Y = 1.9.4.45. With this simple formula at 17 o'clock on August 31st 1939 the order of execution of the White Plan (Fall Weiss) for the invasion of Poland was forwarded to the Head Quarters of the Wehrmacht The initials meant that the decisive time would have been at 4 and 45 AM on September 1st. The atmospheric conditions during the night were perfect. Complete absence of perturbations or early-morning hazes. The ideal for the aerial support that the army of the Reich would have needed to experiment its new methods of fight. The mighty machine of German command was immediately started to give communication of it to all the detachments along the Polish frontier. The secret is at maximum level. It was forbidden, punishment the degradation, to bring in the messages the word mobilization. The time of warning has been on purpose reduced to the least one to avoid disastrous escapes of news. Just this precipitation made difficult to reach all the units busied in the operation. Some of them would have known to have tered in war only at the rhombus of the gun. Despite the orders of the Fuehrer were concise and clear many commanders were ready to recall their own troops. Particularly, the general of division Erich von Manstein and the general von Rundstedt thought that same situation of six days before could repeat itself. On August 26th the same type of message had come, with the indication to attack the next day at 4.30 o'clock. When the troops were already in movement, toward 20.30, the Hitler's countermand annulled the operation. Three complete armies had already begun their trip of approach to the Polish frontier, forcing the command cadres to enormous efforts to succeed in calling them in time back. However, the evening on August 31st was different. After the generals had given their dispositions in the eventuality of a counter-order, they were put themselves in wait that their supreme commander decided the destiny of Germany. At midnight, the maximum temporal limit to return on their own footsteps was expired and the general von Rundstedt went to rest sure that the action would have had beginning without ulterior delays. It was no more a bluff to frighten England. They would have acted seriously. The delay of the preceding week had been a last attempt of Hitler to locate the conflict. Aware of the difficulties that he would have assumed on the shoulders of Germany with a world war, he had tried to find a diplomatic meeting with England that could hold out of the conflict English and French. The firm conviction of the Fuehrer that could be deduced from the minute of the reunion with the military supreme command on May 23 is to not repeat the Czech bargain, that means to resolve the matter of the Baltic corridor with a political arrangement. His general wanted the war and he would have given it to them. At the Munich's Conference he had judged all his political adversaries: Daladier and Chamberlain. Nobody of them was reputed to his height. Only Stalin was considered a real danger weighing the strength of the man and of the nation that he drove. Even if weakened by the strong Stalinist purgations, the Russian army was still able to constitute a menace during the invasion of Poland. On these bases it was based the most important effort brought ahead by all the great powers to gain Russian friendship. The Anglo-French and German negotiations were contemporarily performed during the last two weeks of July. It immediately was clear that the favors of Stalin were for the German proposals. On July 25th a fatiguing agreement of principle was reached that allowed the dispatch of a delegation of France and England represented by Doumenec and Planket. When they came in Russia, they realized that the situation had gone too much out of their control. Russia and Germany didn't have any line of border in common and so any presumed Nazi threat to the Communism was impossible. Besides, Polish were obstinately refused themselves to let enter the Red Army on their own territory to defend the national borders against Germany. In Warsaw it was thought with conviction that until there had been no foreign troops on their own ground, it would not have given the occasion to anybody to camp pretensions of any kind. Reached a point of stalemate that hardly it would have had a solution, it was the direct intervention of Hitler to let hang the dish of the balance to his favor. On August 22 with a personal telegram to Stalin, he required receiving with urgency his Foreign minister: Joachim von Ribbentropp. The unexpected concession of the interview put in alarm the western allies that were seen to escape of hand the position of preference that they still believed to preserve. The result of the exchange of ideas was an accord of not aggression that was emphatically announced the following day. The reactions in Europe were conflicting. On one side the news was gathering with extreme indifference in Great Britain, where Winston Churchill arrived to affirm that there was not to be astonished at if two scoundrels of the same ream were divided the same cake. In France the public opinion was upset by the taking of conscience that they were the only continental power that still remained to oppose to Hitler. In Germany, the accord dn't do anything else other than to consolidate the position of the Fuehrer granting ulterior credit to him among the high industrial middle class that would have financed the war. Only firm point remained the uncertainty on the burst of the conflict. On one side it was thought that there was not any need to attack Poland, since it would have conceded the corridor of Danzica once it had lost the Soviet support. On the other one it was sustained that missing the danger of a clash on two fronts, Germany would have lifted the pretensions arriving up to the use of the weapons. The propensity for this second hypothesis would have been greater if it had been known the true pact that was concealed itself under the accord of not aggression. Von Ribbentropp, as bad negotiator as he was, had simply brought the words of Hitler who can be considered the author of the fourth division of Poland. The new common frontier would have been set on the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula and San. In addition to this, Stalin pretended that they wrote in the accord the annexation of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia to the Soviet Union. The Russian affairs were extended to the zone of the Black Sea, where Rumania,lly of the Germans, was forced to the transfer of the Bessaraby. Russia in one shot returned to the antecedent frontiers of 1914, without fighting. For Germany, it would have been able to be a hazard to grant to the dawning Bolshevism the bases to reach the doors of Western Europe if it had not been for the apparent bad faith of Hitler. Putting aside from the fact that also Stalin gave well little weight to the stipulated accord, the Fuehrer already before letting affix the signature in mortar to the document had manifested wish not to stay to Poland, but to continue into the endless Russian lowlands the search of that Lebensraums that founded the Nazi theory of the war at any cost. Hitler didn't have the time to rejoice for his own diplomatic sagacity because they were verified event that would have deeply irritated him. With impudence, Ciano speaking for Mussolini, who had discovered that the war was imminent, had asked to postpone it. The famous Pact of Steel to the first test of resistance was already giving signs of yelding. A little afterwards the announcement of the accord with Russia, Hitler was forced to hear from the alive voice of the Italian ambassador in Berlin (Attolico), that Mussolini would have adopted an attitude of not belligerency. According to private sources the Fueher would have exclaimed: "The usual Italians… unworthy of trust… impotent… cowards… traitors." Any evidence of such arrogance is not recovered in the official statement issued answering to the Italian note. However, It was the English attitude that constituted a true surprise for Hitler. When one year earlier in Berchtesgaden, in Bad Godesberg and finally in Munich, Chamberlain had always surrendered himself to German demands, Hitler was sure that nothing would have pushed in a war the Great Britain. Instead, Chamberlain himself, just after having known of the compromise with the Soviet Union, was expedited to declare that the defection of Stalin would not have let English recede from the defensive accords taken with Poland. If Germany had attacked mitteleuropean country, England would have been to its side. It stayed to appraise the reliability of such affirmations. Just to verify them, Hitler had postponed the first attack on August 26th. In the five following days the ambassadors have had developed negotiations of little value and without getting anything. On evening August 31st it still seemed open a small space for the accord. Hitler could accept to recede from his own intentions in change of Danzica, but is only an illusion. Early, on 1st September, the German armors invade Poland in answer to a phantom Polish aggression that was staged by Himmler attacking Gleiwitz with soldiers dressing false Polish uniform. The media of the Nazi apparatus shouted to the aggression. They pretend to wash the shame with the blood, crushing the invading army. As in Munich, also for Poland Hitler lied, tearing the stipulated or nearby to be concluded pacts. The deadly machine of World War II had been furtively put in movement without Hitler had responded to the question that was set on August 26th: was the steadiness of the Great Britain and France only a bluff or not? The events of the six following years would have given an exhaustive answer. http://www.geocities.com/iturks/html/worldwarii1.html[/url:db015]
The above has been archived on the Internet Wayback Machine (a high school project) found at: http://web.archive.org/ See: http://web.archive.org/web/20091027093852/http://geocities.com/iturks/html/worldwarii1.html The K12 Web Archiving Program is a partnership between the Internet Archive and the United States Library of Congress. Now in its fourth year, with 5th to 12th graders participating in schools across the country, this program provides a new perspective on saving history and culture, allowing students to actively participate and make decisions about what "at risk" website content will be saved. See: http://www.archive-it.org/k12/
The first days (1939) A 23 unique minute film record of the first days of the war shows many actual and some reconstructed scenes of air raid precautions, military training and the evacuations. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuVMq0HDp7U The Front Line (1940) 6.25 minutes on life in Dover. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG2AzMtnChE
