But while both countries could declare war, neither was really prepared to wage it. They had begun mobilization a few months earlier to prepare for possible German aggression, but the two countries still felt a few more months of military buildup would put them in a stronger position to fight the Nazis. While they didn't expect the Polish to beat the Germans, they expected Poland's million-man army to put up a stronger resistance, bogging down the German troops and giving the Allies time to make war plans.
Obviously, that calculation proved to be a mistake, both because the Germans were more powerful than expected and because the Allies hadn't counted on the Soviets invading Poland as well. So Poland fell before the Allies could launch more than token attacks on the Nazis. Hitler visits Paris in June , after his army succeeds in conquering France. Once Hitler and Stalin had consolidated their combined control over Poland, the Western Allies felt even less pressure to attack Germany quickly.
Warsaw had already fallen, so there was no Polish government to save from defeat. The Allies controlled the seas and believed they had time on their side. The Allies were also haunted by memories of World War I, in which millions of lives had been lost to no obvious purpose. They hesitated to launch into a second continent-wide war with little apparent strategic purpose.
In the earlier war, hostilities on the Western Front began almost immediately after war was declared in early August. Indeed, much of the action in the First World War occurred in the first six weeks, with German troops nearly reaching Paris before getting bogged down into trench warfare. In contrast, there was an eight-month gap between France's declaration of war against Germany in September and the beginning of full-scale war between Germany and France in May During this period, the continent was technically at war, but not much actual fighting was happening.
Some in Britain and France still hoped that a solution to the crisis could be found without the loss of millions of lives.
Only after German tanks began to stream into France on May 10, did the Allies fully accept that stopping Hitler would require another full-scale world war. Ethnic Poles are marched to trains in Western Poland in late as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign. According to historian Max Hastings, "Poland became the only nation occupied by Hitler in which there was no collaboration between the conquerors and the conquered. Another , died under Soviet rule. Nazi propaganda portrayed the Poles as having oppressed ethnic Germans in Poland, and they used this as a pretext for subjecting the Polish people to ethnic cleansing and slavery.
The Poles responded by organizing one of the largest resistance movements in Nazi-occupied territory. Polish nationalists sabotaged German production facilities and disrupted German supply lines. Polish nationalists organized the unsuccessful Warsaw Uprising to throw off Nazi rule in Unfortunately, the defeat of the Nazis in did not bring about Polish freedom.
Poland was "liberated" by the Soviet Union, which installed a repressive communist regime there. Poland would be trapped behind the Iron Curtain until the Polish people finally threw off Communist rule in the s.
Update: I replaced a sentence about Polish non-cooperation with the Nazis with a quote from Max Hastings. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.
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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Here's how it happened. By Timothy B. Lee Sep 1, , am EDT. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. After the invasion of Poland in September , Hitler parades in the streets of the city of Danzig. Why did Adolf Hitler invade Poland? Fluteflute One of these new countries was Poland, which before had last existed as an independent nation in Hitler, emboldened by his earlier successes, ordered the German occupation of the whole of Czechoslovakia, gained the return of the province of Memel from Lithuania, and pressed Poland to permit the construction of new road and railways across its territories to improve communications between East Prussia and Germany.
East Prussia had been separated from the rest of Germany in when the Allies redrew the borders of Germany and Russia to re-establish the independent state of Poland. The Poles had lost their independence as a nation state in , when Tsarist Russia and Prussia had divided and annexed Polish lands. Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia breached the written guarantee he had issued to Chamberlain in Munich in , stating that he had no further territorial demands to make in Europe.
Therefore, on 31 March , Chamberlain issued a formal guarantee of Poland's borders and said that he expected Hitler to moderate his demands. Hitler was not deterred, and on 3 April he ordered the Wehrmacht to prepare for the invasion of Poland on 1 September. Hitler was convinced that Chamberlain would not go to war to defend Poland and that France would lack the will to act alone.
Hitler's only real concern was that a sudden German invasion of Poland might alarm Stalin and trigger a war with the Soviet Union. Stalin feared a German invasion and had been seeking an anti-Nazi 'collective security' alliance with the western powers for many years, but by July Britain and France had still not agreed terms.
Poland had also rejected an alliance with the Soviet Union, and refused permission for the Red Army to cross its territory to engage the Wehrmacht in a future war. Hitler saw his opportunity, and authorised his Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop to enter into secret negotiations with the Soviet Union. The result was the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact on 23 August Both Hitler and Stalin set aside their mutual antipathy for national gain and in particular the restoration of their pre borders.
However, only hours before the attack Hitler cancelled the invasion when his ally Mussolini declared that Italy was not ready to go to war, and Britain declared a formal military alliance with Poland. Once reassured of Mussolini's political support, Hitler reset the invasion for 1 September The invasion was not dependent on Italian military support and Hitler dismissed the Anglo-Polish treaty as an empty gesture. At 6 am on 1 September Warsaw was struck by the first of a succession of bombing raids, while two major German army groups invaded Poland from Prussia in the north and Slovakia in the south.
Air supremacy was achieved on the first day, after most of Poland's airforce was caught on the ground. Panzer spearheads smashed holes in the Polish lines and permitted the slower moving German infantry to pour through into the Polish rear.
In advance of the line of attack the Luftwaffe heavily bombed all road and rail junctions, and concentrations of Polish troops. Towns and villages were deliberately bombed to create a fleeing mass of terror-stricken civilians to block the roads and hamper the flow of reinforcements to the front. Flying directly ahead of the Panzers, the Junkers Ju dive-bomber Stuka fulfilled the role of artillery, and destroyed any strong points in the German path.
The surprise German strategy of blitzkreig was based upon continuous advance and the prevention of a static frontline that would permit Polish forces time to regroup. At 8am, on 1 September, Poland requested immediate military assistance from France and Britain, but it was not until noon on 3 September that Britain declared war on Germany, followed by France's declaration at 5.
The delay reflected British hopes that Hitler would respond to demands and end the invasion. They expected the Germans to probe and bombard the Polish line with heavy artillery for several weeks before launching a full invasion.
They claimed to have massacred more than half of a plane Polish squadron which tried to bomb Berlin. Recapture of what was Germany in was the first objective: Danzig, the Corridor, and a hump of Upper Silesia. It is believed that Adolf Hitler, if allowed to take and keep this much, might have checked his juggernaut at these lines for the time being. Heroes this week were a handful of Polish soldiers left in charge of the Westerplatte munitions dump. Under steady bombing and shell fire, they held out as a suicide squad in the thick-walled fortress, replying from its depths with machine gun fire, resolved to blow up the dump and themselves with it before surrendering.
Even a neutral has a right to take account of facts. Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or his conscience. The Roosevelt version suggested to the magazine that the president might be priming Americans to get ready to take up arms—and after the attack on Pearl Harbor in , they did.
Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia. The front page of London's Evening Standard newspaper on Sept. By Olivia B. Get our History Newsletter. Put today's news in context and see highlights from the archives. Please enter a valid email address. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now. An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up.
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