On September 29, 1938, Britain, France, Italy, and Nazi Germany signed the Munich Agreement in an attempt to sacrifice the Czech Republic and cede the Sudetenland to Germany in an attempt to exchange for lasting peace. The British Prime Minister at the time, Neville Chamberlain, was very pleased, seeing it as another victory for continental policy that could be used by Germany to contain the increasingly powerful France.
Cunning Hitler
French Prime Minister Dallardi was not so happy, because he saw that Germany's appetite was still not satisfied, and this time it was only indulging Germany. Moreover, Daladi believed that war would break out sooner or later, and he also believed that 12 German divisions could defeat 100 French divisions because he saw new German tactics. At this time, France was still thinking during the First World War, believing that the war still relied on artillery and trench warfare, and in fact the war had come to a blitzkrieg dominated by tanks.
Before World War II, de Gaulle wrote a book called "Mechanized Warfare", which described the tactics of combining mechanized armored units and air forces, but at that time, the French were in power at the age of seventy or eighty, and the veteran general of the First World War, Camerin, who stubbornly believed that tanks and airplanes were just toys, and that only fortresses and cannons could function on the battlefield, so many fortresses were built. De Gaulle's "Mechanized War" was bought back by the Germans at that time and translated into German, and after the army commander-in-chief Guderian read it, he was a treasure and put it into practice.
Guderian
Sure enough, it didn't take long for Germany to annex all of Czechoslovakia, but because the Czech Republic, Austria, etc. were all eastern German countries. Therefore, at that time, Britain and France saw Germany's ambitions and did not make any substantive moves. They even had a hard time, drawing the evil water to the side of the Soviet Union and solving the two enemies in the same way.
Fast forward to May 1939, Hitler made territorial claims against Poland, and in the Treaty of Versailles in World War I, both Posen and West Prussia in Germany were ceded to Poland at the time, giving Poland access to the Baltic Sea. In the early days, Hitler also signed the Polish-German Non-Aggression Pact in order to paralyze Poland, but when Germany annexed Austria and the Czech Republic, Poland became his next target.
Originally, the passage of the Baltic Sea was separated from German territory, and Germany first demanded an extraterritorial road that led directly to East Prussia and Germany itself, and Poland, after receiving British and French support, refused Germany's request. Hitler believed that Britain and France would not engage in a Polish case with Germany, so on 28 April 1939 the Polish-German Non-Aggression Pact was terminated. Poland then signed an alliance agreement with France, which promised to join the fight within 15 days if Poland was attacked. Britain then signed a military alliance treaty with Poland, which was actually self-consolation.
Conspiracy with the SOVIET UNION
Before the German invasion of Poland, the German delegation saw Polish soldiers defecating outside the barracks, so they thought that polish military discipline was not in good order at this time. To know that in the army, open defecation is very tolerant of cholera, dysentery and other diseases, such diseases are polluted by feces, or dry feces through the air into the human body, during World War II everyone knows the harm of this open defecation, but Poland's behavior is obviously indicative of military discipline.
In fact, Britain and France were not idle, and in June 1939, they sent a delegation to St. Petersburg to negotiate with the Soviet Union, which also attached great importance to this meeting, and sent the highest military delegation to negotiate with the British and French who came. The British, on the other hand, sent only a few air force major generals, and France was even more excessive, sending a few generals who were about to retire to negotiate, and these generals, in order to ensure their smooth retirement, came in and told the Soviet delegation that we could not do this. This made the Soviet Union very angry at that time, can not be the master, come to the tourist? The delegation really came to visit, visiting Leningrad and Moscow.
Moreover, during the negotiations, Britain and France remained vigilant against the Soviet Union. Historically, the East Slavs have robbed Europe more than 30 times, each time by extermination, and Russia is Orthodox, and there have been countless religious conflicts with Western European Catholicism. But both Poland and the Soviet Union belonged to the East Slavs, but the hatred between the brothers was deeper than that of Germany, and russia had divided Poland three times in history, and the Polish national anthem regarded Dombrowski who fought against Russia as a people's hero, which shows how deep the feud with Russia is.
Because Poland was sandwiched between the Soviet Union and Germany, Marshal Voroshilov of the Soviet Union asked Britain and the United States to ask Poland if Germany invaded France, and whether Poland would lend the Way to the Soviet Union to support France. The Polish replied: "When the Germans come, we are in danger of losing our freedom; when the Russians come, we are in danger of losing our souls." Russian soldiers will never be allowed to enter our territory. ”
In this way, Britain and France gave the Soviet Union to Germany, and Hitler did not waste this favor at this time, saying to the Soviet Union: There is nothing that cannot be discussed, and if necessary, it is even possible to personally fly to Moscow. Ironically, when Britain was heavily bombed by Germany after the fall of France, Churchill secretly met with Stalin, and the negotiations even included sacrificing the Balkans.
After the end of the First World War, the Soviet Union withdrew from the Entente because of the October Revolution, which was treacherous in the eyes of Britain and France, and the Soviet Union and Germany were more like brothers with the same disease than Britain and France. So in 1922, Soviet Germany signed the Treaty of Laballow, which for the first time recognized the legitimacy of Soviet Russian power and renounced the debts of the former Tsarist Russia.
In britain and France, the two countries that were least likely to be partners formed an alliance, because Germany was vigorously suppressing the workers' revolution at this time, but Hitler was very aware of the times, not only to pull the Soviet Union into the company, but also to give the Soviet Union real benefits, that is, to divide Poland.
The paradox of history is that the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact signed by the Soviet Union was denied by the Soviet Union after the war. Because Molotov used the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet when signing the agreement with Germany. I think the Soviet Union was also forced to do it at this time, and also understood that if this agreement was made public, it would not be good for itself or the Soviet Union. So this "forged" Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact was finally abandoned.
By August 1939, Nazi Germany was making a big splash about Poland's impending invasion of Germany, and even reported that 1.5 million Polish troops had gathered on the German border. The Gestapo found a dozen death row inmates from Nazi concentration camps, put them in Polish uniforms, then shot and killed them in the woods on the German-Polish border, then took one of the remaining death row inmates and captured a German radio station, declared Polish war against Germany, and then killed the death row inmates on the radio.
Invasion of Poland
Then, at 4:45 a.m. on September 1, 1939, three armies of Nazi Germany, with an army of 1.6 million, pounced on sleeping Poland. With 2,000 aircraft in the sky and 2,800 tanks on the ground, the Germans put in a total of 44 divisions, including 7 panzer divisions, 4 light armored divisions, and 4 motorized divisions. On the Polish side, there were 7 armies, 870 tanks, 407 aircraft, 39 infantry divisions, 11 cavalry brigades, and 2 motorized brigades, with a total strength of about 1 million people.
Not only the gap in military strength, but also the gap in war thinking, the main force in Poland at this time was actually a cavalry brigade, with a total of 11 cavalry brigades, and the Pomorska cavalry brigade alone had 12,000 people, and it was also the absolute main force of Poland. As you can imagine, the scene when these Polish cavalrymen rushed at German tanks on high-headed horses and large knives were completely cold weapons across the ancient war.
Moreover, Poland gathered a large number of troops on the border of Germany and Poland, and when the German armored division attacked Poland at a speed of 60 kilometers per day, it broke through the border and entered no man's land. The only resistance that could be formed was the Battle of Gdynia, where the Germans lost more than 1,000 men.
Soviet Germany partitioned Poland
After the German occupation of Poland, the Soviet Union declared that the Soviet-Polish Non-Aggression Pact was no longer valid because the Polish government no longer existed, and decided to enter eastern Poland in order to protect the interests of Ukrainians and Belarusians. In the early morning of September 17, 1939, Soviet troops marched to eastern Poland, and German and Soviet troops met at Brest-Litovsk.
The Poles were not mistaken, after the Soviet Union occupied Poland, it considered Poland to be a state established by the bourgeoisie and an enemy of the working class, so it was resolutely exterminated and ordered the execution of 1500 Polish officials. But after the end of World War II, 4,400 bodies were found in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, with their hands tied and bullet holes in their heads, apparently killed by the Soviets during the invasion of Poland. During the Soviet occupation of Poland, 1 million Poles were also exiled to Siberia. Therefore, in the impression of the Poles, the blitzkrieg against Poland was by no means done by the Germans, but also by the Soviet Union.