Conflict1 September – 6 October 1939

German Invasion of Poland

Germany invaded Poland, and Britain and France declared war on Germany, beginning the Second World War. The Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east.

The German battleship Schleswig-Holstein shelling the Polish garrison at Westerplatte, Danzig, 1 September 1939
Unknown author · Public domain · Source

After annexing Austria (1938) and dismembering Czechoslovakia (1939), Hitler demanded Danzig and the Polish Corridor. In August 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact whose secret protocol divided Eastern Europe between them.

On 1 September German armies, led by tanks and aircraft, poured into Poland; on 3 September Britain and France declared war. Soviet forces entered from the east on 17 September and Warsaw surrendered on 27 September. Poland was partitioned and occupied by the two powers.

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States and rulers at the time: Germany · invader
Soviet Union · invader — Leader Joseph Stalin
Poland · invaded
Great Britain · intervened
France · intervened
Places: Warsaw

People

Adolf Hitler1889 – 1945
leader · Nazi leader and Führer of Germany (1934–1945) who started the Second World War and perpetrated the Holocaust; he killed himself as Berlin fell
Joseph Stalin1878 – 1953
related figure · General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party who ruled the USSR from the late 1920s until his death, led the war against Germany and drew Eastern Europe into the Soviet bloc

Before and after

Later: 1940 Fall of France

Themes that include this event

The Great Depression and Totalitarianism1919 – 1939
From the Washington Conference to the invasion of Poland — two decades in which the age of international cooperation collapsed in the Depression, fascism, Nazism and Stalinism rose, and the world slid into war again
World War II1939 – 1945
From the invasion of Poland to the surrender of Japan — the largest war in human history, across Europe, Asia and the Pacific