Students often focus on the trigger to an event. However, the declaration of war by Britain and France on Germany was caused by more than the invasion of Poland. You should aim to put short-term causes of events within their longerterm context.
On 3 September 1939 millions of people in Britain and the wider empire listened to the broadcast by Neville Chamberlain, which committed Britain to a European conflict for the second time in just over 20 years. The invasion of Poland, by Germany, was the reason given for the declaration of war. However, Germany had been seeking to expand its borders and its military capability since 1933, in clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles. The worsening international situation had led both Britain and France to rearm since 1935 and by 1939 the populations in both countries, although still scarred by the memory of the First World War, had come to see that there was no alternative to war with Germany.
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