WW2 question [army on europe?

Mark F

The Czech's basically stood aside while the German's swallowed their country without a fight. A lot of politics behind that requiring more space than we have here.

Poland had a good sized and reasonably well equipped army and air force that put up a good fight but were overwhelmed and had the additional problem of fighting a war on two fronts. Remember the Soviets attacked from the east while the German's attacked from the west.

The German attack on Poland is what caused France and Britain to declare war on Germany in September 1939. The French could have mobilized quickly and marched all the way to Berlin virtually unopposed in late 1939 but decided to sit on their arses. Lot of good that did them.

smiej

There was a secret plan of Polish marshal Pilsudski to start a prevention war against Germany after Hitler came to power. In the early 1933 Polish army together with French were able to defeat easy Germans who were weak then. French government asked by Pilsudski just said "NO". This episode is not widely known, probably only Polish historics know about it.

"and why did only the british, french and belgians fight?
am i wrong?"

Yes you are wrong.

Small countries like Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium were just a piece of cake for Germans.
Czechoslovaks, who were the first, despite of the fact that they had very good military industry and weapons (yes they had it, like for example LT38 tanks) were totally shocked that their western â€œalliesâ€ just sold their country. That country was occupied by many years so people just got used to foreign rulers. Probably they thought that Germans would have to give back their land under the pressure of other countries. Anyway their army were much weaker than German's and they knew about it.
Hungary with their fascist government in that phase of the war were pro-German.
France considered before the war the biggest army of the world with the amount of weapons and technologies comparable to Germany and sometimes even better, defend just few days longer than Poland thats army had MUCH lower budget than French and which was attacked by two enemies (in september the 17th USSR attacked Poland from the east).
Poland didn't use horse cavalry in the 1939. It was a Nazi propaganda myth created to make a fool of Polish army in the eyes of their western allies. They used mobile horse mounted infantry. In the Polish campaign Germans used many similar horse mounted units as well. But first they sent their armoured warfare. As a last resort such infantry could fight like typical cavalry (charges) but usually they fought like infantry (anti-tank guns, grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, light cannons etc.). However it was much more mobile than ordinary infantry. In fact most of those fast, horse charges made by Poles against Germans (they sometimes were forced to make such charges) were finished with a crushing defeat of surprised and disoriented German infantry. But it was just a drop in the whole campaign. The problem was that the percentage of motorised infantry in German army was MUCH higher than in Polish army. Poles had even their own modern weapons comparable to German like7TP tanks, PZL - Los bombers, grenade launchers wz.36, anti tank riffles wz.35 etc. They used also Swedish Bofors 40 mm cannons (still in use in many countries!), American Browning rifles, and other British and French weapons. But they had MUCH less weapons than German army. In fact Polish army had more experiences in mobile battles than French. In 1920 Polish army routed whole Soviet army near Warsaw and that was quite fast and mobile war. But it was nothing in comparison to German Blitzkrieg strategy. French thought that another war would be similar to WWI - positional war, sitting in tranches by many months and shooting to the enemies in opposite tranches. That was why they built the Maginot line, a kind of modern tranche which was useless against Blitzkrieg tactic.
The interesting thing is that today in many countries kids at their history lessons are taught that it was Poland that gave up the easiest. They are sometimes showed as cowards or something. Comparing their possibilities of defence with other countries and taking into consideration the fact that they were attacked from the west, north and south (Germany) and from the east (USSR) it's easy to notice that Poles defended themselves in very efficient way.
There were for example such situations like the battle of Wizna where 720 of Polish soldiers in few bunkers stopped for few days 42 thousands of Germans with 320 tanks!
Another forgotten country that was difficult to defeat for Germans was Greece.

Steve f

Dude you really need to study history better and not rely on TV
For a starter the poles fought tooth and nail they even sent cavalry (yes men on horses) into the battle. The other countries you mentioned did have defence forces but nowhere near the strength and technology that the germans had.

Spain stayed neutral because they had just fought a civil war

Emperor

Look here for the history of WW2 :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II

Doug

poland czech and hungry didnt attack the Germans because they did not want a war with Germany the French and British allowed Germany to break the treaty of ww1 (treaty of Verallies i believe not sure) to avoid another world confrontation with Germany
Also with the Blitzkrige (spelled wrong) (rolling thunder) many of these countries didnt have a chance also German technology at the time was pretty advanced

Spain has always in every world conflict stayed neutral

el_hijo_del_duce

Hungry was reluctantly on the German side during WW2

James B

The German military used blitzkrieg tactics to quickly wipe out the countries of central europe, they attacked so quickly and with such a great force that there was little countries like poland could do. These countries were also attacked by Russia who at the time was allied with Germany. The French too were defeated with this tactic with the only thing really saving the UK being that is was an island. As far as Spain's neutrality goes Spain had just been through a civil war, with a fascist government in place similar to those in Germany and Italy. Portugal also was under an authoritative regime at the time. They were also largely separated from the rest of Europe geographically and had little to gain from entering the war.

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