Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declares war on Germany

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announces Britain's declaration of war on Germany, September 3, 1939.After German troops occupied Poland On September 1, 1939.

"I am speaking to you from the cabinet room of 10 Downing St. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.
You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more, or anything different, that I could have done, and that would have been more successful. Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland. But Hitler would not have it; he had evidently made up his mind to attack Poland whatever happened. And although he now says he put forward reasonable proposals which were rejected by the Poles, that is not a true statement. The proposals were never shown to the Poles, nor to us. And though they were announced in the German broadcast on Thursday night, Hitler did not wait to hear comments on them but ordered his troops to cross the Polish frontier the next morning.

His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force, and we and France are today in fulfillment of our obligations going to the aid of Poland who is so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack upon her people. We have a clear conscience, we have done all that any country could do to establish peace, but a situation in which no word given by Germany's ruler could be trusted, and no people or country could feel itself safe, had become intolerable. And now that we have resolved to finish it, I know that you will all play your parts with calmness and courage."

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[SyberiaDreams]

@TheMissBettyBoop99 In the end ... Poland, for whose liberty the West had gone to war, ended up with none at all. On the contrary, she was handed over to Stalin, along with the whole of Eastern Europe, including a part of Germany. Even so, there are some people in the West who continue to believe that the West won the Second World War.

[GetOffMyNuts88]

@olegaita1 Oh really, so the mass murder inb North Africa is ok because they are of colored decent? hmmmmmmm that's Bullshit. The Germans starved in the Streets of their own country for 15 years plus. Then a man by the Name of Hitler promised to end all of that by creating jobs and declaring people whom were both money hungry and bad for the economy enemy's of the state. The problem is the world did not want these same people in their country. These people would port and be sent to the next port

[lundie911]

are people going to wake up the british may as well have bombed they`re own people and the germans bombed they`re own because the money funded to both sides came from the same people then they profited from the rebuilding of both country`s and created a zionist state of isreall by signing the balfor decleration this is the only reason britain won if they hadnt signed it we wouldnt have had help to win

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[MistrEgg]

ugh walls of text all over the place. Just listen and shut the fuck up.

[FireGammingFtw]

New Zealand declared war on Germany first.

[feurzauber]

The war broke out because Nazi and Communist were allied !!!!

[Turnback]

@SyberiaDreams That would be a fair statement if the basic premise of the entire conflict was to liberate Poland.

[TalonMercenary]

It's scary to think how much society, technology and the balance of world power changed so dramatically from 1939 - 45. It may be six years, but think of the difference between 1920 and 1926 - nothing much truly changed. War certainly does change a lot, sometimes for the better

[P1B1U1H1]

@JBC814 I'd have skipped the North Russia, using your idea, the Romanian corridor, to grab the Caucasus & the Ukraine. The answer to your seemingly wise suggestion & my perhaps less wise suggestion is that of Churchill, who said Hitler's genius dictated what the Germans did when they did it. It's awful tough to argue against a success like the rapid conquest of France.

[JBC814]

@P1B1U1H1 Hitler was a chicken without a head, running around Europe and Africa instead of directing all his efforts towards Russia as he stated in Mein Kampf. He should have taken the Romanian route to Russia, avoiding CZ and PO altogether. He didn't grab HU, RO, & BU until '41 - much too late in the game against the world's largest country - and he didn't make the oil fields his #1 priority. Cutting Russia's oil supply was the only way he could have won.

[P1B1U1H1]

@JBC814 Investments were likely based on profit potential; the Nazi economic miracle, an aggressive variant of US Keynesianism, looked quite nice in a gloomy world. The Rheinland Conquest 7mr36 was the first definite reason for concern. Antisemitism raised eyebrows, but was at that point simply words with some discriminatory laws; Krystallnacht occurred 9no38.

[P1B1U1H1]

@JBC814 Poles believed that part of Czechoslovakia to be stolen property, so Beck, who appears to have believed himself some sort of chum of Germany, used the opportunity to reclaim the land. Absurdity is no argument for conspiracy: Hitler knew what crushed Bonaparte; invading Russia was idiotic. Had France & the UK acted after the Rheinland, not only would the European WW2 have been prevented, so would the Cold War.