LONG ROAD to VICTORY N September 1, 1939, German Menacing Future ; and America Talked of Armour Crossed the Polish a " Phoney " War
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE LONG ROAD TO N3 VICTORY A HISTORICAL NARRATIVE AND A CHRONOLOGICAL REGISTER OF THE EVENTS OF THE WAR IN EUROPE AND AFRICA 1939-1945 WITH A LEADING ARTICLE REPRINTED FROM THE i c TIMES MAY 8, 1945 LONDON : PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE 1945 Price Two Pence RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH ,THE LONG ROAD TO VICTORY N September 1, 1939, German menacing future ; and America talked of armour crossed the Polish a " phoney " war. The weakest point in frontier and German aero- the German front was the long line of sea communications with Narvik and the planes attacked Warsaw. Ten North Swedish iron fields. It was secured days earlier the signature of a Russo- against British sea power by the German German non-aggression pact had pro- use of sheltered Norwegian waters. In claimed the imminence of war and the February the British, impatient of this Germans0had now completed their pre- abuse of Norwegian neutrality, broke in parations for its outbreak. They had per- to rescue British prisoners from a German fected a new method of warfare, later to ship. On April 9 Germany decided that be known as Blitzkrieg, by a develop- neutrality had served its purpose and in- ment of the tactics which had finally over- vaded Denmark and Norway. The Danes come the static defence systems of the last yielded ; the Norwegians fought on and war. They now put into execution their an Anglo-French Army went to their plan for overrunning Poland in a mechan- aid. Imperfectly trained, inadequately ized offensive of hitherto unknown mobi- munitioned, and lacking air cover, it was lity. The air arm led the way, attacking forced to retire on its bases, from which the enemy's centres of communication, it was later withdrawn. During this brief scattering his columns on their way to their campaign the Germans revealed two more concentration points and blinding him by of their secret weapons, the one military, rendering his airfields unserviceable . the other political. The almost simul- Tanks formed the spearhead of the ground taneous seizure of all the key points in attack. They were followed by convoys southern and western Norway was made of motor transport conveying infantry and possible by the employment of parachute guns. Thrusting into Poland from north, troops, and the formation of the country's west, and south, these forces converged puppet government after its conquest was on Warsaw before the Polish High Com- entrusted to a Norwegian traitor, one mand could establish control over the Quisling, who " by merit raised to that troops dispersed along the country's bad eminence," was to give his name to frontiers. the whole contemptible breed of which he The campaign developed at a pace was the first notorious example. which amazed the world. Within a The unhappy issue of the Norwegian fortnight all western Poland was lost campaign had immediate and decisive political repercussions in Britain. At the and the Polish army, so far as it close of a debate in the House of Com- was still in being, had withdrawn mons a division was challenged. The strong behind Warsaw, already closely invested. opposition On September 17 the implicafiions of the vote decided Mr. Chamberlain Russo-German pact began to be revealed. to resign. After consulting the Oppo- Russian sition leaders the retiring Prune Minister troops entered Poland from the advisedthe King to send for Mr. Churchill. east and a few days later the stricken Labour, which had hitherto held aloof country suffered its fourth partition. By from office, entered the new Government the middle of Ocfober organized resist- representative of all parties in the State. ance in Poland had been crushed. There- Its core was a small war Cabinet with Mr. after, for more than 18 months, the war Churchill as Prime Minister and Minister in the east was to be conducted mainly of Defence. Mr. Churchill took office on under diplomatic forms. May 10, a day of momentous events in Europe. Happily for Britain the hour FALL OF FRANCE had produced the man. In the opening days of the war a British Expeditionary Force which eventually THE MIRACLE OF DUNKIRK amounted to 10 divisions crossed the On the same day the Germans opened Channel. Lord Gort was in command. the campaign intended, according to The Armies took up their positions on Hitler, to settle the course of history for their prepared lines. The world waited. 1,000 years. Holland and Belgium were Nothing happened. Both sides armed, invaded simultaneously on what appeared the Germans more rapidly because their to be an expanded version of the old war industries were in full operation. Schlieffen plan. The allies hastened to Germany matured her plans ; Britain and the support of Germany's victims-the France faced an unreal present and a British to fill the gap between the Belgians 2 and the French, the French to act as the It remained for Petain to complete the link between the Belgians and the Dutch. destruction of the Third Republic. Presi- did not interfere with these dent Lebrun transferred his constitutional The Germans powers to Petain, who at once proclaimed movements. Their main blow was to be lumself Chief of the French State. As such struck elsewhere. Realizing that motor- he formed a Government in winch his evil ized forces need not be held up by diffi- genius, Pierre Laval, was given the key post of cult country, they traversed the Ardennes, Foreign Minister and thus placed in charge of crossed the Meuse between Sedan and future negotiations with the Germans. Namur, and sent armoured divisions, with But though France had fallen, there were their race to the still Frenchmen. Before the armistice was effective air support, on signed General de Gaulle had issued his first Channel ports. In the closing days of call for continued resistance . When all seemed May the Germans secured both Boulogne lost he crossed to London, where on June 28 and Calais, and split the allied forces in the British Government recognized him as two. The position of the British in the Leader of the Free French. Before August north was now critical. Holland had was out most of French Equatorial Africa had rallied to his standard, the Cross of Lorraine, capitulated on May 15, and Belgium on but late in September his movement received a May 28. The seaway to England was check through his failure to gain Dakar. accessible only through Dunkirk. Through Nearly five years were to elapse before the this narrow gap there were safely evacu- patriot and soldier who had organized new ated in less than a week some 330,000 men, French forces in England and in the French nearly two-thirds them British. But colonies and had fostered the resistance move- of ment in Metropolitan France was to re-enter all their equipment was lost. Paris as the living symbol of his country's While these events were moving towards resurgence. their climax the French Prime Minister, M. Reynaud, sought to remedy an almost desperate RUSSIAN WAR situation by making two appointments, of PRELUDE TO which one proved futile and the other After the conquest of Poland the aim of disastrous . Dismissing General Gamelin, he Russian policy, with a view of German inten- entrusted the French command to General tions that events were to confirm in full, Weygand, who had been Foch's Chief of Staff was to control the buffer zone lying between and was regarded as the heir to his tradition. the new German lines and Russian territory To strengthen his Cabinet he recalled Marshal proper. Her first step was the absorption Petain from his Madrid Embassy and gave of the three Baltic States under the form him the post of Vice-Premier. of mutual assistance pacts-Estonia before Latvia and Lithuania Unable to stem the German rush to the September was out, coast, Weygand reformed his armies behind early in October. Only Finland proved and a small British recalcitrant and resisted by force the Russian the Somme and the Aisne claim to control both the land and the sea Expeditionary Force was landed in their sup- approaches to Leningrad. At first the Finnish port. It was too late, and on June 14 the successful. Gradu- Germans entered Paris, which had been resistance was brilliantly declared an open city. From Bordeaux, ally, however, the main Finnish position, the Cabinet so-called Mannerheim line guarding south- whither it had withdrawn, the French eastern Finland, was broken up by Russian requested the British Government to release 1940, was it from its obligation not to make a separate artillery, and by mid March, there peace. To thus the British Government-the again an apparent peace in eastern Europe. Coalition Ministry which Mr. Churchill had It lasted until the following October, when formed a month before-was prepared to con- Italian troops invaded Greece and soon showed sent if the French fleet first sailed to safety themselves increasingly unable to make head- in British ports. But the British proposal went way against their plucky and determined farther. It offered the union of the two States enemy. For the moment, the Germans were in a common citizenship if France would fight content to watch events in eastern Europe, on. The French Cabinet rejected this proposal, but in the spring of 1941 they developed M. Reynaud, who had favoured it, resigned, elaborate plans, political and military, which and the octogenarian Petain took his place to included aid to their embarrassed ally. Bulgaria become the central figure in the most and Rumania passed voluntarily into the humiliating episode in French history.