The Day We Went to War (33 page)

We have never been a nation of slaves, and will not be one in the future.

Whatever Germans in the past had to sacrifice for the existence of our Reich they shall not be greater than those which we are prepared to make today.

This resolve is an inexorable one. It necessitates the most thorough measures and imposes on us one law above all others:

If the soldier is fighting at the front no one shall profit by the war. If a soldier falls at the front no one at home shall evade his duty.

As long as the German people was united it has never been conquered. It was the lack of unity that led to collapse.

Whoever offend against this unity need expect nothing else than the annihilation as an enemy of the nation.

If our people fulfils its highest duty in this sense then God will help us, Who has always bestowed His mercy on him who was determined to help himself.

6.30pm (7.30pm), G
ERMAN
-P
OLISH BORDER

Wilhelm Prueller and his company are stood down. Their expected attack will not now take place this evening. Prueller is hungry and thirsty as he hasn’t eaten or drunk since this morning, but his unit have got a pig with them. They intend to kill and eat it once they have captured Poland’s ancient capital, Krakow. In the meantime rumours are flying around the encampment. ‘If the war isn’t over by midnight,’ Prueller writes, ‘Russia and Latvia will attack. That will be a decisive move.’ Before turning in, he writes of his wife and child in his diary, ‘but I am still alive today, and so are you and Lore. All of us!’

7.00pm,
U-30
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

Lemp is on the submarine’s bridge as a Force 4 wind is whipping up the waves around the
U-30
. Suddenly, the U-boat commander sees something to the starboard of the submarine. He calls his artillery officer Leutnant Hans-Peter Hinsch to the bridge. The two men see the silhouette of an approaching big ship. Lemp wonders if she is one of the British armed merchant cruisers that U-boat chief Karl Doenitz has warned his commanders to be on the lookout for them.

7.15pm (9.15pm), G
ERMANY
E
MBASSY
, M
OSCOW

Ambassador Count Friederich-Werner von der Schulenberg has just received a telegram from von Ribbentrop. Its instructions read: ‘Very Urgent ! Exclusively for the Ambassador! Strictly secret! For Chief of Mission or his representative personally. Top secret. To be decoded by himself. Strictest secrecy!’ Von der Schulenberg, like so many top German diplomats, is no Nazi. He now sets about decoding his foreign minister’s message. The ambassador sees that it contains an invitation for the Russians to invade Poland. He is told to ‘discuss this at once with Molotov and see if the Soviet Union does not consider it desirable to move against Polish forces . . .’

7.15pm,
U-30
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

Lemp orders the submarine to dive, and the klaxon sounds ‘battle stations’. He is still unsure about the identity of the approaching ship, but thinks it suspicious that she is showing no lights even though dusk is now falling. With his adrenaline flowing, Lemp weighs up the pros and cons of the situation. He decides to attack.

7.30pm, US E
MBASSY
, P
ARIS

Hubert Earle, who is helping out at the US Embassy, goes out to dinner at the Café de la Paix with two other embassy employees. They find the café a gloomy place this evening. There are no menus, merely a typewritten list with a small selection, mainly egg dishes and no meat on offer. The café is full of servicemen but not many civilians. Most of the waiters are elderly men as the young ones are already in uniform. The only young one on duty is an Italian who is delighted that he will not have to fight.

7.30pm, SS
A
THENIA
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

Captain James Cook joins the first-class passengers for dinner tonight, the first time since the
Athenia
has sailed. Most of the
diners regard this as a good omen. At the Captain’s table are Sir Richard and Lady Lake, a former Lieutenant-Governor of Saskatchewan and his wife. Young actress Pax Walker-Fryett, who has been appearing at Worthing’s Connaught Theatre this summer season, and is now on her way to Hollywood, is also having dinner. Pax has seen the notice that Captain Cook has had put up saying that war was declared at 11.00am this morning. Now as she takes her seat at the table she notices that the ship appears to be zigzagging and that a strict blackout is in force. Pax has been told that the ship is completely unarmed. At her table is a veteran of the last war who still suffers from the effects of poison gas. Pax and her dining companions ask him, ‘What do you think? Do you think that we’re likely to get attacked going to America or Canada? What do you think our chances are?’

7.38pm, SS
A
THENIA
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

On deck a group of children are entertaining some of the other passengers. They have just started to sing this summer’s big hit ‘South of the Border, Down Mexico Way’.

7.38pm,
U-30
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

Lemp gives the order to fire the torpedoes, 1,600 yards from the
Athenia.

7.39pm, SS
A
THENIA
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

The Great War veteran at Pax Walker-Fryett’s table is reassuring. He is just telling Pax and the others, ‘Oh no, they’ll wait till the ship comes back with armaments on before they do anything’, when Lemp’s torpedo crashes into the liner’s side. In the dining room everything seems to rise up, and the diners too are involuntarily forced to their feet. The electricity goes off and everything is in complete darkness. Pax has the sensation of the liner starting to roll over and the tableware, china, cutlery, chairs and passengers
all end up in a heap on one side of the dining room. The
Athenia
then seems to straighten up. Pax and the others get up and start stumbling about. Pax feels a hot trickle down her leg and suddenly realises that she is bleeding from a cut knee. Some of the waiters in their white mess jackets now get the passengers to form a chain behind them. They then wind their way up to the ship’s deck. To Pax’s surprise, it still seems like daylight up on deck.

As the lights go out, Claud Barrie, one of the bedroom stewards and a soldier in the last war, thinks he can smell cordite. But a mate of his tells him, ‘The swine has hit us.’ The two men run to the alleyways to warn their passengers and then go ‘up on deck in time to see the periscope of a submarine disappear’. Another crew member John M’Ewan at first can hardly see through the smoke, but it soon clears a little and M’Ewan makes out the U-boat breaking the surface. To M’Ewan’s shocked surprise it turns its deck gun on the stricken liner. Captain James Cook reckons that the U-boat is aiming to destroy the
Athenia’
s wireless equipment to prevent it from sending out distress signals.

7.40pm,
U-30
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

Two of the
U-30
’s torpedoes have missed the
Athenia
completely. Another is faulty and is stuck in its tube. But the fourth has found its mark. It has exploded in the
Athenia
’s No. 5 hold and against the engine-room bulkhead. Its impact has claimed the first victims of the war in the west. German Jewish refugee Edith Lustig is blown overboard by the force of the torpedo’s explosion. She is never seen again. Ten-year-old Margaret Hayworth, returning home to Canada with her mother and sister, is killed by a metal splinter when No. 5 hold is hit. In the liner’s third-class accommodation, nine-year-old Daniel Wilkes sees his mother die when the wall of their cabin collapses on her as she lies ill in bed. Daniel manages to wriggle free from the wreckage and, clinging to a chair, floats out into the passageway.

7.45pm, W
IRELESS
R
OOM
, SS
A
THENIA
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

Chief Radio Officer Don is ordered by Captain Cook to send out an SOS signal in naval code. For a quarter of an hour, and working on his own in the liner’s large wireless room, Don finally gets through to the nearest coast station at Valentia. His message reads:

‘
ATHENIA TORPEDOED – 5.42 NORTH, 14.05 WEST
’

Captain Cook comes on the speaking tube again and tells Don to send the signal ‘
en clair
’ as well as in code. Don does so and almost immediately he gets a response. It is from the 5,000-ton Norwegian freighter
Knute Nelson
, which is only about forty miles away. After acknowledging, the Norwegian’s radio officer signals Don back:

THE OLD MAN DOESN’T BELIEVE YOU’VE BEEN TORPEDOED – BUT HE’S COMING TO YOUR ASSISTANCE ANYWAY.

7.51pm (8.51pm), G
ERMAN
E
MBASSY
, R
OME

A personal message from Hitler to Mussolini is just coming through on the wire. Hitler thanks his fellow dictator for his last attempt at mediation, but tells him, ‘It would have been impossible to allow blood which was being sacrificed there [Poland] to be squandered by diplomatic intrigue.’ Hitler accepts that Italy, just as in 1914, is going to remain neutral, at least for the time being. But he warns his fellow dictator, ‘If National Socialist Germany were to be destroyed by the Western Democracies, Fascist Italy also would face a hard future.’

7.55pm (8.55pm), A
NHALTER
S
TATION
, B
ERLIN

Hitler arrives to board his train
Amerika
for the Eastern Front. The specially armoured train consists of fifteen carriages and has two steam engines to haul it. Hitler’s own carriage is made up of a bedroom, bathroom, office and a combined dining-conference room
which is large enough to accommodate twelve people. Over 200 members of the Fuehrer’s staff occupy the remaining carriages. There are also anti-aircraft gun wagons at the front and rear of the train. The train pulls out on its way to Gross-Born in Pomerania, where Fuehrer Headquarters is to be located. Hitler calls in Heinz Linge, his personal servant. He tells Linge that in future he intends to have an even more Spartan diet than hitherto. ‘You will see to it,’ the Fuehrer instructs Linge, ‘that I have only what the ordinary people of Germany can have. It is my duty to set an example.’ Hitler is also giving up watching feature films for the duration of the conflict.

8.00pm, ‘V
ILLA
V
OLPONE
’, S
OUTH
H
AMPSTEAD

James Agate observes that the setting sun is turning the barrage balloons to golden asteroids.

8.15pm,
U-30
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

Lemp gives the order to surface. From the conning tower, crew member Adolf Schmidt can quite clearly see the stricken
Athenia
. It is listing heavily and he sees ‘much commotion on the torpedoed ship’ as the liner’s lifeboats are launched. While Schmidt watches the scene on the liner, his captain is handed a transcription of one of Chief Radio Officer Don’s distress signals. With a jolt, Lemp realises that instead of an armed merchant cruiser, he has torpedoed an unarmed passenger liner. He turns to Leutnant Hinsch and exclaims, ‘What a mess!’

8.30pm, P
ARIS

Chamberlain’s French opposite number, Edouard Daladier, whose actual title is President of the Council of Ministers, has hurried from the Chamber of Deputies back to the Ministry of National Defence to deliver a broadcast to the nation. Daladier knows war at first hand. He served in the infantry throughout the Great War, rose to the rank of captain, was twice wounded and decorated with
the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour. A musical programme from evacuated Strasbourg is faded out, and, after a brief introduction, Daladier speaks to the French people and the men of France’s armed forces:

Since daybreak on 1st September, Poland has been the victim of the most brutal and most cynical of aggressions. Her frontiers have been violated. Her cities are being bombed. Her army is heroically resisting the invader. The responsibility for the blood being shed falls entirely upon Hitler’s government. The fate of peace was in Hitler’s hands. He chose war. France and England have made countless efforts to safeguard peace. This very morning they made a further urgent intervention in Berlin in order to address the German Government with a last appeal to reason and a request to stop hostilities and open peaceful negotiations.

Germany met us with a refusal. She had already refused to reply to all men of goodwill who recently raised their voices in favour of the peace of the world. She therefore desires the destruction of Poland so as to be able to dominate Europe quickly and to enslave France. In rising against the most frightful of tyrannies, in honouring our word, we fight to defend our soil, our homes, our liberties. I am conscious of having worked unremittingly against war until this minute. I greet with emotion and affection our young soldiers, who now go forth to perform the sacred task which we ourselves performed before them. They can have full confidence in their chiefs, who are worthy of those who have previously led France to victory.

The cause of France is identical with that of righteousness. It is the cause of all peaceful and free nations. It will be victorious. Men and women of France! We are waging war because it has been thrust upon us. Every one of us is at his post, on the soil of France, that land of liberty where respect for human dignity finds one of its last refuges. You will all co-operate, with a profound feeling of union and brotherhood, for the salvation of the country.
Vive La France!