• Part 3—1935-1940 The League of Nations Staggers to Its Death
    Awake!—1987 | April 8

    • Then in August 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union caught the world by surprise by signing a nonaggression pact. In reality it was a secret agreement to divide Poland between them. Gambling that once again the Western democracies would not intervene, Hitler moved his troops into Poland at 4:45 a.m. on September 1, 1939.

      But this time he was mistaken. Great Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. On September 17, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east, and by the end of the month, for all practical purposes, the Polish question was settled. World War II had begun, launched by a swift military campaign worthy of the German expression Blitzkrieg, meaning “lightning war.” In the glow of victory, Hitler offered to make peace with the Western powers. “Whether he was serious about this,” writes German historian Walther Hofer, “is a question that cannot be answered with any certainty.”

      The first few war years were characterized by surprise attacks, carried out lightning fast and with destructive results. The Soviets quickly forced Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into allowing Soviet troops to be stationed on their soil. Finland, when asked to do the same, refused and was invaded by the Soviets on November 30, 1939. Finland sued for peace under Soviet terms the following March.

      In the meantime, however, Britain and France had contemplated going through neutral Norway to help Finland. But when Finland sued for peace, the Allies, no longer having any pretext for doing so, postponed those plans. Preliminary to a later landing, they started mining Norwegian waters on April 8, 1940. The next day, while the Norwegians were preoccupied with protesting this mine-laying operation, the Germans unexpectedly landed troops in both Norway and Denmark. Less than a week later, British troops landed in Norway, but after several victories, they were forced to withdraw because of unsettling reports from the south.

      For months the question there had been: When and where will Germany make its move against France? Time elapsed with most military action confined to naval battles. On land all was quiet. Some journalists began speaking of a “phony war,” no longer a blitzkrieg, but rather a sitzkrieg, meaning literally a “sit-down war.”

      However, there was nothing phony about the sudden attack by the Germans on May 10, 1940. Bypassing the Maginot Line, the defense line that guarded France at its border with Germany, they struck through the Low Countries, sped through Belgium, and reached the French border on May 12. By May 14 the Netherlands had fallen. Then sweeping down through northern France, German troops trapped thousands of British, French, and Belgian soldiers with the English Channel at their backs. Far from being a sitzkrieg, this was full-scale blitzkrieg!

      On May 26, at Dunkirk, France, one of the most spectacular rescue operations in the history of warfare began. For ten days naval vessels, and hundreds of civilian boats, ferried some 340,000 troops across the English Channel to safety in Britain. But not everyone escaped. Within three weeks the Germans took over one million prisoners.

      On June 10, Italy declared war on Great Britain and France. Then four days later, Paris fell to the Germans. Before the month was out, a Franco-German armistice had been signed. Britain now stood alone. As Hofer describes it: “At a blitzkrieg tempo that even he himself had not thought possible, Hitler had become master over Western Europe.”

      Contrary to what Hitler expected, the British did not sue for peace. So on July 16, he ordered plans for “Operation Sea Lion,” an invasion of the British Isles. Britain braced itself for the lightning that was due to strike again.