{"id":412,"date":"2012-04-02T19:27:13","date_gmt":"2012-04-03T01:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=412"},"modified":"2012-04-02T19:27:15","modified_gmt":"2012-04-03T01:27:15","slug":"this-week-in-the-war-1-7-april-1940-hitler-has-missed-the-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=412","title":{"rendered":"This week in the War, 1–7 April 1940: Hitler has missed the bus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This week in the war, on Thursday 4 April, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain gave an optimistic speech to Conservative Party members, declaring that Hitler had ‘missed the bus<\/em>.’ Following the collapse of Poland the previous year, Europe had settled into the so-called Phoney War, with little or no action from the main combatants. Hitler had abandoned his Plan Yellow, and the Soviet-Finnish war had come to an end. Germany had been better prepared at the outbreak of World War II, Chamberlain reasoned, but Hitler’s inaction had given the Allies\u00a0opportunity to organize\u00a0and gain strength.<\/p>\n

A few days later, Germany\u00a0launched\u00a0a full scale invasion of\u00a0Denmark and Norway. Within a month, Hitler’s Blitzkrieg<\/em>\u00a0would strike against\u00a0the Low Countries and France. The reality of 1–7\u00a0April 1940 and the days that followed\u00a0is succinctly (and eloquently) put by Churchill: ‘Complete immobility and silence reigned behind the German front. Suddenly the passive or small-scale policy of the Allies was swept away by a cataract of violent surprises.’ [Winston S. Churchill: The Second World War<\/em> (Cassell, 1959)].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week in the war, on Thursday 4 April, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain gave an optimistic speech to Conservative Party members, declaring that Hitler had ‘missed the bus.’ Following the collapse of Poland the previous year, Europe had settled … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,34,7,33,8,3],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-war-ii","tag-chamberlain","tag-churchill","tag-hitler","tag-phoney-war","tag-plan-yellow","tag-soviet-finnish-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":461,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions\/461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}