World War Two · Season 9 · Episode 27

How to Launch the Apocalypse - Q3 1939

Saturday, August 8 · 27 min

The moment when the collapse of democracy, diplomacy, and collective security culminated in an attack that would engulf the world. In July and August 1939, Adolf Hitler turned the destruction of German democracy into the instrument for launching a European war. While Nazi Germany armed Danzig, mobilized reservists, prepared its U-boats, introduced civilian rationing, and manufactured stories of Polish aggression, Britain, France, Poland, the United States, and the Soviet Union made a final series of increasingly desperate attempts to prevent catastrophe.