Chapter XII
Second World War
The occupation of Prague made war nigh inevitable.
Up to that event there was always a chance, though a slim one, that Hitler would be content with his many victories; from now on it was evident to all but the blind that the Nazis were bent on further conquest.
Always hitherto they had been able to advance the argument that their successive victories had simply united to the Reich good Germans who longed for a united fatherland.
That argument no longer held.
The Czechs were not Germans, and the brutal and unprovoked on their country in March, 1939, seemed conclusive evidence that Hitler would not stop until the entire continent lay under his thumb - and perhaps not then.
Presumably Poland might well be his next victim, but after Poland, what country?
It might be Russia; but there were those in London fully aware that Britain administered former German colonies; and there were those in Paris who remembered the ominous words in Mein Kampf, "The German people's irreconcilable and mortal enemy is and remains France."
In the spring of 1939, therefore, France and England increased their military preparations, drew closer their political ties, sought allies.
They struck alliances with Poland and Turkey; they guaranteed to march to the aid of the former if she were invaded by Germany; they joined the latter in a mutual defense pact to preserve the status quo in the eastern Mediterranean; they promised unilateral protection to Greece and Rumania; and they invited the Soviets to join them in a defense pact against German aggression.
- p. 320, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
FROM WARS AND REVOLUTIONS
Re: FROM WARS AND REVOLUTIONS
Chapter XII
Second World War, continued ...
Joseph Stalin pondered deeply.
He hated and distrusted Hitler; he also hated and distrusted Chamberlain.
If the Germans drove through Poland or across the Baltic states and attacked Russia, guarantees were needed of armed support from France and Britain.
But suppose these two countries failed him at the last hour; suppose they consented to a second Munich whereby Poland fell a prey to Germany and the Wehrmacht stood on the borders of the Ukraine.
France and England had ignored Russia in 1938; Stalin had not been invited to Munich; the protests of his representative, Litvinoff, had been ignored at Geneva; the two western powers had abandoned, apparently, the whole idea of collective security.
There seemed to be more than an even chance, so Stalin thought, that they would not be displeased at a German-Russian war from which they would stand aloof.
The inept and temporizing character of Franco-British diplomacy did much to heighten his suspicions.
Chamberlain three times had flown to Germany to placate Hitler, and Chamberlain, accompanied by Lord Halifax, secretary of state for foreign affairs, had visited Mussolini; but to Moscow at the height of the crisis the British had accredited as their special envoy an under-official of the foreign office, without prestige, without authority.
Nevertheless, Stalin stood ready to make a hard and fast military alliance with France and Britain, provided that it included not only guarantees for Poland but for all six small countries on the western Russian frontier, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Rumania; guarantees not only against external but also against internal aggression.
What this latter meant was clear enough to Stalin.
He proposed to ward off and prevent Fascist propaganda and revolt from within, such as had given Hitler his excuse for invading Czechoslovakia.
These guarantees the British and French were unwilling to give.
They feared, and perhaps justly, a Soviet advance in the regions of the Baltic, and they argued that the Baltic countries did not want a Soviet guarantee.
They would guarantee Poland and Rumania alone; but Stalin thought an attack by the Germans on Russia might readily be staged through the Baltic countries, and he held out for their inclusion in any pact.
- pp. 320-321, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
Second World War, continued ...
Joseph Stalin pondered deeply.
He hated and distrusted Hitler; he also hated and distrusted Chamberlain.
If the Germans drove through Poland or across the Baltic states and attacked Russia, guarantees were needed of armed support from France and Britain.
But suppose these two countries failed him at the last hour; suppose they consented to a second Munich whereby Poland fell a prey to Germany and the Wehrmacht stood on the borders of the Ukraine.
France and England had ignored Russia in 1938; Stalin had not been invited to Munich; the protests of his representative, Litvinoff, had been ignored at Geneva; the two western powers had abandoned, apparently, the whole idea of collective security.
There seemed to be more than an even chance, so Stalin thought, that they would not be displeased at a German-Russian war from which they would stand aloof.
The inept and temporizing character of Franco-British diplomacy did much to heighten his suspicions.
Chamberlain three times had flown to Germany to placate Hitler, and Chamberlain, accompanied by Lord Halifax, secretary of state for foreign affairs, had visited Mussolini; but to Moscow at the height of the crisis the British had accredited as their special envoy an under-official of the foreign office, without prestige, without authority.
Nevertheless, Stalin stood ready to make a hard and fast military alliance with France and Britain, provided that it included not only guarantees for Poland but for all six small countries on the western Russian frontier, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Rumania; guarantees not only against external but also against internal aggression.
What this latter meant was clear enough to Stalin.
He proposed to ward off and prevent Fascist propaganda and revolt from within, such as had given Hitler his excuse for invading Czechoslovakia.
These guarantees the British and French were unwilling to give.
They feared, and perhaps justly, a Soviet advance in the regions of the Baltic, and they argued that the Baltic countries did not want a Soviet guarantee.
They would guarantee Poland and Rumania alone; but Stalin thought an attack by the Germans on Russia might readily be staged through the Baltic countries, and he held out for their inclusion in any pact.
- pp. 320-321, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
Re: FROM WARS AND REVOLUTIONS
Chapter XII
Second World War, continued ...
Germany, meanwhile, claiming that she was being encircled, and flushed with her bloodless victory of March pounced upon the tiny area of Memel on her northeastern border, hitherto administered by Lithuania in the name of the League of Nations, and made demands on Poland for the return of Danzig to the Reich, together with a strip of land across the Polish corridor.
As she did so Hitler denounced his ten-year peace pact with Poland, proclaiming that the treaties just made by that country with the western democracies had broken friendly relations between Germany and Poland.
Likewise for good measure he denounced Germany's naval treaty with Great Britain.
At the other end of the Axis was Italy.
The Duce, not to be outdone, let forth a tremendous blast against the follies of democracy and peace, invaded Albania, and annexed that country to Italy.
The spring of 1939 had been hectic, the summer more so.
None could tell just what was happening in Moscow.
Then in late July the French and British sent a military commission to Moscow.
Despite many clear warnings from a number of authoritative sources that Stalin might bargain with Hitler, it did not go by airplane; it took a slow steamer and did not reach Moscow until August 10th.
Immediately it encountered a snag.
The Russians were willing to fight the Germans in Poland provided the Red army was permitted to defend Poland's western boundary.
But neither the Poles nor the western allies would accept this qualification.
If the Russians were once in Poland, who could or would evict them?
On the other hand, from the Russian viewpoint, if the Red army was to fight the Nazis it did not intend to wait until the latter swallowed Poland and were on the Russian border.
Stalin, in the meantime, determined not to be caught napping.
If the anti-Nazi powers would not do business with him, he would do business with the Nazis.
It would be a risky thing to do, but to wait longer was also risky.
So it came about that on August 23rd the Nazi foreign minister, Von Ribbentrop, was welcomed in Moscow, and one day later a Soviet-German non-aggression pact was signed, the two contracting parties agreeing that for a period of ten years they would "refrain from any violence, from any aggressive action, and any attack against each other, individually or jointly with other powers."
- pp. 321-322, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
Second World War, continued ...
Germany, meanwhile, claiming that she was being encircled, and flushed with her bloodless victory of March pounced upon the tiny area of Memel on her northeastern border, hitherto administered by Lithuania in the name of the League of Nations, and made demands on Poland for the return of Danzig to the Reich, together with a strip of land across the Polish corridor.
As she did so Hitler denounced his ten-year peace pact with Poland, proclaiming that the treaties just made by that country with the western democracies had broken friendly relations between Germany and Poland.
Likewise for good measure he denounced Germany's naval treaty with Great Britain.
At the other end of the Axis was Italy.
The Duce, not to be outdone, let forth a tremendous blast against the follies of democracy and peace, invaded Albania, and annexed that country to Italy.
The spring of 1939 had been hectic, the summer more so.
None could tell just what was happening in Moscow.
Then in late July the French and British sent a military commission to Moscow.
Despite many clear warnings from a number of authoritative sources that Stalin might bargain with Hitler, it did not go by airplane; it took a slow steamer and did not reach Moscow until August 10th.
Immediately it encountered a snag.
The Russians were willing to fight the Germans in Poland provided the Red army was permitted to defend Poland's western boundary.
But neither the Poles nor the western allies would accept this qualification.
If the Russians were once in Poland, who could or would evict them?
On the other hand, from the Russian viewpoint, if the Red army was to fight the Nazis it did not intend to wait until the latter swallowed Poland and were on the Russian border.
Stalin, in the meantime, determined not to be caught napping.
If the anti-Nazi powers would not do business with him, he would do business with the Nazis.
It would be a risky thing to do, but to wait longer was also risky.
So it came about that on August 23rd the Nazi foreign minister, Von Ribbentrop, was welcomed in Moscow, and one day later a Soviet-German non-aggression pact was signed, the two contracting parties agreeing that for a period of ten years they would "refrain from any violence, from any aggressive action, and any attack against each other, individually or jointly with other powers."
- pp. 321-322, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
Re: FROM WARS AND REVOLUTIONS
Chapter XII
Second World War, continued ...
The Brief Polish Campaign
This act gave the green light to the Nazis in Poland and in Germany the government-controlled press unleashed a slashing attack on that country, accusing her not only of refusing all concessions but of maltreating Germans within her borders.
The Polish question must be settled immediately, said Hitler.
He would be content with the return of Danzig to the Reich and the ownership of a super-corridor across the Polish border, in other words with a strip of territory one kilometer wide, sufficient for four railways or motor roads; but that strip must be German.
Polish lines of communication north and south must go over or under this strip.
Hitler pressed the Poles hard; and as he did so the Japanese created a diversion by blockading the port of Tientsin, where the British had granted sanctuary to several Chinese whom the Japanese accused as being assassins.
British citizens were stripped naked by Japanese sentries, but England did nothing.
The royal navy was needed at home.
England was determined that there should not be a second Munich.
In the summer the skies darkened over Poland.
Poles were persecuted in Germany, according to the Polish newspapers; Germans were brutalized in Poland, if the German press was to be believed.
Hitler outdid himself in truculence; he would negotiate no longer with the Polish ambassador; the Poles must send a plenipotentiary to Berlin, presumably their prime minister, to accept a German ultimatum, else Germany would act.
In vain did the French and British ambassadors at Berlin assure the Fuehrer that they would investigate fully and carefully German charges made against the Poles.
Hitler would not listen to them, asserting that it was none of their business, that he had no quarrel with western Europe, that England and France had no right to intervene in Polish-German controversies.
German troops were concentrated on the Polish border and south of it in Slovakia, supposedly an independent country.
Then, to frighten the democracies even further, Hitler published in triumph a ten-year non-aggression pact with Soviet Russia, his old enemy.
Germany was secure now on the east; let the two democracies to the west beware.
- pp. 322-324, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
Second World War, continued ...
The Brief Polish Campaign
This act gave the green light to the Nazis in Poland and in Germany the government-controlled press unleashed a slashing attack on that country, accusing her not only of refusing all concessions but of maltreating Germans within her borders.
The Polish question must be settled immediately, said Hitler.
He would be content with the return of Danzig to the Reich and the ownership of a super-corridor across the Polish border, in other words with a strip of territory one kilometer wide, sufficient for four railways or motor roads; but that strip must be German.
Polish lines of communication north and south must go over or under this strip.
Hitler pressed the Poles hard; and as he did so the Japanese created a diversion by blockading the port of Tientsin, where the British had granted sanctuary to several Chinese whom the Japanese accused as being assassins.
British citizens were stripped naked by Japanese sentries, but England did nothing.
The royal navy was needed at home.
England was determined that there should not be a second Munich.
In the summer the skies darkened over Poland.
Poles were persecuted in Germany, according to the Polish newspapers; Germans were brutalized in Poland, if the German press was to be believed.
Hitler outdid himself in truculence; he would negotiate no longer with the Polish ambassador; the Poles must send a plenipotentiary to Berlin, presumably their prime minister, to accept a German ultimatum, else Germany would act.
In vain did the French and British ambassadors at Berlin assure the Fuehrer that they would investigate fully and carefully German charges made against the Poles.
Hitler would not listen to them, asserting that it was none of their business, that he had no quarrel with western Europe, that England and France had no right to intervene in Polish-German controversies.
German troops were concentrated on the Polish border and south of it in Slovakia, supposedly an independent country.
Then, to frighten the democracies even further, Hitler published in triumph a ten-year non-aggression pact with Soviet Russia, his old enemy.
Germany was secure now on the east; let the two democracies to the west beware.
- pp. 322-324, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
Re: FROM WARS AND REVOLUTIONS
Chapter XII
Second World War, continued ...
The Brief Polish Campaign, continued ...
The Germans, set on forcing the issue, on August 31 presented the British ambassador (they refused to have any dealings with the Polish ambassador) with a peace proposal in sixteen points which considerably enlarged their demands on Poland.
Not only were Danzig and the extraterritorial traffic zone to be annexed, but also there were to be plebiscites whereby the Germans hoped to add the entire Polish corridor to the Reich.
The Poles, unwilling to sign on the dotted line, were not unwilling to negotiate.
But Hitler refused to wait longer.
On September 1, without declaration of war, the German armies invaded Poland, Hitler asserting that he had waited two days for the Poles to submit, that Germans were being mutilated by Polish mobs, and that the preceding night Polish troops had fired across the border.
Within one month Poland was conquered.
England and France declared war on Germany on September 3, but did nothing to stave off annihilation of their ally, aside from scattering propaganda pamphlets over the German countryside.
The very first day of September saw Warsaw bombed three times and German armies advancing on doomed Poland from four different points.
So swift was the German onrush by motorized divisions on land and by squadrons of planes in the air that the Poles never had a chance.
While optimistic prophets in London and Paris predicted that French and British planes would soon be shuttling back and forth across Germany to Polish air-fields to refuel and return, those very air-fields were wrecked by German bombs, and Polish planes were destroyed on the ground.
The famous Polish cavalry was helpless against the German panzer (armored) divisions.
Brilliant sunshine baked the Polish plain, and the rain upon which the Poles depended to make their fields a sea of mud failed to materialize.
By the middle of the month all of Poland's important cities (except Warsaw) were in German hands and the Polish government had begun its flight toward the Rumanian frontier.
- p. 324, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
Second World War, continued ...
The Brief Polish Campaign, continued ...
The Germans, set on forcing the issue, on August 31 presented the British ambassador (they refused to have any dealings with the Polish ambassador) with a peace proposal in sixteen points which considerably enlarged their demands on Poland.
Not only were Danzig and the extraterritorial traffic zone to be annexed, but also there were to be plebiscites whereby the Germans hoped to add the entire Polish corridor to the Reich.
The Poles, unwilling to sign on the dotted line, were not unwilling to negotiate.
But Hitler refused to wait longer.
On September 1, without declaration of war, the German armies invaded Poland, Hitler asserting that he had waited two days for the Poles to submit, that Germans were being mutilated by Polish mobs, and that the preceding night Polish troops had fired across the border.
Within one month Poland was conquered.
England and France declared war on Germany on September 3, but did nothing to stave off annihilation of their ally, aside from scattering propaganda pamphlets over the German countryside.
The very first day of September saw Warsaw bombed three times and German armies advancing on doomed Poland from four different points.
So swift was the German onrush by motorized divisions on land and by squadrons of planes in the air that the Poles never had a chance.
While optimistic prophets in London and Paris predicted that French and British planes would soon be shuttling back and forth across Germany to Polish air-fields to refuel and return, those very air-fields were wrecked by German bombs, and Polish planes were destroyed on the ground.
The famous Polish cavalry was helpless against the German panzer (armored) divisions.
Brilliant sunshine baked the Polish plain, and the rain upon which the Poles depended to make their fields a sea of mud failed to materialize.
By the middle of the month all of Poland's important cities (except Warsaw) were in German hands and the Polish government had begun its flight toward the Rumanian frontier.
- p. 324, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
Re: FROM WARS AND REVOLUTIONS
Chapter XII
Second World War, continued ...
The Brief Polish Campaign, continued ...
The Poles fought bravely; they simply were not equipped for modern war.
Here and there, scattered Polish divisions thrust vigorously at the encircling Germans; at the Danzig Westerplatte and at Warsaw they made notable stands.
The civilian population of Warsaw turned out en masse to dig trenches around their capital, and the Warsaw radio alternated martial music, defiance of the enemy, and appeals to the world for succor as German planes droned overhead, reducing the proud city to a mass of ruins.
Then, on September 17, came an invasion of Poland by the Soviet army.
The Polish government, so the Russians said, no longer existed, and Soviet forces were needed to restore order and to rescue peasants from oppression.
Caught between the Germans and the Russians, Poland collapsed.
Warsaw, that shell of a city, bombed and burning in a dozen places, held out until the end of the month.
On October 1 the Germans occupied what was left.
Russian and German armies met as Russia and Germany divided Poland between them, the lion's share of the booty in economic resources going to the Reich, the eastern marshes and the Polish Ukraine falling to Russia.
Thus within one month perished Poland, a country of 50,000 square miles and 35,000,000 people.
Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were in accord.
Their non-aggression pact was now supplemented by another agreement, the opening paragraph of which struck an ominous note.
"In the case of the war's being continued," it read, "joint consultations will take place between the German and Soviet governments on the subject of necessary measures."
Just what did that mean?
The rest of this pact simply provided for lines of demarcation in Poland and for economic cooperation between the two signatories, Russia agreeing to supply Germany with raw materials in exchange for manufactured goods.
From the German point of view this economic accord by itself seemed sufficient guarantee of victory; if the Germans could depend on the Soviets for oil and food, what more was necessary?
- p. 325, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943
Second World War, continued ...
The Brief Polish Campaign, continued ...
The Poles fought bravely; they simply were not equipped for modern war.
Here and there, scattered Polish divisions thrust vigorously at the encircling Germans; at the Danzig Westerplatte and at Warsaw they made notable stands.
The civilian population of Warsaw turned out en masse to dig trenches around their capital, and the Warsaw radio alternated martial music, defiance of the enemy, and appeals to the world for succor as German planes droned overhead, reducing the proud city to a mass of ruins.
Then, on September 17, came an invasion of Poland by the Soviet army.
The Polish government, so the Russians said, no longer existed, and Soviet forces were needed to restore order and to rescue peasants from oppression.
Caught between the Germans and the Russians, Poland collapsed.
Warsaw, that shell of a city, bombed and burning in a dozen places, held out until the end of the month.
On October 1 the Germans occupied what was left.
Russian and German armies met as Russia and Germany divided Poland between them, the lion's share of the booty in economic resources going to the Reich, the eastern marshes and the Polish Ukraine falling to Russia.
Thus within one month perished Poland, a country of 50,000 square miles and 35,000,000 people.
Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were in accord.
Their non-aggression pact was now supplemented by another agreement, the opening paragraph of which struck an ominous note.
"In the case of the war's being continued," it read, "joint consultations will take place between the German and Soviet governments on the subject of necessary measures."
Just what did that mean?
The rest of this pact simply provided for lines of demarcation in Poland and for economic cooperation between the two signatories, Russia agreeing to supply Germany with raw materials in exchange for manufactured goods.
From the German point of view this economic accord by itself seemed sufficient guarantee of victory; if the Germans could depend on the Soviets for oil and food, what more was necessary?
- p. 325, World Wars and Revolutions - The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943