In this sense, the events in 1939 are known to have been an untrue story. More precisely, "Hitler desired war and any further attempts to negotiate peace were doomed to failure. The Nazis then staged a fake attack on a German radio outpost along the German-Polish border and used that as an excuse for invasion" (Quotes and sayings, n.d.) Therefore, it can be said that the invasion of Poland was indeed the event which triggered the start of the war. Hours after the invasion, the British and the French ultimatum was presented to the German Ambassador in the respective countries. They ultimatum was not respected, nor agreed upon by the German side which was determined to go to war against the Western side.
Poland represented only one step in Hitler's way to supremacy in Europe and the regaining of status by the German Republic. His stated statement was present in Mein Kampf where he argued that "Germany will either be a world power or there will be no Germany" (Kershaw, 2001) Therefore he followed his aim of attaining this goal. One of the arguments which consider that in fact the emergence of the world war was largely due to the conciliatory attitude of the European countries comes from Robert Kagan who views the weakness of the European countries as being the main element which influenced the way in which the events would evolve (Kagan, 2003). However, it is rather hard to demonstrate the fact that the continuous weak policy the world hand towards the Nazi regime enabled it to create such a massive phenomenon.
Another reason which is often discussed in relation to the actual issues arising from the invasion of Poland represents the precise reason for which Europe did not address the issue of the resurrection of Germany; in the end it was too late to successfully fight an entire army. More precisely, "although Hitler was considered something of an extremist, he was not yet the megalomaniac the world now knows him to be. Although much of what was to follow was mentioned in Mein Kampf, few outside Germany had bothered to read this long and dull work. Paradoxically, Hitler was also considered a positive development by many. His dynamic leadership appeared to bring badly needed order and stability to Germany" (Havers, 2000). However, there was little vigilance on the political scene at the time. Nobody actually believed in Hitler's capacity to subdue an entire people and to command it against Europe.
Despite the fact that the invasion of Poland is an interpretable aspect of the Second World War, taking into account the events prior to 1 September 1938, it can be said that the European states, and Britain and France in particular became well aware of the fact that the intentions of Hitler concerning the eventual war were serious. In the years preceding 1939, Hitler had taken into consideration and eventually succeeded in annexing Austria as part of the Anschluss process which implied, more or less, to integration of Austria in the German state (Nye, 2005). Given the fact that Germany used to a limited extent means that could not have been politically attacked by the international scene, there was little reaction to Hitler's plan. However, by the time Chamberlain had interacted with Hitler on the issue of the Danzig province it was beginning to be clearer that the intention of the German Fuhrer was to dominate the entire Europe (Kissinger, 1995).
From the point-of-view of the historical context before the invasion of Poland therefore, it can be stated that the European countries were well aware of the fact that should the interests of the Fuhrer include Poland, war would emerge. Therefore, Poland represented the final limit Europeans were willing to get to. A proof of this fact...
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