On 10 September, General Fedor von Bock issued an order to Army Group North: ‘If there is shooting from a village behind the front and if it proves impossible to identify the house from which the shots came, then the whole village is to be burned to the ground.’ Other commanders followed suit. It was no more than what Gerhard M. and his comrades were already doing. During the four weeks of fighting and the further four weeks of German military administration in Poland, between 16,000 and 27,000 Poles were executed and 531 towns and villages torched.
