ABSTRACT
Hitler’s invasion of Poland was to launch a war which ultimately was to far exceed in scale the war of 1914–1918. But for over seven months little happened – the so-called Phoney War. The Germans quickly conquered Poland, while the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) went to France in accordance with pre-arranged plans to form part of the front with the much larger French army. The Phoney War ended when Germany invaded Denmark and Norway in April 1940. Allied attempts to resist in Norway were unsuccessful, although the German navy was seriously mauled, with ten destroyers sunk. The failure in Norway was the immediate cause of the fall of Chamberlain and his replacement by Churchill and a fully representative Coalition government, in itself one of the major events of the war (see Chapter 8; and box, ‘Winston Churchill’).
