largest tank battle in ww2 invasion of poland

The German demands caused a crisis throughout the summer of 1939. He had been determined to destroy Poland as an independent country. In fact, Hitler did not want Poland to agree to the demands: from the beginning The governments of Britain and France felt the same way. The proposed road would be German territory.Įven if the Polish government had been willing to surrender these lands, it believed that they were only excuses and that Germany would only demand more. In addition, Hitler wanted the right to build a road across the ' Polish Corridor,' the slice of Polish territory that separated the German province of East Prussia from the rest of Germany. But the people of the city were almost all German, and the local Nazis ran the city and followed Hitler's orders. Poland, which then had no other ports, had the right to use Danzig for its exports and imports, which made the city very important to the Polish economy.

Danzig (now the Polish city of Gdansk) had been made a 'free city' after World War I, which meant it was not part of Germany or Poland. Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler demanded that the city of Danzig, a port on the Baltic Sea, be returned to Germany.

Soon after Germany took over Czechoslovakia in March 1939 (see Chapter 1), it began to make demands on Poland.

Largest tank battle in ww2 invasion of poland