The Day We Went to War (8 page)

5 August, C
HARTWELL
(Westerham, Kent)

Churchill has written an article for this week’s
Picture Post
on the outbreak of the Great War, twenty-five years ago this week. The magazine asks: ‘Will There Be War Again?’

7 August, S
OENKE
-N
ISSEN
-K
OOG
(German-Danish border)

Birger Dahlerus hosts a meeting between Goering and seven British businessmen. They tell the field marshal both orally and in a memorandum that Britain will stand by its obligations to Poland. Goering gives them his solemn assurance ‘as a soldier and statesman’ that he will do everything he can to avert war. Dahlerus will be continuing his unofficial peacemaking for the rest of the month, going backwards and forwards between Britain and Germany.

8 August, L
ONDON

Winston Churchill broadcasts to the United States. He tells his American listeners, ‘If Herr Hitler does not make war, there will be no war. No one else is going to make war. Britain and France are determined to shed no blood except in self-defence or defence of their Allies.’ He finishes by calling for a future system of human relations ‘which will no longer leave the whole life of mankind dependent upon the virtues, caprice, or the wickedness of a single man’.

8 August, W
ORTHING

‘News still bad from Danzig and Hitler ominously quiet – ugly!’ (Joan Strange)

9 August, B
ERLIN

Luftwaffe chief Goering is reported as saying, ‘The Ruhr will not be subjected to a single bomb. If an enemy bomber reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Goering: you can call me Meier.’ (Meier is the German equivalent of Smith or Jones.)

9 August, M
ARGATE

Fifteen London holidaymakers take part in a snap poll on the international situation. ‘Do you think we should go to war to defend Danzig?’ they are asked. Seven say yes, four no, and four are undecided. They are then asked, ‘Do you think there will be a war?’ Eight say no, four yes and three are undecided. ‘Do you think Hitler wants war, or is he bluffing?’ is the final question and all fifteen reply, ‘No, he’s bluffing.’

9 August, W
EYMOUTH

King George VI inspects 133 ships of the Royal Navy’s Auxiliary Fleet. Many people are reminded that a similar review by the King’s father took place just before war broke out in 1914.

9 August, L
ONDON

There is a practice blackout in the capital tonight. Superintendent Reginald Smith of the Metropolitan Police’s ‘K’ Division goes to the top of Marble Arch to see how effective it is. The superintendent thinks London looks like ‘a Gruyere cheese with a candle behind it’. In blacked-out Trafalgar Square a number of drunks splash in the fountains, bawling out the song, ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home’.

10 August, B
ERLIN

Reinhard Heydrich gives orders to SS major Alfred Naujocks to simulate an attack on the Gleiwitz radio station near the border with Poland. It must look as if the attacking forces are Poles.
Heydrich tells Naujocks, ‘Practical proof is needed for these attacks of the Poles for the foreign press as well as German propaganda.’ Heydrich gives the operation the codename Himmler after his chief, the head of the SS.

11 August, O
BERSALZBERG

League of Nations High Commissioner in Danzig, Swiss diplomat Carl Burckhardt, has an audience with Hitler, ‘the most profoundly feminine man’ he has ever encountered. Burckhardt has also never met before ‘any human being capable of generating so terrific a condensation of envy, vituperation and malice’ as Hitler does. The Fuehrer tells Burckhardt that ‘the Polish army already has the mark of death stamped on its countenance’. Then Hitler, with astonishing frankness, tells the Swiss that everything he is undertaking is fundamentally aimed at Russia, just as he wrote in
Mein Kampf
back in 1925. If Britain and France are so stupid as not to recognise this, he tells the Swiss diplomat, then he will be forced to join with Russia in order to annihilate them. Then, he will turn on Russia and gain the
Lebensraum
(living space), so vital for the German race. Back home in Basle, Burckhardt reports the conversation to British and French diplomats. He fails, however, to mention Hitler’s remarks about Russia because he believes ‘a German-Soviet pact was simply too absurd to contemplate’.

11 August, W
ORTHING

‘Danzig events look ugly – Herr Forster has been to see Hitler and made violent anti-British and anti-French speech to the Danzigers on his return.’ (Joan Strange)

12 August, M
OSCOW

The Anglo-French military mission begins their first formal discussions with the Soviets. The Russian delegation is headed by Soviet Commissar for Defence, Marshal Klementi Voroshilov, a crony of
Stalin’s. Voroshilov is not over-endowed with brains. ‘He would have made a good sergeant-major in anyone else’s army’ is the general opinion of him among Western military attachés. The talks get off to a bad start with suspicion on both sides. Captain André Beaufre of the French part of the military mission comments that the British and French strongly suspect ‘The Soviet had organized the conference in order to obtain, on the eve of war, an idea of our plans, and then naturally, to pass them on to Germany.’ The talks will continue inconclusively until a final meeting on 25 August. The great stumbling block is the Poles’ refusal to have Red Army troops on their soil, even in the event of a German invasion. Their attitude is summed up by commander-in-chief Marshal Smigly-Rydz: ‘With the Germans we risk the loss of our liberty, but with the Russians we lose our soul.’

12 August, O
BERSALZBERG

Count Ciano has arrived from Rome for talks with von Ribbentrop and Hitler. Ciano is told quite frankly by von Ribbentrop that it is not a question of Germany wanting Danzig or the Polish Corridor. Hitler wants war. Ciano records in his diary, ‘The decision to fight is implacable . . . I am certain that even if the Germans were given more than they ask for they would attack just the same, because they are possessed by the demon of destruction.’ In between his meetings with Count Ciano, Hitler sets the date for the invasion of Poland. It will begin on Saturday, 26 August at 4.30am.

12 August, O
BERSALZBERG

During the discussions with Count Ciano, von Ribbentrop is called to the telephone. The foreign ministry in Berlin tells him that the Russians are now prepared to open talks in Moscow.

14 August, M
OSCOW

The German ambassador calls on the Soviet foreign ministry with a message that von Ribbentrop is willing to fly to Moscow, ‘to
lay the foundations for a final settlement of German-Russian relations’.

16 August, D
OORN

Ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, living in exile in Holland, receives two British visitors, John Wheeler-Bennett and Robert Bruce Lockhart. In discussing the present crisis he tells them, ‘Don’t go away with the idea that Russia and Germany will go to war.’ And as they leave, Wilhelm ruefully comments, ‘The machine is running with
him
as it ran away with
me.
’

16 August, L
ONDON

Registrar-General Sir Sylvanus Vivian announces that, in event of war, everyone in Britain will have their own National Registration number and an identity card.

19 August, O
BERSALZBERG

Hitler receives from his ambassador in Moscow a message that the Russians are prepared to receive von Ribbentrop on 27 or 28 August to negotiate and sign a non-aggression pact. The Fuehrer is jubilant but because of the date set for the attack on Poland, he wants von Ribbentrop’s visit to be brought forward.

20 August, O
BERSALZBERG

From the Berghof, Hitler sends a personal message to Stalin. He proposes that ‘in view of the international situation’ von Ribbentrop should go to Moscow by 23 August at the latest.

20 August, O
UTER
M
ONGOLIA

In an undeclared war, Soviet forces under General Georgi Zhukov engage the Japanese in the biggest battle fought since the First World War. Over 150,000 troops are involved, and the Russians employ 690 tanks and 300 aircraft. The Japanese suffer their greatest
military reverse to date, with over 18,000 casualties and the loss of 300 ’planes.

21 August, W
ILHELMSHAVEN

Pocket battleship
Admiral Graf Spee
departs to take up its war station off the coast of Brazil.

21 August, H
OLLYWOOD

Charlie Chaplin, born just four days before Hitler in April 1889, delays the production of his new film, tentatively called
The Dictators
. Chaplin ‘hesitates to go before the cameras while the European situation remains so uncertain’. It is rumoured that the US State Department is also bringing pressure on the British-born Chaplin ‘to avoid incensing Hitler and Mussolini in the present delicate state of international relationships’.

21 August, O
BERSALZBERG

At 10.50pm, Stalin’s reply arrives while Hitler, Eva Braun and their guests are having dinner. The Soviet dictator agrees to von Ribbentrop’s coming to Moscow on 23 August. Hitler is overjoyed. He bangs the table so hard that the glasses and cutlery rattle, and exclaims, ‘I have them! I have them!’

21 August, B
ERLIN

Just before midnight, German home service radio announces the news of the pact with Russia. Propaganda minister Dr Goebbels writes confidently in his diary, ‘We’re on top again. Now we can sleep more easily.’ From Berlin,
The Times
correspondent notes that among ordinary Germans the initial reaction is: ‘This means that nobody will dare fight against us, and we can do just as we please.’ But many old Nazi Party members are dismayed at a pact with the Bolsheviks. The garden of the Brown House, the Nazi Party headquarters in Munich, is reportedly littered with the Party’s swastika badges thrown
there by disillusioned Nazis. Official and public opinion in Japan, Spain, Italy and Hungary is also aghast at Hitler’s
volte face.

21 August, T
EDDINGTON

‘Tension increasing – nurses called up, soldiers being inoculated – heavy troops being called up – Poland advises foreigners to leave.’ (Helena Mott)

22 August, L
ONDON

The Cabinet meets to discuss the crisis. Lord Halifax rather airily dismisses the German–Soviet non-aggression pact as ‘perhaps of not very great importance’. During the nine o’clock news this evening it is announced that Parliament is being recalled. This is the first time that this has been done over the radio. Chamberlain, mindful of the accusations levelled at Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey in August 1914, writes to Hitler:

Whatever may prove to be the nature of the German-Soviet Agreement, it cannot alter Great Britain’s obligation to Poland which His Majesty’s Government have stated in public repeatedly and plainly and which they are determined to fulfil.

It has been alleged that, if his Majesty’s Government had made their position more clear in 1914, the great catastrophe would have been avoided. Whether or not there is any force in that allegation, His Majesty’s Government are resolved that on this occasion there shall be no such tragic misunderstanding.

The Prime Minister’s message is dispatched to the Berlin embassy for Sir Nevile Henderson to personally deliver to Hitler.

22 August, W
ILHELMSHAVEN

The German submarine
U-30
commanded by Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp leaves base to take up its war station in the Atlantic Ocean. Twenty other U-boats also leave this week.

22 August, O
BERSALZBERG

Hitler addresses his military chiefs on the imminent invasion of Poland. He tells the generals that with the non-aggression pact with Russia, he now has Poland ‘in the position in which I want her’. He is scornful of Chamberlain and Daladier: ‘our enemies are small fry. I saw them in Munich.’ Hitler goes on to say that he will provide a propaganda pretext, however implausible, for the invasion. In any case, ‘The victor will not be asked afterwards whether he told the truth or not. When starting and waging war it is not right that matters, but victory. Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally. Eighty million people must obtain what is their right. Their existence must be secured. The stronger man is right. The greatest harshness.’

22 August, T
EDDINGTON

‘
Like a bombshell
the Russian news in the morning papers fell on us at breakfast. Well! We have asked for it and no doubt Germany has read books that have pointed out what an invincible combination these two powers would make . . . Still, we have nothing whatsoever of which to be proud nor has our policy been anything but weak and reprehensible. If Neville Chamberlain had no means of gauging the trend of events he is certainly not fit to hold the position of prime minister of an empire. To make us the laughing stock of the world is scarcely an accomplishment of which to be proud – to shilly shally as he has done is not only madness but criminal lunacy.

‘I am listening to Mozart’s “sinfonia concertante” for violin, viola and orchestra in E Flat. How lovely! It seems impossible to connect such beauty with this present age and time of bestiality, misery and war madness.’ (Helena Mott)

22 August, W
ORTHING

‘Crisis again. Amazing news of a Berlin–Moscow Pact. Sworn enemies but uniting in a non-aggression pact. “World shocked” say the placards.’ (Joan Strange)

23 August, P
ARIS

The Council of Ministers hold an emergency meeting to discuss how the situation has been affected by the Nazi–Soviet pact. Foreign minister Georges Bonnet thinks that to avoid war France should put pressure on Poland to compromise. But Daladier, most of the other ministers and the military chiefs present, believe that France must stand by the Poles.

23 August, O
BERSALZBERG