The war Hitler won, September 1939

by Nicholas Bethell

At 5:40AM, 9/1/39, Hitler announced his invasion of Poland. During the next 72 hours, while French & British civilian & military leaders (Poland's sworn allies) equivocated & while the USA maintained neutrality, armored columns & the Luftwaffe gained the momentum which enabled them to conclusively roll over the antiquated Polish cavalry & infantry while driving its planes from the sky. By 9/28 Poland was theirs--abetted by Russian invasion on 9/17. This was the phony war, when no bombs were dropped on German soil (private property, a British Secretary of State for Air protested), when French troops took only defensive positions on the Maginot Line, when Mussolini & the Swedish businessman Birger Dahlerus moved between Berlin & the Allies as self-appointed saviors. Bethell's account of those weeks follows the opening of the British State Papers for the period & shows from inside how the political decisions were made, how opportunities were lost & allegiances broken, & how the necessity of war with Hitler gradually became reality. It describes behind-the-scenes maneuvers in Moscow & Berlin of Hitler, Ribbentrop, Stalin & Molotov; Roosevelt's attempt to awaken Americans to the danger; the distrustful bargaining between Paris & London; the vacillation of Daladier, Bonnet & Chamberlain; the bitter conflict, between the French & British politicians who favored peace at any price & those who realized the Nazi threat; & the heroic, terrible story of the Poles themselves, outflanked & outmachined in a new type of warfare. The War Hitler Won presents a fascinating picture of the crucial political & military events of WWII's opening days.PrefaceThe First DayAn Uneasy LullA Tentative BeginningThe Fall of PolandExchanges of Harsh WordsThe Empire in PerilNeutral--but on Whose Side?Russia the Great EnigmaThe Peace OffensiveChronological List of Major EventsNotesSource MaterialsSelect BibliographyIndexMaps

Genres: History

472 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Nicholas William Bethell, 4th Baron Bethell (19 July 1938 – 8 September 2007) was a British politician. He was a historian of Central and Eastern Europe. He was also a translator and human rights activist. He sat in the House of Lords as a Conservative from 1967 to 1999. He served as an appointed member of the European Assembly from 1975 to 1979, and as an elected Member of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1994, and from 1999 to 2003.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a detailed account of the German conquest of Poland, an event which took barely over a month in the fall of 1939. The author, born just before the war, writes with feeling, but his moral judgments are nuanced. So far as individuals are concerned, Chamberlain, British Prime Minister at the time, is criticized, but sympathetically, his fundamental decency held in sharp contrast to the character of Hitler. Roosevelt and Churchill are represented more favorably. Meanwhile, all governments come across as self-interestedly amoral by nature, the more representative of them being "better" only because of their being held in check by more interests. Yet although the German and Russian governments are both substantially treated as reflections of their dictators, Russia comes off better than I would have expected. Although it was a johnny-come-lately in the partition of Poland, its motives, Stalin's motives, are treated as being primarily defensive and reactive, as opposed to the aggressivity of Hitler's.

[Luis Belisario · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book. Well researched but is only focused in the 1939 events. Very hard on M. Chamberain and Daladier.