ABSTRACT
Although the Second World War is usually said to have begun on 3 September 1939, following upon Germany's invasion of Poland two days earlier, it fell short of being a 'world' war for some two years. Indeed, for almost a year it became for the British a 'phoney' war and for their German counterparts a 'Sitzkrieg'. The first British bombs on Berlin fell on 25 August 1940, for instance. Initially, it was not even a war in which a majority of European states was embroiled. Italian support for Germany was not immediately forthcoming. Literally days before the Polish invasion, Hitler had secured a non-aggression pact with Russia. Some countries, Sweden and Spain among them, never entered the war at all. It began as a world war only in so far as British colonies and dominions described a worldwide distribution and in so far as these interests became an immediate target for surface and submarine raiders.
