Gliwice Radio Station

The Gliwice Radio Station (pronounced "glee-VEE-tseh") is where World War II was staged before it began. On the evening of August 31, 1939, German SS men disguised as Polish insurgents seized the station and broadcast a fake "Polish attack," handing Hitler a pretext to invade Poland the next morning. The site, known in German as Sender Gleiwitz, also has a remarkable engineering landmark: a 111-meter (364-foot) wooden radio tower, the tallest surviving wooden structure in Europe.

Where it is and how to get there

Gliwice is in Upper Silesia, southern Poland, about 25 km (15 miles) west of Katowice. Before 1945 the city belonged to Germany. The nearest airport is Katowice International (Pyrzowice); Kraków's airport is about 1.5 hours away by car via the A4 motorway. The station is at Tarnogórska 129 in the northern part of the city, reachable by city bus or a short taxi ride from the center. Admission is paid in Polish złoty (PLN).

The Gleiwitz incident: a staged attack

In August 1939 Nazi Germany needed a pretext to present its invasion of Poland as self-defense. A small team of SS operatives led by Alfred Naujocks, disguised as Poles, stormed the station around 8 p.m. and broadcast a brief anti-German message in Polish. They left behind the body of Franciszek Honiok, a 43-year-old Upper Silesian farmer known for his pro-Polish sympathies, who had been arrested the day before and killed by the Gestapo. The raid was part of Operation Himmler, a series of staged border incidents; most of what we know comes from Naujocks's own affidavit at the Nuremberg trials. Within hours Berlin radio blamed Poland. At dawn on September 1 the Wehrmacht crossed the border, and two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. Historians count the "Gleiwitz incident" as one of the best-documented false-flag operations in history.

The tower: larch wood and brass

The tower was assembled in 1935, in five months, by Christoph & Unmack of Niesky, and the station went on air on December 22, 1935. Germany built 53 such wooden towers in the 1920s and 1930s; Gliwice's is one of very few that remain. Key numbers:

• height 111.1 m, base 20 × 20 m;
• larch beams joined with more than 16,000 brass bolts and not a single steel nail;
• four platforms, the highest at 109.7 m, reached by ladders with 365 rungs;
• four concrete footings weighing 87 tonnes each.

Visitors cannot climb the tower, but walking around it in the surrounding park gives a strong sense of its scale. At night it is lit by thousands of LEDs.

After the war

The station broadcast until January 22, 1945, when the Red Army arrived. From late 1945 it carried Polish Radio Katowice; from 1950 to 1956 it was used to jam Radio Free Europe. The city bought the site in 2002, the Gliwice Museum took over in 2005, and it was named a Historic Monument of Poland in 2017.

What to see in the museum

The transmitter building keeps almost all its 1930s equipment by Lorenz, Telefunken and Siemens & Halske. The star exhibit is the 12-kilowatt Lorenz transmitter, removed to Warsaw's Museum of Technology in 1963 and returned in 2013. The exhibition explains the provocation and its role in the outbreak of the war.

Opening hours and tickets (as of October 2026)

• Monday: closed
• Tuesday and Friday: 11 a.m.–4 p.m.
• Wednesday and Thursday: 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
• Saturday and Sunday: 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

Tickets cost 20 PLN (standard), 10 PLN (reduced) and 30 PLN (family). Saturdays are free for everyone. The park around the tower is free at all times when open. An English-speaking guide costs 250 PLN per group and should be booked ahead at +48 32 300 04 04 or info@muzeum.gliwice.pl.

Is it worth visiting?

Absolutely, for anyone interested in World War II history or engineering. Allow 1–1.5 hours; the park paths are easy with a stroller, and the tower looks best on a clear day or lit up after dark. It pairs well with a day in Katowice or with other stops on the Silesian Industrial Monuments Route.