The day the world changed

[AVB]

On Sept. 1, 1939, World War II began as Germany invaded Poland thus setting forth a chain of events that molded our current world.

 

[Devil Doc]

It was on this day in 1939 that Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II. The previous year, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had tried to prevent a war with Germany by allowing Hitler to take control of part of Czechoslovakia. But that compromise only encouraged Hitler to expand his power. He took control of all of Czechoslovakia, and then began to plan an invasion of Poland. He claimed that the only part of Poland he wanted was the city of Danzig, which he said was rightfully a German city.

And so, without making any formal declaration of war, Hitler ordered the invasion on this day in 1939. At the time, Poland had an army of 1.7 million men, and Hitler's invasion force consisted of only 800,000. But Hitler's army was the most advanced in the world. Whereas almost all of World War I had been fought on the ground, in the trenches, at a slow-motion pace, Hitler saw speed as the future of warfare. He began the invasion with dive-bombing planes, equipped with screaming sirens that would terrify the people on the ground. Then he sent in high-speed panzer tanks, which could drive over fences and destroy stone walls and buildings.

The Polish soldiers were completely outmaneuvered. In one of the battles, a group of Polish cavalrymen rode out on horseback with lances and swords to fight the German tanks, and they were slaughtered in minutes. The fighting lasted barely more than a month, and Hitler arrived in Warsaw for his victory parade on October 5, 1939. Fifty thousand Polish soldiers had been killed or wounded and 750,000 had become prisoners of war.

But back in Germany, people were not celebrating. Most Germans remembered the horrors of the First World War, and they didn't want to go through that again. Two days after the invasion began, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. American journalist William Shirer was in Berlin as a correspondent for CBS Radio, and he wrote in his diary that day, "It has been a lovely September day, the sun shining, the air balmy, the sort of day the Berliner loves to spend in the woods or on the lakes nearby. I walked the streets. On the faces of the people astonishment, depression. Stunned."

Doc.

 

[Mrepp]

Interesting stuff guys. My great grandfather fought in World War II and would never speak of it.

 

[moki]

We, the German Fuhrer and Chancellor, and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognizing that the question of Anglo-German relations is of the first importance for our two countries and for Europe.

We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.

We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.

My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is "peace for our time." Go home and get a nice quiet sleep

---


Neville Chamberlain
"Peace for Our Time," September 30, 1938

 

[Matt R]

Danged old Nazi appeasers.....

 

[Mark Twain]

A sort of interesting footnote about Poland’s short resistance to Germany’s invasion that started WW2.

Poland had one of the world’s most modern air forces in the early 1930s and was the first air force in the world to be armed completely with metal gull-wing aircraft. This was due to the fact that the Poles fully expected to be at war with Germany by 1936 and had prepared for this in advance. By 1939 the Polish air force had been over taken in technology and numbers by the Luftwaffe. The Poles fielded some 397 aircraft that they considered to be state-of-the-art compared to the Luftwaffe’s 1600 aircraft used in the invasion. The Poles may have been out matched in technology and numbers, but they were highly adept at tactics.

The Polish air force was not actually wiped out in the opening days of the invasion, but actually remained intact because those crafty Poles moved their entire force of 397 front line aircraft to 43 air bases set up in secret days before the invasion. The German Luftwaffe bombed the hell out of Poland’s main air bases, but only destroyed the antiquated aircraft that the Poles had left on the runways. These aircraft were bait and the Polish air force, along with anti-aircraft batteries made an impressive showing against their German adversaries.

The Poles enviably lost some 83% or 333 aircraft of their aircraft, but they were able to destroy some 285 planes of the Luftwaffe. The German high command should have been concerned about this, and about the fact that they used over 50% of their bomb reserve and the majority of their fuel reserves during this brief campaign. This lesson was lost on the Luftwaffe who failed to understand that their success was due to massive superiority in numbers and technology, and not in the superiority of the German military compared to the Polish military which the Nazi doctrine considered to be sub-human. Arrogance mixed with success blinded the German high command to the ultimate lesson of the invasion of Poland and this arrogance would doom the Luftwaffe when faced with the British air force a few years later.

Most of this info can be found in Walter J. Boyne’s book The Influence of Air Power upon History on pages 197-199.

 

[brash]

My country was ruled by Japan in WW2. Glad those days are over.