1939 War Myths France England Couldn’t Help Jodl

Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal Volume 15, by International Military Tribunal. 2010

None Other Than Top Nazi Alfred Jodl Testifies About the Reality and Crucial Significance of the French and British Betrayal of 1939 Poland

This volume consists largely of interviews of the Nuremberg defendants. In one of these, Dr. Exner asked Alfred Jodl the following question: “Did you already know during the Polish campaign what the Fuhrer’s intentions were concerning the West?” (p. 380).

Alfred Jodl replied: “The Fuehrer himself had his doubts during the Polish campaign. He too could find no plausible explanation for the complete inactivity of the French and English forces in France, who only staged a kind of sham war with the help of their war communiqués. In reality not a single shot was fired at the front. But, by the end of September, if I remember rightly, the Fuehrer did realize that once England enters a war she fights it out to the bitter end.” (p. 380).

Obviously, the Germans as well as the Poles had expected military action from the French and British. To the surprise of both the Germans and Poles, and to the dismay of the latter, this did not materialize. (Claims about French and British being unprepared to offer Poland military assistance beg the question about their making treaty-bound assurances to Poland that they knowingly couldn’t fulfill. They also beg the question as to German expectations of a French and British attack. Had the French and British been physically incapable of delivering any kind of militarily meaningful attack on the Third Reich, surely German intelligence would’ve known about it, and neither Hitler nor Jodl would have been surprised by the fact that it did not happen.)