Phoney War
The Phoney War was a phase in early World War II in the months following the German Poland Campaign (1 September 1939) and preceding the Battle of France (10 May 1940).
History
Although on 3 September 1939 Great Britain, followed by France, had declared war on Germany, neither side had yet committed to launching a significant ground attack in the West on the continent.
While most of the German army was fighting in Poland, a much smaller German force manned the Siegfried Line, their fortified defensive line on the German side of the French border. On the other side of the border was the Maginot Line plus British and French troops, but there were only some local, minor skirmishes. The British Royal Air Force first dropped propaganda leaflets, and later some bombs, on Germany, but western Europe was in a strange calm for seven months.
The Royal Navy began the war with only five aircraft carriers (the Germans having none), then the veteran HMS Courageous was sunk in the Atlantic area on 17 September 1939. The ship was swallowed by the waves off the Hebrides Islands in less than 15 minutes. Only half the crew of 1,000 men was saved. Some of the British sailors were saved after an hour spent in the cold North Sea. The sailors kept up their morale by singing popular songs, such as ‘Roll out the Barrel’ and ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home’. A survivor recalled that the sea ‘was so thick with oil we might have been swimming in treacle’. The Kriegsmarine dealt another blow to the British when the U-47 submarine managed to pass through an approx. 15-meter long breach in the defenses of Scapa Flow. The U-boat, commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Günther Prien, launched seven torpedoes towards the 29,000 ton battleship HMS Royal Oak. Three torpedoes hit their mark, sinking the ship and killing 810 people from a crew of 1,224 in only 13 minutes on 14 October 1939.
Elsewhere, from March 1940, the opposing nations clashed in Norway which led to the Operation Weserübung. In their hurry to re-arm, Britain and France had both begun buying large amounts of weapons from manufacturers in the USA following their declarations of war, supplementing their own productions. The non-belligerent United States contributed to the Allies by discounted sales, and, later, the lend-lease scheme of military equipment and supplies. It should be noted that in the 1930s, on a much smaller scale, private companies in Britain and the USA were also supplying Germany, without government sanction. Engines of a few German fighters were made in Britain and American raw materials were still being sold to Germany. German efforts to interdict the Allies' trans-Atlantic trade at sea would ignite the Battle of the Atlantic.