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The year 1939 began like any other. Sydney, Australia hit a heat record, the first boxing match was televised, and in February, 22,000 Nazi supporters attended a German American Bund rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden. It was the kind of event that some people noticed, but many more ignored. 

But the sentiments would soon come to bear. On September 1st, Germany invaded Poland under the pretext of a faked attack on the German radio transmission tower in Gleiwitz. 

And suddenly, the world changed and would remain forever changed. The foreign policy mandate of appeasement followed by Britain and France had allowed Germany to rearm, and the talk of a rising leader in Adolf Hitler was no longer just talk. His ambitions were plain.

Harry Leslie Smith was 18-years-old in 1941 when he enlisted in Britain’s Royal Air Force. Now, he says the warning sides of a war that he missed in 1939 are emerging again today.

"In 1939, I didn’t hear war coming," he writes in The Guardian. "Now its thundering approach can’t be ignored."

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