Origins of World War Two

  On 01st September 1939, German forces invaded Poland. Two
days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany,
beginning World War II. Some historians date the war from
1937, with the Japanese invasion of China; Japanese official
histories, however, start with 1931, when Japan’s forces overran
Manchuria. But perhaps the most accurate place to begin
is with the end of World War 1. That conflict exacted horrible
human and economic costs, destroyed the existing power
structure of Europe, and toppled all the continental empires.
It also sowed the seeds for a new conflict.

  In January 1919, representatives of the victorious Allied, or
Entente, powers met in Paris to impose peace terms on the
defeated Central Powers. The centerpiece of the settlement,
the Versailles Treaty, was the worst of all possible outcomes
it was too harsh to conciliate but too weak to destroy. It was
also never enforced, making a renewal of the struggle almost
inevitable.

  The Paris peace settlement was drafted chiefly by Britain,
France, and the United States. The Germans claimed they had
assumed the November 1918 armistice would lead to a true
negotiated peace treaty, yet in March and May 1918, when they
were winning the war, their leaders had imposed a truly harsh
settlement on Russia. In the Treaty of Brest—Litovsk, Russia
lost most of its European territory, up to a third of its population,
and three-quarters of its iron and coal production. It was also
required to pay a heavy indemnity.

  Far from being dictated by French Premier Georges
Clemenceau, as many Americans still believe, the Paris peace
settlement of 1919 was largely the work of British Prime
Minister David Lloyd George and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson,
who repeatedly blocked proposals advanced by Clemenceau.
The irony is that the British and American leaders prevented a
settlement that, although punitive, might indeed have brought
actual French and Belgian security and prevented war in 1939.

  The most novel creation of the conference was undoubtedly
the League of Nations. Clemenceau did not place much
stock in a league, but if there had to be one, he wanted
mandatory membership and an independent military force.
The Anglo-American league relied primarily on moral persuasion;
its strongest weapon was the threat of sanctions.
The most contentious issue at the peace conference and
arguably its most important matter was that of French and
Belgian security. Alsace and Lorraine were returned to
France, and for security purposes, Belgium received the two
small border enclaves of Eupen and Malmédy. France was
granted the coal production of the Saar region for 15 years in
compensation for Germany’s deliberate destruction of
French mines at the end of the war. The Saar itself fell under
League of Nations control, with its inhabitants to decide their
future at the end of the period.

  A storm of controversy broke out, however, over the
Rhineland, the German territory west of the Rhine River.
France wanted this area to be reconstituted into one or more
independent states that would maintain a permanent Allied
military presence to guarantee Germany would not again
strike west, but Lloyd George and Wilson saw taking the
Rhineland from Germany as “an Alsace-Lorraine in reverse."
They also wished to end the Allied military presence on
German soil as soon as a peace treaty was signed.

  These vast differences were resolved when Clemenceau
agreed to yield on the Rhineland in return for the Anglo -
American Treaty of Guarantee, whereby Britain and the
United States promised to come to the aid of France should
Germany ever invade. The Rhineland would remain part of
the new German Republic but would be permanently
demilitarized, along with a 30 mile deep belt of German territory
east of the Rhine.

  Allied garrisons would remain for only a
limited period: the British would occupy a northern zone for
five years, the Americans a central zone for ten, and the French
a southern zone for 15 years. Unfortunately for France, the
pact for which it traded away national security never came
into force. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify it, and the British
government claimed its acceptance was contingent on American
approval.

  Germany lost some other territory: northern Schleswig to
Denmark and a portion of Silesia and the Polish Corridor to
the new state of Poland—accessions the Allies justified along
ethnic lines. The Polish Corridor allowed Poland access to the
sea, but it also separated East Prussia from the remainder of
Germany and became a major rallying point for German
nationalists. Despite these losses, German power remained
largely intact; Germany was still the most powerful state in
central and western Europe. Nonetheless, Germans keenly
resented the territorial losses.

  The Treaty of Versailles also limited Germany in terms of
both the size and the nature of its military establishment.
The new German army, the Reichswehr, was restricted to
100,000 men serving 12 year enlistments. It was denied
heavy artillery, tanks, and military aviation, and the German
General Staff was to be abolished. The navy was limited to 6
predreadnought battleships, 6 light cruisers, 12 destroyers,
and no submarines. From the beginning, the Germans violated
these provisions. The General Staff remained, although
clandestinely; moreover, Germany maintained military
equipment that was to have been destroyed, and it worked
out arrangements with other states to develop new weapons
and train military personnel.

  Other major provisions of the settlement included Article
231, the “war guilt clause.” This provision blamed the War on
Germany and its allies and was the justification for reparations,
which were fixed at $33 billion in 1920, well after Germany
had signed the treaty on 28th June 1919. British economist
John Maynard Keynes claimed that reparations were a perpetual
mortgage on Germany’s future and that there was no
way the Germans could pay them, yet Adolf Hitler’s Germany
subsequently spent more in rearming than the reparations
demanded. In any case, Germany, unlike France following the
Franco-Prussian War in 1871, was never really forced to pay.

  The breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the
peace treaties following the war led to the creation of a number
of new states in central Europe, most notably Poland but
also Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Resolving the boundaries of
Poland proved difficult, especially in the east; it was
not until December 1919 that a commission headed by Lord
Curzon drew that line. Neither the new Polish government
nor Russia recognized it, however. Romania was greatly
enlarged with the addition of Transylvania, which was taken
from Hungary. Hungary was, in fact, the principal loser at
the peace conference, having been left with only 35 percent
of its prewar area. The much reduced rump states of Austria
and Hungary were now confronted by Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia,
and Romania. The latter three, the so-called Little
Entente, allied to prevent a resurgence of their former masters.
They were linked with France through a treaty of mutual
assistance between that nation and Czechoslovakia.

  The Allied solidarity of 1918, more illusion than reality,
soon disappeared. When the peace treaties were signed, the
United States was already withdrawing into isolation and
Britain was disengaging from the Continent. This situation left
France alone among the great powers to enforce the peace
settlement. Yet France was weaker in terms of population and
economic strength than Germany. In effect, it was left up to
the Germans themselves to decide whether they would abide
by the treaty provisions, which all Germans regarded as a
vengeful diktat. Moreover, the shame of the Versailles settlement
was borne not by the kaiser or the army—the parties
responsible for the decisions that led to the defeat—but rather
by the leaders of the new democratic Weimar Republic.

  The new German government deliberately adopted obstructionist
policies, and by 1923, it had halted major reparations payments.
French Premier Raymond Poincare acted. He believed that if the
Germans were allowed to break part of the settlement, the remainder
would soon unravel. In January 1923, Poincare sent French troops,
supported by Belgian and Italian units, into the Ruhr, the industrial
heart of Germany.

  German Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno’s government adopted a
policy of passive resistance, urging the workers not to work
and promising to pay their salaries. The German leaders
thereby hoped to secure sufficient time for the United States
and Britain to force France to depart. Although that pressure
was forthcoming, Poincare’ refused to back down, and the
result was catastrophic inflation in Germany.

  The mark had already gone from 4.2 to the dollar in July
1914 to 8.9 in January 1919. It then tumbled precipitously
because of deliberate government policies. By January 1920,
its value was 39.5 to the dollar and in January 1922, 1918. Then
came the French occupation of the Ruhr and Cuno’s ruinous
policy. In January 1923, the value was 17,972, but by July, it
was 353,412. In November, when the old mark was withdrawn
in favor of a new currency, the mark’s value stood at 4.2 trillion
 to the dollar. The ensuing economic chaos wiped out the
German middle class, and many middle class citizens lost all
faith in democracy and voted for Adolf Hitler a decade later.

  Germany now agreed to pay reparations under a scaled
down schedule, and French troops withdrew from the Ruhr
in 1924. Although the French generally approved of Poincaré’s
action, they also noted its high financial cost and the
opposition of Britain and the United States. These factors
helped bring the Left to power in France in 1924, and the new
government reversed Poincare"s go-it-alone approach. The
new German government of Chancellor Gustav Stresemann,
moreover, announced a policy of living up to its treaty obligations.
Notions of “fulfillment” and “conciliation” replaced
“obstruction” and led to the Locarno Pacts of 1925, by which
Germany voluntarily guaranteed its western borders as final
and promised not to resort to war with its neighbors and to
resolve any disputes through arbitration. For at least half a
decade, international calm prevailed.

  By the 1930s, national boundaries were still basically those
agreed to in 1919. Italy, Germany, and Japan continued to be
dissatisfied with this situation, however, and in the 1930s, the
economic difficulties resulting from the Great Depression
enhanced popular support in those nations for politicians
and military leaders who supported drastic measures, even
at the risk of war, to change the situation in the “revisionist”
powers’ favor. The “status quo” powers of France, Great
Britain, and the United States saw no advantage in making
changes, but at the same time, they were unwilling to risk war
to defend the 1919 settlement. They therefore acquiesced as,
step by step, the dissatisfied powers dismantled the peace settlement,
From the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 to
the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, those who wanted to
overturn the status quo used force but not those who
sought to maintain it.

  The Western democracies seemed paralyzed, in part
because of the heavy human cost of World War I. France alone
had 1,397,800 citizens killed or missing in the conflict.
Including the wounded, 73 percent of all French combatants had
been casualties. France could not sustain another such blood-
letting, and the defensive military doctrine it adopted came to
be summed up in the phrase “Stingy with blood; extravagant
with steel.” In 1929, France began construction of a defensive
belt along the frontier from Switzerland to Belgium. Named
for Minister of War Andre’ Maginot and never intended as a
puncture-proof barricade, the Maginot Line nonetheless
helped fix a defensive mind-set in the French military.
By the 1930s, attitudes toward World War 1 had changed.
German people believed their nation had not lost the war militarily
but had been betrayed by communists, leftists, pacifists,
and Jews. Especially in Britain and the United States,
many came to believe that the Central Powers had not been
responsible for the war, that nothing had been gained by the
conflict, and that the postwar settlement had been too hard
on Germany.

  In Britain, there was some sympathy in influential, upper-
class circles for fascist doctrines and dictators, who were seen
as opponents of communism. British Member of Parliament
Winston L.S. Churchill, for example, praised Italian dictator
Benito Mussolini. The British government avoided continental
commitments, and its leaders embraced appease-
ment—the notion that meeting the more legitimate
demands of the dictators would remove all need for war.
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (who served in that post
from 1937 to 1940) was the principal architect of this policy.

  There was also great concern in Britain, as elsewhere, over the
possible air bombardment of cities in any future war.
The United States had been one of the few powers that actu-
ally benefited from World War I. At a modest cost in terms of
human casualties, it had emerged from the struggle as the
world’s leading financial power. Yet Americans were dissatisfied
with their involvement in European affairs; they believed
they had been misled by wartime propaganda and that the
arms manufacturers (the so-called merchants of death) had
drawn the nation into the war to assure themselves payment
for sales to the Entente side. In the 1930s, the United States
adhered to rigid neutrality, and Congress passed legislation
preventing the government from loaning money or selling
arms to combatants in a war. Unfortunately, such legislation
benefited the aggressor states, which were already well armed,
and handicapped their victims. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S.
president from 1933 to 1945, understood the threat the aggressors
posed to the world community, but most Americans
eschewed international involvement.

  The Soviet Union was also largely absorbed in its internal
affairs. Following World War I, Russia experienced a pro-
tracted and bloody civil war as the Communist Reds, who had
seized control in November 1917, fought off the Whites, who
were supported by the Western Allies. When this conflict
ended in 1921, efforts by the government to introduce Com-
munist economic practices only heightened the chaos and
famine. In the 1930s, Soviet leader Josef Stalin pushed both
the collectivization of agriculture, which led to the deaths of
millions of Soviet citizens, and the industrialization essential
for modern warfare.

In foreign policy, Stalin was a revisionist who did not
accept the new frontiers in eastern Europe as final.
Particularly vexing to him was the new Poland, part of which had
been carved from former Russian territory Russia had also
lost additional lands to Poland following its defeat in the 1920
Russo-Polish War.

  After 1933 and Adolf Hitler’s accession to power, Stalin
became especially disturbed over Germany, for the German
Fuhrer (leader) had clearly stated his opposition to commu-
nism and his intention of bringing large stretches of eastern
Europe under German control, even by the sword. The Ger-
man threat led Stalin to turn to collective security and pursue
an internationalist course. In 1934, the Soviet Union joined
the League of Nations.

  Simultaneously, Stalin launched unprecedented purges
against his own people, largely motivated by his own paranoia
and desire to hold on to power. The number of victims
may have been as high as 40 million, half of whom were killed.
The so-called Great Terror consumed almost all the old-
guard Bolshevik leadership and senior military officers. The
consequences of decimating the latter group were felt in 1941
when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union.

  By the late 1930s, many Western leaders distrusted the
Soviet Union to the point that they hoped German strength
could be directed eastward against it and that Nazism and
communism would destroy one another. Thus, despite the
fact that the Kremlin was willing to enter into arrangements
with the West against Germany and Japan, no effective
inter-national coalition was forged.

  In 1931, Japan seized Manchuria. Japan had been one of
the chief beneficiaries of World War 1. At little cost, it had
secured the German islands north of the equator and concessions
in China. Riding the crest of an ultra nationalist wave,
Japanese leaders sought to take advantage of the chaos of the
world economic depression and the continuing upheaval in
China after the 1911 Chinese Revolution to secure the natural
resources their country lacked. The Japanese attempted to
garner these not only in Manchuria but also in Mongolia,
China proper, and South Asia.

  Although Japan had many of the trappings of a democracy,
it was not one. The army and navy departments were independent
of the civilian authorities; from 1936 onward, the
ministers of war and navy had to be serving officers, giving the
military a veto over public policy because no government
could be formed without its concurrence. Army leaders had
little sympathy for parliamentary rule or civil government,
and in the 1930s, they dominated the government and occasionally
resorted to political assassinations, even of prime
ministers.

  On the night of 18th September 1931, Japanese staff officers
of the elite Guandong (Kwantung) Army in southern
Manchuria set off an explosion near the main line of the South
Manchuria Railway near Mukden, an act they blamed on
nearby Chinese soldiers. The Japanese military then took
control of Mukden and began the conquest of all Manchuria.
Tokyo had been presented with a fait accompli by its own military,
but it supported the action.

  The Japanese held that they had acted only in self defense
and demanded that the crisis be resolved through direct Sino
Japanese negotiation. China, however, took the matter to the
League of Nations, the first major test for that organization.
The League Council was reluctant to take tough action against
Japan, and the Japanese ignored its calls to withdraw their
troops and continued military operations. In February 1932,
Japan proclaimed the “independence” of Manchuria in the
guise of the new state of Manzhouguo (Manchukuo). A protocol
that September established a Japanese protectorate
over Manzhouguo. In 1934, the Japanese installed China’s
last Manchu emperor—Ahrinjueluo Puyi (Aisingioro P’u-i,
known to Westerners as Henry Puyi), who had been deposed
in 1911)—as emperor of what was called Manzhoudiguo (the
empire of the Manzhus [Manchus]).

  A League of Nations investigating committee blamed
Japan and concluded that only the presence of Japanese
troops kept the government of Manzhouguo in power. On 24th
February 1933, the League Assembly approved the report of
its committee and the Stimson Doctrine, named for U.S.
Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, of nonrecognition of
Manzhouguor Of 42 member states, only Japan voted against
the move. Never before had such a universal vote of censure
been passed against a sovereign state. Tokyo then gave notice
of its intention to withdraw from the league.

  Manzhouguo was larger than France and Germany combined,
 but in March, Japanese troops added to it the Province
of Rehe (Jehol). Early in April, they moved against Chinese
forces south of the Great Wall to within a few miles of Beijing
(Peking) and Tianjin (Tienstin). In May, Chinese forces evacuated
Beijing, then under the authority of pro-Japanese Chinese
leaders. The latter concluded a truce with Japan that
created a demilitarized zone administered by Chinese
friendly to Japan.

   Had the great powers been able to agree on military action,
Japan would have been forced to withdraw from its conquered
territory. Such a war would have been far less costly
than fighting a world war later, but the world economic
depression and general Western indifference to the plight of
Asians precluded a sacrifice of that nature. A worldwide
financial and commercial boycott in accordance with Article
16 of the League of Nations Covenant might also have forced
a Japanese withdrawal, but this, too, was beyond Western
resolve. Other states with similar aspirations took note.
Germany was the next to move. In January 1933, Adolf
Hitler became Germany’s chancellor, by entirely legitimate
means, and in October 1933, he withdrew Germany from both
the League of Nations and the international disarmament conference
meeting in Geneva. In July 1934, Austrian Nazis, acting
with the tacit support of Berlin, attempted to seize power in
Vienna in order to achieve Anschluss, or union with Germany.
Ultimately, Austrian authorities put down the putschists without
outside assistance, although Mussolini, who considered
Austria under his influence, ordered Italian troops to the
Brenner Pass.

  Germany was then still largely unarmed, and Hitler
expressed regret at the murder of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert
Dollfuss and assured the world that Germany had no role
in the failed coup. The Nazis’ unsuccessful attempt at a
takeover of Austria was clearly a setback for Hitler. Secure in
French support, Mussolini met with the new Austrian chan-
cellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, in Rome that September and
announced that Italy would defend Austrian independence. A
French pact with Italy rested on agreement with Yugoslavia,
but on 09th October 1934 when King Alexander of Yugoslavia
arrived at Marseille for discussions with the French government,
Croatian terrorists assassinated him and French Foreign
Minister Louis Barthou. This event was a great embarrassment
for France, although Barthou’s successor, Pierre Laval, did
secure the pact with Italy. The January 1935 French-Italian
accords called for joint consultation and close cooperation
between the two powers in central Europe and reaffirmed the
independence and territorial integrity of Austria. They also
recommended a multilateral security pact for eastern Europe.
In secret provisions, Italy promised to support France with its
air force in the event of a German move in the Rhineland and
France agreed to provide troops to aid Italy if the Germans
should threaten Austria. France also transferred land to the
Italian colonies of Libya and Eritrea, and Laval promised Mus-
solini that France would not oppose Italy’s efforts to realize its
colonial ambitions. Thereafter, Mussolini behaved as if he had
France’s approval to wage aggressive war.

  Only a week later, with Hitler declaring the Saar to be his
last territorial demand in Europe (the first of many such statements),
Saarlanders voted nine to one to rejoin Germany. On
01st March 1935, the League Council formally returned the Saar
to German control. Two weeks later, on 16th March, Hitler proclaimed
the rearmament of Germany. Secret rearmament had
been under way for some time, including development of an
air training center at Lipetsk, a gas warfare school at Torski,
and a tank school at Kazan (all in the Soviet Union), but Hitler
now announced publicly that the Reich would reintroduce
compulsory military service and increase its army to more
than 500,000 men, moves he justified on the grounds that the
Allies had not disarmed. France, Britain, and Italy all
protested but did nothing further to compel Germany to
observe its treaty obligations. In April 1955, Laval, Prime Minister
 I. Ramsay MacDonald of Britain, and Mussolini met at
Stresa on Lake Maggiori and formed the so-called Stresa
Front, agreeing “to oppose unilateral repudiation of treaties
that may endanger the peace” (with the phrase “of Europe”
being added at Mussolini’s request).

  On 02nd May, France and the Soviet Union signed a five-year
pact of mutual assistance in the event of unprovoked aggression
against either power. The French rejected a military con-
vention that would have coordinated their military response
to any German aggression, however. On 16th May, the Soviet
Union and Czechoslovakia signed a similar mutual-assistance
pact, but the Soviet Union was not obligated to provide armed
assistance unless France first fulfilled its commitments.
Britain took the first step in the appeasement of Germany,
shattering the Stresa Front. On 18th June 1935, the British
government signed a naval agreement with Germany that condoned
the latter’s violation of the Versailles Treaty. In spite
of having promised Paris in February that it would take no
unilateral action toward Germany, London permitted the
Reich to build a surface navy of a size up to 35 percent that of
Britain’s own navy in effect, a force larger than the navies
of either France or Italy. It also allowed the Reich to attain 45
percent of the Royal Navy’s strength in submarines, armaments
that Germany was prohibited from acquiring by the
Treaty of Versailles. British leaders were unconcerned. The
Royal Navy had only 50 submarines, which meant the Germans
could build only 23. Moreover, the British were confident
that the new technology of ASDIC, later known as sonar,
would enable them to detect submarines at a range of several
thousand yards. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement was,
of course, another postdated German check. The conclusion
of this accord was also the first occasion on which any power
sanctioned Germany’s misdeeds, and it won Britain the dis-
pleasure of its ally France.

  On 03rd October 1935, believing with some justification that
he had Western support, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia
(Abyssinia). Long-standing border disputes between Italian
Somaliland and Ethiopia were the excuse. Mussolini’s goal
was to create a great Italian empire in Africa and to avenge
Italy’s defeat by the Ethiopians at Adowa in 1896. The out-
come of the Italo-Ethiopian War was a foregone conclusion,
and in May 1936, Italian forces took Addis Ababa and Mussolini
proclaimed the king of Italy as the emperor of Ethiopia.

  On 07th October 1935, the League of Nations condemned
Italy, marking the first time it had branded a European state
an aggressor. But behind the scenes, British Foreign Secretary
Sir Samuel Hoare and French Foreign Minister Pierre
Laval devised their infamous proposals to broker away
Ethiopia to Italy in return for Italian support against
Germany. Public furor swept both men from office when the deal
became known.

  Ultimately, the league voted to impose some economic
sanctions—but not on oil, which would have brought an Italian
withdrawal. In the end, even those ineffectual sanctions
that had been voted for were lifted. Italy, like Japan, had
gambled and won, dealing another blow to collective security.
Probably the seminal event on the road to World War II
occurred in early 1936, when Hitler remilitarized the
Rhineland. On 07th March 1936, some 22,000 lightly armed German
troops marched into the Rhineland, defying not just the
Treaty of Versailles but also the Locarno Pacts, which Germany
had voluntarily negotiated. Hitler deliberately scheduled
the operation to occur while France was absorbed by a
bitterly contested election campaign that brought the leftist
Popular Front to power.

  Incredibly, France had no contingency plans for such an
eventuality. French intelligence services also grossly over
estimated the size of the German forces in the operation and
believed Hitler’s false claims that the Luftwaffe had achieved
parity with the French Armée de l’Air (air force). Vainly seeking
to disguise its own inaction, Paris appealed to London for
support, but Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden made it clear
that Britain would not fight for the Rhineland, which was,
after all, German territory.

  Had the French acted, their forces in all likelihood would
have rolled over the Germans, which would probably have
meant the end of the Nazi regime. But as it turned out,
remilitarization of the Rhineland provided Germany a buffer for
the Ruhr and a springboard for invading France and Belgium.
That October, it also led Belgian leaders to renounce their
treaty of mutual assistance with France and seek security in
neutrality.

  Almost immediately after the German remilitarization of
the Rhineland, another international crisis erupted, this time
in Spain, where civil war began on 18th July 1936. The issue
centered on whether Spain would follow the modernizing reforms
of the rest of western Europe or maintain its existing structure,
favored by Spanish traditionalists. When the Republicans
won a narrow victory in the Spanish elections of 1936, the
traditionalists, who were known as the Nationalists, took to arms.
It is probable, though by no means certain, that the Republicans
would have won the civil war had Spain been left alone
to decide its fate. Certainly, the conflict would have ended
much sooner. But Germany and Italy intervened early,
providing critical air support that allowed the airlifting of
Nationalist troops and equipment across the Straits of Gibral-
tar from Morocco to Nationalist-held territory in Spain in
effect, the first large-scale military airlift in history.

  Germany even formed an air detachment, the Kondor
Legion, to fight in Spain, a key factor in the ultimate
Nationalist victory. The Germans also tested their latest military
equipment under combat conditions, developed new fighter
tactics, and learned about the necessity of close coordination
between air and ground operations, along with the value of
dive bombing. Italy also provided important naval support
and sent three divisions of troops, artillery, and aircraft.
Surprisingly, the Western democracies did not support the
Spanish Republic. France initially sent some arms to the
Republicans, but under heavy British pressure, it reversed its
stance. British leaders devised a non interventionist policy.
Although all the great powers promised to observe that policy,
only the Western democracies actually did so. This agreement,
which made it impossible for the Republicans to obtain the
arms they needed, was probably the chief factor in their defeat.
Only the Soviet Union and Mexico assisted the Spanish
Republic. Stalin apparently hoped for a protracted struggle
that would entangle the Western democracies and Germany
on the other side of the European continent. During the civil
war, the Soviet Union sent advisers, aircraft, tanks, and
artillery to Spain. Eventually, this Soviet aid permitted the
Spanish Communists, who were not a significant political factor
in 1936, to take over the Republican government. Finally,
in March 1939, Nationalist forces, led by General Francisco
Franco, entered Madrid. By April, hostilities ended.

  The Western democracies emerged very poorly from the
test of the Spanish Civil War. Although tens of thousands of
foreign volunteers had fought in Spain, most of these for the
Republic, the governments of the Western democracies had
remained aloof, and many doubted the West had any will left
to defend democracy. Internationally, the major effect of the
fighting in Spain was to bring Germany and Italy together. In
October 1936, they agreed to cooperate in Spain, to collaborate
in matters of “parallel interests,” and to work to defend
“European civilization” against communism. Thus was born
the Rome-Berlin Axis. Then, on 25th November, Germany and
Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact to oppose activities of
the Comintern (the Communist International), created to
spread communism. On the same day, Germany and Japan
also signed a secret agreement providing that if either state
was the object of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union,
the other would do nothing to assist the USSR. On 6th November
1937, Italy joined the Anti-Comintern Pact. Shortly afterward,
Mussolini announced that Italy would not assist
Austria against a German attempt to consummate Anschluss.
Italy also withdrew from the League of Nations, and it
recognized Manzhouguo as an independent state in November
1937 (as did Germany in May 1938).

  Japan, meanwhile, continued to strengthen its position in
the Far East, asserting its exclusive right to control China.
Tokyo demanded an end to the provision of Western loans
and military advisers to China and threatened the use of force
if such aid continued. In 1935, Japan began encroaching on
several of China’s northern provinces. The Chinese government
at Nanjing (Nanking), headed by Generalissimo Jiang Jieshi
(Chiang Kai-shek), initially pursued a policy of
appeasement vis-a-vis the Japanese, but students and the
Chinese military demanded action. The Chinese Communists
declared themselves willing to cooperate with the
Nationalist government and place their armies under its
command if Nanjing would adopt an anti-Japanese policy.

  The rapid growth of anti-Japanese sentiment in China and the
increasing military strength of the Nationalists alarmed
Japanese military leaders, who worked to establish a pro-
Japanese regime in China’s five northern provinces.
On the night of 07th July 1937, a clash occurred west of Beijing
between Japanese and Chinese troops. Later that month,
after Nanjing rejected an ultimatum from Tokyo, the Japanese
invaded the coveted northern provinces. In a few days,
they had occupied both Tianjin and Beijing, and by the end
of the year, Japan had extended its control into all five Chinese
provinces north of the Yellow River. In mid-December,
Japan also installed a new government in Beijing. Tokyo
never declared war against China, however, enabling it to
evade U.S. neutrality legislation and purchase American raw
materials and oil. But by the same token, this situation
permitted Washington to send aid to China.

  The fighting was not confined to north China, for in
August 1937, the Japanese attacked the great commercial city
of Shanghai. Not until November, after three months of hard
fighting involving the best Nationalist troops, did the city fall.
Japanese forces then advanced up the Changjiang (Yangtse)
River, and in December, they took Nanjing, where they
com
mitted widespread atrocities.

  As scholars have since noted, Japan subsequently developed
a collective amnesia in regard to its actions at Nanjing
and its atrocities in the war through South Asia in general.
(According to the Chinese, Japan has a long history and a
short memory.) This Japanese evasion of responsibility
stands in sharp contrast to German attempts to come to terms
with the Holocaust, and it has affected Japan’s relations with
China and other nations in Asia right up to the present.

  On 12th December 1937, while trying to clearthe Changjiang
River of all Western shipping, Japanese forces attacked a U.S.
Navy gunboat, the Parlay. Other American ships belonging to
an oil company were also bombed and sunk, and British ves-
sels were shelled. Strong protests from Washington and Lon-
don brought profuse apologies from Tokyo. The Japanese,
falsely claiming they had not realized the nationality of the
ships, stated their readiness to pay compensation and give
guarantees that such incidents would not be repeated. Washington
and London accepted these amends, and the episode
only served to convince Tokyo that it had little to fear from
Western intervention.

  Again, China appealed to the League of Nations, which
once more condemned Japan. Again, too, the West failed to
withhold critical supplies and financial credits from Japan, so
once more, collective security failed. By the end of 1938,
Japanese troops had taken the great commercial cities of Tianjin,
Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hankou, and Guangzhou (Canton),
and the Nationalists were forced to relocate their capital
to the interior city of Chongqing (Chungking), which Japan
bombed heavily. In desperation, the Chinese demolished the
dikes on the Huang He (Hwang Ho), known to Westerners as
the Yellow River, costing hundreds of thousands of lives and
flooding much of northern China until 1944.

  Japan was also confronting the Soviet Union. Fighting
began in 1938 between Japanese and Soviet troops in the
poorly defined triborder area normally referred to as
Changkufeng, where Siberia, Manzhouguo, and Korea met.
Although no state ofwar was declared, significant battles were
fought, especially at Changkufeng Hill in 1938 and Nomonhan/
Khalkhin Gol in 1939. The fighting ended advantageously
for the Soviets. A cease-fire in September 1939 preempted a
planned Japanese counterattack, and the dispute was resolved
by treaty in June 1940. The fighting undoubtedly influenced
Stalin’s decision to sign a nonaggression pact with Germany
in August 1939. It also gave Tokyo anew appreciation of Soviet
fighting ability, and in 1941, it helped to influence Japanese
leaders to strike not north into Siberia but against the easier
targets of the European colonies in Southeast Asia.

  In the West, the situation by 1938 encouraged Hitler to
embark on his own territorial expansion. Mussolini was now
linked with Hitler, and France was experiencing another
period of ministerial instability. In Britain, appeasement was
in full force, so much so that in February 1938, Anthony Eden,
a staunch proponent of collective security, resigned as foreign
secretary.

  Austria was Hitler’s first step. In February 1938, Austrian
Chancellor Schuschnigg traveled to Berchtesgaden at the
Ftihrer’s insistence to meet with the German leader. Under
heavy pressure, Schuschnigg agreed to appoint Austrian Nazi
Arthur Seyss-Inquart as minister of the interior and other Austrian
Nazis as ministers of justice and foreign affairs. On 09th
March, however, in an attempt to maintain his nation’s independence,
Schuschnigg announced that a plebiscite on the issue
of Anschluss would be held in only four days, hoping that the
short interval would not allow the Nazis to mobilize effectively.
Hitler was determined that no plebiscite be held, and on
11th March, Seyss-Inquart presented Schuschnigg with an ultimatum
demanding his resignation and postponement of the
vote under threat of invasion by German troops, already
mobilized on the border. Schuschnigg yielded, canceling the
plebiscite and resigning. Seyss-Inquart then took power and
belatedly invited in the German troops “to preserve order”
after they had already crossed the frontier. Yet Germany’s
military was hardly ready for war; indeed, hundreds of Ger-
man tanks and vehicles of the German Eighth Army broke
down on the drive toward Vienna.

  On 13th March, Berlin declared Austria to be part of the
Reich, and the next day, perhaps a million Austrians gave
Hitler an enthusiastic welcome to Vienna. France and Britain
lodged formal protests with Berlin but did nothing more.
After the war, Austrian leaders denied culpability for their
association with the Third Reich by claiming that their coun-
try was actually the first victim of Nazi aggression.
The Anschluss greatly strengthened the German position
in central Europe. Germany was now in direct contact with
Italy, Yugoslavia, and Hungary, and it controlled virtually all
the communications of southeastern Europe. Czechoslova-
kia was almost isolated, and its trade outlets operated at Ger-
many’s mercy. Militarily, Germany outflanked the powerful
western Czech defenses. It was thus not surprising that,
despite his pledges to respect the territorial integrity of
Czechoslovakia, Hitler should next seek to bring that state
under his control.

  In Austria, Hitler had added 6 million Germans to the Reich,
but another 3.5 million lived in Czechoslovakia. Germans living
there had long complained about discrimination in a state
that had only minority Czech, German, Slovak, I-Iungarian,
Ukrainian, and Pole populations. In I938, however, Czechoslovakia
had the highest standard of living east of Germany and
was the only remaining democracy in central Europe.
Strategically, Czechoslovakia was the keystone of Europe.

  It had a military alliance with France, an army of 400,000
well-trained men, and the important Skoda munitions complex
at Pilsen, as well as strong fortifications in the west.
Unfortunately for the Czechs, the latter were in the Erzegeberge
(Ore Mountains) bordering the Bohemian bowl, where
the population was almost entirely German. From the German
point of view, it could now be said that Bohemia -
Moravia, almost one-third German in population, protruded
into the Reich. Hitler took up and enlarged the past demands
of Konrad Henlein’s Sudetendeutsch (Sudeten German)
Party to turn legitimate complaints into a call for outright
separation of the German regions from Czechoslovakia and
their union with Germany.

  In May 1938, during key Czechoslovakian elections, German
troops massed on the border and threatened invasion.
Confident of French support, the Czechs mobilized their
army. Both France and the Soviet Union had stated their willingness
to go to war to defend Czechoslovakia, and in the end,
nothing happened. Hitler then began to construct fortifications
along the German frontier in the west. Known to Ger-
mans as the West Wall, these fortifications were clearly
designed to prevent France from supporting its eastern allies.
Western leaders, who believed they had just averted war,
now pondered whether Czechoslovakia, which had been
formed only as a consequence of the Paris Peace Conference,
was worth a general European war. British Prime Minister
Chamberlain concluded that it was not. In early August, he
sent an emissary, Lord Runciman, to Prague as a mediator,
and on 07th September, based on Runciman’s suggestions,
Prague offered Henlein practically everything that the Sudeten
Germans demanded, short of independence.

  A number of knowledgeable Germans believed that Hitler
was leading their state to destruction. During August and early
September 1938, several opposition emissaries traveled to
London with messages from the head of the Abwehr (German
military intelligence), Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, and the chief
of the German General Staff, General der Artillerie (U.S.
equiv.lieutenant general) Ludwig Beck. They warned London of
Hitler’s intentions and urged a strong British stand. Beck even
pledged, prior to his resignation in mid-August, that if Britain
would agree to fight for Czechoslovakia, he would stage a
putsch against Hitler. Nothing came of this effort, however, as
London was committed to appeasement.

  By mid-September, Hitler was demanding “self-
determination” for the Sudeten Germans and threatening war
if it was not granted. Clearly, he was promoting a situation to
justify German military intervention. France would then have
to decide whether to honor its pledge to Czechoslovakia. If it
chose to do so, this would bring on a general European war.
In this critical situation, Chamberlain asked Hitler for a
personal meeting, and on 15th September, he flew to Germany
and met with the Fuhrer at Berchtesgaden. There, Hitler
informed him that the Sudeten Germans had to be able to
unite with Germany and that he was willing to risk war to
accomplish this end. London and Paris now decided to force
the principle of self-determination on Prague, demanding on
19th September that the Czechs agree to an immediate transfer
to Germany of those areas with populations that were more
than 50 percent German. When Prague asked that the matter
be referred to arbitration, as provided under the Locarno
Pacts, London and Paris declared this unacceptable. The
Czechs, they said, would have to accept the Anglo-French
proposals or bear the consequences alone.

  The British and French decision to desert Czechoslovakia
resulted from many factors. The peoples of both countries
dreaded a general war, especially one with air attacks, for
which neither nation believed itself adequately prepared. The
Germans also bluffed the British and French into believing
that their Luftwaffe was much more powerful than it actually
was, and both Chamberlain and French Premier Edouard
Daladier feared the destruction of their capitals from the air.
The Western leaders also thought they would be fighting
alone. They did not believe they could count on the USSR,
whose military was still reeling from Stalin’s purges. lt also
seemed unlikely that the United States would assist, even
with supplies, given its neutrality policies. Nor were the
British dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and
South Africa likely to support Great Britain in a war for
Czechoslovakia. In France and especially in Britain, there
were also those who saw Nazism as a bulwark against com-
munism and who hoped that Hitler could be diverted east-
ward and enmeshed in a war with the Soviets in which
communism and fascism might destroy one another.

  Chamberlain, who had scant experience in foreign affairs,
hoped to reconcile differences in order to prevent a general
European war. He strongly believed in the sanctity of con-
tracts and could not accept that the leader of the most powerful
state in Europe was ablackmailer and aliar. Butthe West
also suffered from a moral uncertainty. In 1919, it had touted
the “self-determination of peoples,” and by this standard,
Germany had a right to all it had hitherto demanded. The
transfer of the Sudetenland to the Reich did not seem too high
a price to pay for a satisfied Germany and a peaceful Europe.
Finally, Hitler stated repeatedly that, once his demands on
Czechoslovakia had been satisfied, he would have no further
territorial ambitions in Europe.

  Under heavy British and French pressure, Czechoslovakia
accepted the Anglo-French proposals. On 22nd September,
Chamberlain again traveled to Germany and met with Hitler,
who, to Chamberlain’s surprise, demanded that all Czech
officials be withdrawn from the Sudeten area within 10 days
and that no military, economic, or traffic establishments be
damaged or removed. These demands led to the most serious
international crisis in Europe since 1918. Prague informed
London that Hitler’s demands were absolutely unacceptable.

  London and Paris agreed and decided not to pressure Prague
to secure its acceptance. It thus appeared that Hitler might
have to carry out his threat to use force and that a general
European war might result.

  Following appeals by Roosevelt and Mussolini to Hitler,
the German leaders agreed to a meeting. Chamberlain, Daladier,
and Mussolini then repaired to Munich to meet with
Hitler on 29th September. The Soviet Union was not invited,
and Czechoslovakia itself was not officially represented.
There were no real negotiations, the object being to give Hitler
the Sudetenland in order to avoid war.

  The Munich Agreement, dated 30th September, gave the
Fuhrer everything he demanded, and early on 01st October 1938,
German troops marched across the frontier. Other neighbor-
ing states joined in. Poland demanded—and received—an
area around Teschen of some 400 square miles with a popu-
lation of 240,000 people, only 100,000 of whom were Poles,
and in November, Hungary secured some 4,800 square miles
of Czechoslovakia with about one million people.

  In retrospect, it would have been better for the West to
have fought Germany in September 1938. The lineup against
Germany might have included the Soviet Union and Poland,
but even discounting them, the German army would have
been forced to fight against France and Britain, as well as
Czechoslovakia. Despite Hitler‘s claims to the contrary, Ger-
manywas not ready for war in September 1938. The Luftwaffe
had 1,230 first-line aircraft, including 600 bombers and 400
fighters, but nearly half of them were earmarked for use in the
east, leaving the rest too thinly stretched over the Reich frontier
to counter any serious offensive by the French air force
and the Royal Air Force (RAF). The Luftwaffe was also short
of bombs. Worse, only five fighting divisions and seven
reserve divisions were available to hold eight times that num-
ber of French divisions.

  Britain itself was far from ready, its rearmament program
having begun only the year before. France had many more
artillery pieces than Germany but was weak in the air. According
to one estimate, France had only 250 first-quality fighters
and 350 bombers out of perhaps 1,375 front-line aircraft, but
France also could have counted on 35 well-armed and well-
equipped Czech divisions, backed by substantial numbers of
artillery pieces and tanks and perhaps 1,600 aircraft.
Later, those responsible for the Munich debacle advanced
the argument that the agreement bought a year for the Western
democracies to rearm. Winston Churchill stated that
British fighter squadrons equipped with modern aircraft rose
from only 5 in September 1938 to 26 by July 1939 (and 47 by
July 1940), but he also noted that the year “gained” by Munich
left the democracies in a much worse position vis-a-vis Hitler’s
Germany than they had been in during the Munich crisis.

  The September 1938 crisis had far-reaching international
effects. Chamberlain and Daladier were received with cheers
at home, the British prime minister reporting that he believed
he had brought back “peace in our time.” But the agreement
effectively ended the French security system, since France’s
eastern allies now questioned French commitments to them.
Stalin, always suspicious, was further alienated from the
West. He expressed the view that Chamberlain and Daladier
had surrendered to Hitler in order to facilitate Germany’s
Drang nach Osten (drive to the east) and a war between Ger-
many and the Soviet Union.

  Hitler had given assurances that the Sudetenland was his
last territorial demand, but events soon proved the contrary.
The day after the Munich Agreement was signed, he told his
aides that he would annex the remainder of Czechoslovakia at
the first opportunity. Within a few months, Hitler took advantage
of the Czech internal situation. In March 1939, he threw
his support to the leader of the Slovak Popular Party, Jozef
Tiso, who sought complete independence for Slovakia. On 14
March, Slovakia and Ruthenia declared their independence.
That same day, Hitler summoned elderly Czech President
Emile Hacha to Berlin, where the commander of the Luftwaffe,
Hermann Goring, threatened the immediate destruction of
Prague unless Moravia and Bohemia were made Reich pro-
tectorates. German bombers, he alleged, were awaiting the
order to take off. Hacha signed, and on that date, 15th March,
Nazi troops occupied what remained of Czechoslovakia. The
Czech lands became the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,
and Slovakia became a vassal state of the Reich, with little
more independence than Bohemia-Moravia.

  Thirty-five highly trained and well-equipped Czech divisions
thus disappeared from the anti-Hitler order of battle.
Hitler had also eliminated what he had referred to as “that
damned airfield” (meaning all of Czechoslovakia), and the
output of the Skoda arms complex would now supply the
Reich’s legions. In Bohemia and Moravia, the Wehrmacht
acquired 1,582 aircraft, 2,000 artillery pieces, and sufficient
equipment to arm 20 divisions. Any increase in armaments
that Britain and France achieved by March 1939 was more
than counterbalanced by German gains in Czechoslovakia,
which included nearly one-third of the tanks they deployed
in the west in spring 1940. Between August 1938 and September
1939, Skoda produced nearly as many arms as all
British arms factories combined.

  Hungarian troops crossed into Ruthenia and incorporated
it into Hungary. Later in March, Germany demanded
from Lithuania the immediate return of Memel, with its
mostly German population. Lithuania, which had received
the Baltic city after World War 1 to gain access to the sea, had
no recourse but to comply.

  Hitler’s seizure of the rest of Czechoslovakia demon-
strated that his demands were not limited to areas with German
populations but were instead determined by the need for
Lebensmum, or living space. His repudiation of the formal
pledges given to Chamberlain at Munich did, however, serve
to convince the British that they could no longer trust Hitler.
Indeed, Britain and France responded with a series of guarantees
to the smaller states now threatened by Germany.
Clearly, Poland would be the next pressure point, as the German
press orchestrated charges of the Polish government’s
brutality against its German minority. On 31st March, Britain
and France extended a formal guarantee to support Poland
in the event of a German attack. At the eleventh hour and
under the worst possible circumstances—with Czechoslovakia
lost and the Soviet Union alienated—Britain had changed
its eastern European policy and agreed to do what the French
had sought in the 1920's.

  Mussolini took advantage of the general European situation
to strengthen Italy’s position in the Balkans. In April 1939,
he sent Italian troops into Albania. King Zog fled, whereon an
Albanian constituent assembly voted to offer the crown to
King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. On 13th April, Britain and
France extended a guarantee to defend Greece and Romania.
The Western powers began to make belated military preparations
for an inevitable war, and they worked to secure a pact
with the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the guarantee to Poland
gave the Soviet Union protection on its western frontier,
virtually the most it could have secured in any negotiations.
On 23rd May, Hitler met with his leading generals at the
Reich Chancellery. He reviewed Germany’s territorial
requirements and the need to resolve these by expansion
eastward. War, he declared, was inevitable, and he announced
that he intended to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity.

  The same month, Britain and France initiated negotiations
with the Soviet Union for a mutual-assistance pact.
Although negotiations continued until August, no agreement
was reached. Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were all
unwilling to allow Soviet armies within their borders, even to
defend against a German attack. Many in these countries
feared the Soviets more than the Germans, and Polish leaders
refused to believe that Hitler would risk war with Britain
and France. But due to the 1920 Russo-Polish War, Po1and’s
eastern border extended almost to Minsk, and the Soviets
believed that the French and British wished them to take the
brunt of the German attack. The Poles also had an exaggerated
sense of their own military power. In any case, the Anglo-
French negotiators refused to sacrifice Poland and the Baltic
states to Stalin as they had handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler.
While the Kremlin had been negotiating more or less
openly with Britain and France, it concurrently sought an
understanding with Germany, even to the point of Stalin
dispatching personal emissaries to Berlin. On 10th March 1939)
addressing the Eighteenth Party Congress of the Soviet
Union, Stalin had said that his country did not intend to “pull
anyone else’s chestnuts out of the fire.” He thus signaled to
Hitler his readiness to abandon collective security and
negotiate an agreement with Berlin. Within a week, Hitler had
annexed Bohemia and Moravia, confident that the Soviet
Union would not intervene. Another consideration for Stalin
was that the Soviet Union potentially faced war on two fronts,
owing to the threat from Japan in the Far East. Japanese pres-
sure on Mongolia and the Maritime Provinces may well have
played a significant role in predisposing Stalin to make his
pact with Hitler.

  In early May 1939, Stalin gave further encouragement to
Hitlerwhen he dismissed Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maksim
Litvinov and appointed Vyacheslav Molotov in his place.
Litvinov was both a champion of collective security and a Jew.
Hitler later said that the dismissal of Litvinov made fully
evident Stalin’s wish to transform its relations with Germany.
Contacts begun in May culminated in the German-Soviet
Non-aggression Pactsigned on 23th August in Moscowby Molotov
and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.
The German-Soviet agreement signed that night consisted
of an open, Ten-year, nonaggression pact, together with two
secret protocols that did not become generally known until
Rudolf Hess revealed them after the war during the proceedings
of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
These secret arrangements, never publicly acknowledged by
the Soviet Union until 1990, partitioned eastern Europe
between Germany and the Soviet Union in advance of the German
invasion of Poland, for which Hitler had now, in effect,
received Stalin’s permission. Any future territorial
rearrangement of the area was to involve its division between the two
powers. The Soviet sphere would include eastern Poland, the
Romanian Province of Bessarabia, Estonia, Latvia, and Finland.
Lithuania wentto Germany. A month later, Hitler traded
it to Stalin in exchange for further territorial concessions in
Poland. In addition, a trade convention accompanying the
pact provided that the Soviet Union would supply vast quan-
tities of raw materials to Germany in exchange for military
technology and finished goods. This economic arrangement
was immensely valuable to Germany early in the war, a point
that Churchill later made quite clear to Stalin. Certainly, Stalin
expected that Hitler would face a protracted war in the west
that would allow the Soviet Union time to rebuild its military.

  All indications are that Stalin welcomed the pact with Germany,
whereas he regarded the subsequent wartime alliance
with Britain and the United States with fear and suspicion. His
position becomes understandable when one realizes that
Stalin’s primary concern was with the internal stability of the
Soviet Union.

  The nonaggression pact had the impact of a thunderbolt
on the world community. Communism and Nazism, supposed
to be ideological opposites on the worst possible terms,
had come together, dumbfounding a generation more versed
in ideology than power politics.

On 22nd August, Hitler summoned his generals and
announced his intention to invade Poland. Neither Britain
nor France, he said, had the leadership necessary for a life
and death struggle: “Our enemies are little worms,” he
remarked, “I saw them at Munich.” British and French armament
did not yet amount to much. Thus, Germany had much
to gain and little to lose, for the Western powers probably
would not fight. In any case, Germany had to accept the risks
and act with reckless resolution.

  The German invasion of Poland, set for 26th August, actually
occurred on 01 September, the delay caused by Italy’s
decision to remain neutral. Prompted by his foreign minister and
son inlaw, Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini lost faith in a German
victory. Ciano proposed that Mussolini tell Hitler that Italy
would enter the conflict only if Germany would agree to
supply certain armaments and raw materials. On 25th August, the
Germans rescinded their plans and engaged in frenzied discussions.
The next day, Mussolini asked for immediate delivery
of 170 million tons of industrial products and raw
materials, an impossible request. Hitler then asked that
Mussolini maintain a benevolent neutrality toward Germany and
continue military preparations so as to fool the English and
French. Mussolini agreed.

  On 01st September, following false charges that Polish forces
had crossed onto German soil and killed German border
guards—an illusion completed by the murder of concentration
camp prisoners who were then dressed in Polish military
uniforms—German forces invaded Poland. On 03rd September,
after the expiration of ultimatums to Germany, Britain and
France declared war on Germany.