Neville Chamberlain
British prime minister

This country is at war with Germany. You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that my long struggle to win peace has failed.

On September 1, 1939, at 4:45 a.m., fifty-eight German army divisions invaded Poland all across the 1,250-mile frontier. Exactly one week earlier, on August 25, Britain had signed a mutual assistance treaty with Poland, warning Nazi leader Adolf Hitler that such an invasion would warrant British intervention. Despite the agreement, Hitler expected appeasement from British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain--the same British leader who had given Czechoslovakia away to German conquest in 1938 with his signing of the Munich Pact. However, Chamberlain would not allow Hitler's new desecration of Europe's borders to stand, and on September 1 he demanded that Germany withdraw from Poland. The next day, he presented German forces an ultimatum: withdraw by 11:00 a.m. on September 3 or face war with Great Britain. On September 3, a few minutes after the expiration of the ultimatum, Chamberlain appeared on national radio to solemnly announce that Britain was at war with Germany. Australian and New Zealand immediately followed suit. Later that afternoon, a similar French ultimatum expired, and at 5:00 p.m. France declared war against Germany. The European phase of World War II had begun