The Day We Went to War (21 page)

Today of all days, Dr Schmidt has overslept. He has had to dash by taxi to get to the Foreign Ministry in time for his meeting with Sir Nevile Henderson. As he is driving across the Wilhelmplatz, Schmidt sees the elegant British envoy entering the building. By using a side entrance, he manages to catch up with himself. And he is in von Ribbentrop’s office when, punctually at 9am, Sir Nevile is shown in. Schmidt sees immediately that the ambassador is in a
very serious frame of mind. The two men shake hands, but Sir Nevile declines Schmidt’s offer of a seat.

‘I regret,’ says Henderson in a voice of deep emotion, ‘that on the instructions of my government I have to hand you an ultimatum for the German Government. Still standing in the middle of the room, Sir Nevile reads out to Schmidt the British ultimatum:

Sir

In the communication which I had the honour to make to make to you on 1st September, I informed you on the instructions of His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs that unless the German Government were prepared to give His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom satisfactory assurances that the German Government had suspended all aggressive action against Poland and were prepared promptly to withdraw their forces from Polish territory His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom would without hesitation, fulfil our obligations to Poland.

Although now it is more than twenty-four hours ago no reply has been received, and German attacks upon Poland have intensified.

I have, therefore, to inform you that unless not later than 11am British Summer Time today, 3rd September, satisfactory assurances to the above effect have been given by the German Government and have reached His Majesty’s Government in London, a state of war would exist between the two countries as from that hour.

Henderson finishes reading the ultimatum and hands it to the normally jovial Schmidt, a popular figure with foreign diplomats in Berlin. The ambassador tells him, ‘I am sincerely sorry that I must hand such a document to you in particular, as you have always been most anxious to help.’ Schmidt too expresses his regret and adds a few heartfelt words. He has the highest regard for Sir Nevile,
who, despite all his many failings, has been pathetically sincere in his mission to bring peace and understanding between Britain and Germany. The two men shake hands in parting, and Henderson returns to the embassy. Schmidt hurriedly makes his way down the Wilhelmstrasse to the Reich Chancellery.

8.20am (9.20am), R
EICH
C
HANCELLERY
, V
OSS
-S
TRASSE
, B
ERLIN
Schmidt arrives at the Chancellery. It has been designed and built by Hitler’s favourite architect Albert Speer. The Fuehrer only moved into it this January. Schmidt has to virtually fight his way through a crowd of Government and Nazi Party officials that have collected in the room next to Hitler’s study.

‘What’s the news?’ Schmidt is asked, to which he can only reply, ‘Classroom dismissed’, before he is ushered into the Fuehrer’s presence. The study measures 400 square metres. Speer has placed the furniture, groups of chairs, map table and a huge globe, all of which he has designed himself, near the walls. This is in order to heighten the sense of size and spaciousness. Hitler’s desk, at which he is sitting as Schmidt enters, is decorated with a wooden inlay depicting a sword half drawn from the scabbard. ‘Good, good,’ Hitler had said when he first inspected it, ‘when the diplomats sitting in front of me at this desk see this, they’ll learn to shiver and shake.’

But today the only other person present as Schmidt delivers the British ultimatum is von Ribbentrop, standing by the window. Both men look up expectantly as the interpreter comes in. Stopping at some distance from Hitler’s desk, Schmidt slowly translates the British ultimatum. When he finishes there is complete silence in the enormous room. Hitler sits immobile, gazing before him, completely silent and unmoving. After an interval that seems like eternity, Hitler turns to his foreign minister, still standing by the window, and with a savage look on his face asks von Ribbentrop, ‘What now?’

To which von Ribbentrop quietly replies, ‘I assume that the French will hand in a similar ultimatum within the hour.’

Schmidt now withdraws, and in the anteroom tells the waiting throng, ‘The English have just handed us an ultimatum. In two hours a state of war will exist between England and Germany.’ Just as in Hitler’s study a few minutes ago, the news is met by stunned silence. Goering turns to Schmidt and says, ‘If we lose this war, then God have mercy on us!’ And as he is about to make his way back to the Foreign Ministry, Schmidt sees Dr Goebbels standing in a corner. Hitler’s propaganda genius, he notices, looks downcast and self-absorbed, ‘like the proverbial drenched poodle’. So far today Hitler has retained his self-control, but now in the Chancellery’s conservatory in front of von Ribbentrop, Hess, Himmler and Dr Goebbels, he verbally savages the British:

‘The Poles are a miserable, good-for-nothing, loud-mouthed rabble. The British understand that as well as we do; the British gentlemen understand that might is right. When it comes to inferior races they were our first schoolmasters. It is disgraceful to present Czechs and Poles as sovereign states when this rabble is not a jot better than the Sudanese or the Indians – and only because on this occasion, it is about German interests and not British ones. My entire policy towards Britain has been based on recognising the natural realities as they exist on both sides, and now they want to put me in the pillory. That is an unspeakable vilification.’

9.15am, O
LYMPIA
E
XHIBITION
H
ALL
, L
ONDON

Anti-Nazi activist Eugen Spier, a German Jewish refugee, wakes up after an incredible sixteen-hour sleep. He has been in detention since yesterday afternoon, and at Olympia is registered as Prisoner of War No. 1. Among his fellow prisoners are the Jewish former Police Vice-President of Berlin Bernhard Weiss and Ernst ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl. Up until two years ago, ‘Putzi’ was the Nazi Party’s Foreign Press Chief.

9.15am (10.15am), B
YDOSZCZ
(B
ROMBERG
)

Polish troops are withdrawing through the western parts of the city when they are suddenly fired upon. The shooting comes from members of the German minority, the
Volksdeutsche,
who have featured so heavily in Dr Goebbels’s propaganda over the last few weeks. One eyewitness to the shootings is Lucy Baker-Beall. She is an English schoolteacher who has taught in Polish schools for the past thirty-two years. Today’s attacks on Poles by ethnic Germans are not the first. Miss Baker-Beall heard the first shots on Friday, and she herself has been fired on twice while in the street. Today, she has heard the firing intensify with the Germans using machine guns against the Poles. Among the Polish victims that Miss Baker-Beall sees is an unarmed air-raid warden shot dead with a bullet in his head. Two other wardens, a man and a women, who live in the same house as Miss Baker-Beall, have also been wounded. A nearby first-aid post is under constant fire from a German-inhabited house. The Poles are taking strong countermeasures. Any German caught with a weapon in his hand is shot. An official Polish count puts the fatalities today, ‘Bloody Sunday’, at 238 Poles and 223 Germans.

9.20am, F
OREIGN
M
INISTRY
, Q
UAI D
’O
RSAY
, P
ARIS

Georges Bonnet telephones the text of the French ultimatum to his ambassador in Berlin, Robert Coulondre. He tells his ambassador, ‘If the reply . . . is negative . . . you will notify the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, or his representative, that from 5am, tomorrow September 4, France will be obliged to fulfil her obligations to Poland, which are known to the German government. You may then ask for your passports.’

10.00am, 10 D
OWNING
S
TREET

Over the BBC’s new Home Service, announcer Alvar Lidell broadcasts a statement from the Prime Minister’s residence: ‘Following
the midnight meeting of the Cabinet, the British ambassador at 9.00am this morning gave the German Government two further hours in which to decide whether they would at once withdraw their troops from Poland. This ultimatum expires at 11.00am. The Prime Minister will broadcast to the nation at 11.15am.’

10.00am, O
XFORD

Dorothy Bartlett is at her parents’ home when she hears the BBC announcement that Chamberlain is going to speak at 11.15am. The family are all out in the garden. The day has started off rather chilly, but the sun has gradually risen: it is now fine and rather warm. But the announcement has put them all in a strange mood. They all know or strongly suspect what Chamberlain is going to tell them. Dorothy notices that everybody finds it difficult to settle to the simplest of tasks. Her young sister Mary says, ‘Well, it is a good job that it is Sunday and time doesn’t really matter. We should be thankful that we have a few hours in which to get used to the idea.’

10.00am (11.00am), G
ERMAN
-P
OLISH BORDER

Wilhelm Prueller’s unit is just about to go into action when the attack is called off. In his diary, he notes down the latest rumour: ‘11am: The Fuehrer is said is said to have issued an ultimatum to the Poles that they should give us the land we’ve taken. If there’s no satisfactory answer by 12.00, 2,000 of our planes will take off at 12.01 and destroy cities and villages. That would mean practically the end of Poland. The Poles ought to accept.’

10.00am (11.00am), M
UNICH

Unity Mitford, twenty-five-year-old daughter of Lord Redesdale, and a passionate admirer of Hitler and all things German, drives up to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior. She is promptly shown into the office of Munich Gauleiter Adolf Wagner. She hands Wagner
a heavy envelope with the words, ‘I should like to give you this.’ She then abruptly leaves. The Gauleiter, with so much else on his plate today, puts the envelope to one side, and carries on dealing with official correspondence.

10.15am (11.15am), G
ERMAN
-P
OLISH BORDER

Wilhelm Prueller and his comrades are still mulling over the rumour about the Fuehrer’s ultimatum to the Poles. Suddenly, Polish planes are spotted: ‘Plenty of excitement. Polish flyers appear and shoot at us, the flak goes into action. One, two, three, they are all shot down.’

10.30am (11.30am), K
ONSTANCIN
, W
ARSAW DISTRICT

Hearing of the attack on the American ambassador’s villa, foreign correspondents have dashed from Warsaw to view the damage. They are now clamouring to interview Biddle. He puts on a brave front and jokingly tells them, ‘I am sure Hermann Goering knew my address but I hardly believed he would send a calling card so soon. As an American husband and father I’m proud of the way the women took the experience. They stood it like soldiers and never quivered.’ The Poles are naturally anxious for the popular ambassador’s safety. But they are delighted that such a leading foreign envoy can now be cited as a witness to the fact that the Germans, despite their promises, are deliberately bombing nonmilitary targets. Biddle now motors back to Warsaw. There he cables Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Washington an account of the bombing.

10.30am (11.30am), G
ERMAN
-P
OLISH BORDER

After the excitement of the air attack, Wilhelm Prueller’s company receives orders to prepare to march on Krakow, Poland’s second-largest city. Prueller writes, ‘It’s supposed to be a forced march . . . Perhaps Poland is already done for today.’

10.45am (11.45am), F
RENCH
E
MBASSY
, B
ERLIN

Foreign Minister Bonnet’s urgent telephone call from Paris is taken by Robert Coulondre. He has been ambassador in Berlin since last October. Bonnet tells him of the change in expiry times, and Coulondre alters the text with his own fountain pen. But suddenly the ambassador is seized with doubts. Perhaps it is not Bonnet on the line but an impostor? Coulondre calls for verification. Alexis Leger, the permanent head of the Quai d’Orsay, comes on the line. He confirms to the ambassador that it is indeed France’s foreign minister to whom Coulondre has been speaking. Reassured, the ambassador prepares to leave for the Wilhelmstrasse.

10.55am (11.55am), F
RENCH
E
MBASSY
, B
ERLIN

Ambassador Coulondre leaves the embassy to make the short drive to the Foreign Ministry to present France’s final ultimatum. Like Henderson, Coulondre has tried to make an appointment to see von Ribbentrop himself. But the ambassador is told that the foreign minister is not available. Instead, Coulondre will be received by von Ribbentrop’s more sympathetic and congenial deputy, State Secretary Ernst von Weizsacker.

A small crowd has gathered on the Pariser Platz outside the embassy. It has been drawn perhaps by the smoke billowing from the embassy chimneys. Inside, Coulondre’s staff are frantically burning the last secret documents, codes and ciphers. Just as the dapper French envoy is about to get into his car, a teenage boy approaches him from the crowd. For an instant Coulondre wonders if he is going to be physically or verbally attacked. But the teenager just wants the ambassador’s autograph, which Coulondre willingly gives.

Arriving at the Foreign Office, Coulondre is greeted by von Weizsacker. He is an ex-naval officer and most of Berlin’s diplomatic colony much prefer to deal with him, rather than his boss, the bumptious von Ribbentrop. But the ambassador is now dismayed when von Weizsacker tells him that he himself can give no reply
to the French ultimatum. Coulondre must wait for von Ribbentrop. The French diplomat considers this to be a deliberate snub and he is annoyed to be kept waiting. But von Ribbentrop soon appears. He has been at the Reich Chancellery with Hitler to receive the new Soviet ambassador.