16 März 1939 Jahr - German blitzkrieg in Poland; France and Great Britain declare war against Germany

Beschreibung:

blitzkreig is reminding me of sherman's scorched earth


Within six months, Hitler’s forces had overrun the rest of Czechoslovakia and were threatening to march into Poland. Realizing that their policy of appeasement — capitulating to Hitler’s demands — was proving disastrous, Britain and France warned Hitler that further aggression meant war. In August 1939, Hitler and Stalin shocked the world by signing a mutual nonaggression pact. This surprise agreement shielded Germany from a two-front war against Britain and France in the west and the Soviet Union in the east. On September 1, 1939, Hitler launched a blitzkrieg against Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. World War II had officially begun.


German tanks roll along a major thoroughfare in Warsaw, Poland, following Hitler’s successful “blitzkrieg” (lightning war) against that Eastern European nation in September 1939. Hitler’s armies would in short order invade Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and, finally, France, conquering all of continental northern Europe by the summer of 1940.


Two days after the European war started, the United States declared its neutrality. But President Roosevelt made no secret of his sympathies. When war had broken out in 1914, Woodrow Wilson asked Americans to be neutral “in thought as well as in action.” FDR, by contrast, declared in 1939 that the United States “will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well.” The overwhelming majority of Americans — some 84 percent, according to a poll in 1939 — supported Britain and France rather than Germany, but most wanted America to avoid another European war.

At first, any need for U.S. intervention seemed remote. After Germany quickly overran Poland, an uneasy calm settled over Europe. But on April 9, 1940, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway, rapidly defeating both Scandinavian nations. In May, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg fell to the swift German army. The final shock came in mid-June, when the French government surrendered, and Nazi troops paraded through Paris. Britain now stood alone against Hitler.

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