At the beginnig of WWII.

W

Wildcat

Active member
As you know Hitler attack Poland. We were fighting very heroic but Stalin helped Hitler and we have no chance. But do you remember that France and Great Britain promised to help in case of war. And what have they done? NOTHING!!! You must know when Hitler atacked Poland, in Germany there were little troops. France could attack them and WWII would be over. But they are cowards!!! A year after they with their big army which as they were sayin were one of the biggest and with Maginote Line, let Germans conquer France faster then Poland. Hitler reached Paris without one shot!!! And marshall Petain was cooperating with Hitler. It's horrible.
Poles were fighting until the whole war!!! What have France done?
I suposse you have heard about Warsaw Rising in 1944. Young people(the youngest soldier killed in rising was 13) tried to conquer Warsaw. They didn't have tanks and artillery. They have only a few carbines and grenades. But they were Poles and they want to kill Germans. It was very heroic and I think that French people would never do such a heroic thing.
 
Was it cowardly not to go to the aid of Poland or was it just expedient. We did not have the man power in our forces to launch an attack over such a distance, we did not have the planes, the tanks or the artillery to take on the Germans, we had to try and by time why we started to rearm and reequip the forces. France was in the same boat, they had spent what little money they for their forces on the Siegfried line. On the aircraft side they no modern fighters or bombers and very few tanks and much of their equipment was of WW1 vintage. Which begs me to ask just where were the Polish Tanks and modern aircraft, like Britain and France there money had been spent on other things. If you remember Hitlers saying Guns before Butter.
 
Maybe you are right. I can agree that Brits wasn't able to help but I'm sure and you should agree with me that France was able. But they were saying: "We don't want to die for Gdansk". :evil: They were able to end WWII in 1939. But they were cowards!!!
 
I can't comment on what they might have, or did not say, but every one was much in the same boat, they had all disarmed after WW1. When you add to that the Great Depression then a democratic state just would not been able to get the votes for the extra spending on defence. When Hitler came to power he started to rebuild his forces in all departments. By the time Hitler invaded Poland his forces were that strong that the current European forces could not touch him. When Hitler invaded France they swept every thing before them, France had nothing in the way of an Air force, there Tank force was a joke and most of there Artillery was of the first world war variety. It took Britain some years to started get enough modern equipment together before they could start making a fight back. The reason the French did not fight in Paris was that they had nothing to fight with also the German Air force would have just flatten it before the German troops in. this would not have stopped the Germans or slowed them down, it would have just have meant that many thousands of Parisians would have been killed and made homeless.
 
Beginning of WW2

Well If both of yall watched documentries on Germany in 1935-1939. Germany's rearmorment cost more then 80Billion dollars. I dont know what that cost would be now. But by the time of 1939, they had 30 panzer divisions, 70 motorized divisions, 140 infrantry divisions plus the Luftwaffe (the worlds largest air force at the time). What was Englands fighting force at the time? Same goes for France.
 
Wildcat said:
Maybe you are right. I can agree that Brits wasn't able to help but I'm sure and you should agree with me that France was able. But they were saying: "We don't want to die for Gdansk". :evil: They were able to end WWII in 1939. But they were cowards!!!
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You have a good point. Why didn't the BEF and French Army attack?

One possible reason is that the French Army in particular was very heavily geared towards defence. Its numerous tanks were in place to support defensive and limited offensive infantry operations. I'm afraid Poland was seen as a way for the western Allied armies to gain enough time to prepare themselves defensively for an expected German invasion.
 
I am afraid the Poles were concidered "expendable". Throughout the whole war, there are more cases where the Poles got the short en of the stick. For example: look at the Polish Airbrigade that jumped at Arnhem in september "44. It was known that the LZ was very very compromised and yet they threw Sosabowski and his men into the meatgrinder.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it cowardice. I would think more along the lines of calculation, buying time and expedience!
 
You know, Maginote line did armed and ready but German did not face the maginote line. They had to around to though Ardennes where the french border have so few French divisons. The French thought Germans couldn't though the ardennes because there are so many trees.
 
From experiences in WWI, British and French armies were geared heavily towards defense, hence the Maginot Line. They believed that well-placed artillery and strong fortifications could demolish any assaulting army. Although that was the case in WWI, it wasn't the case in WWII due to the expanded role of tanks (the British and French had tanks support individual infantry while Germans used them into irresistable large formations supported by hundreds of Stuka bombers)
Yet Wildcat did have a point. The French and British had overwhelming manpower (over 140 divisions, reserves included), yet the Germans only had about 30 divisions devoted to their western front (Most of the Wehrmacht were at Poland), and the French and British had ample chance to invade Germany. They would have succeeded and stopped the war, but no, the Blitzkrieg ensued and millions of people would now die.....
 
Britain had to Police an Empire and that is were a great deal of the Army was scattered all over the world. The German Army then was just in Germany still it started to push outwards and further it pushed outwards the great problems they ran into. Now the British did not try invade Germany 1939, but the French did and repulsed very quickly by an inferior force. Germany had been working up its strength in all branches of its forces, were Britain only started after Chamberlain came back with document signed claiming he had agreed with Hitler Hitler had no further ambitions in invading other countries.
 
Re: At the beginnig of WWII

Great Britain and France's threat to Germany was far more hollow than most had believed! They thought their bluff would prevent Hitler from invading Poland. I don't they knew about Germany's agreement with the USSR... to both invade Poland. When Hitler did, they had to shut up because they could not put-up!
France were prepared to fight a WW-1 style war which is why they build the Maginot Line. Great Britain was also only prepared to fight a WW-1 style combat. No one ever expected the German Army would go around the Maginot Line.
The French had good tanks but, they were designed for and used for infantry support only. When French armor met German armor, the Germans were prepared for tank versus tank combat, the French were not. The French Air Force's best fighter was decent but, the Me-109 was a little faster than the French VG-33 but, the VG-33 was far fewer in numbers. The Luftwaffe launched a first strike which destroy a good number of the VG-33's on the ground. That made air superiority for the Luftwaffe much easier. The RAF Spitfires were a help, not a cure-all.
Summing it up, Germany was prepare for war and none of its enemies were... just that simple.
 
AVON said:
Great Britain and France's threat to Germany was far more hollow than most had believed! They thought their bluff would prevent Hitler from invading Poland. I don't they knew about Germany's agreement with the USSR... to both invade Poland. When Hitler did, they had to shut up because they could not put-up!
France were prepared to fight a WW-1 style war which is why they build the Maginot Line. Great Britain was also only prepared to fight a WW-1 style combat. No one ever expected the German Army would go around the Maginot Line.
The French had good tanks but, they were designed for and used for infantry support only. When French armor met German armor, the Germans were prepared for tank versus tank combat, the French were not. The French Air Force's best fighter was decent but, the Me-109 was a little faster than the French VG-33 but, the VG-33 was far fewer in numbers. The Luftwaffe launched a first strike which destroy a good number of the VG-33's on the ground. That made air superiority for the Luftwaffe much easier. The RAF Spitfires were a help, not a cure-all.
Summing it up, Germany was prepare for war and none of its enemies were... just that simple.
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Couldn't have put it better myself
 
The French had at some stage tried to send some troops accross the border and into Saarland in Germany, occupied some of the territory, but got entangled in minefields and withdrew.
That action alone would achieve nothing but convinsing the Germans that the French either didn't have the capability, or the interest, to put armed action behind their words.

Unlike the German invasion in 1940, the French couldn't simply roll in through the Belgian and Dutch territories.

As for the British, England is an island, it was back then too, and except for the might of the Roal Navy, there was little England had to put up against German aggression towards Poland.
Oh, and the Spitfires were in short numbers back then, one og two fully fitted squadrons I believe, the rest of the British fighter force being equipped with Hurricanes or older planes of lesser value in combat.

Poland was in effect too far away, and that may have been one of the few things that Chamberlain knew for a fact.
Was Poland sacrified, I don't know, but Polish war effort later on was impressive and valuable for the outcome of the war.
 
Yes, Polish air crews certainly fought through WW11 here with us, very valuable contribution they were too; they are honoured here for that.
 
Del Boy said:
Yes, Polish air crews certainly fought through WW11 here with us, very valuable contribution they were too; they are honoured here for that.
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Don't forget the Polish navy, they may not have been hitting the headlines as much as their air-force countrymen, but they sure hit a lot of targets, and sunk them.
And their losses was in no manner connected to incompetence, rather the Polish fighting spirit I'd say.

In Narvik a wreath of remembrance and gratitude is placed at the monument over the ORP Grom each year, in respect for the Polish crew who fought and died there.
By the way, ORP Grom is one of the few navy vessels in the world who have a monument outside it's homeland.
 
Poland was not sacrified or abandoned:Britain never never had the intention to put the guarantee in action :the meaning of the guarantee was not that Britain (in fact France;Britain had no army) would fight for Poland,but that it would prevent the war .
 
I may be entering this late but want to add my 1/2 cent.

Great Britian's royal family had long and lengthy ties with Germany through blood. A lot of her intellectuals were progressives who strongly believed in socialism. Hitler, while insane, was quite smart in cloaking his nationalistic dreams in socialism, thus gaining the sympathy of some upper-class Brits.

The American intelligencia were also strongly progressive and socialistic after WWI. But, they bent to demands of France and certain other Allies in forcing the repatriation that bankrupted the attempt at a German republic.

So, while outwardly, the winners of WWI tried to carry on the facade of empire builders with mighty navies, their land forces were inadequate to do much of anything. And, the battleship admirals did not/would not accept the idea that naval aviation would someday make the big, armored hulks ineffective.

On the other hand, some of those who followed Hitler had a far different and more progressive vision of warfare. For all his horrible and disgusting tendencies, Ghoering [sp?] was a visionary on the use of aircraft. And, other German generals took lessons from WWI in forming and arming the military forces. The tank was just one example, the .88 mm was another.:tank:

So, when Germany first took over the Sudentenland, western forces knew they simply were not armed and ready to take Germany of. They bowed to the rhetoric that Hitler used claiming that all he was doing was protecting Germans who were being treated badly. The same held true of the Austrian Anschluss.

And, let's be honest - FDR did not create the Lend Lease Program to help Britain to defend itself but to improve and increase jobs in the American economy. And, we would not have become involved in Europe [due to a very large segment of Amerian society that was pro-Germany] if it had not been for the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. FDRs involvement in that is something for another thread.

:type:
 
As the British royal family had no power,its blood ties with Germany were irrelevant .
The fact also is that the Austrians and the Sudeten wanted to return to Germany,and that Britain and France had,morally,no argument,unless the argument was that the right of self-determination (which was the key-stone of Versailles) had to bow for strategical interests,but that argument was rejected by public opinion,and the partisans of that argument (Churchill) were considered as crypto-fascists .
 
lljadw said:
As the British royal family had no power,its blood ties with Germany were irrelevant .
The fact also is that the Austrians and the Sudeten wanted to return to Germany,and that Britain and France had,morally,no argument,unless the argument was that the right of self-determination (which was the key-stone of Versailles) had to bow for strategical interests,but that argument was rejected by public opinion,and the partisans of that argument (Churchill) were considered as crypto-fascists .
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Any blood ties the British royal family had with Germany was linked to the German royalty, wich did no longer exist, and either way they denounced every tie to that early in WW I as far as I can remember.
 
I believe that in recent years, Polish troops have joined in our Remembrance celebrations.

Good discussion you are presenting here, gentlemen, IMHO.
 
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