Who Started World War II?

[Raptor1]

The August 29th proposal couldn't have been a genuine attempt to secure peace. It was presented to the British, rather than the Polish, and was supposed to have somehow made its way from Germany to Britain to Poland and brought back a Polish negotiator within a very limited time frame, making it more of an ultimatum than an actual attempt to negotiate. It was presented much too late to stop the invasion in any case. The secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had practically completely sealed Poland's fate, and the German army received its orders for the invasion over a week beforehand. The invasion was supposed to have started on August 26th before being delayed by the signing of the Polish-British defense treaty, since Hitler wanted more time to attempt to ward off French and British involvement in the conflict. Some units of the German army had actually started moving towards their objectives on the 25th before they were recalled (in fact, some of them weren't).

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Fahnenbohn

In his memories, the translator who assisted Hitler in his conversations with strangers wrote :

"By reading [the 16 proposals], I didn’t believe my eyes [...]. Such proposals were inspired by a spirit that had little common with the National Socialist methods and ideas from Hitler during countless previous interviews. This was really a project which bore the mark of the League of the Nations." (Paul Schmidt, Sur la scène internationale. Ma figuration après de Hitler. 1933-1945 (éd. Plon, 1950), pp. 217-8.)

That's a curious way to put it since Germany had withdrawn from the League of Nations years beforehand. In any case, he's right, it does have little in common with Hitler's ideas because it wasn't supposed to have been accepted.

Originally Posted by Fahnenbohn

- The day of 30 August passed without a Polish plenipotentiary came. Anxious however to leave one last chance to his neighbor, Hitler delays again the attack on Poland (24 additional hours).

Is this the attitude of a man who is wanting a war ?

- On August 30, around midnight, J. von Ribbentrop received the British ambassador. This one informed him that "The British Government was not able to recommend to the Polish Government to accept this procedure". So, it was clear that Britain would not safeguard peace.

--> Until the end, Hitler was in favor of direct negotiations between powers, including Poland ! But the polish plenipotentiary never came ...

- On September 1, the German armies penetrated in Poland. However, world peace was not dead. A simple local conflict had begun, as there had been so many in 50 years, and nothing required it to escalate into global conflict.

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This is exactly the attitude of a man who wants to legitimize his war. If he had wanted peace, he'd not have signed an agreement with the Soviet Union to divide Poland or given the order to launch the invasion ahead of time and used actual diplomacy rather than hasty ultimatums to achieve his goals. As for it being a 'simple local conflict', I'm sure the Polish would have seen themselves as a worthy sacrifice in the name of global peace.