Hitler (116 page)

Strictly speaking, Hitler had no reason to be upset. The Italians might well feel miffed; they had been offended countless times by contemptuous treatment; and even the belated letter in which Hitler had informed Mussolini of the pact with Moscow had been a model of diplomatic slighting. It had dismissed an ally's claim to consultation with trivial phrases and an allusion to newspaper atrocity propaganda, but had said not a word about the ideological and political consequences resulting from Hitler's reversal of his previous positions. Nevertheless, Hitler dismissed Italian Ambassador Attolico “with an icy face” and “the chancellery echoed with unkind words about ‘the disloyal Axis partner.' ” A few minutes later Hitler canceled the order to advance. “Führer rather shaken,” Halder noted in his diary.

 

Once again events seemed to undergo a dramatic slowdown. Three days passed before Hitler, sleepless, his voice cracking, appeared before an assemblage of high party and military leaders and attempted to justify Mussolini's conduct. He was in a bleak mood and commented that the impending war would be “very difficult, perhaps hopeless.” But he did not change his mind; rather, as always, opposition seemed to reinforce his determination: “As long as I live there will be no talk of capitulation.” The new date he set for launching the attack was September 1.

As a result, the events of the last few days—the passionate efforts to preserve peace, the messages, travels and exchanges between the capitals, all have an unreal air. To the observer with hindsight much of it seems a kind of late-night show, full of sham dialogue, transparent confusion, and grotesque intermezzos. Daladier's moving personal appeal was futile. The French ambassador Coulondre, who told Hitler everything “that my heart as a man and a Frenchman could inspire me to say,” wasted his words. England's conciliatory gesture was answered by Hitler with a torrent of fresh reproaches, so that even the patient Henderson lost his self-control and began to outshout Hitler, telling him he did not want “to hear such language from him or anyone else.... If he wanted war, he could have it.” In vain, finally, was Mussolini's imploring letter; he had tried to persuade Hitler to settle for a solution by conference so that “the rhythm of your magnificent creations will not be interrupted.”

Only two antagonists seemed to know that they had reached a dead end: Hitler and Beck. They alone thought exclusively of war, the former urgently, impatiently fixated upon his self-appointed timetable, the other fatalistically, wearily, facing an ineluctable fate. Hitler was so obsessed with the employment of his military power that he did not even see the political opportunities the moment offered. We have private notes from British diplomats from which we can deduce the maneuvers London expected and the concessions it was preparing. Merely for renouncing war Hitler probably could have obtained not only Danzig and the road and rail link through the Polish Corridor, but also an assurance by Great Britain of restitution of Germany's colonies and negotiations for a grand new settlement.
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But Hitler was no longer thinking of alternatives. Here was the first sign of his inability to think beyond military goals or to examine the military situation for its political potentialities. That inability was to grow worse in the course of the following years. Thus he took up the British proposal for direct negotiations with Poland but promptly twisted it into an ultimatum, demanding that a Polish plenipotentiary negotiator come to Berlin within twenty-four hours. The intention behind this particular chess move was all too obvious. He meant to force the Poles either to capitulate or, as had happened to the Czechoslovaks, to appear as the troublemakers. The list of demands the Germans had prepared for the negotiations was studded with sham concessions. There was still the insistence on the return of Danzig, but otherwise there was a play for world opinion: the proposal of a series of plebiscites, offers of compensation, international controls, guarantees of minority rights, and plans for demobilization. After a conversation with Hitler on the afternoon of August 29, Halder noted: “Führer has hope of driving a wedge between England, French and Poles. Underlying idea: Bombard with demographic and democratic demands. Then came the actual timetable: August 30: Poles in Berlin. August 31: Blow up. Sept. 1: Use of force.”

But the Poles did not come to Berlin; Schuschnigg's and Hächa's shadows loomed too large before Colonel Beck. To the steady urgings of the British and French, to which the Italians soon lent their voice, he responded that there was nothing to negotiate. On the morning of August 31 Henderson was informed that Hitler would issue the order to attack unless the Polish government consented by twelve o'clock to send a negotiator. Once again, as recently in Moscow, a struggle against the clock was waged with Polish indolence. Henderson tried, through two envoys, to change the minds of his Polish colleagues in Berlin. Ambassador Lipski received the visitors, as one of them reported, in his already partly evacuated office. He was “white as a sheet,” with trembling hands took the document offered him, stared absently at the German demands, and finally murmured that he could not understand what was written there; all he knew was that they must remain firm and that “even a Poland abandoned by her Allies is ready to fight and to die alone.”
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Death was Poland's only idea. Nor was the content of the telegram that Beck sent to his ambassador in Berlin at 12:40
P.M.
any different. It was a document of perplexity, and remarkable only for the coincidence in time. For at the very same minute Hitler signed “Directive Number 1 for the Conduct of the War.” A short while later he told the Italian ambassador that it was all over.
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The directive began:

 

Since all political possibilities have been exhausted of eliminating by peaceful means a situation on the eastern frontier which has become intolerable for Germany, I have decided on the solution by force.

The attack on Poland is to be conducted in consonance with the preparations made for Case White.... Day of Attack: September 1, 1939. Time of Attack: 4:45 a.m....

In the West it is essential to let the responsibility for initiating hostilities be placed unequivocally upon England and France. For the time being trivial border violations are to be opposed on a purely local basis. The neutrality of Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg and Switzerland, which we have guaranteed, is to be scrupulously observed....

 

At nine o'clock that night all radio stations broadcast the list of the German proposals to Poland, which had never been submitted to Poland herself. Approximately at the same time SS Sturmbannführer (Major) Alfred Naujocks staged a sham Polish attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz, broadcast a brief proclamation, fired some pistol shots, and left behind the corpses of several concentration camp inmates. A few hours later, at dawn on September 1, the Polish commander of the fortress on the peninsula Westerplatte, near the harbor of Danzig, a Major Sucharski, reported: “At 4:45
A.M.
the cruiser Schleswig Holstein opened fire upon the Westerplatte with all her guns. The bombardment is continuing.” Simultaneously, the troops emerged from their prepared positions all along the German-Polish border. No declaration of war was issued. The Second World War had begun.

Hitler, it is true, was still hoping to limit the conflict. Shortly before ten o'clock he drove to a session of the Reichstag at the Kroll Opera House. The streets were almost deserted; the few pedestrians watched silently as the car passed in which Hitler sat in a field-gray uniform. His speech to the Reichstag was brief, serious, and peculiarly flat. Once again he asseverated his love of peace and “endless patience.” Again he tried to arouse hopes in the West, evoked the new friendship with the Soviet Union, made some embarrassed remarks about his Italian ally, and finally heaped charge upon charge on the Polish government. After a wild flight of fancy about the number of border incidents in the preceding days, he declared that “tonight for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our own territory. Since 5:45
A.M.
we have been returning the fire, and from now on bombs will be met with bombs.” Henceforth, he wanted simply to be the first soldier of the Reich. “I have once more put on that coat that was most sacred and dear to me. I will not take it off again until victory is secured, or I will not survive the outcome.”

Hitler's persistent hope of limiting the conflict to Poland was nourished chiefly by the hesitation of the Western powers. Contrary to their obligation under their alliance, they did not answer the German attack with an immediate declaration of war. The French government in particular resorted to a series of evasions: advice of the General Staff, a renewed attempt at mediation by Mussolini, the uncompleted evacuation of the big cities; and finally it tried to delay the beginning of the dreaded war by at least another few hours.
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Although England's attitude was more determined, the gravity of the situation was fully realized. In Parliament Chamberlain declared on September 1: “Eighteen months ago I prayed that the responsibility would not fall upon me to ask this country to accept the awful arbitrament of war.” Now, he continued, he was on the point of demanding assurances from the German government that it would cease its aggressive action against Poland and withdraw its troops. When an MP angrily called out to ask whether a time limit had been set, the Prime Minister replied: “If the reply to this last warning is unfavorable—and I do not suggest it is likely to be otherwise—His Majesty's Ambassador is instructed to ask for his passport. In that case we are ready.”
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But Hitler failed to hear the warning, or understood only that England, in spite of the clear terms of the alliance, was still ready to temporize. Initially, therefore, he did not even answer the British note of September 1. And while England and France engaged in complicated negotiations in order to arrive at a joint procedure, the German troops advanced tempestuously in Poland. It seems probable that these signs of weakness on the opposing side encouraged Hitler to rebuff Mussolini, who on September 2 enumerated the advantages of the situation and tried to persuade him to accept a solution by conference. “Danzig is already German,” he informed Hitler, “and Germany has in her hands pledges which guarantee her the greater part of her claims. Moreover, Germany has already had her ‘moral satisfaction.' If she accepted the proposal for a conference she would achieve all her aims and at the same time avoid a war, which even now looks like becoming general and of extremely long duration.”

During the night hours of September 2 England at last decided to forgo joint action with France. Ambassador Henderson was told to deliver to the German Foreign Minister at 9
A.M.
Sunday an ultimatum that would expire at 11
A.M.
Ribbentrop did not receive Henderson personally; in his place he sent his chief interpreter, Dr. Paul Schmidt. Schmidt has described the scene when he brought the British note to the chancellery. Hitler's antechamber was so crowded with members of the cabinet and party leaders that he had difficulty making his way through the throng. When he entered Hitler's office, he saw Hitler sitting at his desk, while Ribbentrop stood by the window.

 

Both looked up tensely when they caught sight of me. I stopped some distance from Hitler's desk and slowly translated the British government's ultimatum. When I finished there was dead silence....

Hitler sat immobile, staring into space. He was not stunned, as was later asserted, nor did he rant, as others claimed. He sat absolutely silent and unraoving. After an interval, which seemed an eternity to me, he turned to Ribbentrop, who had remained standing frozen by the window. “What now?” Hitler asked his Foreign Minister with a furious glare, as if to say that Ribbentrop had misinformed him about the probable reaction of the British. Ribbentrop replied in a muted voice: “I assume that within the hour the French will hand us a similar ultimatum.”
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When Ambassador Coulondre called on the German Foreign Minister toward noon, England was already at war with the Reich. The French ultimatum corresponded to the British one with the exception of one significant detail. As though even now the government in Paris shrank from using the word “war,” it threatened, if Germany refused to withdraw her troops from Poland at once, to fulfill those “contractual obligations which France has undertaken toward Poland and which are known to the German government.” When Coulondre returned to his embassy, he burst into tears in the presence of his associates.
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But England, too, had difficulty adjusting to the reality of war. In desperation Poland waited for military aid, or at least some relief; when she realized that she was without actual assistance, it was far too late. The ponderousness of the British responses was, however, not simply a matter of temperament or of inadequate military preparation. The guarantee for Poland had never been popular in England. There was no traditional friendship between the two countries, and Poland was regarded as one of those dictatorial regimes that merely showed up the constriction and oppressiveness of authoritarian government, but not the glamour and allure of power.
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When in the early days of September an opposition conservative urged a member of the cabinet to provide help for Poland and mentioned the plan then being discussed, of setting fire to the Black Forest with incendiary bombs, he was answered: “Oh, we can't do that, that's private property. Next you'll be insisting that we bomb the Ruhr region.”

France, for her part, had pledged to launch an offensive with from thirty-five to thirty-eight divisions by the sixteenth day of the war. But the country was psychologically fixed on defense and incapable of planning an offensive. General Jodi declared at Nuremberg: “If we did not collapse in 1939, that was only because the approximately one hundred and ten French and English divisions in the West, which during the campaign in Poland were facing twenty-five German divisions, remained completely inactive.”
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