Hello guys and welcome to the first of many weekly blog posts elaborating on a topic I learned in class. For those of you who don’t know, my classes current project is about WWII, so naturally we had to learn about the Second World War itself.

The Last Straw:

It is August, 1939. Nazi Germany is on the rise, after annexing the Sudetenland under a year earlier, they are training their eyes on a new target for the Third Reich. That target is Poland. Poland had only been an independent country for 20 years, so obviously couldn’t handle the might of the Nazi German army alone. Lets also mention that while Germany was planning to invade from the west, the Soviet Union was planning to invade from the east, as the two countries had signed an agreement which basically split Poland evenly between the two nations. Germany would get west Poland, while the Soviet Union would be in control of East Poland. But why was this invasion so critical to the world?

Well in 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed. This treaty effectively used Germany as a scapegoat, blaming them for the entirety of World War 1. They were forced to pay what is now billions of dollars in war reparations, lost over 20% of their land, and was forced to disband their Air Force and reduce their army to a few hundred thousand. They were quite literally reduced to nothing. This of course did not sit well with the German population and produced the fuel allowing fascist political parties like the Nazi’s to rise. 

Fast forward back to 1933. Adolf Hitler has just been elected Chancellor of Germany, promising to restore the country to it former glory. He promised reclaiming the land that was wrongfully taken from them in the aftermath of WWII. So he began campaigns to reclaim “rightful German land”, which included the annexation of the Sudetenland and Austria. But to forcefully take land he would need an army, and began defying the rules set by the Allied leaders 20 years before. His army swelled in size, the Luftwaffe was reborn, and troops were mobilized to areas like Austria under the pretence of “peacekeeping.” 

So Germany and the Soviet Union would mobilize troops into Poland on September 1st, 1939. Let us remember that Germany was not even supposed to have a military strong enough for an invasion. Also, on top of that, Germany was not allowed to mobilize troops. Let us remember that this entire time, England and France have been watching Germany, not defying them so to avoid conflict, but not allowing them to pave a way to having an empire. But they had decided enough was enough. Germany had been pushing the patience of the allies for over 2 years, slowly gaining piece by piece, not loudly enough to attract attention. But Poland was one piece of land, a little to loud. England would eventually tell Germany that if they did not remove their troops from Poland by September 2nd, war would be declared. Germany would not remove their troops, and on September 2nd, 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain would announce to the British public that they were now at war with Germany. Poland would soon be flattened with Germany’s new tactic of Blitzkrieg. This would be the start of WWII, as other countries would begin siding with either Germany or the Allies. 

So ultimately, it was not the fact that Germany was invading Poland specifically, it was actually a build up of small events that drove the Allies to their breaking point. That is why the invasion of Poland was so crucial to WWII, and was nicknamed “The Last Straw”.