TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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<text> <title> (1930s) On To War </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1930s Highlights </history> <link 05281> <link 07828> <link 07830> <link 00059><link 00060><link 00061><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> On to War </hdr> <body> (April 17, 1939) Step by step, like a long-harried elephant finally facing an enemy, Britain last week turned in her tracks. It was an impressive and world-shaking spectacle. Hard as it was for Britain to change, in one short week she turned her back on a long established policy of nonmilitary commitments in Europe east of the Rhine--turned, whole-elephant, and guaranteed that the British Fleet, along with the French Army (and the combined Air Forces of the two nations) would fight to protect the States of Eastern Europe from further Nazi aggression. For Britain the step marked the end of a six years' effort, to get along with Adolf Hitler. Time after time Fuhrer Hitler has torn up treaties, ignored agreements, threatened neighboring States with invasion. As many times Britain has looked the other way. When, three weeks ago, the Fuhrer moved into a Czechoslovakia which he had already dismembered last autumn, even the most credulous of British statesmen were shocked. They recognized then that Herr Hitler had embarked on a policy of conquest aimed at nothing less than domination of Europe, if not the world. Last week they reacted. Flush from the Czech seizure, the Fuhrer began to threaten Poland. The German Army was already partly mobilized. Troops were moved toward the Polish Corridor and toward Danzig, the Free City on the Baltic, where Poland has large interests and investments. East Prussia had become an armed camp. Finally the Nazi Government submitted its demands: German absorption of Danzig, a German auto road across the Polish Corridor, a Polish signature on the German-Italian-Japanese anti-Comintern Pact. Last week Poland got what Czechoslovakia had pleaded for in vain. Before a hushed, crowded House of Commons 70-year-old Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, former arch-exponent of appeasing the dictators, announced that the British Government was prepared to consider the Vistula, the river the flows through the Polish Corridor, just as much it frontier as it has long considered the Rhine. He added: "In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces. His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend all the support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect." [The only trouble with the loosely worded British pledge was that Britain had no control over its invocation, and once invoked, there was almost nothing Britain could do to aid Poland except to go to war and defeat Hitler. Meanwhile, Germany seized Memel in Lithuania, and Italy occupied tiny Albania. Omens of aggression to come were the sacking of Stalin's longtime Foreign Affairs Commissar, Maxim Litvinov, who was Jewish, and his replacement by Vyacheslav Molotov. Three weeks later, a "pact of steel" was concluded between Soviet Russia and fascist Italy. The summer of impending crisis wore on. Britain and France began to look to the Soviet Union as a potential ally in stopping Hitler. A military mission went to Moscow to scout out the possibilities for anti-Axis cooperation. But in late August they found to their shocked horror that Stalin had made an end run around them and concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany. War followed within days.] (August 28, 1939) Late Sunday night--not the usual time for such announcements--the Soviet Government revealed a pact, not with Great Britain, not with France, but with Germany. And at Monday midnight the official German news agency announced from Berlin: "The Government of the Reich and the Soviet Government have decided to conclude a non-aggression pact with each other. The Reichminister of Foreign Affairs, von Ribbentrop, will arrive in Moscow Wednesday to conclude the negotiations." To the bewilderment of almost everybody else in the world, and the consternation of the non-totalitarian four-fifths of it, the announcement was confirmed in Moscow next morning. Russia had got into a peace pact, but not with the nations she had been doing the public dickering with. A nightmare which the European democracies and their satellites only whispered about was the alliance of great Communist Russia with great Fascist Germany, a mighty cordon of non-democracy stretching one-third around the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific. There was no comfort in the hindseen reasons which made this Red & Black team if not inevitable, at least understandable: 1) Russia wanted as much peace as she could get, even at the expense of pulling her punches in Spain from 1938 on. If she joined the Allies, it might work out that she had merely balanced the European war scales, joining Germany tipped them, she could hope, to an imbalance the lighter side would not dare to challenge. 2) Russia, while suspicious of Germany, was suspicious of the democracies. Joseph Stalin having served notice in March that he did not propose to be pitted against Germany by the Allies, only so that both countries might be knocked out after each had knocked the other groggy. 3) Russia's rulers still smarted at being uninvited to Munich, where, according to high diplomatic humor, the democracy looked the totalitarians knowingly in the eyes and nodded in the direction of the Ukraine. 4) Russia, and her raw materials, and Germany, and her industries, make an economic combination. (September 11, 1939) World War II began last week at 5:20 a.m. (Polish time) Friday, September 1, when a German bombing plane dropped a projectile on Puck, fishing village and air base in the armpit of the Hel Peninsula. At 5:45 a.m. the German training ship Schleswig-Holstein lying off Danzig fired what was believed to be the first shell: a direct hit on the Polish underground ammunition dump at Westerplatte. It was a grey day, with gentle rain. In the War's first five days, hundreds of Nazi bombing planes dumped ton after ton of explosive on every city of any importance the length & breadth of Poland. They aimed at air bases, fortifications, bridges, railroad lines and stations, but in the process they killed upward of 1,500 noncombatants. Recapture of what was Germany in 1914 was the first objective: Danzig, the Corridor, and a hump of Upper Silesia. It is believed that Adolf Hitler, if allowed to take and keep this much, might have checked his juggernaut at these lines for the time being. When Britain & France insisted that he withdraw entirely from Polish soil or consider himself at war with them, he determined on the complete shattering and subjugation of Poland. (September 18, 1939) This week, after only eleven days of fighting, it was a grave question whether Poland was not already crushed. Perhaps Marshall Smigly-Rydz was to blame, for having his generals resist too long; perhaps the speed and power of the German advance surpassed even German calculations, perhaps the weather made the difference, staying dry and leaving the roads passable for motorized advance: perhaps the German air-power exceeded all expectations, breaking Poland's wings before they left the ground, smashing defensive positions before they could be organized. Certainly all these factors combined to make half Poland a shambles and her stand at Warsaw a desperate siege, as ghastly as Madrid. Stefan Starzynski, mayor of Warsaw, was a demon in its defense. He rallied civilians to help the soldiery, exhorted Poland's women to fight beside their men, took to the radio to order the city's life. "Go to the slaughter house," he said, "for pigs have arrived. Help the butchers there. Go to the post office and pick up your mail yourselves. The banks are open, so do your banking. All stores must be kept open." Such details as these sounded ludicrous amid the lethal pandemonium in which the city was living. Flights of Nazi bombers passed over the city every hour and oftener. Sometimes there was as many as 70 of them at once. They dropped 800-lb. demolition charges. Bridges, public building, Lazienki Gardens erupted debris. (September 25, 1939) Eleven stirring, martial notes, the opening phrase of one of Composer Frederic Francois Chopin's Polonaises, sounded every 30 seconds from the Warsaw radio station all last week to let the world know that Poland's capital was still Polish. Hour after hour, day after day, the notes came like hope rising from an inferno. For the world also knew what other sounds filled Warsaw--the bellow of bombing planes in power dives, the scream of fighting planes on the attack, the sharp whanging of anti-aircraft guns, the mighty thump, boom and roar of half-ton bombs plowing up the city's remaining defenses. To the North, the continuous thunder of artillery made a background for the nearer hammering of defense guns on the East, hurling shells over the rooftops toward the German positions in the western suburbs. After the bomb explosions came screams of the dying. Hospitals were full; wounded had to be dragged into what was left of private houses. The city was crumbling, but still Warsaw fought on, both sexes and all ages behind the barricades. Mayor Straczynski went down into the streets, picked up a shovel and dug trenches. When German tanks blasted their way into the suburbs, the defense hurled bottles of gasoline against them, trying to set them afire. Still the Polonaise sounded over the radio. The battlefront disappeared, and with it the illusion that there had ever been a battlefront. For this was no war of occupation, but a war of quick penetration and obliteration--Blitzkrieg, lightning war. Swift columns of tanks and armored trucks had plunged through Poland while bombs raining from the sky heralded their coming. They had sawed off communications, destroyed stores, scattered civilians, spread terror. Working sometimes 30 miles ahead of infantry and artillery, they had broken down the Polish defenses before they had time to organize. Then, while the infantry mopped up, they had moved on, to strike again far behind what had been called the front. By week's end it mattered very little whether Warsaw stood or fell. The Republic of Poland, aged 20, was lost. A German officer entered Warsaw under a flag of truce, delivered an ultimatum that the city must surrender in 24 hours or siege guns would be moved up. General Czuma refused to receive the message. Nazi airplanes then dropped leaflets repeating the ultimatum. General Czuma agreed to parley on evacuating all civilians and the Nazi high command ordered his spokesmen to come out of the city in a car at night, with truce flags specially spotlighted. All firing must cease. Shortly after that news, the Polonaise was heard no more from Warsaw. A curtain of German propaganda fell. [On the Western Front between Germany and France, there was little action, giving rise to the illusion of "phony war." In the East, however, Stalin took advantage of his new alliance to launch his own conquests.] (December 11, 1939) Russia, Germany's silent and equivocal partner, having made a jackal's feast off conquered Poland, and having taken advantage of the western conflict to subject the tree smaller Baltic countries, ran into armed resistance when she tried the same move on Finland. Unlike their occupation of Poland, where they marched in upon the rear of an already demoralized foe, this attack was upon a well-prepared, straight-shooting, determined people facing front. It was at least 2,000,000 trained men and 5,000 airplanes against 200,000 trained men and 150 airplanes, but the tough-fibred Finns provided a test for the Red war machine which the rest of the world watched intently. From the outset it was apparent that the Reds could not match the Nazis at Blitzkrieg. (December 18, 1939) Nastiness was in store for the Russians--especially in the Karelian Isthmus, historic gateway into Finland and the one Alexander I stormed with 17,000 men in 1808. Not only were roads, bridges and buildings mined--even a new bicycle left leaning against a fence was a detonator--but the Finns had utilized the geographical peculiarities of their country shrewdly. Lowlands had been flooded, augmenting the chain of lakes across the isthmus and leaving only narrow strips of land between the lakes as passageway for invaders. This land, wooded and boulder-studded, was a natural anti-tank defense, to which the Finns had added long lines of jagged, diamond-shaped boulders, three deep, as their main lines of defense against tanks. Above the narrow roads other huge boulders had been poised, so that the mere cutting of a cord sent them hurtling into the road. Concrete pillboxes, sunk into the earth and covered with sod, guarded all main avenues of passage. In the thick fir forests hid the Finns themselves, trained since childhood to use their knives as cleverly as an Alabama Negro uses his razor, and since joining the Army to aim their machine guns as accurately as a sharpshooter aims his rifle. Finally; there was the snowstorm. </body> </article> </text>