which is about 14 gauge mild steel without any deformity or damage to the point the the height that it was dropped from into then it was around two meters so taller than me and presumably it was in some type of jig and so that's got quite a lot of momentum will have picked up quite a lot of speed by the time it hits that steel plate so that's quite a brutal test the next one you could say is even more brittle then that's that it would take five iron rods it's sometimes people say steel sometimes iron that does actually make quite a big difference I suspect that the use of what iron rods for a reason I'll explain in a second take five iron rods and the edge of this sword was used to hack through those five iron rods that were each individually of five millimetres diameter so you had five millimeter diameter rods five of them and you had to chop through those with the edge of this sharpened sword and it had to take no edge damage from that whatsoever so that would show that your point was hard your edge was hard also show to a certain degree the shock resistance as well of doing those things now why do I think they were iron rods well quite simply because that test of cutting through iron rods is actually something which goes all the way back to the Napoleonic period in 18th century and was done certainly in Solomon and other parts of Germany and swords that passed this test often have the word Eisenhower written on them and Eisen iron how a cut okay so it shows that they are iron cutting swords and those were iron bars maybe sometimes it you steel bars I don't know mild steel I think sometimes the differentiation between iron and mild Steel's may be a bit fuzzy at that period but nevertheless let's assume they're iron probably wrought iron bars so you've got a hack through five five millimeter iron bars taking no damage to the edge okay the next test is you need to whack the sword really heavily on a wooden block and this is actually paralleled by the wilkinson test so the wilkinson factory in london used to do this on Victorian era British swords as well now in terms specifically of the Polish saw the model 1934 you might think well what's that's not so bad hitting a hardwood block with with with the sword but specifically it was with the flat and the spine now that's quite brutal particularly the flat and I mean a spine is so brutal but you know I suppose generally speaking you're hitting if you're hitting with the flat and then it's not going to penetrate the block at all it's just gonna hit it and stop so in that sense it's more brutal because when you hit something with the edge the edge bearers into the object certainly if it's wood slightly and that dissipates some of the energy and less of that energy stops in the steel of the blade but hitting with the flat of the blade repeatedly on a wooden on a hardwood block and then with the back of the blade on the hardwood block this could incidentally I don't know in the Polish example I don't in this specific example but in the British tests that were like this this could be done either by a person and it was usually done by the blade maker so it could either be done by personal the approval person and who give the approval stamp if you'll either be done by person or it could be done by a machine and there were machines to do these tests as well and so so that was the third test was they had to survive being whacked with the flat and spine on a wooden block the final test of the sword itself was a bend test and again this is something we see in the Wilkinson test we see it in even modern TV shows like forged in fire and companies like cold steel and that do those kind of bend tests as well in fact lots of people make the swords we'll do some kind of bend test and the sword had to be again put against the hard wood block and had to be flexed about 150 millimetres each side and obviously take no set no bend so you know fairly tough tests although not unprecedented and they did have I mean clearly when the Polish factory ludovic ah thought this up in in fact the government brought this up in 1934 they did have prior precedents to base this on and it was undoubtedly based I would suspect probably on Sullivan manufacturing standards although the British Wilkinson tests and the French shuttle or a Klingon tile blade test could have been drawn upon as well and so so these kinds of tests were being done in various countries but this was a relatively brutal test it was kind of as brutal as within the context of those 19th century blade tests as brutal as they get and there was a final test and that was actually of the scabbard rather than the swords I haven't really talked about the scabbard so far so the scabbard is relatively straightforward it's a steel scabbard it has a softer metal throat I can tell you that from this original because I can see where the edge of the blade has scoured the inside of the throat so to help them blade be slightly less blunt and by continual drawing and sheathing they usually use a slightly softer metal throat here at the scabbard but the rest of the scabbard is made of iron or mild steel probably and it has a fairly simple shoe or dragged at the bottom fairly squared off one and it has one ring which as I mentioned in my Italian model 1833 video it's quite typical of cavalry swords after about 1890 this just for some reason everyone switched from having two rings worn from the belt to having one ring which predominantly was attached to the saddle rather than the rider and that was partly of course because by this point cavalry was so frequently dismounting and mounting so they would often ride to a position dismount fire rifles then mount up and ride up so they didn't want to be clattering around with their sabers attached to them all the time necessarily and very often the sword would be attached to the horse and was only there to administer a cavalry charge or to get into horseback fighting should that occur but they acted as essentially riflemen on foot a bit like dragoons a lot of the time so oh and the scabbard so what did it do they had to put essentially was put supported at both ends and weight was put on it I think 120 kilograms weight was put on the middle and the the scabbard had to not bend so it was essentially a scabbard test so we got a test of the scabbard which I don't recall ever seeing before any any actual sword test they always talk about testing with swords but they don't talk about testing the scabbard and given how many bent and broken scabbards I come across in the antique dealing world probably a good thing that the scabbard was robust and this one has you know has some little dents down the bottom but it's in pretty good condition so there we go to summarize the polish wzd 1934 table made by a hooter Ludovic off I think I'm pronouncing that right E of and I don't know how to say the play at a place named instantly they were based in PLC I think I don't know how to say that key I'll check ELC this is actually a 1939 dated sword and you can tell the weights of them from the serial numbers on the spine and they had a different letter for each year and this is a D this is D 543 so D corresponds to 1939 see is 1938 and so on and so these were only made for a few years but they were made in quite large numbers so the question is and I haven't found a definitive answer yet why are these we know why these is so sought after because they're awesome swords they're lovely they look nice they have a history behind them but also they they represent something as well they represent the last sword really that Poland used him in in warfare and also they represent things to do with Polish independence and and all of this kind of stuff but why are they so rare as objects as I say they're not super super rare but they are rare enough that when they come up for sale it's quite difficult to get a hold of one so why are they so rare well probably and we think this is the prevailing theory I think and feel free if you know more about this subject to me because I'm sure there are people watching this video who certainly do know more about these swords than me as you know I'm mostly a British sword guy but my understanding is these swords were replaced after the sec yes after the Second World War when the Soviets essentially took over they replaced these as these were taken out of you know kind of parade use or any other kind of use and also under German occupation as well of course and possibly disposed of destroyed don't know recycled maybe maybe the steel was recycled we don't really know and the Russians I believe made Polish cavalry units where the Russian shashka for some amount of time and then I think in the 1970s the Polish were allowed to have their own style of sword again and so essentially it seems like this sword was sort of prohibited and destroyed and done away with in that period of first of German occupation and then of Soviet occupation during those years during and after the Second World War hence not a huge a number of these are around there's probably some in Russia there's probably something obviously in Germany and it is it it is entirely possible that some of these made their way west during the Second World War during the fall of Poland because obviously some people managed to get out of Poland once Germany took over and so it's possible that some of them came out at that time it's possible that some of them were in storage or hidden or we don't really know so the end result is these are highly desirable swords very nice swords and there's enough the loss of them about which is a sort of golden it was a combination of things which mean that these are pretty damn expensive now and for certainly for 20th century swords these are super expensive but a wonderful thing I'm glad that I have been privileged to have it for a friendly short amount of time actually I've only had it for a couple of weeks but I'm very honored that I get to show one of these on my channel because I suspect that I'll never get to own one of these again it doesn't fit in my collection it's a very nice thing but I want it to go to someone else who really appreciates the history of these and what they are I'm really wants one of these and thank you for watching the video give us a like and subscribe and as I say if you have particular bits of information about this sword and their use I would love it if you share that information below and particularly I understand that there is some implication that some of these were used in combat during World War two if you know of accounts of these being used in World War two I would absolutely love to read those because I love first hand combat accounts so by all means share share that underneath and all I will say for now is give us a like and subscribe if you haven't done already Jin Dobler and see you all soon back on Scala gladiatori channel just folks thanks for watching we've got extra videos on patreon please give our facebook alike and subscribe if you haven't already cheers folks

Channel: scholagladiatoria

Views: 118,421

Keywords: polish sabre, polish szabla, polish sword, polish hussars, polish army, invasion of poland, 1939, second world war, history, war history, polish cavalry, cavalry sword, cavalry saber, 1934, wz.34, matt easton, scholagladiatoria, fencing, polish fencing, fencing history, military history, fighting the germans, WW2

Id: kxyuWu1ZNwI

Length: 31min 57sec (1917 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2020