The Year 1939

The opening salvos of World War Two in Europe

Public domain images

The first months of 1939 witnessed the continued advance of Fascism in Europe. Shipments of German arms to Generalissimo Francisco Franco enabled the Nationalists in Spain to launch a successful offensive in Catalonia which culminated in the fall of Barcelona in January 1939.

After this, the defeat of the Republic was only a matter of time. On 28th March, Madrid surrendered, and by the end of the month several thousand men, women and children fled, many of them over the Pyrenees, to avoid summary trials and executions during the White Terror. Spain became a military dictatorship under Francisco Franco who stayed in power until his death in 1975.

Czechoslovakia

Early in March, Adolph Hitler and his allies completed the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, begun the previous year by the Munich agreement between the Axis powers (Italy and Germany), Britain and France.

Stripped of her natural defenses, Czechoslovakia was in no condition to resist when Hitler exploited a crisis he had himself created by encouraging the Slovaks to declare their independence.

The elderly Czech President, Emil Hácha, was summoned to Berlin and told at two in the morning that German troops would enter the country four hours later. So Hácha had no choice but to sign a prepared statement that he “confidently placed the fate of the Czech people in the hands of the Fuhrer.”

The Siegfried Line

In July 1939 Hitler and his Second in command Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering inspected the West Wall or Siegfried Line.

This was a defense system of pillboxes and strongpoints which had been built along the German western frontier during the 1930s. It ran parallel to the French Maginot Line, extending north to the Dutch frontier and south along the Rhine to Switzerland.

Hitler regarded the West Wall and Belgian neutrality as a sufficient barrier to any French counter-offensive while Germany invaded Poland. Despite the confidence expressed in the popular song Hang out your washing on the Siegfried Line, Allied forces were weak.

Photo by “Colling-architektur”. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence

Hitler Prepares to Invade Poland

The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia finally alerted the democracies to Hitler's insatiability. Rearmament was stepped up, conscription was introduced in Britain and, when Hitler began to threaten Poland, Britain and France gave the country an unconditional guarantee of support.

The Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, was also irritated by Hitler's Czechoslovakian coup, since he was increasingly feeling himself to be the junior partner in the Axis alliance, being usually informed at the last minute of some new German adventure.

He consoled himself by ordering the occupation of Albania — only a small step in his ambition to make the Mediterranean “an Italian lake” — but the hostile reception of which by the democracies helped bind him more closely to Hitler. In May, the “Pact of Steel” converted the Axis partnership into a formal military alliance.

After a barrage of propaganda and fruitless negotiations in March, the Polish question hung fire through the spring and summer of 1939. However, Hitler had already made up his mind to attack and destroy Poland when the opportunity offered, even if it meant war with Britain and France.

Only the USSR was in a position to assist the Poles directly, but the Polish government was even more anti-Russian than anti-German. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin viewed German expansion with alarm, and also feared that Britain and France might encourage, or even take part in, a German attack on the USSR.

Stalin needed allies and on 16th April his foreign minister, Maxim Litvinov, proposed a formal pact between the Soviet Union, Britain and France. By August, British prevarication had forced the Soviets into signing a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany with secret clauses carving Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.

War Begins

On 1st September Germany invaded Poland, and on 3rd September Britain and France declared war. The Polish armies collapsed within a few weeks under the impact of the German blitzkrieg, whereby the initial attack was spearheaded by tanks, followed by armoured vehicles and the infantry supported by the Luftwaffe.

Hitler’s invasion of Poland was ostensibly in connection with his demands for cession of the “Polish Corridor” - the broad strip of land that split German territory and gave Poland access to the sea at Danzig (now Gdansk). Hitler had wanted to invade earlier, but it was not until the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August that he felt safe on his eastern flank and was thus able to mobilize. By the end of three weeks, Poland and Danzig had succumbed to the combined might of German and Russian armies and the terrors of the German blitzkrieg.

Soviet troops had entered Poland from the east and “rescued” part of the country, which was then partitioned and ceased to exist. While Germany was securing her new territories, her new ally was annexing the Baltic States of Latvia and Estonia prior to invading Finland on 30th November.

The Graf Spee

On the day that Britain and France declared war on Germany, two sister pocket-battleships, the Deutschland and the Graf Spee were poised ready to disrupt and destroy Allied merchant shipping in the Atlantic.

Over the following months, the Graf Spee caused sufficient havoc in the South Atlantic to merit pursuit by three British Naval Raider Hunting Groups. She was finally intercepted off the estuary of the River Plate on 13th December by the Exeter, Achilles and Ajax and was forced into the Uruguayan harbour of Montevideo. Captain Langsdorff, aware of the build-up of British reinforcements, was forced to scuttle the battleship on the Fuhrer’s orders.

Public domain image

Away From War

Despite the imminence of global war in 1939, Pan American Airways became the first airline to begin regular flights between the United States and Europe.

The Irish author James Joyce finally published Finnegan's Wake. In it, he created his own language with reference to many different sources, which makes it difficult to understand. Basically, it is a soliloquy recounting the dreams and nightmares of the narrator.

John Steinbeck published his magnificent novel of the plight of poor sharecroppers, The Grapes of Wrath, while cinemagoers flocked to David O Selznick's Gone with the Wind. The highlight of Hollywood’s most prolific year.

Other famous 1939 movies include, John Ford’s Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Four Feathers, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Gunga Din, and of Mice and Men. Many people consider 1939 the peak of the American movie industry and golden age Hollywood.

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