Clouds of War in Europe
On March 15, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, breaking the agreement it had signed with Great Britain and France the year before in Munich, Germany. The invasion jolted British and French leaders and convinced them that Adolf Hitler, the German chancellor, could not be trusted to honor his agreements and was likely to keep committing aggressions until stopped by force or a massive deterrent.
Did you know?
Hitler disliked the photograph taken when the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact was signed in the Kremlin because it showed Stalin with a cigarette in his hand. Hitler felt the cigarette was unsuited to the historic occasion and had it airbrushed from the photo when it was published in Germany.
In the previous year, Hitler had annexed Austria and had taken the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia; in March 1939, his tanks rolled into the rest of Czechoslovakia. It appeared that he was determined to undo the international order set up by the Treaty of Versailles, the 1919 peace settlement that ended World War I.
The treaty, which required Germany to make numerous concessions and reparations, was highly unpopular with Hitler and his Nazi Party. It also seemed that Hitler was planning to strike next against its neighbor Poland.
To block him, France and Britain pledged on March 31, 1939, to guarantee Poland’s security and independence. The British and French also stepped up diplomatic engagement with the Soviet Union, trying to draw it closer by trade and other agreements to make Hitler see he would also have to face Joseph Stalin if he invaded Poland.
But Hitler already knew the Soviets would not stand by if he tried to occupy Poland—an act that would extend the border of Germany right up to the Soviet Union. He also knew France and the Soviets had concluded a defense alliance several years earlier—a treaty that gave Stalin an additional reason to fight Germany if it ventured into Poland and triggered France’s pledge.
It was clear during the tense spring and summer of 1939 that little, if anything, could be taken for granted. In May, Germany and Italy signed a major treaty of alliance, and Hitler’s representatives had begun conducting important trade talks with the Soviets.
Just two years prior, however, as Laurence Rees notes in “War of the Century: When Hitler Fought Stalin,” Hitler had called the Soviet Union “the greatest danger for the culture and civilization of mankind which has ever threatened it since the collapse of the … ancient world.”
Hitler Sets His Sights on Poland
Through the spring and summer of 1939, Hitler stepped up his demands on the Polish government in Warsaw, and pushed for allowing Germany to reclaim the port city of Danzig (a former German city internationalized by the Treaty of Versailles).
Hitler also wanted to put a stop to the alleged mistreatment of Germans living in the western regions of Poland. At the same time, he advanced his plans for attacking Poland in August 1939 if his demands were not met.
However, Hitler’s fervor for a war with Poland made his generals nervous. They knew Stalin’s purges of his military commanders in 1937 and 1938 had seriously weakened the Soviet army, but the Germans were leery of a campaign that could easily lead to the nightmare faced in World War I—a two-front war, in which they would be fighting Russians troops in the east and French and British troops in the west.
