German Invasion of Poland

Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, transformed an already alarming international crisis into war between Germany and Britain and France. The book presents the invasion briefly, chiefly through its place in the troubled political and personal world facing Harry S. Truman as the 1940 election approached.

The invasion and the widening crisis

In late August 1939, Hitler and the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact. On September 1, Hitler invaded Poland; Britain and France then declared war on Germany. The sequence marks a sudden escalation in the account: diplomatic alignment gave way to invasion, and the European conflict widened into war.

The book does not detail the campaign in Poland. Instead, it situates the invasion among the accumulating reasons Truman regarded the state of the world as terrible. The New Deal appeared politically weakened, Franklin D. Roosevelt was making little headway with Congress, and the Great Depression persisted, with eight million people still unemployed. International danger and domestic strain occupy the same frame, without being treated as the same problem.

Truman’s response

As the crisis unfolded, Truman was privately in despair over Roosevelt, the collapse of Tom Pendergast’s political organization, and the condition of the world. His daughter, Margaret Truman Daniel, had never known him to be in such low spirits. The invasion is one element in this convergence of personal and political anxieties, rather than an episode recounted through military action or direct involvement by Truman.

Hoping for a diversion, Truman attended the Washington premiere of Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The film’s portrayal of senators as crooks and fools discouraged him further. Its corrupt machine boss, who resembled Pendergast and ruled a city called Jackson, gave the film an especially pointed connection to Truman’s own political experience.

Significance in the narrative

The invasion’s narrative force lies in its arrival at a moment when Truman’s political loyalties, financial worries, and confidence in public life were already under pressure. The passage links the European outbreak of war with his private despondency, while keeping the event’s larger military history outside its focus. Poland’s invasion and the ensuing declarations of war thus register as a stark sign of the worsening world whose consequences Truman would soon have to confront as a national leader.