The German Question, Part One Hundred Thirty-Seven

"Hitler Rules Germany" Part Two/C
"Germany In World War Two" Part One/C
"War Comes To Europe" Part Three

So on September 3, 1939 Hitler had put Germany into another two-front war, but the British and French did not take advantage of this German predicament. The British sent troops to the Continent and the French sat in what they considered to be the relative safety of the Maginot Line.* The problem was, the French were still living in the World War One era, expecting another bloody war in the trenches and forts. Opposite the French positions, the Germans held the weakly defended "Siegfried Line" (actually called the "West Wall" by the Germans). It too had bunkers and barricades and such, although nowhere nearly as elaborate as the French Maginot Line. If only the Allies had tried a major attack; what might have happened???

While Poland was dying, the French and British forces essentially sat idly by in their fortifications along Germany's western border. There were no major Allied offensives to force the Germans to defend themselves, and some in the press, as a play on the term "Blitzkrieg;" that is, "lightning war,** called the rather relaxed affair the "Sitzkrieg," or "sitting war," while others termed it the "phony war." Whatever you want to call it, nothing was really done to help Poland.

In the meantime, German forces quickly penetrated Polish positions and the capital, Warsaw, was mercilessly bombed. While the Allies fiddled, the Soviet Union sent troops into eastern Poland in mid September to claim the territories they wanted from the disintegrating Polish nation. It was all part of the pact signed between Germany and the Soviet Union on August 23. By the end of September the Germans took Warsaw and Poland was defeated, although there were pockets of Polish resistance through the first week of October. Even Slovakia got in on the act, sending in troops to take a slice of Polish territory.

* The Maginot Line (French: "Ligne Maginot") was a series of fortifications constructed by the French during the 1930s along their border with Germany. For its time, it was really a marvel, with all sorts of bunkers, armor protected artillery positions, underground passages and storage areas, and even a special rail system to send men and supplies to various positions in the line. Most, if not all, of the major parts of the fortifications had electricity provided by buried cables.

** "Blitzkrieg" came to be a term applied to the German developed tactics of quick air strikes against enemy positions, command and control positions, rail lines and supply infrastructure, followed by fast thrusts by mobile units of tanks, motorized artillery, and motorized infantry to break through enemy positions to get into the rear areas of their enemy, bypassing strong points, which were left to be taken by the regular infantry moving up behind the faster moving advance units. The whole point was for forces to "strike like lightning," and to never let the enemy know what hit them.

WORD HISTORY:
Slaughter-This word goes back to Indo European "slak," which had the idea of "hit, strike." This gave Old Germanic "slahto/slahtor," which continued the "hit" meaning, but also the idea of "hitting" produced the additional meaning "kill," and indeed, "slaughter" is closely related to "slay." Old English had various forms of the word, including "sleaht," which meant "kill in combat," but these forms died out (no pun intended) or merged with Old Norse "slahtr" which was borrowed into English in the 1200s, with the meaning "killing of animals for food," but then also the "killing of people, especially in large numbers in battle" developed as a secondary meaning. The verb form developed from the noun in the first half of the 1500s. "Slaughter" has many relatives in the other Germanic languages: German has "schlachten," a verb form, but also "Schlachter" and "Schlächter," meaning "butcher," and "Schlächterei," meaning "butcher's shop," but also "butchery." German also derives its word for "battle" from the same word, which is "Schlacht," and for those studying German, it is feminine; thus, "die Schlacht." Low German Saxon has "Slachter," Dutch has "Slachting," Frisian "slachter," Icelandic has "slátrun," Swedish has "slakt," Norwegian has "slakting," and Danish has "slagtning;" all of these having to do with "slaughter, butchering."