World War II European Theater

At 4:30 on the morning of September 1, 1939, Hitler's Luftwaffe (air force) started the bombing of airfields all across Poland. Simultaneously, a German battleship "visiting" the Polish port of Danzig opened fire on Polish fortifications, and the Wehrmacht (army) surged across the Polish frontier. The rapid combined air, sea, and land assault was the essence of blitzkrieg (lightning war), and the superbly trained and equipped German forces swept aside the valiant but outgunned and outnumbered Polish forces. On September 27, Warsaw fell to the invaders; the next day, the town of Modlin surrendered. In a single action, 164,000 Polish soldiers became prisoners of war. By early October, the last organized Polish force at Kock had been crushed. It mattered not at all that two days after the invasion, both France and Britain honored their treaty obligations to Poland by declaring war on Germany.

So it began again, a war sparked by nationality conflicts in east-central Europe and provoked, in part, by a German stab at continental hegemony that expanded into a global conflict touching every continent. It was a more total war than even World War I had been, since the belligerent powers' civilians not only contributed to their war efforts but also became targets for their enemies.