With Germany’s invasion of Poland on Friday, Sept. 1, 1939 (see blog, April 4, 2021), another major European war seemed unavoidable. Indeed, sentiment in England now appeared resigned to war: Get on with it, and get it over. While in Germany, many thought England would not allow itself to be drawn into a simple border dispute between the Germans and the Poles.
That Friday afternoon, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with one of the fiercest critics of his appeasement policy toward the Nazis. He offered Winston Churchill a position in a small bi-partisan cabinet Chamberlain was forming to conduct the war. Churchill immediately accepted.
Early that evening, Chamberlain addressed the House of Commons to tell the members that the Government had delivered a stern warning to the German Foreign Minister in Berlin that if the Nazis use force, Britain was resolved to oppose them with force. The Prime Minister then reviewed the many steps his Government had taken to preserve peace. He blamed Hitler for the “terrible catastrophe” Europe now faced, and said England must enter the struggle it so earnestly had endeavored to avoid, “with determination to see it through to the end.”
But Chamberlain ended his talk without any declaration of war or explanation of what steps the Government might be taking to honor its agreement to protect Poland.
Saturday, Sept. 2, saw continued attacks by the German Army in Poland and the bombing of Polish cities, but no action taken by England or France. In an afternoon Cabinet meeting, Chamberlain described a proposal by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to hold talks to resolve the Polish crisis, and noted that German forces would have to withdraw from Poland before there could be any such talks. He also told the Cabinet members that France wanted another 48 hours to complete military mobilizations before delivering any ultimatum to Germany. The British military, Chamberlain said, opposed any such delay. Several Cabinet members said they believed that any ultimatum should expire at the stroke of midnight.
Chamberlain again addressed Parliament Saturday evening. To the distress of many members, the Prime Minister spoke less than five minutes and seemed to indicate that His Majesty’s Government would take no action if Germany promised to withdraw its forces from Poland and enter into talks with the Poles to resolve “the matters between them.”
As soon as Parliament adjourned that evening, key Cabinet members met with the Prime Minister in private and told him he must act now or risk losing their support and that of the British public. Chamberlain was surprised that his brief address had sounded like a capitulation and promised to act immediately.
That night he drafted an ultimatum that was cabled to the British Ambassador in Berlin to be delivered Sunday morning, Sept. 3, to the German Government. The message said that unless German forces ceased all action in Poland by noon, Berlin time, that same day, a state of war would exist between Britain and Germany.
The Sunday deadline in Berlin passed without any word from the German Government.
Fifteen minutes later, at 11:15 a.m. London time, Chamberlain went on the radio to announce to his countrymen and to the world that for the second time in the 20th century, England was at war with Germany.
The Second World War had begun.
