absolutely unbelievable how everyone involved was living on the edge of absolute precipice and had no idea.
not single player, germany, russia, england, etc had any idea what was about to come down. that blows my mind.
Not entirely true. I have been posting updates from Shirer's book that show the planning for the invasion (Case White) is well along. Hitler has even settled on the date of 1 September as the probable date of execution. When Chamberlain announced that Great Britain would guarantee Poland against outside aggression (a mostly empty promise) he had the support of most of Parliament, including Churchill. People with access to information and the willingness to look at it realistically knew that the probable outcome would be a general war with Germany. And probably before the year was out.
At this point Hitler was unsure of only two things.
1. Could he make a deal with Stalin to ensure that they didn’t ally with Britain and France and end up at war with Germany (This question would be answered on the 23rd of August).
2. Would Britain and France follow through on their guarantee to Poland or would they cave again like they did with Czechoslovakia. (The final answer to this questions would come on September 3rd).
Hitler did know that by September 1st at the latest Poland would be destroyed.
I was talking some more with that nice lady from the cardiac rehab clinic. She was born in 1935 and was actually in a concentration camp in Poland (though her family was not Jewish). Her father died in a German concentration camp. She survived that, and living under Soviet oppression and still became a nuclear chemist and moved to America in 87. I wish I could sit down and just talk to her for hours about her experiences, but I can see that those are some pretty painful memories and the only reason she mentioned anything at all was because I was talking about my degree pursuits. She’s quite amazing in my opinion.
One of the articles above states that Germany was thinking the West would give up Poland the same way they had just given up the Czech Republic... “Sudetenlands” or something like that.