Hitler (112 page)

Simultaneously, Beck was reassured by the attitude of the British government. Still indignant at Hitler's occupation of Prague, Chamberlain at the end of March decided upon a desperate step. Acting on the basis of several unconfirmed reports of an impending German
coup de main
against Danzig, he asked Warsaw whether Poland had any objections to a British declaration guaranteeing her integrity. Despite the warnings of some of his more perspicacious fellow countrymen, who regarded it as “childish, naïve and at the same time unfair to propose to a country in Poland's situation that it compromise its relations with so strong a neighbor as Germany,”
¹¹³
Beck promptly consented. He later declared that he needed less time to make his decision than was needed to flip the ash from a cigarette. On March 31 Chamberlain made his famous statement in the House ol Commons: England and France “in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence... would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power.”
¹¹⁴

This promise of assistance was the great turning point in the policies of that phase. England had decided unconditionally to oppose Hitler's expansionist ambitions wherever and whenever it encountered them. It was an extraordinary and impressive decision, though one as deficient in wisdom as it was superabundant in dramatic consequences. Its origins in the emotions of a disappointed man were all too apparent, and critics quickly pointed to the inherent flaws of such a guarantee: it required no counterguarantee from the Poles if Hitler attacked some other European country, and did not oblige the Poles to conduct negotiations for aid with the Soviet Union, whose partnership would necessarily be of crucial importance. Moreover, the grave question of war or peace for Europe was being given into the keeping of a handful of stubborn, nationalistic men in Warsaw who a short while ago had made common cause with Hitler against Czechoslovakia, betraying the very principles of independence they were now so anxiously appealing to.

Chamberlain's decision of March 31 forced Hitler to reassess his position. He considered the British guarantee a warrant for the eccentric Poles to involve Germany in military undertakings whenever it pleased them. But far more crucial in his eyes was that England had now at last revealed herself as an enemy. She would not allow him to move freely against the East and was evidently resolved to push matters to the ultimate confrontation. He could not obtain the grand mandate of the bourgeois powers to proceed against the Soviet Union. Consequently, his whole strategic concept was threatened. It seems clear that this last day of March gave him the final impetus to that radical turn which had been hinted at in various remarks since the end of 1936, but which had been repeatedly postponed. Now he actually proceeded “to the liquidation of the Work of his youth,” as he had phrased it a short while before. He abandoned his courtship of England, which had rejected him. He concluded correctly that whenever he set out to conquer new
Lebensraum
in the East he would clash with England. Consequently, to achieve his central idea he would first have to defeat Great Britain. If he wished to avoid a two-front war, one more thing followed: he would have to come to a temporary arrangement with the future enemy. It so happened that the conduct of Poland provided him with an opening. An alliance with the Soviet Union was now within reach.

Hitler's policy during the following months was one grand, large-scale maneuver to bring about this swing and so shape the antagonistic fronts in Europe to accord with his purposes. Admiral Canaris, who happened to be present when news of the British guaranty to Poland arrived, reported Hitler's furious outburst: “I'll cook them a stew that they'll choke on.”
¹¹⁵
The following day he utilized the launching of the
Tirpitz
in Wilhelmshaven for a violent speech against the British “encirclement policy.” He issued a dire warning to the “satellite states whose task is to be set against Germany” and indicated that he was about to terminate the Anglo-German Naval Treaty:

 

I once made an agreement with England—namely, the Naval Treaty. It is based on the earnest desire which we all share never to have to go to war against England. But this wish can only be a mutual one.

If this wish no longer exists in England, then the practical preconditions for this agreement are removed and Germany also would accept this very calmly. We are self-assured because we are strong, and we are strong because we are united.... Those who are powerless lose the right to live!
¹¹⁶

 

Everyone who met Hitler during this period has reported him flaring up furiously against England.
¹¹⁷
Early in April the Propaganda Minister issued a directive whose tenor was that England must be represented as Germany's most dangerous adversary. Simultaneously Hitler broke off his negotiations with Poland. He ordered State Secretary von Weizsäcker to inform the Poles that the offer had been unique and would not be repeated. At the same time new demands, as yet unspecified, were hinted at. And, as if to stress the gravity of the situation, Hitler suddenly once more expressed interest in the German minorities in Poland, whom he had overlooked for years during which they, together with the Jews, had been the favorite victims of the Poles' resentments and outbreaks of chauvinistic arrogance.

But even more can be read from the secret message Hitler issued to the armed forces on April 3, setting up a new operation with the code name “Case White”:

 

The present attitude of Poland requires... the initiation of military preparations to remove, if necessary, any threat from this direction for all future time.

The German relationship to Poland continues to be governed by the principle of avoiding trouble. Poland's policy toward Germany hitherto has been based upon the same principle, but if she should change it and adopt an attitude threatening to the Reich, a final reckoning may become requisite without regard to the existing treaty.

The aim then will be to shatter the Polish forces and create in the East a situation in keeping with the requirements of national defense. The Free State of Danzig will be declared territory of the German Reich by the beginning of the conflict at the latest....

The major goals in the build-up of the German Armed Forces will continue to be determined by the hostility of the western democracies. “Case White” merely forms a precautionary supplement to the preparations.
¹¹⁸

 

A note appended to the document referred to a directive from Hitler to “make the preparations in such a way that execution will be possible at any time from September 1, 1939, on.”

Although outwardly everything remained unchanged, Europe now seemed to be gripped by a nervous tension. In Germany a propaganda campaign translated Hitler's aggressive remarks into screeching agitation. In Poland, and for the first time in England also, there were more or less violent anti-German demonstrations. And, as if Italian pride forbade that country's keeping out of the bickerings and brawls of Europe, Mussolini now reminded the world of his existence by a great show of Italy's strength and courage. On April 7, 1939, he sent his troops to attack little Albania, and in imitation of his envied German model set up a protectorate over the country. Shortly before in Berlin he had let it be known that he felt called upon “to acquire something” also.

The result was that the Western powers now issued guarantees of aid to Greece and Rumania also. Germany then warned the smaller European countries against “English lures,” thus generating more nervousness. Whereupon the United States, after years of disillusioned retreat into isolation from international affairs, let its voice be heard once more. On April 14 President Roosevelt addressed a letter to Hitler and Mussolini calling upon them to give a ten-year guarantee of nonaggression to thirty-one countries, which he mentioned by name.

Mussolini at first refused to acknowledge receipt of the message. Hitler, however, was delighted at this unexpected challenge. Ever since he had first come forth as a speaker, his oratorical temperament had always responded best in argument. The naive demagoguery of Roosevelt's appeal, with its listing of countries with which neither Germany nor Italy had common borders or differences of opinion (among them Eire, Spain, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Persia), offered Hitler an easy target. He announced through DNB, the German News Agency, that he would deliver his reply in a speech to the Reichstag.

Hitler's speech of April 28 was one of the recognizable milestones along the course of the European crisis. It marked the destination as war. Following Hitler's tried-and-true pattern, it was full of avowals of peace, loud in asseverations of innocence, and silent about all his real intentions. Once again Hitler tried to commend himself as the spokesman for a program of limited and moderate revisions in the East; but attacks upon the Soviet Union as evil incarnate were noticeably absent. Simultaneously he displayed all his sarcasm, all his apparent logic and hypnotic persuasiveness, so that many a listener called the speech “probably the most brilliant oration he ever gave.”
¹¹⁹
He combined his attacks upon England with expressions of admiration and friendly feelings for her. He assured Poland that despite all his disappointments with her he was ready to continue negotiations. And he ranted against the “international warmongers,” the “provocateurs,” and “enemies of peace” whose aim was to recruit “mercenaries of the European democracies against Germany.” He denounced the “jugglers of Versailles who, either in their maliciousness or their thoughtlessness, placed 100 powder barrels all over Europe.”

Finally he came to the climax, his answer to the American President, which was greeted by the deputies with tempestuous enthusiasm and roars of laughter. Hitler divided Roosevelt's letter into twenty-one points, which he answered in sections. The American President, he said, had pointed out to him the general fear of war; but Germany had participated in none of the fourteen wars that had been waged since 1919—“but in which the States of the ‘Western Hemisphere,' in whose name President Roosevelt speaks, were indeed concerned.” Germany also had nothing to do with the twenty-six “violent interventions and sanctions carried through by means of bloodshed and force” during that period, whereas the United States, for example, had carried out military interventions in six cases. Furthermore, the President had pleaded for the solution of all problems at the conference table, but America herself had given sharpest expression to her mistrust in the effectiveness of conferences by leaving the League of Nations, “the greatest conference of all time”—from which Germany, in violation of Wilson's pledge, was for a long time excluded. In spite of this “most bitter experience,” Germany had not followed the example of the United States until his, Hitler's, administration.

The President was also making himself the advocate of disarmament. But Germany had, for all times, learned her lesson, ever since she had appeared unarmed at the conference table in Versailles and been “subjected to even greater degradation than can ever have been inflicted on the chieftains of the Sioux tribes.” Roosevelt was taking so great an interest in Germany's intentions in Europe that the question necessarily arose what aims American foreign policy was pursuing, for example, toward Central or South American countries. The President would surely regard such a question as tactless and refer to the Monroe Doctrine. And although it was surely tempting for the German government to behave in the same way, it had nevertheless addressed all the countries mentioned by Roosevelt and asked whether they felt threatened by Germany. “The reply was in all cases negative, in some instances strongly so.” However, Hitler continued, “it is true that I could not cause inquiries to be made of certain of the States and nations mentioned because they themselves—as, for example, Syria—are at present not in possession of their freedom, but are occupied and consequently deprived of their rights by the military agents of the democratic States.” Then he continued:

 

Mr. Roosevelt! I fully understand that the vastness of your nation and the immense wealth of your country allow you to feel responsible for the history of the whole world and for the history of all nations. I, sir, am placed in a much more modest and smaller sphere.... I cannot feel myself responsible for the fate of the world, as this world took no interest in the pitiful state of my own people.

I have regarded myself as called upon by Providence to serve my own people alone and to deliver them from their frightful misery....

I have conquered chaos in Germany, re-established order and enormously increased production in all branches of our national economy by strenuous efforts.... I have succeeded in finding useful work once more for the whole of 7,000,000 unemployed, who so appeal to the hearts of us all.... I [have] united the German people politically, but I have also re-armed them; I have also endeavored to destroy sheet by sheet that Treaty which in its 448 articles contains the vilest oppression which peoples and human beings have ever been expected to put up with.

I have brought back to the Reich provinces stolen from us in 1919; I have led back to their native country millions of Germans who were torn away from us and were in misery; I have re-established the historic unity of German living space and, Mr. Roosevelt, I have endeavored to attain all this without spilling blood and without bringing to my people, and consequently to others, the misery of war.

I, who twenty-one years ago was an unknown worker and soldier of my people, have attained this, Mr. Roosevelt, by my own energy.... You, Mr. Roosevelt, have a much easier task in comparison. You became President of the United States in 1933 when I became Chancellor of the Reich. In other words, from the very outset you stepped to the head of one of the largest and wealthiest States in the world.... Conditions prevailing in your country are on such a large scale that you can find time and leisure to give your attention to universal problems.... My world, Mr. Roosevelt... is unfortunately much smaller... for it is limited to my people.