The Outbreak of the Second World War
IT was now evident that the signing and breaking of the Munich Agreement was simply the latest step in a well-laid plan of political manoeuvring. By supporting General Franco in the Spanish Civil War since 1936, Hitler had ensured Spain would at least remain neutral. By supporting Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, he had isolated Austria, and gained the support of a colonial power in North Africa capable of hindering Britain’s path to India and Singapore.
Neville Chamberlain’s position weakened further when Germany eased past the Allies into Denmark and Norway in the Spring of 1940. He resigned in Churchill’s favour on May 10th, the day that Germany invaded Belgium and Holland, and just weeks before the scrambled evacuation of Dunkirk.*
On June 10th, Italy officially threw in with Germany, and declared war on a defiant Greece the following October.* France had already surrendered on June 22nd. From Norway to the Pyrenees, Britain faced a Europe united behind Germany.*
* See The Evacuation of Dunkirk.
* See The Day of ‘No’.
* It was not quite all Europe that Britain faced in 1940: Switzerland, Spain and Ireland remained neutral, and so at this point did the USSR. The entry of the USSR into ‘the Great Patriotic War’ on June 22nd, 1941, was a turning point; it is doubtful that the British Empire could have held out on her own, even with the help of the USA, which abandoned neutrality only after Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, Honolulu, on December 7th, 1941.