Sitzkrieg - Part 1
Even though General Halder, the Chief of the Army General Staff was already making plans by 7th September, as to which units would be sent from Poland to the western front first, it appears that at the time Hitler had no real idea of what his next move was going to be. Although harping continuously on the necessity of not fighting on two fronts at once, which is the main reason he gave for having to deal with Stalin, the Sitzkrieg must have caught him off balance. He continued to emphasise to his generals his intention to strike through Belgium and Holland to France but, after setting a date, would postpone it usually using the weather as the excuse.
For public consumption, once Poland had been defeated, he started to talk peace again, as if he were a tape in a loop, endlessly repeating the same old lies and distortions as he had done after Austria, the Sudeten, Czechoslovakia, but no one was prepared to listen this time except the French. The malaise there was deep, so deep that the politicians were pulled along by public opinion which was against any war, especially one on French soil; the trauma of the losses of the First World War had eaten into the national psyche and now the people would prefer peace at almost any price. Chamberlain on the other hand gave Hitler short shrift on 12th October in the House when he said that German promises could not be relied upon, only acts would show whether Hitler really wanted peace. A cold blast of common sense from him after so many years of bleating to appease the schoolyard bully.
Unfortunately it did not translate into much action from the British who were simply caught out by logistics, and the pre-war thinking and planning of the military who had no idea of what the blitzkrieg was like and, effectively, continued to rely on the Navy as the country's shield. They did however have four divisions in France by 11th October but, failing a co-ordinated plan with France, they did no more than patrol the Maginot Line along the Belgian border. The sinking of the British liner, the Athenia, on the very day Britain declared war caused more alarm and despondency in Berlin than it did in London. The Germans consistently denied that they were responsible and it was only established after the war, from one of the very few surviving crew members of the U-boat that did actually torpedo it, what had happened. Hitler was directly involved in keeping the truth suppressed because he was afraid of the American reaction to the deaths of 28 American citizens among those drowned. He could see that America, as in the First War, was a threat but that, as also in that War, so long as its interests were not directly affected, it would stay out as long as it could.
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