ABSTRACT
When, on September 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler started the campaign against Poland, it was clear to everybody with any political judgment that this attack would result in a world war. Shortly before the attack on Poland, General Georg Thomas composed a memorandum in which he used information and statistics available to him as Chief of the Military Economic Staff. In this memorandum he emphasized two points: that the war against Poland would bring about a world war; and that Germany would not be capable of winning such a war. If the French soldiers would fight as well as they had fought in World War I, the German attack would get bogged down despite German superiority in air and tank equipment. In the opinion of the German General Staff, the offensive would have taken a different course if the French had not decided to spare their air force so completely.
