p Preparations for an attack on Poland were in full swing in the meantime. To attack Poland, Germany had concentrated 57 divisions and 2 brigades (including 6 armoured and 8 molorised divisions), which had strength of over one 274 and a half million, more than 2,500 tanks and up to 2,000 combat aircraft.^^229^^

p At daybreak on the 1st of September, 1939, the German forces invaded Poland at three points. All the attempts of the British and French governments to come to agreement with Nazi Germany failed ignominiously. They had to face an extremely daunting task. They had themselves put England and France into an appallingly precarious predicament. The British and French governments could not count on a victory over Germany. Yet they presumed that to shirk their allied commitments to Poland would be still worse, as that would mean that Germany would swallow up Poland, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey, one by one, and, with the resources of all these countries at their disposal in addition to their own, the aggressors would turn against France and England. ^^23^^°

England and France had to declare a state of war with Germany. It was now a world war.