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68 Years On...

German forces invaded Poland 68 years ago today. Through the 1930s, the response to the acceleration of Germany's rearmament and the threat of war was to appease rather than confront Hitler.

By late 1938, Hitler was making speeches that furiously proclaimed Germany's right to annex the Sudetenland, a Czechoslovak territory with a significant German population.

British PM Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany to calm the situation, eventually signing the Munich Agreement with Hitler, giving control of the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany.

With the invasion of the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Britain was no longer acquiescent and Chamberlain warned that any further attacks would meet resistance. It took the defeat of Poland six months later to induce the British and French governments to declare war.

Might things had been different? The British were in no military position to force Germany's hand earlier, and the French were not interested. The lack of action over both Poland and the Soviet invasion of Finland only a few months later indicates that the Western powers were not quite ready for what was to come.
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