World War 2
The Phoney War
The speed of the German operations in Poland had, in part, been prompted by Hitler's fear that the French might launch an offensive in the West. In the event, the French and their British allies obliged him by remaining wholly inert.
The 150’000 troops of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) which had crossed to France, dug in on The Belgium boarder but saw no action. Visiting the front line, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain asked querulously, ‘The Germans don’t want to attack, do they?’ The greater part of the French Army, some 43 divisions, sat passively in or behind the Miginot Line, the fortress system on its eastern frontier. In September they made a feeble demonstration in the Saar, advanced a few miles, occupied a few abandoned villages and then withdrew.
One of the huge guns mounted in the Maginot Line, the embodiment in steel and concrete of the trench systems of World War 1. Named after the French war minister who initiated it, the Maginot Line was meant to deter aggression but spoke volumes for the defensive mentality of the French Army. The Line's fatal weakness was that it could be outflanked through neutral Belgium.
There was an air of unreality about the war. The Royal Air Force was dropping propaganda leaflets rather than bombs on Germany. The bitter winter weather of 1939-40 was a greater threat to aircrew than the enemy’s air defences. In Britain the ‘Phoney War’, as it came to be known, seemed to be s conflict run by civil servants rather than soldiers. The sole beneficiary was Adolf Hitler. Untroubled by the blockage on which the Allies pinned their Hopes, he re-grouped after the victory in Poland and planned his spring offensive, which was to begin with the invasion of Norway and Denmark.