Phoney War

The Phoney War (French: Drôle de guerre; German: Sitzkrieg) was an eight-month period at the start of World War II during which there was only one limited military land operation on the Western Front, when French troops invaded Germany's Saar district. Nazi Germany carried out the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, and the Phoney period began two days later with the declaration of war by the United Kingdom and France against Germany, after which little actual warfare occurred, and ended with the German invasion of France and the Low Countries on 10 May 1940. Although there was no large-scale military action by Britain and France, they did begin some economic warfare, especially with the naval blockade and shut down German surface raiders. They created elaborate plans for numerous large-scale operations designed to cripple the German war effort. These included opening an Anglo-French front in the Balkans, invading Norway to seize control of Germany's main source of iron ore, and an embargo against the Soviet Union, which supplied Germany's main source of oil. By April 1940, the lone execution of the Norway plan was considered inadequate to stop the German offensive.^[1]

"Bore War" redirects here. Not to be confused with the First Boer War or Second Boer War.

The quiet of the Phoney War was punctuated by a few Allied actions. In the Saar Offensive in September, the French attacked Germany with the intention of assisting Poland, but it fizzled out within days and they withdrew. In November, the Soviets attacked Finland in the Winter War, resulting in much debate in France and Britain about an offensive to help Finland, but the forces finally assembled for this campaign were delayed until it ended in March. The Allied discussions about a Scandinavian campaign caused concern in Germany and resulted in the German invasion of Denmark and Norway in April, and the Allied troops previously assembled for Finland were redirected to Norway instead. Fighting there continued until June, when the Allies evacuated, ceding Norway to Germany in response to the German invasion of France.

On the Axis side, the Germans launched attacks at sea in the autumn and winter against British aircraft carriers and destroyers, sinking several, including the carrier HMS Courageous, with the loss of 519 lives. Action in the air began on 16 October 1939, when the Luftwaffe launched air raids on British warships. There were various minor bombing raids and reconnaissance flights on both sides. Fascist Italy was not involved during the Phoney period, only until the Battle of France.

Terminology[edit]

The initial term used by British people for this period was Bore War. While this was probably coined as a play on the Boer War fought approximately four decades earlier, eventually the Americanism Phoney War became favoured on both sides of the Atlantic,^[2] probably (especially in the British Empire and Commonwealth) in large part to avoid confusion with the aforementioned earlier conflict. The term Phoney War customarily appears using the British spelling even in North America, rather than the American phony, although some American sources do not follow the pattern.^[3] The first known recorded use of the term in print was in September 1939 in a US newspaper which used the British spelling,^[4] although other contemporary American reports sometimes used "phony", since both spellings were in use at the time in the US. The term appeared in Great Britain by January 1940^[5] as "phoney", the only acceptable spelling there.

The Phoney War was also referred to as the "Twilight War" (by Winston Churchill) and as the Sitzkrieg^[6] ("the sitting war": a word play on blitzkrieg created by the British press).^[7]^[8]^[9] In French, it is referred to as the drôle de guerre ("funny" or "strange" war).^[a]

The term "Phoney War" was probably coined by US Senator William Borah, who, commenting in September 1939 on the inactivity on the Western Front, said, "There is something phoney about this war."^[4]

A German submarine sank the ship on the first day of the war, killing 117 civilian passengers and crew.

SS Athenia

4 September 1939, Royal Air Force daylight bombing raids on major Kriegsmarine warships in the proved a costly failure. Seven of the Bristol Blenheim and Vickers Wellington bombers were shot down without any ships being hit.^[26] 4 September 1939, British bombs killed eleven German sailors from German cruiser Emden in port Wilhelmshaven.^[27] Further ineffective anti-shipping raids in the same area on 14 and 18 December led to the loss of 17 Wellingtons and the abandonment of daylight operations by RAF heavy bombers.^[28]

Heligoland Bight

17 September 1939, the British aircraft carrier was sunk by U-29. She went down in 15 minutes with the loss of 519 of her crew, including her captain. She was the first British warship to be lost in the war.

HMS Courageous

14 October 1939, the British battleship was sunk in the main British fleet base at Scapa Flow, Orkney (north of mainland Scotland) by U-47. The death toll reached 833 men, including Rear-Admiral Henry Blagrove, commander of the 2nd Battleship Division.

HMS Royal Oak

air raids on Britain began on 16 October 1939 when Junkers Ju 88s attacked British warships at Rosyth on the Firth of Forth. Spitfires of 602 and 603 Squadrons succeeded in shooting down two Ju 88s and a Heinkel He 111 over the firth. In a raid on Scapa Flow the next day, one Ju 88 was hit by anti-aircraft fire, crashing on the island of Hoy. The first Luftwaffe plane to be shot down on the British mainland was a He 111 at Haddington, East Lothian, on 28 October, with both 602 and 603 Squadrons claiming this victory.^[29]^[30] 602 Squadron's Archie McKellar was a principal pilot in both the destruction of the first German attacker over water and over British soil. McKellar (KIA 1 Nov. 1940) went on to be credited with 20 kills during the Battle of Britain, as well as "ace in a day" status by shooting down five Bf 109s; a feat accomplished by only 24 RAF pilots during the entire war.

Luftwaffe

In December 1939, the German Admiral Graf Spee was attacked by the Royal Navy cruisers HMS Exeter, Ajax and Achilles in the Battle of the River Plate. Admiral Graf Spee fled to Montevideo harbour to carry out repairs on the damage sustained during the battle. She was later scuttled rather than face a large British fleet that the Kriegsmarine believed, incorrectly, was awaiting her departure. The support vessel for Admiral Graf Spee, the tanker Altmark was captured by the Royal Navy in February 1940 in southern Norway. (See: Battles of Narvik, Altmark Incident.)

Deutschland-class cruiser

On 19 February 1940, a Kriegsmarine destroyer flotilla embarked on , a sortie into the North Sea to disrupt British fishing and submarine activity around the Dogger Bank. En route, two destroyers were lost due to mines and friendly fire from the Luftwaffe; nearly 600 German sailors were killed and the mission was then aborted without ever encountering Allied forces.

Operation Wikinger

Most other major actions during the Phoney War were at sea, including the Second Battle of the Atlantic fought throughout the Phoney War. Other notable events among these were:

British war planning had called for a "knockout blow" by strategic bombing of German industry with the RAF's substantial Bomber Command. However, there was considerable apprehension about German retaliation, and when President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed an agreement not to mount any bombing raids which might endanger civilians, Britain and France agreed immediately and Germany agreed two weeks later.^[31] The RAF therefore conducted a large number of combined reconnaissance and propaganda leaflet flights over Germany.^[32] These operations were jokingly termed "pamphlet raids" or "Confetti War" in the British press.^[33]

On 10 May 1940, eight months after Britain and France had declared war on Germany, German troops marched into Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, marking the end of the Phoney War and the beginning of the Battle of France.^[34]

Italy, hoping for territorial gains when France was defeated, entered the war on 10 June 1940, although the thirty-two Italian divisions which crossed the border with France enjoyed little success against five defending French divisions.^[35]