[1] The battle was fought against the judgment of General Władysław Bortnowski, the commander of Army Pomerania, who believed the Corridor to be a very poor defensive position and had repeatedly asked for permission to withdraw his forces from it.

However, the Germans had held their Truppenübungsplatz Gruppe military exercises in the area until 1919, and were therefore familiar with it, and furthermore General Heinz Guderian had been born in nearby Chełmno).

[6] Frustrated by these delays, Guderian ordered his motorcyclists to cross the river in rubber boats at Sokole-Kuźnica, this was accomplished by 1800 hours, and after clearing the Polish defenders from the far bank German engineers were able to begin repairs of the bridges over the Brda.

General Bader ordered a series of frontal assaults across flat, marshy terrain which were repeatedly repulsed with considerable casualties until the Polish troops withdrew around 1800 due to the risk of encirclement from the south by Guderian's panzers.

During the late morning and early afternoon the 20th Division slowly enveloped the Polish positions, and the ON battalions withdrew at 1400 to avoid encirclement.

[8] All day on September 1st the German XXI Army Corps, attacking from the exclave of East Prussia, attempted to secure a crossing over the Vistula and link up with Guderian.

Having failed to secure the bridges, XXI Corps proceeded southwards and became locked in a positional battle with the Polish 16th Infantry Division dug in along the Osa, a minor tributary of the Vistula.

[11] By the end of the day, a significant portion of the Polish forces were disorganized or in retreat, with the remainder facing the threat of encirclement by the German pincer movement.

Around noon the German Luftwaffe began to launch air attacks on the retreating Polish columns which inflicted heavy losses, including most of the 9th Division's artillery.

Pressed up against the Vistula with their route to Bydgoszcz cut, 4,000 Polish troops would be captured by the end of the day, with only the 35th Infantry Regiment managing to escape.

Bortnowski decided to abandon the city and establish a new defensive line on the south bank of the Vistula, but roughly 1,000 German Nazi sympathizers, organized by Abwehr infiltrators and armed by the SS, staged a diversionary uprising, firing from windows and killing 20 Polish troops of the 22nd Infantry Regiment.

The 62nd infantry regiment of the 15th division was tasked with restoring order; Polish troops rounded up 600 local Germans and killed 100 others, some in combat and some in summary executions.

German air power and mobility gave them a considerable technological advantage over the Polish forces, which struggled to keep pace with their opponents in a war of movement.