Question

Was World War II caused by the invasion of Czechoslovakia, or Poland?

Answer 1

Poland. One interesting note on this is that Hitler claimed that he was provoked by a Polish attack on a German radio station. The attack, however, was actually staged by Hitler's SS as a secret operation. This, along with other actions, were to be used as the excuses that Hitler needed to invade in order to "defend" Germany against Polish "aggression."

Czechoslovakia was bullied into capitulation and was relatively abandoned by its allies, this after Germany's Munich agreement with Britain's Neville Chamberlain had naively believed that it would result in "peace in our time" by forcing the Czechs to give up the Sudetenland.

Later, as Hitler planned his invasion of Poland, he needed to knock Czechoslovakia out of the way first. But instead of invading them, he reportedly screamed at their president (who came to Berlin) instead to agree to a capitulation - which he did. German forces then marched into Czechoslovakia without meeting any real resistance. In essence, they took the country without firing a shot.