5 Steps to a 5TM AP European History

(^188) › STEP 4. Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High
Blitzkrieg and the “Phony War” (1939–1940)
As Germany invaded Poland, Great Britain and France were not yet in a military posi-
tion to offer much help. The Poles fought bravely but were easily overrun by the German
blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” which combined air strikes and the rapid deployment of tanks
and highly mobile units. Poland fell to Germany in a month.
Meanwhile, Great Britain sent divisions to France, and the British and French gen-
eral staffs coordinated strategy. But the strategy was a purely defensive one of awaiting a
German assault behind the Maginot Line, a vast complex of tank traps, fixed artillery sites,
subterranean railways, and living quarters, which paralleled the Franco-German border but
failed to protect the border between France and Belgium. Over the winter of 1939 and
1940, war was going on at sea, but on land and in the air there was a virtual standoff that
has come to be termed the “Phony War.” During the lull, however, the Soviet Union acted
on its agreement with Hitler, annexing territories in Poland and Eastern Europe, including
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and invading Finland.
The Battles of France and Britain (1940)
In April 1940, the Phony War came to an abrupt end as the German blitzkrieg moved
into Norway and Denmark to prevent Allied intervention in Scandinavia and to secure
Germany’s access to vital iron ore supplies, and then into Luxembourg, Belgium, and the
Netherlands in preparation for an all-out attack on France.
By early June 1940, the German army was well inside France. The Maginot Line proved
useless against the mobility of the German tanks, which skirted the Line by going north
through the Ardennes Forest. On June 14, 1940, German troops entered Paris. Two days
later, the aging General Marshal Pétain assumed control of France and signed an armistice
with Germany, according to which the German army, at French expense, would occupy the
northern half of France, including the entire Atlantic coast, while Pétain himself governed
the rest from the city of Vichy. Not all of France was happy with the deal. General Charles
de Gaulle escaped to Britain and declared himself head of a free French government. In
France, many joined a Free French movement, which would provide active resistance to
German occupation throughout the remainder of the war.
In Great Britain, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who had been the architect
of Great Britain’s appeasement policy, resigned. King George VI turned to the 65-year-
old Winston Churchill, who had been nearly the lone critic of the appeasement policy.
Churchill used his oratory skill throughout the war to bolster moral and strengthen the
Allies’ resolve. The German blitzkrieg now drove to the English Channel, trapping the
Allied army at the small seaport of Dunkirk. In an episode that has come to be known as
“the Miracle of Dunkirk,” more than 338,000 Allied troops (224,000 of them British), sur-
rounded on all sides by advancing German units, were rescued by a motley flotilla of naval
vessels, private yachts, trawlers, and motorboats. The episode buoyed British spirits, but
Churchill was somber, pointing out that “wars are not won by evacuations.”
Hitler, and many neutral observers, expected Great Britain to seek peace negotiations,
but Churchill stood defiant. The German High Command prepared for the invasion of
Great Britain, but the invasion never came. Instead, in one of the most significant moments
in the war, Hitler changed his mind and turned on the Soviet Union. Several components
make up the explanation for this fateful decision:
• Hitler’s racialist view of the world made him wary of the British, whom he considered to
be the most closely related race to the Germans.
• Hitler’s staff was handicapped by both the lack of time given to them and by their relative
lack of experience in mounting amphibious operations.
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