In the early morning hours of Sept. 1, 1939, 72 years ago, the German army crossed the Polish frontier.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 3, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, having received no reply to his ultimatum demanding a German withdrawal, declared that a state of war now existed between Great Britain<\/strong> and Germany<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The empire followed the mother country in. The second world war was on. It would last six years, carry off scores of millions and end with Germany<\/strong> in ruins, half of Europe<\/strong> under Josef Stalin’s rule and the British Empire on the way to collapse.<\/p>\n Though it may prove to be the mortal wound that brings about the death of the West, most today accept World War<\/strong> II as inevitable, indeed as “the good war.”<\/p>\n For it is said and believed that Adolf Hitler was not only the incarnation of evil but also out to conquer, first Poland<\/strong> and then Europe<\/strong> and then the world.<\/p>\n To stop such a monster, one must risk everything.<\/p>\n Which makes these two sentences in the final chapter of British historian Richard Overy’s new book, “1939: Countdown to War<\/strong>,” riveting:<\/p>\n “Few historians now accept that Hitler had any plan or blueprint for world conquest. … (R)ecent research has suggested that there were almost no plans for what to do with a conquered Poland<\/strong> and that the vision of a new German empire … had to be improvised almost from scratch.”<\/p>\n But if Hitler had no “plan or blueprint for world conquest,” this raises perhaps the great question of the 20th century.<\/p>\n What was Britain<\/strong>‘s stake in a Polish-German territorial quarrel to justify a war from which the British nation and empire might never recover?<\/p>\n How the war came about is the subject of Overy’s book.<\/p>\n By August 1939, Hitler had come to believe that Polish intransigence over the city of Danzig meant Germany<\/strong> would have to resolve the issue by force. But he desperately did not want a war with Britain<\/strong> like the one in which he had fought from 1914-18.<\/p>\n To prevent a German-Polish clash from bringing on a European war, however, Hitler had to sever the British-Polish alliance formed the previous spring.<\/p>\n To split that alliance, Hitler negotiated his own pact with Stalin, a coup that meant any British declaration of war to save Poland<\/strong> would be an utterly futile gesture. But when the Hitler-Stalin pact was announced, spelling Poland<\/strong>‘s doom, Britain<\/strong> publicly reaffirmed her commitment to Poland<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Hitler instantly called off an invasion set for Aug. 26.<\/p>\n In the last analysis, says Overy, British “honour,” Chamberlain’s honoring of his war guarantee to the Poles, caused Britain<\/strong> to go to war.<\/p>\n When and why was this commitment given?<\/p>\n On March 31, 1939, Chamberlain, humiliated by the collapse of his Munich agreement and Hitler’s occupation of Prague, handed, unsolicited, a war guarantee to a Poland<\/strong> then led by a junta of colonels.<\/p>\n To understand the rashness, the sheer irrationality of this decision, one must understand the issue involved and Britain<\/strong>‘s situation in 1939.<\/p>\n First, the issue: The Polish-German quarrel was over a city, Danzig, most British leaders believed had been unjustly taken from Germany<\/strong> at the end of World War<\/strong> I and ought to be returned.<\/p>\n The German claim to Danzig was regarded as among the most just claims Germany<\/strong> had from what most agreed by then had been an unjust and vindictive Treaty of Versailles.<\/p>\n What did the people of Danzig themselves want? Writes Overy:<\/p>\n “In May 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany<\/strong>, Danzig’s National Socialist Party won 38 out of the city’s 72 assembly seats and formed the city government. … By 1936 there was a virtual one-party system. … The strongly nationalist German population agitated in 1939 to come … back home to Germany<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n In short, the Germans wanted their city back, and the Danzigers wanted to go home to Germany<\/strong>. And most British had no objection.<\/p>\n Yet Britain<\/strong> backed up Poland<\/strong>‘s refusal even to negotiate, and when that led to war, Britain<\/strong> declared war on Poland<\/strong>‘s behalf.<\/p>\n Why did Britain<\/strong> do it?<\/p>\n After all, the war guarantee was given in response to the destruction of Czechoslovakia, but the Polish colonels had themselves participated in that destruction and seized a slice of Czechoslovakia.<\/p>\n Second, despite the guarantee, Britain<\/strong> had no plans to come to Poland<\/strong>‘s aid. Third, Britain<\/strong> lacked the means to stop Germany<\/strong>. When Hitler bombed Warsaw, British bombers dropped leaflets on Germany<\/strong>.<\/p>\n If Britain<\/strong> had no ability to save Poland<\/strong> and no plans to save Poland<\/strong>, why encourage the Poles to fight by offering what the British knew was a worthless war guarantee? Why declare a European and world war for a country Britain<\/strong> could not save and a cause, Danzig, in which Britain<\/strong> did not believe, in an Eastern Europe<\/strong> where Britain<\/strong> had no vital interest?<\/p>\n Said British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, “(We must) throw all we can into the scales on the side of law as opposed to lawlessness in Europe<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n And throw it all in they did. And what became of Poland<\/strong>?<\/p>\n At Tehran and Yalta, another prime minister, Winston Churchill, ceded Poland<\/strong> to Stalin’s empire, in whose captivity she remained for a half-century. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"