The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (101 page)

In contrast to the British and French, the Russians placed on their military mission the highest officers of their armed forces: Marshal Voroshilov, who was Commissar for Defense, General Shaposhnikov, Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, and the commanders in chief of the Navy and Air Force. The Russians could not help noting that whereas the British had sent the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Edmund
Ironside
, to
Warsaw
in July for military talks with the Polish General Staff, they did not consider sending this ranking British officer to Moscow.

It cannot be said that the Anglo–French military missions were exactly rushed to Moscow. A plane would have got them there in a day. But they were sent on a slow boat—a passenger-cargo vessel—which took as long to get them to Russia as the
Queen Mary
could have conveyed them to America. They sailed for Leningrad on August 5 and did not arrive in Moscow until August 11.

By that time it was too late. Hitler had beaten them to it.

While the British and French military officers were waiting for their slow boat to Leningrad the Germans were acting swiftly. August 3 was a crucial day in Berlin and Moscow.

At 12:58
P.M
. on that day Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, who invariably left the sending of telegrams to State Secretary von Weizsaecker, got off on his own a wire marked “Secret—Most Urgent” to Schulenburg in Moscow.

   Yesterday I had a lengthy conversation with Astakhov, on which a telegram follows.

I expressed the
German
wish for remolding German–Russian relations and stated that from the Baltic to the Black Sea there was no problem which could not be solved to our mutual satisfaction. In response to Astakhov’s desire for more concrete conversations on topical questions … I declared myself ready for such conversations if the Soviet Government would inform me through Astakhov that they also desired to place German–Russian relations on a new and definitive basis.
⁸⁹

   It was known at the Foreign Office that Schulenburg was seeing Molotov later in the day. An hour after Ribbentrop’s telegram was dispatched, Weizsaecker got off one of his own, also marked “Secret—Most Urgent.”

   In view of the political situation and in the interests of speed, we are anxious, without prejudice to your conversation with Molotov today, to continue in more concrete terms in Berlin the conversations on harmonizing German–Soviet intentions. To this end Schnurre will receive Astakhov today and will tell him that we would be ready for a continuation on more concrete terms.
⁹⁰

   Though Ribbentrop’s sudden desire for “concrete” talks on everything from the Baltic to the Black Sea must have surprised the Russians—at one point, as he informed Schulenburg in his following telegram which was sent at 3:47
P.M
., he “dropped a gentle hint [to Astakhov] at our coming to an understanding with Russia on the fate of Poland”—the Foreign Minister emphasized to his ambassador in Moscow that he had told the Russian chargé that “we were in no hurry.”
⁹¹

This was bluff, and the sharp-minded Soviet chargé called it when he saw Schnurre at the Foreign Office at 12:45
P.M
. He remarked that while Schnurre seemed to be in a hurry, the German Foreign Minister the previous day “had shown no such urgency.” Schnurre rose to the occasion.

I told M. Astakhov [he noted in a secret memorandum]
⁹²
that though the Foreign Minister last night had not shown any urgency to the Soviet Government, we nevertheless thought it expedient to make use of
the next few days
^*
for continuing the conversations in order to establish a basis as quickly as possible.

   For the Germans, then, it had come down to a matter of the next few days. Astakhov told Schnurre that he had received “a provisional answer” from Molotov to the German suggestions. It was largely negative. While Moscow too desired an improvement in relations, “Molotov said,” he reported, “that so far nothing concrete was known of Germany’s attitude.”

The Soviet Foreign Commissar conveyed his ideas directly to Schulenburg in Moscow that evening. The ambassador reported in a long dispatch filed shortly after midnight
⁹³
that in a talk lasting an hour and a quarter Molotov had “abandoned his habitual reserve and appeared unusually open.” There seems no doubt of that. For after Schulenburg had reiterated Germany’s view that no differences existed between the two countries “from the Baltic to the Black Sea” and reaffirmed the German wish to “come to an understanding,” the unbending Russian Minister enumerated some of the hostile acts that the Reich had committed against the Soviet Union: the
Anti-Comintern Pact
, support of Japan against Russia and the exclusion of the Soviets from Munich.

“How,” asked Molotov, “could the new German statements be reconciled with these three points? Proofs of a changed attitude of the German Government were for the present still lacking.”

Schulenburg seems to have been somewhat discouraged.

   My general impression [he telegraphed Berlin] is that the Soviet Government are at present determined to conclude an agreement with Britain and France, if they fulfill all Soviet wishes … I believe that my statements made an impression on Molotov; it will nevertheless require considerable effort on our part to cause a reversal in the Soviet Government’s course.

   Knowledgeable though the veteran German diplomat was about Russian affairs, he obviously overestimated the progress in Moscow of the British and French negotiators. Nor did he yet realize the lengths to which Berlin was now prepared to go to make the “considerable effort” which he thought was necessary to reverse the course of Soviet diplomacy.

In the Wilhelmstrasse confidence grew that this could be accomplished. With Russia neutralized, Britain and France either would not fight for Poland or, if they did, would easily be held on the western fortifications until the Poles were quickly liquidated and the German Army could turn its full strength on the West.

The astute French chargé d’affaires in Berlin, Jacques Tarbé de St.-Hardouin, noticed the change of atmosphere in the German capital. On the very day, August 3, when there was so much Soviet–German diplomatic activity in Berlin and Moscow, he reported to Paris: “In the course of the last week a very definite change in the political atmosphere has been
observed in Berlin … The period of embarrassment, hesitation, inclination to temporization or even to appeasement has been succeeded among the Nazi leaders by a new phase.”
⁹⁴

It was different with Germany’s allies, Italy and
Hungary
. As the summer progressed, the governments in Budapest and Rome became increasingly fearful that their countries would be drawn into Hitler’s war on Germany’s side.

On July 24 Count Teleki, Premier of Hungary, addressed identical letters to Hitler and Mussolini informing them that “in the event of a general conflict Hungary will make her policy conform to the policy of the Axis.” Having gone so far, he then pulled back. On the same day he wrote the two dictators a second letter stating that “in order to prevent any possible misinterpretation of my letter of July 24, I … repeat that Hungary could not, on moral grounds, be in a position to take armed action against Poland.”
⁹⁵

The second letter from Budapest threw Hitler into one of his accustomed rages. When he received Count Csáky, the Hungarian Foreign Minister, at Obersalzberg on August 8, in the presence of Ribbentrop, he opened the conversation by stating that he had been “shocked” at the Hungarian Prime Minister’s letter. He emphasized, according to the confidential memorandum drawn up for the Foreign Office, that he had never expected help from Hungary—or from any other state—“in the event of a German–Polish conflict.” Count Teleki’s letter, he added, “was impossible.” And he reminded his Hungarian guest that it was due to Germany’s generosity that Hungary had been able to regain so much territory at the expense of
Czechoslovakia
. Were Germany to be defeated in war, he said, “Hungary would be automatically smashed too.”

The German memorandum of this conversation, which is among the captured Foreign Office documents, reveals Hitler’s state of mind as the fateful month of August got under way. Poland, he said, presented no military problem at all for Germany. Nevertheless, he was reckoning from the start with a war on two fronts. “No power in the world,” he boasted, “could penetrate Germany’s western fortifications. Nobody in all my life has been able to frighten me, and that goes for Britain. Nor will I succumb to the oft-predicted nervous breakdown.” As for Russia:

So effective was Hitler’s harangue that at the end of a second talk held the same day Count Csáky requested him “to regard the two letters written
by Teleki as not having been written.” He said he would also make the same request of Mussolini.

For some weeks the Duce had been worrying and fretting about the danger of the Fuehrer dragging Italy into war. Attolico, his ambassador in Berlin, had been sending increasingly alarming reports about Hitler’s determination to attack Poland.
^*
Since early June Mussolini had been pressing for another meeting with Hitler and in July it was fixed for August 4 at the Brenner. On July 24 he presented to Hitler through Attolico “certain basic principles” for their discussion. If the Fuehrer considered war “inevitable,” then Italy would stand by her side. But the Duce reminded him that a war with Poland could not be localized; it would become a European conflict. Mussolini did not think that this was the time for the Axis to start such a war. He proposed instead “a constructive peaceful policy over several years,” with Germany settling her differences with Poland and Italy hers with France by diplomatic negotiation. He went further. He suggested another international conference of the Big Powers.
⁹⁷

The Fuehrer’s reaction, as Ciano noted in his diary on July 26, was unfavorable, and Mussolini decided it might be best to postpone his meeting with Hitler.
⁹⁸
He proposed instead, on August 7, that the foreign ministers of the two countries meet immediately. Ciano’s diary notes during these days indicate the growing uneasiness in Rome. On August 6 he wrote:

We must find some way out. By following the Germans we shall go to war and enter it under the least favorable conditions for the Axis, and especially for Italy. Our gold reserves are reduced to almost nothing, as well as our stocks of metals… We must avoid war. I propose to the Duce the idea of my meeting with Ribbentrop … during which I would attempt to continue discussion of Mussolini’s project for a world conference.

August 9.—Ribbentrop has approved the idea of our meeting. I decided to leave tomorrow night in order to meet him at
Salzburg
. The Duce is anxious that I prove to the Germans, by documentary evidence, that the outbreak of war at this time would be folly.

August 10.—The Duce is more than ever convinced of the necessity of delaying the conflict. He himself has worked out the outline of a report concerning the meeting at Salzburg which ends with an allusion to international negotiations to settle the problems that so dangerously disturb European life.

Before letting me go he recommends that I shall frankly inform the Germans that we must avoid a conflict with Poland since it will be impossible to localize it, and a general war would be disastrous for everybody.
⁹⁹

   Armed with such commendable but, in the circumstances, naïve thoughts and recommendations, the youthful Fascist Foreign Minister set out for Germany, where during the next three days—August 11, 12 and 13—he received from Ribbentrop and especially from Hitler the shock of his life.

For some ten hours on August 11, Ciano conferred with Ribbentrop at the latter’s estate at Fuschl, outside Salzburg, which the Nazi Foreign Minister had taken from an Austrian monarchist who, conveniently, had been put away in a concentration camp. The hot-blooded Italian found the atmosphere, as he later reported, cold and gloomy. During dinner at the White Horse Inn at
St. Wolfgang
not a word was exchanged between the two. It was scarcely necessary. Ribbentrop had informed his visitor earlier in the day that the decision to attack Poland was implacable.

“Well, Ribbentrop,” Ciano says he asked, “what do you want? The Corridor or Danzig?”

“Not that any more,” Ribbentrop replied, gazing at him with his cold, metallic eyes. “We want war!”

Ciano’s arguments that a Polish conflict could not be localized, that if Poland were attacked the Western democracies would fight, were bluntly rejected. The day before Christmas Eve four years later—1943—when Ciano lay in Cell 27 of the
Verona
jail waiting execution at the instigation of the Germans, he still remembered that chilling day of August 11 at Fuschl and Salzburg. Ribbentrop, he wrote in his very last diary entry on December 23, 1943, had bet him “during one of those gloomy meals at the Oesterreichischer Hof in Salzburg” a collection of old German armor against an Italian painting that France and Britain would remain neutral—a bet, he remarks ruefully, which was never paid.
¹⁰⁰

Ciano moved on to Obersalzberg, where Hitler during two meetings on August 12 and 13 reiterated that France and Britain would not fight.
In contrast to the Nazi Foreign Minister, the Fuehrer was cordial, but he was equally implacable in his determination to go to war. This is evident not only from Ciano’s reports but from the confidential German minutes of the meeting, which are among the captured documents.
¹⁰¹
The Italian Minister found Hitler standing before a large table covered with military staff maps. He began by explaining the strength of Germany’s
West Wall
. It was, he said, impenetrable. Besides, he added scornfully, Britain could put only three divisions into France. France would have considerably more, but since Poland would be defeated “in a very short time,” Germany could then concentrate 100 divisions in the west “for the life-and-death struggle which would then commence.”