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Sitzkrieg

On August 23, 1939 Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov signed nonaggression and trade agreements that partitioned Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union. The outbreak of war in Europe, with the German Blitzkrieg [lightning war] invasion of Poland on 01 September 1939, led to Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany on September 3, 1939. Canada soon followed on September 10, 1939, sending units of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division to Britain that December. The German Blitzkrieg into Poland was, however, soon followed by the Sitzkrieg "phony war" during the winter of 1939-1940.

The Sitzkrieg ["sitting war" -- the opposite of the Blitzkrieg] or in French drôle de guerre was a waiting period of neither war nor peace. The German Wehrmacht had concentrated the bulk of its forces in Poland, and the western border at the Rhine was completely unprotected throughout September 1939. The Western Allies did not seize this opportunity to attack Germany during a moment of strategic weakness. The Germans behind the West Wall opposite the Maginot Line were inactive, doing their best not to provoke the French. During the eight months of the Sitzkrieg Germany rapidly rearmed, adding a million new soldiers, vastly increasing its ammunition stockpile, and trippling the number of medium and heavy tanks.

The German generals feared a new world war, knowing it could not be won, and everything within their limited powers to discourage Hitler from attacking the West. By late November 1939, the invasion of the Low Countries had been postponed, and the Luftwaffe tested Allied defences by sending small formations of aircraft on recconnaissance missions. The British responded by scrambling flights from squadrons in France. As the Sitzkrieg gained momentum, Germany announced a blockade of Britain carried out primarily by German U-boats.

Britsh and French strategic aims grew out of wish to strike at Germany through the periphery of Europe rather than in a frontal assault against Germany proper. This caused some fantastic plans to be forwarded in the period of the “Phoney War.” One dealt with bombing the Russian oil fields from the Middle East, another was action in the Balkans, while yet another espoused the mining of the Rhine River by air to close the waterway to industrial traffic.

As early as 1940, an aide of Canaris's leaked the plans of Hitler's invasion of the Lowlands and France to the Dutch, who passed it to the English, who dismissed it as a ruse until they realized, too late, that it was authentic. Thereafter, Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, head of British intelligence, remained in shadowy contact with Canaris. But Menzies' ability to negotiate was crippled by the British Foreign Office influenced by the passionate anti-Germanism of Robert Vansittart, for many years the permanent under secretary and later chief diplomatic adviser.