On This Day: Britain declares war on Germany to begin World War II

SEPTEMBER 3, 1939: Britain declared war on Germany to begin World War II and trigger six years of fighting that would cost up to 50million lives across the globe.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, having previously tried to appease the Nazis, made the grave announcement two days after Germany invaded Poland.

He addressed the nation by radio at 11.15am, saying: ‘This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin, handed the German government the final note, stating that unless we heard from them, by 11 o’clock, that they were prepared at once, to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.

‘I have to tell you now, that no such undertaking has been received, and as a consequence, this country is now at war with Germany.’

A British Pathe newsreel, marking the momentous statement, showed Britons at work preparing defences and insisted that they were ready to face the horror of ‘tackling the same task twice in 25 years’.

France, which had also warned that future attacks would meet resistance after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in March, followed suit.

And Britain’s Commonwealth partners Australia and New Zealand also declared war that day, followed by South Africa on September 6 and Canada on the tenth.

Yet the Allies failed to provide any meaningful support to the Poles, who had been invaded by 1.5million German soldiers under the false pretext of self-defence

The numerically and technically superior Wehrmacht forces deployed a ‘Blitzkrieg’ – lighting war – strategy and defeated Poland in just three weeks.

Germany, which had agreed to share Polish territory with the Soviet Union in its cynical Non-Aggression Pact, would prove a particularly savage occupier.

They caused the deaths of 5.6million Poles, including 3million – or 90% - of the country’s Jews during the Holocaust.

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Christian Poles, who the Nazis also considered racially inferior, were also treated appallingly, with many dying in the same camps as their Jewish compatriots.

In total, 20% of Poland’s population was wiped out during WWII - representing the biggest proportional loss inflicted on any single country.

But, despite the German ferocity and their astonishing attacking success, neither Britain nor France was willing to take the fight to the Nazis.

During this ‘Phoney War’ period, the RAF dropped leaflets rather than bombs on Nazi territories and French and German troops rarely fired on one another.

This ‘Sitzkrieg’ – as then backbench MP Winston Churchill called it – ended abruptly when Germany invaded France and the low countries on May 10, 1940.

With French and British forces being almost pushed back to the sea, France signed a humiliating armistice with Germany just six weeks after being attacked.

Britain, with Churchill taking over as PM after Chamberlain’s resignation, stood alone in Europe for exactly a year until Germany rescinded her peace deal with the Soviet Union and invaded the communist state on June 22, 1941.

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Almost six months later, on December 8, 1941, the US ended its neutrality and declared war on both Germany and Japan after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

With Italy also on the side of the Nazis, the war would continue to go the way of the fascist Axis Powers for some months amid continued Allied setbacks.

The tide began to turn on November 11 1942, when the British routed the Germans on land for the first time in the war at the Battle of El Alamein in North Africa.

At the same time, the US began advancing in the Pacific against the brutal Japanese forces, who killed millions of Asian civilians and thousands of Allied prisoners of war.

In Europe, the major turning point was the Nazi defeat by the Soviet Union at the Battle of Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, triggering the Red Army’s march to Berlin.

Four months later, the Western Allies landed on Italian soil and on June 6, 1944 – D-Day – they launched the Invasion of Normandy in the largest ever amphibious assault.

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Britain, having been invigorated by a new resolve and America’s massive production of arms, played a big role in the liberation of France and other occupied countries.

But it was Soviet troops who arrived in Berlin first and led Adolf Hitler to take his own life before his commanders surrendered unconditionally on May 8, 1945.

And American nuclear bombs, dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 respectively, forced Japan to capitulate on August 15, finally ending the war.