How did World War II begin, and what triggered the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939?
On September 1, 1939, before the world was fully awake, a million and a half men, 1,300 planes, and 2,750 tanks crossed the Polish border simultaneously in a lightning assault that would later define the term Blitzkrieg. Adolf Hitler justified the attack by invoking the Polish Corridor — a strip of territory once part of Germany, ceded to Poland under the Treaty of Versailles after World War I — but his actual ambition went far deeper: to seize Lebensraum, or "living space," for a new German empire stretching into Eastern Europe.
The territorial grievance over the Polish Corridor was real enough as a political flashpoint, but in the episode Tom Hanks makes clear it was a pretext rather than a cause. Hitler had telegraphed his expansionist vision years earlier in Mein Kampf, and the Wehrmacht's assault on Poland was the culmination of years of calculated preparation — diplomatic pressure, rearmament, and ultimately the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which neutralized the Soviet threat to Germany's east and left Poland exposed on two fronts. The Luftwaffe's Stukas screamed over Polish towns while armored columns rolled through at a pace that left defenders — and the watching world — stunned.
The speed and scale of the assault shocked even seasoned observers. Civilians woke to the rumble of tanks rolling through their streets, uncertain what was happening. Within hours, the mechanics of what would become the deadliest conflict in human history were already in motion. Hanks traces these opening hours in full in the episode on Listenly, drawing on firsthand accounts of soldiers and civilians caught in the storm.
"Poland has been overrun by two of the great powers which held us in bondage for 150 years, but were unable to quench the spirit of the Polish nation. The heroic defence of Warsaw shows that the soul of Poland is indestructible."
— Quoted in Episode 1, World War II with Tom HanksSee also
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The series focuses on the human cost of the war, highlighting that humanity witnessed people at their absolute worst but also at their absolute best — with stories of soldiers, civilians, and families caught in six years of global conflict.
The series consists of 20 parts. It covers the six years of the Second World War, emphasizing that no part of the globe was untouched and no life unchanged.