The Road to War (September - December 1939) Countdown to Victory | World War II

It's easy to look back at the past, study the history of war and uncover dramatic reports of heroic exploits, daring deeds, evil megalomaniacs, and vicious dictators and all too soon you'll find yourself completely detached from such events. The turbulent wars that took place so long ago seem to have little connection with reality and really point to fact often be the stuff of legend. Whether you consider the conflicts of the ancient Greeks, the battles for Troy or Alexander the Great's conquest for world domination, what we now know, often owes more to movie makers of the more recent past's interpretations.

War is about heroes, glory and a rip roaring story. Invariably, the true horrors of human conflict are lost in the telling. What's more, the old adage that history is only ever written by the victors is extremely accurate or it was until the wider use of photography developed through the course of the 20th century, painted a very different picture indeed.

To really understand the concept of war on a global scale, the World War II years of 1939 to 1945 provide, perhaps the first complete overview of man's inhumanity to man. Alongside the bravery and heroism that show the very worst and the very best facets of human nature. Incredibly, there are archive images from every stage of this conflict.

As we consider the events of the Second World War chronologically, these series of programs will build into the ultimate timeline. This is our past that we can truly connect with. Revealing a history littered with living, breathing survivors who can still tell stories of the comradeship, hardship, suffering, and sadly on occasion, the futility of battle.

However, we are already racing rather ahead of ourselves because by the very fact of this being a Second World War, the events of the First World War are key to unravelling the whys and wherefores of everything. From Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, right through to America's President Truman giving the order to bomb Hiroshima. The First World War, spanning the years of 1914 to 1918, is often referred to as the Great War, although there was little that was great about it.

It was also called, the War to End All Wars, which is rather a tragic misnomer with the benefit of hindsight. The figures for the casualties are staggering, with approximately 40 million people suffering injury on a very personal level, and at least half of these casualties proved to be fatal. This so-called Great War ended with an Armistice at 11:00 a.

m. on the 11 November 1918 after which the defeated German empire had its own internal revolution leading to the end of the monarchy and the setting up of Germany as a republic. Even after the Armistice was signed, the victorious forces still kept up their blockades around the country.

This led to imports and exports being severely reduced, which did little to help Germany to rebuild itself. In 1919, delegates from all over the world met in Paris in order to restore a sense of world order, harmony and unity. The main objective was to prevent another war on this scale ever happening again and the League of Nations was formed.

The official treaty that marked the ending of the First World War came a little while after the Paris Peace conference and formed the backbone of the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles was drawn up by the victorious Allies and signed by all parties on June 28, 1919. However, many historians believe that this well-intentioned treaty actually did more to cause a Second World War rather than prevent it.

Signed in Versailles magnificent Hall of Mirrors, the only country not allowed to take part in the process was Germany. The repercussions and heavy penalties imposed were therefore unworkable and would create a national feeling of resentment and revenge. It was this lack of foresight that eventually would allow the extremist views of Adolf Hitler to not only be listened to, but also acted upon.

It wasn't only Germany dissatisfied with the outcome. Italy felt they should have done better. Imperial Japan was unhappy about its failure to gain parts of China.

We now know, of course, that these three countries would form a dangerous alliance With Germany, Italy and Japan joining an Axis coalition to demand territory and respect, which they felt the Treaty of Versailles had robbed them of. Matters were made much worse because Germany was also forced to accept sole responsibility for the conflict, pay huge sums of money to the Allied nations for the damage that the war had caused and relinquish land to specific ethnic groups to form new countries. Part of the deal also required Germany to disband the military and the manufacture of any armaments was prohibited.

For a proud nation with a distinguished tradition of empire building, the treaty added insult to injury. As the history books tell, an agreement of any kind will only ever hold if all parties involved have something to gain from adhering to it and feel that whether victor or loser justice has been done. At the end of the First World War, most nations who had been involved and their citizens developed a pacifist mentality, never wanting to experience the horrors of war again.

However, there were those, sadly, who had been inspired by the experience, and two of the most famous of these men were Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. With equally distorted views and a distinct fondness for fascism, they posed a danger to the much longed for idea of world peace, and neither of them would waste any time rising to power. In 1919, it was generally assumed that all European states would in future be democratic in structure, and therefore sufficiently like minded and peace loving to make the machinery of the League of Nations work effectively.

However, this was to prove far more of a dream than a reality. Nevertheless, Europe did rebuild and within a decade had regained the same productivity levels as it had enjoyed in 1913, before the First World War started. This prosperity was to be short lived.

After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the whole world faced a period of history that has come to be known as the Great Depression. For the people of Germany already hard hit by the huge war debt they'd incurred as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, this was a terrible blow for their already crumbling economy. However, what was bad news for the ordinary German in the street proved very advantageous to Adolf Hitler, and he was quick to seize the chance to rise to power.

This program is entitled The Road to War. There was nobody keener to follow this path than Adolf Hitler, who ironically, was an Austrian by birth. Born on 20 April 1889, the son of Alois and Klara Hitler, in the small town of Braunau am Inn, Adolf rarely excelled at school and having lost both his parents while still a youth, found himself alone in Vienna, struggling to make his way in the world as an artist.

Already blaming others for his troubles, along with a group of anti-Semitic Austrians he fell in with, the Jews became a target for his hatred. Hitler despised the Austrian authorities for allowing the Jews to occupy positions of power. As his fortunes went from bad to worse until he was living on the streets, having failed miserably as an artist, his dislike of Austria and the Jews became more deeply entrenched than ever.

At the first opportunity, Hitler left Austria and in 1913 he headed for Germany, moving to Munich. When World War I was declared the following year, he requested permission to fight with the German Army, and he fast became a fierce patriot. After service in the trenches, Hitler, along with many of his German comrades, was disgusted when the German government surrendered in 1918, and after the war joined with them to fight for a restoration of his adopted homeland to a position of power.

It was not long after the Treaty of Versailles was ratified that Hitler started his political career. Speaking at a German Workers Party meeting and his oratory skills were soon noticed. He quickly took charge of the party, which became more widely known as the National Socialist German Workers Party, and the Nazis were on their way.

Nevertheless, by 1923, Hitler felt political means were too slow, and he attempted a military coup in a Munich beer hall, which was a disaster. Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, but his popularity was already well established and he only served 13 months, during which time he wrote Mein Kampf laying out all his plans for a new Germany. Of course, this put him in the perfect position to offer Germany salvation in the early 1930s as the terrible hardships of the depression really began to bite and rational people who would otherwise have dismissed Adolf Hitler as a fanatic started to believe what he was saying.

This was very much the case when it came to rebuilding the German military, providing much needed jobs, but was strictly forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. After the Reichstag fire of 1933, Hitler blamed the Communists for attempting to destroy the seat of German government. Soon afterwards, Hitler stormed to power.

His position was further secured when President Hindenburg died in 1934. At this point in time, Hitler's power became absolute. The German Fuhrer now held the titles of Head of State, Commander in Chief of German Military Forces, Chancellor and Chief of the Nazi Party.

There was no question Hitler reigned supreme, and he began building his empire with alarming speed. By 1935, the ranks of the army had swelled to over half a million, and production of arms and ammunition had resumed. Also, the Rhineland, a region in the west bordering France, was reoccupied by military units.

This region had been demilitarized after World War I, but despite the violation of treaty after treaty, little was done by the rest of the world to control the new German military regime. Despite the threat that Hitler was now posing, the British and the French failed to take any action. In fact, Hitler was quite vulnerable at this point, had the Allies all but realized it.

Evidently, gaining in confidence, Hitler started to accelerate the process, and before there was a chance for anyone to do anything further, the Nazis were on the march through Europe. When Hitler announced his intentions at a Nazi Congress in Berlin to march into Czechoslovakia, the cheers were resounding. In 1938, the new British Prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, was forced to do something about German aggression.

However, Hitler was able to play for time because Chamberlain was staunchly against war, prepared to pay any price not to fight. In September, he flew to Munich to meet with Hitler, the Italian leader Mussolini, and the French premier, Edouard Daladier. For Chamberlain, appeasement was the way forward and as British citizens prepared for war just in case their prime minister agreed a peaceful solution with Hitler.

By allowing the German dictator some land in Czechoslovakia, he would go no further. When the Munich treaty was signed, Chamberlain flew home triumphant, claiming he carried a piece of paper that assured peace rather than war. Chamberlain was cheered as a hero, but fellow politician Winston Churchill was far from convinced.

He claimed that Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. For Churchill, both nations had chosen dishonor and he predicted there would be war. Then on 15 March 1939, without warning, the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia and as Prague fell, Winston Churchill's worst fears were proven to be well founded, and Chamberlain had to face the full horror of what lay ahead.

With great speed, Hitler looked towards Germany's eastern neighbor, Poland, but with a real danger of the Russians attacking his Nazi stormtroopers, he had to plan his next move with great care. Although unlikely Allies, Hitler agreed a non-aggression pact with the Russian leader Joseph Stalin, and the road to war was laid wide open. There could be no doubt that the British and the French would have no choice but to come to the aid of Poland if there was a German invasion because of pacts already in place.

However, Hitler had used his time well and was ready and waiting to face any consequences as well as anything the Allied forces could throw at him. In the early morning hours of 1 September 1939, an overwhelming German force of more than a million troops backed by tactical aircraft and speedy Panzer tank divisions on the ground, were mobilized and swarmed into Poland using a three front Blitzkrieg. The term Blitzkrieg, when translated, means, quite simply, lightning strike.

It was a tactical military maneuver developed by an army officer called Hans Guderian and championed by Hitler himself based on surprise and speed. It utilized foot soldiers on the ground and tanks with planes providing further cover from overhead. The reason that Hitler took to such a radical new plan was due to his experiences in the First World War, where very little progress was made for months at a time.

The opposite was true with the Blitzkrieg, as the whole point was to storm in quickly and create havoc and panic using speed, coordination and tactical movements. Stuka dive bombers flew in first to cut the place off and isolate a target area. This was done by destroying railway lines and communication centers, which resulted in nobody even being able to think about mounting a defense before the arrival of tanks and the infantry to complete the operation.

With Hitler's Blitzkrieg already underway, Neville Chamberlain issued an ultimatum. Either Germany was to withdraw from Polish soil by 11:00 on the morning of 3 September, or there would be more. When no word was forthcoming from Hitler, just 15 minutes after the deadline had passed, Chamberlain announced to the nation that war had been declared.

I am speaking to you in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11:00 that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now, that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

The nations of the Commonwealth, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and India also prepared to stand up and be counted in the fight against the Nazi tyranny. France quickly followed Chamberlain's lead a few hours later also declaring war on Germany. Whatever errors of judgment Chamberlain had made, failing to prevent the onset of World War II on this most historic of days, he did at least make one of his better decisions.

Winston Churchill, who'd argued so vigorously against negotiating with Hitler, was asked to return to his post as First Lord of the Admiralty, which he had last held in 1916. Folklore has it that the Admiralty flashed a jubilant message to all its ships, simply announcing Winston is back. Understanding Churchill's role in World War II is crucial, because he was a unique character capable of changing the course of history by the sheer force of his personality.

Equally in these early months of the war, he was already at retirement age and had a colorful political background, to say the very least. Born into the British aristocracy in November 1874 at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, Winston was the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and his American wife, the society beauty, Jennie Jerome. When it came to education, Winston was far from outstanding, but he was determined to pass the entrance exam for Sandhurst.

When he did, it was the beginning of a military career that would take him as far afield as India and South Africa. Nevertheless, it was his work as a war correspondent rather than a soldier that brought him to public notice. When he returned to Britain, Winston decided to follow in his father's footsteps and enter politics, which is how he came to be First Lord of the Admiralty during World War I.

Unfortunately, though, his outspoken style meant he became the scapegoat for the disaster at Gallipoli, where so many soldiers from Britain and the Commonwealth died, forcing Winston to take a back seat in the House of Commons. Churchill was never one to give up without a fight. By the 1920s, he was back in business, rising to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.

However, again, his outspoken views caused problems and as the 1930s saw Hitler rise to power, Winston was definitely in his wilderness years. Even so, there was no silencing Churchill on the subject of Hitler, as we've already heard, warning the whole world of what would happen if action wasn't swiftly taken. Consequently, as Winston Churchill took up his post at the Admiralty, the British people looked to the man who had so resolutely predicted what Hitler would do and expected great things of him.

Never was it more vital for a leader of men to emerge, because on the very same day that Churchill took over commanding the naval side of the Warfare Division, a German U-boat torpedoed a British passenger ship that was carrying over a thousand people from Glasgow to Canada, of which about 300 were American. The ship called the Athenia was sunk, killing 118 civilians who'd been on board. The U-boats commander Lieutenant Fritz-Julius Lemp was undoubtedly aware of the rules of international seafaring convention, which stated that it was illegal to open fire on passenger or cargo ships.

Without warning, he shot off two torpedoes, dived, and then resurfaced to fire one last torpedo. However, it's likely that he mistook the Athenia for a warship and his failure to offer assistance while maintaining radio silence compounded the error as the U-boat quickly left the scene. As news of the Athenia's fate flashed around the world over the next 24 hours, all who heard of it were outraged.

In fact, the first thing Adolf Hitler did was to deny all knowledge of the incident as he ordered the submarine's logbook to be rewritten, while Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, claimed it was a torpedo from a British submarine that had hit the Athenians. Later, he added that it was all a publicity stunt by Winston Churchill to discredit Germany and to pull the United States into the war, proving beyond all doubt that the new First Lord of the Admiralty was already making waves. Meanwhile, as the battle for supremacy at sea started in deadly earnest, the first of British air assault courtesy of the RAF, was launched on 4 September, but all did not go according to plan.

Planes got lost, were shot down and just like Lemp's U-boat attacked the wrong ship. Even worse, at one point, the wrong country. Out of 29 bombers scrambled to strike fear and terror into Germany's naval bases, only eight actually managed to do so.

Two days later, another disaster hit the RAF when a false air raid alert sounded inciting a number of Hurricanes and Spitfires to take to the skies, only to end up shooting each other down with no enemy planes anywhere in sight. Nevertheless, as are the fortunes of war, just a week later, there was success for the British when the first German ship was destroyed, a U-boat depth charged and sunk by a British destroyer. Any jubilant celebrations were to be sadly cut short, though, because on 17 September, HMS Courageous was sunk off the coast of Ireland by a retaliatory U-boat, claiming the lives of 500 of the British aircraft carriers crew.

[German spoken audio] Fire! After the initial shock of the declaration of war, in Britain, life went on pretty much as normal. In fact, this lull before the storm is often referred to as the Phoney War, and many of the children so speedily evacuated to the countryside returned home.

A routine of curfews soon became commonplace and nightly blackouts to prevent German bombers finding their targets should they take to the skies with immediate effect were strictly adhered to. Street lighting was also blacked out and motorists were not permitted to use head lamps, which resulted in a number of casualties due to road accidents. However, for the people of Poland, it was a very different story and the horror of what the soldiers under Hitler's command were capable of, soon became all too evident.

There was no escaping the well-ordered German war machine. While the British and French felt confident the Polish could defend themselves for the time being, at least, they were sadly mistaken. The attack on the Polish people was also blistering and in Operation Tannenberg, mass executions resulted in more than 20,000 ruthless killings as the atrocities of war took their toll.

Despite the odds being so stacked against them, what was left of the Polish militia and as many civilian volunteers as could be mustered, attempted to defend Warsaw. However, worse was still to come. On the 17 September, the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland from the east with 40 divisions adding up to 800,000 men, making any hope of Poland withstanding attacks on both sides impossible.

The Russians had been promised the land as part of Hitler's non-aggression deal, and Stalin was determined to claim what he believed Russia was owed. However, in one piece of good fortune, members of the Polish Cipher Bureau, armed with inside knowledge of the Enigma code used by the Germans for many of their communications, managed to escape from the clutches of the invading Russians with two of the Enigma machines. When they arrived safely in Paris, it was to a rapturous reception on 1 October and for very good reason.

These Enigma machines were used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages, and although in commercial use during the 1920s, it was during World War II that they were adopted by the German military. Although the true implications of this escape would not be fully realized for some time to come, the intelligence gained through this source, codenamed Ultra, would prove to be of significant aid to the Allied war effort. As September drew to a close, the besieged and battered city of Warsaw fell to the Nazis after being bombed into submission by the low flying Luftwaffe.

There was no respite for Poland as this was already one of the strongest, most advanced and battle experienced air forces in the world at the outbreak of war in 1939. Officially unveiled in 1935 in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles, its purpose was to support Hitler's Blitzkrieg across Europe. The aircraft that were to serve in the Luftwaffe were of a new age and far superior to that of most other nations in the 1930s.

Under such pressure, it took just two days for Poland to surrender unconditionally on 27 September. Just a day later, Poland was callously partitioned off by Russia and Germany, with Hitler claiming almost 73,000 square miles of Polish territory, which was tragically home to nearly two million Jews, while Russia swallowed up 78,000 square miles. The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were also taken by Russia.

Of the Polish Militia, the majority were taken prisoner by the Germans. While Hitler's military losses during this campaign were minimal and for the Russians, the casualties were even less due to the fact that by the time they invaded, Poland was already overwhelmed. During the early days of October, Adolf Hitler's treatment of the vanquished Poles was appalling as his plan to evict or kill as many as possible was put into action.

They were, in his words, an alien population dangerous to the Reich and even at this early stage, the atrocities committed in the name of racial purity was sickening. However, the program of extermination, codenamed Aktion T4, did not just apply in Poland because in Germany what had started much earlier with the enforced euthanasia of the elderly and mentally ill was extended as Hitler's evil master plan for an Aryan Nation also began to focus on newborns and very young children. It was the job of doctors and midwives to register any child born with any kind of deficiency so that Hitler's officials could decide who lived or died.

Questionnaires were also sent out to anyone who didn't have German citizenship or were not of German blood. As Hitler's regime of terror spread through the territories he conquered, his own people suffered equal horrors. Experiments using gas chambers at the euthanasia killing centers, whether in Germany or elsewhere, ultimately served as a training for the SS.

This elite band of Nazis, basically the Fuhrer's Praetorian Guard, would implement Hitler's final solution of genocide. Under Heinrich Himmler's command, the SS were rapidly growing in strength. It's interesting that although, it is the SS's extermination of the Jews that is most widely known, communists, ethnic races, homosexuals, and even the Freemasons were also equally viciously targeted.

As the war progressed, the technical experience gained during the euthanasia program, was used in the construction of huge killing centers at Auschwitz, Treblinka and other concentration camps in an attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. Of the approximately 6 million European Jews murdered during the Holocaust, many of them were Polish. Despite Hitler's actions in Poland resulting in the declaration of war, he still had hopes for a negotiated settlement with the British.

However, on 12 October, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain rejected Hitler's insincere peace proposals and told the people of Britain that no promises from Hitler or the present German government should be believed or accepted as fact. Nevertheless, although the lesson that Hitler was not to be trusted had been learnt from the debacle of the Munich Treaty which he had so readily agreed to. Under Chamberlain's leadership, there was no attempt to become proactive against the Nazis.

Consequently, the German Fuhrer wasted no time strengthening his position while the Allies continued to maintain a watching and waiting brief. Meanwhile, in Poland, matters deteriorated further as the Nazis concentrated their efforts to round up the nation's Jewish population and either send them to enforced labor camps or confined them to a localized ghetto in Warsaw, creating endless restrictive and pointless laws for them to adhere to. For example, the wearing of a felt hat would be punishable by death, and it's hard to imagine the terror that this kind of persecution generated.

Despite the already well-oiled German propaganda machine under the watchful command of Joseph Goebbels, by November, news of what was happening to those not considered to be of pure race, home and abroad, began to spread. There were those who began to wonder whether Hitler was the savior of Germany he'd promised to be. At the very start of the month a folder full of top-secret German weapons research was sent to Norway with a note attached, which read, from a German scientist who wishes you all well.

Then a matter of days later, the first of a number of failed assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler's life was carried out. This was in the same Munich beer hall where Hitler had attempted his own military coup so many years earlier and ironically, had been equally disastrous. The bomb that could have brought the Second World War to a halt before it had really even had a chance to get started, detonated 20 minutes after the Fuhrer had left.

As eight people were killed in the blast, the odds are that if Hitler hadn't finished his speech earlier than expected, it could well have been his last. The man responsible for the bomb, George Elser, was actually arrested while attempting to illegally cross the border into Switzerland while Hitler was still speaking. He appears to have acted alone, outraged that the German people had lost so much personal freedom as even the education of children had been taken away from their parents and turned over to such institutions as the Hitler Youth.

The main protagonists in this early part of the war, were now beginning to maneuver themselves into position. Having secured their advantage in Poland, the Russians turned their attention to Finland. Joseph Stalin had every reason to distrust Adolf Hitler as the years of war ahead would prove.

Although the non-aggression pact between them enabled the Germans to storm through Europe, Stalin also had his own agenda. Equally, Russia was watchful of the Allies and Finland would give them a tactical buffer, protecting what Stalin saw as the vulnerable city of Leningrad from any army that might target it. When the battle lines had been drawn between Russia and Finland by the end of November, the Russian Red Army believed that they had an easy task ahead of them.

Adopting a similar offensive to the Germans Blitzkrieg that they'd seen work so effectively in Poland, they were anticipating victory within a matter of weeks, but this was the first of many occasions when other factors, not least the weather, would have an important influence on the outcome. With Finland being a relatively sparsely populated country, they struggled to muster an army large enough to defend against the Russians, who had what appeared to be an unlimited supply of soldiers. Even so, the Finnish troops were able to use their hostile terrain to their advantage.

They were well accustomed to the forests and snow-covered regions of their homeland. Although outnumbered by the Russians, their determination to defend Finland was fiercely patriotic. The winter of 1939 was one of the worst ever known in Finland.

Ironically, the Red Army troops had actually been sent from the south of Russia, so the cold weather made them particularly vulnerable. However, the Russian Army had another weakness. Commanders in the field couldn't make a decision without approval from a higher authority, which resulted in significant delays on the battlefield.

Therefore, the Russian Army was frequently a slow moving dinosaur, hindered by both the geography of Finland and its rigidity in terms of strategy. Whereas, Blitzkrieg had been designed to incorporate all aspects of Germany's Army and Air Force, each part of the Russian military acted as a separate entity. Also, white camouflage clothing was not issued to the Russians, and their vehicles simply couldn't cope with the freezing conditions.

Many parts of the 600 mile border were simply impassable, so the Finns could predict the routes the initial stages of the invasion would take. The Russian Air Force was also limited in the amount of time it could help the army because the days were so short during the winter months. When they did fly, the Russians took heavy casualties, losing 800 planes.

Although it would be into the new year of 1940, before this particular conflict would be resolved, the Finns were far from being intimidated by the Russians. Back in Great Britain during December, the age limit for conscription was expanded twice in two weeks, with men aged between 19 and 41 called up to join the armed forces. Women aged between 20 and 30 were also accepted for different levels of service.

It was also the month that the Royal Navy became embroiled in the first big naval battle of the South Atlantic during World War Two, which has become to be known as the Battle of the River Plate. It took place off the coast of Argentina and Uruguay, where the German warship, the Graf Spee, had been successfully attacking merchant shipping in the area. British Navy had not one but four cruisers in the area.

The Ajax, the Exeter, the Cumberland, and the Achilles. The commander of this South American division set off in hot pursuit of the dangerous German craft. The Treaty of Versailles had forbidden Germany from building large classic battleships when the nation had been forced to disarm and cease military production.

Germany therefore built smaller and more compact vessels, and the Graf Spee commissioned in 1936 was fast enough to outrun many battleships because it had also been armed with sufficient weapons, it was a potent enemy. Nevertheless, in the Battle of the River Plate, the British Navy eventually forced the Graf Spee into the neutral port of Montevideo. The Exeter in particular was badly damaged, but as there was a time restriction on how long the German ship could remain, the captain of the Graf Spee, Hans Langsdorff, knew he could only put off a confrontation with the British Navy for a short while.

However, it was British intelligence that really won the day on this occasion, having convinced Langsdorff he was completely outclassed and stood no chance at all of escaping, even though it would be days before the fleet would actually arrive. Determined to save the lives of his crew, the German captain decided to scuttle the ship and three days later, committed suicide to prove that he was no coward. Ironically, all the British sailors captured by Langsdorff claimed they'd been treated extremely well by him, and he was without doubt a man of honor, even if some historians have questioned his judgment.

These were still early days in the war. Not all of the action was at battle stations. In the League of Nations, the Russian actions against the Finns meant that they were expelled.

The international peacekeeping organization still believed that there was a chance for diplomacy. However, with such determined individuals as Stalin and Hitler to try and control, there was little room for maneuver or rationality. The League of Nations had actually been the brainchild of American President Woodrow Wilson.

Although his motivation was laudable, in practice, the concept was fraught with difficulties. While the league was born with the exalted mission of preventing another great war, it proved ineffectual. Being unable to protect China from a Japanese invasion or Abyssinia from an Italian one.

The league had also been powerless when it came to reacting to German rearmament. In the lead up to the outbreak of the Second World War, there was little the League of Nations could do to fulfill the task entrusted to it in the aftermath of the war, that should by rights, have ended all wars. Germany and Japan voluntarily withdrew from the league in 1933 and Italy left in 1937.

The true imperial designs of Russia soon became apparent with its occupation of Eastern Poland in September of 1939, whilst Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia had been terrorized into signing a mutual assistance pact which gave Stalin air and naval bases in strategic positions. Even so, it was the invasion of Finland where no provocation or pact could justify the aggression which resulted in worldwide condemnation. Interestingly, President Wilson's successor, Franklin D.

Roosevelt, who was forced to stay on the sidelines during the opening skirmishes of the war because of American public opinion, spoke out against the invasion, resulting in the Russians withdrawing from the New York World's Fair. The next step was for the League of Nations to expel the Russians, while as the world faced a global conflict that no group of peacekeepers could hope to pacify, the organization born out of such good intentions faced its own conclusion. As 1939 drew to a close, with Christmas on the horizon, more British troops were being sent from their families to help the war effort for nations already in direct danger from Adolf Hitler's advancing Nazis.

The Commonwealth added to the number of available men with over 7,000 Canadian troops arriving in Britain, ready to swell the numbers while soldiers from India were sent to France. As people's thoughts turned to Christmas and the prospect of a new year, everything that they'd feared since Hitler first started to make his presence felt in the early 1930s came sharply into focus. These few months really were the lull before the storm, but as Neville Chamberlain and his government watched for what Hitler would do next, Winston Churchill was speaking out against Britain's inactivity once again.

For the first Lord of the Admiralty, the best form of defense was most definitely attack, and Chamberlain was well and truly in the firing line alongside Adolf Hitler. Churchill was desperately worried that the Germans were about to target Norway from where Hitler's war machine accessed much of the iron ore needed for production. However, it was as if the lessons of 1938 and the Munich Treaty had been forgotten by Chamberlain.

As Churchill's grave warnings were once more ignored and the first few months of 1940 were about to prove very interesting indeed.