Chapter Twelve – Second World War Begins with Germany’s Genocidal Racist Invasion of Western Poland. Soviets Regain Western Ukraine and West Belarus, territory the USSR had been forced to give up in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk – British and French ‘Sitz Krieg’ followed by Nazi ‘Blitz Krieg’ of Europe
The day after the German-Soviet Non-Agression Pact was signed, the French and British military negotiation delegation urgently requested a meeting with Voroshilov. On August 25, Voroshilov replied, “In view of the changed political situation, no useful purpose can be served in continuing the conversation.”[155] Earlier that same day, Britain had signed a mutual-assistance treaty with Poland (quite probably to Hitler’s surprise).
Also on 25th August, Hitler sent a letter to Chamberlain in which he demanded the Danzig and Polish corridor questions be settled immediately. In return for a settlement Hitler offered a non-aggression pact to Britain and promised to guarantee the British Empire and to sign a treaty of disarmament. Hitler trying to dissuade the British and the French from interfering in the upcoming conflict proposed to make Wehrmacht forces available to Britain in the future. [156]
Hitler had demanded territorial concessions for Germany with respect to Danzig and East Prussia — a “corridor”,[156a] extraterritoriality for Germans in it, etc. Actually, to some people this seemed fairly reasonable. Danzig was mainly German. East Prussia was all German, and divided from the rest of Germany by Poland.
August 31, 1939: The final hours; final pressure for Poland to German pressure; final time for Britain to acquiesce to German trickery; final plea from Mussolini to Hitler to wait; final chance for peace. All efforts were deceptive all along. The next day 1,500,000 German troops move into position and await orders. Hitler creates the desired provocation, code name “Canned Goods” – German troops masquerading as Polish invade a German Radio Station. Concentration inmates were killed and left as “casualties” of action. Hitler had his provocation for war. (“THE HOLOCAUST 1939, “ NAAF Holocaust Project Timeline 1939)[157]
Was it Hitler’s wild gamble that France and Great Britain would not meet their treaty obligations to Poland, knowing he had nothing to fear from the Soviet army, that he ordered his troops to strike east into Poland on September 1, 1939?
The Second World War Begins
On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded western Poland after first having staged false flag border incidents as a pretext. Two days later, after Germany ignored a United Kingdom ultimatum to cease military operations, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand declared war on Germany with South Africa and Canada declaring a few days later. This alliance began a naval blockade of Germany. Germany responded with submarine warfare against allied ships. The Second World War had begun.
As almost all Polish armies were being either destroyed by the German onslaught or in retreat, the Polish government was evacuated to Volhynia and the supreme military commander Rydz-Śmigły left Warsaw on the night of 6 September and moved in an eastern direction. On 13 September, Marshal Rydz-Śmigły ordered all Polish forces to withdraw toward the so-called Romanian Bridgehead in southeastern Poland, next to the Romanian and Soviet borders, the area he designated to be the final defense bastion.[158][160]
On 11 September, foreign minister Józef Beck had asked France to grant asylum to the Polish government and asked Romania to allow the transfer of the government members through its territory.[160] The USSR occupied Eastern Poland beginning on September 17, 1939 after the Polish Government had interned itself in Romania. Though Romania had a military treaty with Poland aimed against the USSR, Romania did not declare war on the USSR.
The Polish government did not declare war on USSR, as it did on Germany. Polish Supreme Commander Rydz-Smigly ordered Polish soldiers not to attack the Soviets, though he ordered Polish forces to continue to fight the Germans. Those orders notwithstanding, tragically, costly life-taking battles at Szack and Wytyczno by victorious Polish forces did take place. [160a]
France did not declare war on the USSR, though it had a mutual defense treaty with Poland. England never demanded that the USSR withdraw its troops from Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine, the parts of the former Polish state occupied by the Red Army after September 17, 1939. The League of Nations did not determine the USSR had invaded a member state. All countries accepted the USSR’s declaration of neutrality. The Soviets regarded captured Polish military personnel not as prisoners-of-war, but as counter-revolutionaries resisting the legal Soviet reclamation of Western Ukraine and West Belarus, territory the USSR had been forced to give up by the onerous terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk [161] with a temporarily victorious Germany in August of 1918.
The Red Army occupation of eastern Poland on 17 September 1939 was a Soviet military operation without any declaration of war. On that morning, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. Molotov ended his communication to Wacław Grzybowski, the Polish Ambassador in Moscow:
“In these circumstances, the Soviet Government have directed the High Command of the Red Army to order troops to cross the frontier and to take under their protection the life and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western White Russia.” — People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R. V. Molotov, September 17, 1939 [161a]Molotov declared on the radio that all treaties between the Soviet Union and Poland were now void; that the Polish government had abandoned its people and effectively ceased to exist.[162]
On the same day, the Red Army had crossed the border into Poland.
Domestic reaction
The response of non-ethnic Poles to the situation added a further complication. Many Ukrainians, Belarusians and Jews welcomed the invading Soviet troops.[163] In 1940, the USSR issued postage stamps “Liberation of brotherly people of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia on 17th of September 1939”
Reaction of the major Colonial Powers
The reaction of France and Britain to the Soviet invasion and annexation of Eastern Poland was indistinct, not made clear, since both wanted to avoid a confrontation with the Soviet Union.[164] In the Polish-British Common Defense Pact of 25 August 1939, the British had promised assistance if a European power attacked Poland, but when Polish Ambassador Edward Raczyński reminded Foreign Secretary Edward Frederick Lindley Wood of the pact, he was bluntly told that it was Britain’s business whether to declare war on the Soviet Union. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain issued only general condemnations.[165] Britain’s security interests included trade with the Soviets that would support its war effort and a possibility of a future Anglo-Soviet alliance against Germany. Public opinion in Britain was divided between expressions of outrage at the invasion and some perception that Soviet claims to the region were reasonable.[166]
The Soviet Union also sent troops into Lithuania, [167] Estonia, [168] and Latvia [169] under demanded treaties of protection. Thereafter, new governments in all three Baltic countries submissively requested admission to the Soviet Union and were installed.
On 1 October 1939, Winston Churchill—via radio—stated:
… “That the Russian armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace. At any rate, the line is there, and an Eastern Front has been created which Nazi Germany does not dare assail. When Herr von Ribbentrop was summoned to Moscow last week it was to learn the fact, and to accept the fact, that the Nazi designs upon the Baltic States and upon the Ukraine must come to a dead stop.”[171]
War On the High Seas Immediate
Within hours of the entry of Great Britain and France into World War II on September 3, 1939, the British liner SS Athenia was sunk by a German U-boat off the northwestern coast of Ireland, with the loss of 112 dead, including 28 American citizens. The Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Courageous was torpedoed by a U-boat off the southwestern English coast on September 17 with the loss of 515 lives; the 29,150-ton battleship HMS Royal Oak was sunk at anchor in the British Home Fleet base at Scapa Flow, Scotland, early on October 14, and the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled just outside the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay, on December 17, after the Battle of the River Plate. As German auxiliary cruisers and U-boats made their presence known, hostilities started on the high seas from the war’s beginning. (Michael Hull, Sitzkrieg on the Western Front as chronicled by Warfare History Network)
It would seem that the British declaring war on a Nazi Germany, which they themselves had so recently allowed to be armed to the teeth, would call for some explanation. A greater curiosity comes to mind as to why France, which had fought so many wars with Germany, had been a party to allowing German rearmament, in retrospect seeming to have been foolish when later obliged to declare war on its perennial enemy now well armed. An explanation many might feel necessary to fall back on would seem to be that in a world controlled by speculative investment banking, the insanity of profitable war reflects its own unchallengeable logic, as in the axiom that whatever makes money, will flow inexorably forward like an ocean into wherever unobstructed, regardless of expected catastrophic results.
British and French ‘Sitz Krieg’ followed by Nazi ‘Blitz Krieg’ of Europe
The lull in the fighting on the Western Front in 1940 was dubbed the “Phony War” by American correspondents referring to the lack of any offensive action by the British and French. The phrase had become commonplace in Britain and around the world. To some Britons, it was the “Bore War”; to Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, it was the “Twilight War”; to the French it was “La Drole de Guerre” (joke war); and to the Germans it was “Sitzkrieg” (sit-down war).
Great Britain and France had honored their August 25, 1939, treaty with Poland by declaring war against Germany, but the two nations were not sufficiently prepared to fulfill their obligation and lend military support to the Poles. In fact, they did little to distract Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler during the five weeks his forces took to complete their Polish campaign.
The reason for the relative lack of action on land was strategic. For the military planners on both sides, the key problem was the fact that the Franco-German border was the most heavily fortified strip of land in the world. On the French side, running northward from the Swiss border to Montmedy, stretched the Maginot Line, a string of concrete and steel underground forts and artillery emplacements impervious to both shells and bombs. Behind this line, the French and British began lethargic mobilization. Along Germany’s western border, the Siegfried Line (West Wall) was a complex mesh of concrete obstacles and interlocking zones of fire several miles deep. (Sitzkrieg on the Western Front by Michael Hull [172]
‘The Winter War’
On November 30, three months after Hitler invaded Poland, the Soviet Union invaded Finland, which had refused border restructuring demanded primarily for the protection of Leningrad, 32 km (20 mi) from the Finnish border. Provinces of Tsarist Russia lost during the chaos of the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War almost two decades earlier if restored would provide security against the rising power of Nazi Germany.
This labeled ‘Winter War’ ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940 in which Finland ceded 11 percent of its territory. Soviet losses were heavy, and the country’s international reputation suffered. Finland retained its sovereignty and enhanced its international reputation. 63,200 Finns and 23,200 Germans died or went missing during the war in addition to 158,000 and 60,400 wounded, respectively. Estimates of dead or missing Soviets range from 250,000 to 305,000 while 575,000 have been estimated to have been wounded or fallen sick., The poor performance of the Red Army is thought to have encouraged Adolf Hitler to think that an attack on the Soviet Union would be successful. [174]
- In April, Shanghai, China, accepted thousands of Jewish refugees.
Nazi Blitzkrieg of Europe
‘Blitzkrieg,’ meaning ‘Lightning War’, describes the successful tactics used by Nazi Germany in the early years of World War II, as German forces swept through Poland, Norway, Belgium, Holland and France with astonishing speed and force.
Combined forces of tanks, motorized infantry and artillery penetrated an opponent’s defenses on a narrow front, by passing pockets of resistance and striking deep into enemy territory. The German Air Force (Luftwaffe) provided close air support, bombing key objectives and establishing local air superiority. Radio communications were the key to effective Blitzkrieg operations, enabling commanders to coordinate the advance and keep the enemy off balance. (“GERMAN ‘LIGHTNING WAR’ STRATEGY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, “ Imperial War Museums)[175]
On April 9, 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, Denmark surrenders within four hours. The Danes and Norwegians attempt to prevent the Nazis from harming Jews
In May, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
In June, both Germany and Italy invaded France, which after only twenty-six days signed an armistice with Germany, dividing it into occupied France, which included the entire coast, and an unoccupied France aligned with Germany with the town of Vichy as its capital. Paris had fallen to the Germans on June 14th.
France had a powerful military and was considered one of the most important major military powers in the world, but France surrendered within six weeks. This strikingly quick surrender had pertinent non-military, political and economic issues involved. Soon after the French surrender, Hitler was receiving more war material from French factories he had taken over than Britain was receiving from the United States.[176]
In July, Germany began bombing England for almost a year in an unsuccessful attempt to destroy British air forces prior to a planned invasion.
Trains of prisoners begin arriving at Auschwitz. Nazi Germany’s largest concentration camp and extermination camp.
Germany, Italy and Japan Unite and War Spreads to Africa and Middle East
In August, 1940, Italy invaded British Somaliland and made an incursion into British-held Egypt. On 27 September 1940, Germany, Italy and Japan formally united as the Axis Powers. Hungary, Slovakia and Romania joined a month later, Bulgaria the following year. In April, 1941, both Yugoslavia and Greece were invaded and occupied by Germany with large-scale partisan warfare breaking out. In July, the British invaded and occupied the French colonies Syria and Lebanon.
Fighting in North Africa had started with the Italian declaration of war in June 1940. On 14 June, the British Army units crossed the border from Egypt into Italian Libya and this was answered by an Italian counter-offensive into Egypt halted by the British in December. The German Afrika Korps—commanded by Erwin Rommel, was sent to North Africa in February 1941 to reinforce Italian forces and prevent a complete Axis defeat.
January-August 1941, about 13,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, and 5000 Jews in the Lódz Ghetto, die of starvation.[177]
Chapter twelve – Second World War Begins
- Shirer 1990, pp. 541–2
- World War II Database Messages Between Chamberlain/UK Government and Hitler;
Nazi-Soviet Pact, https://spartacus-educational.com/RUSnazipact.htm
- “Telegram: His Majesty’s Ambassador in Berlin – Dept of State 8/25/39”. Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. Retrieved 11 June 2009.<templatestyles src=“Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css”>
156a.The Polish Corridor, also known as the Danzig Corridor, Corridor to the Sea or GdańskCorridor, was a territory located in the region of Pomerelia, which provided the Second Republic of Poland (1920–1939) with access to the Baltic Sea, but at the same time divided the bulk of Germany from its province of East Prussia. The Free City of Danzig was located in this Corridor.
- NAAF THE HOLOCAUST PROJECT TIMELINE1939
NAAF Project an Online Memorial to the Victims of the Holocaust https://neverrepeat.org/1939.htm
- Stanley S. Seidner, Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz Rydz and the defence of Poland,New York, 1978, ch. 2
ISBN 978-0-7139-9742-2
- “History of Poland (1939–45)” From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core, https://infogalactic.com/info/History_of_Poland_(1939%E2%80%9345)
160a. “Battle of Szack, History of Poland (1939–45)” From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core. “Battle of Wytyczno,” From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core, https://infogalactic.com/info/Battle_of_Wytyczno
- “The Peace Treaty of Brest-Litov” WWI Document Archive > 1918 Documents >161. Electronic Museum,
161a Text of the Soviet communique in English translation. September 17, 1939, by Vyacheslav M. Molotov
- Tadeusz Piotrowski, (1998). Poland’s Holocaust: Ethnic Strife: Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic 1918–1947,(Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company). ISBN 0-7864-0371-3.<templatestyles src=“Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css”></templatestyles>
- Jan Tomasz Gross, (2002).Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia.(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University) p. 31-32 Press. ISBN 0-691-09603-1.<templatestyles src=“Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css”></templatestyles>] In 1940, the USSR issued postage stamps “Liberation of brotherly people of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia on 17th of September 1939”
- Anita J. Prazmowska, (1995). Britain and Poland 1939–1943: The Betrayed Ally.(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), ISBN 0-521-48385-9.
- Prazmowska pp. 44–45]
- John Hiden,; Thomas Lane, (2003). The Baltic and the Outbreak of the Second World War, (Cambridge University Press), 143-145 ISBN 978-0-521-53120-7.
- On 20 March 1939, Lithuania was given an ultimatum by Nazi Germany demanding it relinquish the Klaipėda Region. The Lithuanian government accepted the ultimatum. Originally, in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Lithuania was assigned to the German sphere of influence but later was transferred to the Soviet sphere. In October 1939, Lithuania submissively signed the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty: five Soviet military bases with 20,000 troops were established in Lithuania in exchange for Vilnius, which the Soviets had captured from Poland. The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, proclaimed in July became part of the Soviet Union in August. John Hiden,; Patrick Salmon, (2014). The Baltic Nations and Europe: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the Twentieth Century. (Routledge)
- On 24 September 1939, the Soviet Union presented an ultimatum, demanding that Estonia sign a treaty of mutual assistance which would allow Soviet military bases into the country. The Estonian government felt that it had no choice but to comply, and the treaty was signed on 28 September.[Hiden, John; Salmon, Patrick (2014). The Baltic Nations and Europe: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the Twentieth Century. (Routledge), 110. ISBN 978-1-317-89057-7.] On 16 June, 1940, the Soviets presented an ultimatum demanding completely free passage of the Red Army into Estonia and the establishment of a pro-Soviet government. Feeling that resistance was hopeless, the Estonian government complied.
- On 5 October 1939, Latvia was forced to accept a “mutual assistance” pact with the Soviet Union, granting the Soviets the right to station between 25,000 and 30,000 troops on Latvian territory. Elections were held with single pro-Soviet candidates listed for many positions. The resulting people’s assembly immediately requested admission into the USSR, which the Soviet Union granted.The Soviet Union incorporated Latvia on 5 August 1940, as The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic.
- Winston S. Churchill “The First Month of War” // Blood, Sweat and Tears.
- Michael Hull. Sitzkrieg on the Western Front Jun 02, 2016 https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2016/06/02/sitzkrieg-on-the-western-front/·
- William R. Trotter, (2002) [1991]. The Winter War: The Russo–Finnish War of 1939–40(5th ed.), p. 15 (Aurum Press).ISBN 1-85410-881-6.
- THE GERMAN ‘LIGHTNING WAR’ STRATEGY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-german-lightning-war-strategy-of-the-second-world-war
- Julian Jackson,The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003), ISBN 0-19-280300-X
- http://www.holocaustchronicle.org/staticpages/218.html
J. Jankovsky-Novak aka Jay Janson spent eight years as Assistant Conductor of the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra in Hanoi and also toured, including with Dan Tai-son, who practiced in a Hanoi bomb shelter. The orchestra was founded by Ho Chi Minh, and it plays most of its concerts in the Opera House, a diminutive copy of the Paris Opera. In 1945, our ally Ho, from a balcony overlooking the large square and flanked by an American Major and a British Colonel, declared Vietnam independent. Everyone in the orchestra lost family, “killed by the Americans” they would mention simply, with Buddhist unaccusing acceptance. Jay can be reached at: [email protected] .
