Why didn't Britain and France go to war against Russia in 1939?

Answer 1

The pact between Hitler and Stalin to split Poland was made in secret. When the UK and France pledged to support Poland, they were doing it primarily (only?) with fighting against Germany in mind. Also, the USSR waited to invade their half of Poland until after Germany had conquered its half and thereby gotten into the war with France and the UK.

Also, some of the territory invaded by the USSR was actually Polish-occupied Ukraine, not Poland, and the military Dictatorship in charge of Poland pre-1939 had an unsavoury record of mistreatment toward the Ukrainians. I should add that it became worse once the oppressors from Poland were replaced by those sent from Moscow.

While the Soviet Union did violate Poland, England and France obviously did not want to declare war against BOTH Germany and Russia. As events in 1940 show, England and France had enough to deal with in Germany.

English and French couldn't even handle Germany, it would be silly to declear a war against U.S.S.R.

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The British pledge to Poland was militarily meaningless for geographical reasons, anyway.

Answer 2

There were several reasons. First, it should be noted that they did demand Germany withfraw and when she didn't they declared war, but you mean why didn't they contribute materially to Poland's defense. First of all, they weren't ready for war in September of 1939. They needed time to call up their reserves and get their men and equipment ready to fight. England in particular had only a small regular army. Secondly, the only way to get any troops into Poland would have been by way of the North Sea and the German navy and Air Force were strong enough to prevent that. Thirdly, most French and British generals thought the second war would be much like the first, that offensive manuevers would be almost impossible against well entrenched defenders. Thus they thought the Poles would be able to defend themselves better than they did, and that the Germans would wear themselves out attacking the Maginot line. The Germans quickly showed them that this was goping to be a whole different war with very fast maneuvers conducted by tanks. But the French and british had to learn that lesson the hard way.Michael Montagne

Britain did not 'go to war over' Poland but just declared war on Germany.

According to the Polish-British Common Defence Pact Britain signed with Poland on August 25th 1939 mutual military assistance was promised between the nations in the event either was attacked by another European country.

Britain provided no meaningful assistance to Poland so effectively did not honour the treaty and abandoned Poland to fight Germany alone. Shame Britain!

Answer 3

They weren't prepared for war at that time. The phony war period gave time for preparation. They were continuing the policy of appeasement. The declaration of war in 1939 was largely posturing and grandstanding. There were several hundred thousand German troops between them and Germany.

Answer 4

In short, since the defensive pact between Britain, France and Poland said nothing about the Soviet Union, the British and French refused to declare war against them. Read below for more context.

Prior to the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Poland, Britain and France made a defensive pact against the Germans, stating that if one of them was attacked, the other two would declare war against Germany. It is often stated that Britain and France responded to Germany's annexation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 (a violation of the Munich agreement) by "guaranteeing the integrity of the Polish state". This is an incomplete explanation, as the agreement was for all three states to declare war against Germany (and it only pertained to Germany) if one of those three were attacked by Germany.

Meanwhile, there was a political battle going on between Britain/France and Germany to get Soviet support in an eventual military conflict. Germany won this battle with a secret non-aggression pact that would partition Poland between the two states when they invaded it. This is what led to the German invasion of, and declaration of war on, Poland on September 1st. On September 3rd, the British and French, stunned by the boldness of Hitler (they had not expected him to actually attack), declared war on Germany, as per the agreement they had made with Poland. However, since the agreement did not specify military action, neither Britain nor France engaged Germany in any fighting until Germany invaded France the following year. This has been dubbed the "phony war", because of a lack of fighting by the British and French, but of course the war was ongoing in Poland, even after the capitulation of the Polish state and the exile of the Polish government to the British isles on September 28th, 1939.

On September 17th, 1939 Poland was invaded on its eastern border by the Soviet Union. This attack, and the expectation of the attack itself, helped to split Polish defenses, and sped up the eventual defeat of the Polish military forces 11 days later. Since the defensive pact between Britain, France and Poland said nothing about the Soviet Union, the British and French refused to declare war against them, in keeping with their very technical and legalistic interpretation of the pact. Their hope was that Germany would stop with Poland, and not attack them next.

One of the reasons cited for such a relatively easy defeat of Poland is that the Germans did not have to worry about the French troops on its Western border. German scouts were given the order to inform HQ if they saw so much as a single French soldier near the border, the response to which would have been a split of German forces to defend its western front while attacking Poland in the east. The scouts saw no one (possibly due to a combination of serendipity and an actual scarcity of French scouts near the border), so that virtually the entirety of Germany's forces were put into the attack on Poland, leaving Germany defenseless against a full western invasion from a superior number (at the time) of French forces for weeks. The lack of support from the Western "allies" and second frontal attack by the Soviets was too much for the Polish military, as was the single-front attack too much for France several months later. Only once Germany brought the Soviet Union and the United States (via their ally Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor) into the war against itself did it get defeated by a two-front war.

Answer 5

France and Britain did not to declare war on Russia when they invaded Poland because at the time of that invasion Russia was allied with the Nazis. They had become allied with the Germans earlier in hopes of keeping the Germans out of Russia for a while. Josef Stalin had a spy network that had informed him Germany had plans to invade Russia. Stalin joined Hitler as an ally and they agreed not to attack one anther's country.

When the Brits and French declared war on Nazi Germany their war declaration also included the German allies. (Japanese, Italians and Russians at that time)

Answer 6

Why should they have? Russia was an ally at the time, and Poland was, if not exactly an "enemy country", certainly an enemy-controlled country. Russia was nominally "liberating" Poland, not "invading" it. (Of course, as it turns out they "liberated" it right into their own pockets, but that wasn't apparent at the time.)

Russia had earlier been engaged in talks with Britain and France intended to allow them free movement of their troops through Poland. Since the Soviet Invasion came after the German invasion, the Russians could color their own invasion as an attempt to "protect" the remaining portion of Poland from becoming completely taken over by Germany; they did this by declaring that since the government of Poland had so far been unable to protect its citizen, the Russians would step in and do it for them (whether they liked it or not). They then staged elections to "Sovietize" the portion of Poland they controlled, lending their actions even greater legitimacy.

Another factor is that country borders in Europe, particularly at the time, didn't always follow cultural boundaries. There were many people living in Poland who were more closely related, ethnically and culturally, to Ukrainians and Belorussians than to the Polish. The Soviets mainly took over the portions of Poland where those people already lived.

Answer 7

The British and French did not want to lose a potential ally in the war against Germany. They were shocked after the Molotov- Ribbentrop pact between Germany and the USSR.