World War II: The beginning of a horrific chapter in history

It was 1 September 1939 and the time was 4:45 am. The bloodiest and most brutal chapter in human history began across the world. The drums of war began to sound everywhere.

In northern Germany, it was a beautiful day toward the end of summer. The temperature was around 27°C, and a light breeze was blowing from the northwest. In the early hours of that morning, German forces began attacking the Polish military at Westerplatte, near the port of Danzig. On Hitler’s orders, Germany violated international law and launched a criminal and unprecedented war of such immense scale that it soon became known throughout the world, in the international media and among the common people, as “World War II.”

Under a false pretext, the German war and training vessel Schleswig-Holstein departed on 24 August 1939, from the port on the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea. Its purpose was ostensibly to make a friendly visit to the Free City of Danzig in Poland.

But behind this sea voyage lay an entirely different and secret plan. During the night between 24 and 25 August, the ship secretly took 225 naval personnel from East Prussia aboard while at sea. The ship’s commander, Gustav Kleikamp, had already been summoned to Berlin on 16 August to the office of the German Navy’s High Command, where he was briefed about the plans for an attack on Poland.

Interestingly, after World War I, the predominantly German city of Danzig was declared a Free City under the protection of the League of Nations. The city was subsequently surrounded by Polish territory. For years, this political status had been a source of irritation for Hitler’s National Socialists. Through propaganda directed by Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s chief associate and devoted follower, the demand to “return Danzig to the German Reich” was forcefully promoted.

But the demand to liberate Danzig was, in reality, merely a pretext for an attack on Poland. Before the war began, on 23 May 1939, Adolf Hitler had made it clear to senior military officers at Obersalzberg that the issue was not the occupation of Danzig; rather, the objective was a more extensive Germany in the east, providing the living space needed for the German people.

According to the German Navy’s secret plan, the battleship Schleswig-Holstein arrived at the port of Danzig on the morning of 25 August 1939. No one was allowed to disembark from the ship, not even the naval personnel it had secretly taken aboard. On the night of September 1, the sailors were told, “Everyone out. We have been assigned to liberate Danzig.”

At 4:45 am, the attack began on Westerplatte, a peninsula situated in front of Danzig. Approximately 218 Polish soldiers were stationed there, guarding a fortified ammunition depot. The shells fired from the Schleswig-Holstein are still widely regarded as the opening shots of World War II.

On 1 September 1939, in a speech delivered at the Reichstag in Berlin, Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler presented his justification for the invasion of Poland. That day, the German people were instructed to gather around their radio sets to listen to the speech of the Führer, their leader, Hitler. At around 10 am, Adolf Hitler was taken to the Reichstag in Berlin. There, he made a number of unsolicited and unnecessary statements that attempted to completely distort the actual events and convince the German people that Germany was supposedly fighting a just and defensive war.

He said that day, “I do not want to wage war against women and children. I have ordered my air force to restrict itself exclusively to military targets during the attacks. But if the enemy believes that this gives them the freedom to wage war using the same methods, they will receive such a response that it will leave them stunned! Tonight, Poland fired upon our own territory for the first time, even using regular troops. We have been returning fire since 5:45 this morning!”

Although Adolf Hitler’s belligerent and extreme nationalist speech astonished many older Germans, for some unknown reason it had an impact on the younger generation.

Following these events, Britain and France issued Germany an ultimatum to withdraw its forces in order to protect Poland. When the ultimatum expired, they declared war on Germany on September 3, an act that eventually turned the conflict into a world war. In Asia, however, the conflict had begun even earlier, when Japan invaded China in 1937.
Speaking to NDR (North German Broadcasting), Hamburg resident Ralph Brauer, who was born in 1927, recalled his feelings at the time: “When my mother told me in the summer of 1939 that there would probably be a war, I was happy. There was no one to tell me that it would result in a terrible catastrophe.”

Werner Mork, an employee at a radio shop, said that at the beginning of World War I there had been intense enthusiasm for war among some Germans, but this time, during World War II, there was no comparable widespread excitement about the war among the older generation. Recalling that day, he said: “After Hitler’s speech ended, everyone stood there in silence. There was a kind of unsettling silence all around.”
Between 1939 and 1945, during World War II, the whole of Europe was reduced to ruins. In 1945, nuclear weapons were used deliberately for the first time in history, when atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Approximately 110 million men and women around the world took up arms during the war. Between 60 and 75 million people died as a result of conventional warfare on land, at sea, and in the air; as victims of war crimes and genocides; and through displacement. A large proportion of those killed were ordinary civilians.

The Soviet union suffered the highest number of deaths, with approximately 25 million people killed. Around 15 million people were killed in China as a result of the Sino-Japanese War, while approximately 7 million were killed in Germany and 6 million in Poland.

Historical assessments of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, concluded after World War I, remain controversial to this day. The Treaty of Versailles brought World War I to an end. It placed sole responsibility for the war on Germany and required the country to pay enormous reparations, surrender significant territories, and maintain only a small military. The Treaty of Versailles was not solely responsible for World War II. However, it is widely regarded as an important contributing factor. The treaty did not make World War II inevitable.

Following World War I, the rise of National Socialism, or Nazism, under Adolf Hitler was facilitated by Germany’s severe economic crisis, resentment and humiliation over the Treaty of Versailles, and the weakness of the Weimar Republic. The principal causes of World War II were the rise of National Socialism and Adolf Hitler’s deliberately aggressive policies. In 1933, Hitler came to power as Chancellor of Germany and established an extreme fascist and dictatorial state.

The war brought an end to many of Europe’s traditional ways of life. Particularly in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, it took decades for people to return to normal life and for living standards to improve significantly following the Nazi occupation.

After World War II, history witnessed an unprecedented ethnic upheaval. In international politics, the rivalry between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, began to play a dominant role. Proxy wars in various parts of the so-called “Third World” also became part of this rivalry. The politics of these superpowers remains visible across the world to this day.

Every year, 1 September is observed in Germany as “Anti-War Day.”

* Sharaf Ahmed is Prothom Alo's correspondent in Germany. He was be reached at [email protected]

* This article appeared in Prothom Alo Online and has been translated into English by Ayesha Kabir for Prothom Alo English Online