THE8 October of the 1939, exactly 82 years ago, Nazi Germany he annexed western Poland. The Reich presented the operation as an act of legitimate reconquest, because those territories had been taken from the Germans at the end of the Great War, with the Treaty of Versailles. In fact, however, the invasion of Poland was the military action that led to the outbreak of the Second World War.
The attack began on September XNUMX, immediately triggering the reaction of Great Britain and France, which two days later they had declared war on Germany. The support of London and Paris, however, was not enough to help Poland, where the Nazi troops gave the world an impressive display of war efficiency.
The German offensive easily defeated an antiquated and misled army: in mid-September the armies of the Reich were already besieging Warsaw, which, almost completely destroyed by aerial bombardments, capitulated at the end of the month.
This was the first application of the blitzkrieg, a new strategy which was based on the contemporary use ofaviation and armored forces, entrusting the latter with the main role in the attack. The massive use of tanks e armored car it allowed the Germans to quickly capture very large territories, preventing the enemy army from accessing supplies.
And as Germany wiped out western Poland, the USSR did the same with the eastern part of the country. The partition of Poland between Germans and Russians was in fact foreseen by the secret clauses of the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact, signed on August 23 of that same year by the foreign ministers of the two powers.
In early October 1939, the Polish army gave up all resistance: from then on, the Germans and Russians imposed a ruthless occupation regime in the territories under their control. The Polish Republic thus ceased to exist after just 20 years of life. And without having received any concrete help from his Western allies.
