Read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Online
Authors: William L. Shirer
Finally the excited Chancellor strode up to his guest and said, “Herr Dahlerus, you who know England so well, can you give me any reason for my perpetual failure to come to an agreement with her?” Dahlerus confesses that he “hesitated at first” to answer but then replied that in his personal opinion the British “lack of confidence in him and in his Government was the reason.”
“Idiots!” Dahlerus says Hitler stormed back, flinging out his right arm and striking his breast with his left hand. “Have I ever told a lie in my life?”
The Nazi dictator thereupon calmed down, there was a discussion of Hitler’s proposals made through Henderson and it was finally settled that Dahlerus should fly back to London with a further offer to the British government. Goering objected to committing it to writing and the accommodating Swede was told he must, instead, commit it to memory. It contained six points:
Germany wanted a pact or alliance with Britain.
Britain was to help Germany obtain Danzig and the Corridor, but Poland was to have a free harbor in Danzig, to retain the Baltic port of Gdynia and a corridor to it.
Germany would guarantee the new Polish frontiers.
Germany was to have her colonies, or their equivalent, returned to her.
Guarantees were to be given for the German minority in Poland.
Germany was to pledge herself to defend the British Empire.
With these proposals imprinted in his memory, Dahlerus flew to London on the morning of Sunday, August 27, and shortly after noon was whisked by a roundabout route so as to avoid the snooping press reporters and ushered into the presence of Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, Sir Horace Wilson and Sir Alexander Cadogan. It was obvious that the British government now took the Swedish courier quite seriously.
He had brought with him some hastily scribbled notes jotted down in the plane describing his meeting with Hitler and Goering the night before. In these notes he assured the two leading members of the British cabinet who now scanned his memorandum that during the interview Hitler had been “calm and composed.” Although no record of this extraordinary Sabbath meeting has been found in the Foreign Office archives, it has been reconstructed in the volume of Foreign Office papers (Volume VII, Third Series) from data furnished by Lord Halifax and Cadogan and from the emissary’s memorandum. The British version differs somewhat from that given by Dahlerus in his book and at Nuremberg, but taking the various accounts together what follows seems as accurate a report as we shall ever get.
Chamberlain and Halifax saw at once that they were faced with two sets of proposals from Hitler, the one given to Henderson and the other now brought by Dahlerus, and that they differed. Whereas the first had
proposed to guarantee the British Empire after Hitler had settled accounts with Poland, the second seemed to suggest that the Fuehrer was ready to negotiate through the British for the return of Danzig and the Corridor, after which he would “guarantee” Poland’s new boundaries. This was an old refrain to Chamberlain, after his disillusioning experiences with Hitler over Czechoslovakia, and he was skeptical of the Fuehrer’s offer as Dahlerus outlined it. He told the Swede that he saw “no prospect of a settlement on these terms; the Poles might concede Danzig, but they would fight rather than surrender the Corridor.”
Finally it was agreed that Dahlerus should return to Berlin immediately with an initial and unofficial reply to Hitler and report back to London on Hitler’s reception of it before the official response was drawn up and sent to Berlin with Henderson the next evening. As Halifax put it (according to the British version), “the issues might be somewhat confused as a result of these informal and secret communications through M. Dahlerus. It was [therefore] desirable to make it clear that when Dahlerus returned to Berlin that night he went, not to carry the answer of His Majesty’s Government, but rather to prepare the way for the main communication” which Henderson would bring.
39
So important had this unknown Swedish businessman become as an intermediary in the negotiations between the governments of the two most powerful nations in Europe that, according to his own account, he told the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary at this critical juncture that “they should keep Henderson in London until Monday [the next day] so that the answer could be given after they had been informed how Hitler regarded the English standpoint.”
40
And what was the English standpoint, as Dahlerus was to present it to Hitler? There is some confusion about it. According to Halifax’s own rough notes of his verbal instructions to Dahlerus, the British standpoint was merely this:
i
. Solemn assurance of desire for good understanding between G. and Gt.B. [The initials are Halifax’s.] Not a single member of the Govt. who thinks different. ii. Gt.B. bound to honor her obligations to Poland.
iii.
German–Polish differences must be settled peacefully.
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According to Dahlerus, the unofficial British reply entrusted to him was more comprehensive.
Naturally, Point 6, the offer to defend the British Empire, was rejected. Similarly they did not want to have any discussion on colonies as long as Germany was mobilized. With regard to the Polish boundaries, they wanted them to be guaranteed by the five great powers. Concerning the Corridor, they proposed that negotiations with Poland be undertaken immediately. As to the first point [of Hitler’s proposals] England was willing in principle to come to an agreement with Germany.
42
Dahlerus flew back to Berlin Sunday evening and saw Goering shortly before midnight. The Field Marshal did not consider the British reply “very favorable.” But after seeing Hitler at midnight, Goering rang up Dahlerus at his hotel at 1
A.M
. and said that the Chancellor would “accept the English standpoint” provided the official version to be brought by Henderson Monday evening was in agreement with it.
Goering was pleased, and Dahlerus even more so. The Swede woke up Sir George Ogilvie Forbes, the counselor of the British Embassy, at 2
A.M
. to give him the glad tidings. Not only to do that but—such had his position become, at least in his own mind—to advise the British government what to say in its official reply. That note, which Henderson would be bringing later on this Monday, August 28, must contain an undertaking, Dahlerus emphasized, that Britain would persuade Poland to negotiate with Germany directly and immediately.
Dahlerus has just telephoned [read a later dispatch from Forbes on August 28] from Goering’s office following suggestions which he considers most important.
1. British reply to Hitler should not contain any reference to Roosevelt plan.
*
2. Hitler suspects Poles will try to avoid negotiations. Reply should therefore contain clear statement that the Poles have been strongly advised to immediately establish contact with Germany and negotiate.
†
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Throughout the day the now confident Swede not only heaped advice on Forbes, who dutifully wired it to London, but himself telephoned the British Foreign Office with a message for Halifax containing further suggestions.
At this critical moment in world history the amateur Swedish diplomat had indeed become the pivotal point between Berlin and London. At 2
P.M
. on August 28, Halifax, who had been apprised both from his Berlin embassy and from Dahlerus’ telephone call to the Foreign Office of the Swede’s urgent advice, wired the British ambassador in Warsaw,
Sir Howard Kennard
, to see Foreign Minister Beck “at once” and get him to authorize the British government to inform Hitler “that Poland is ready to enter at once into direct discussion with Germany.” The Foreign Secretary was in a hurry. He wanted to include the authorization in the official reply to Hitler which Henderson was waiting to carry back to
Berlin this same day. He urged his ambassador in Warsaw to telephone Beck’s reply. Late in the afternoon Beck gave the requested authorization and it was hastily inserted in the British note.
44
Henderson arrived back in Berlin with it on the evening of August 28, and after being received at the Chancellery by an S.S. guard of honor, which presented arms and rolled its drums (the formal diplomatic pretensions were preserved to the end), he was ushered into the presence of Hitler, to whom he handed a German translation of the note, at 10:30
P.M
. The Chancellor read it at once.
The British government “entirely agreed” with him, the communication said, that there must “first” be a settlement of the differences between Germany and Poland. “Everything, however,” it added, “turns upon the nature of the settlement and the method by which it is to be reached.” On this matter, the note said, the Chancellor had been “silent.” Hitler’s offer to “guarantee” the
British Empire
was gently declined. The British government “could not, for any advantage offered to Great Britain, acquiesce in a settlement which put in jeopardy the independence of a State to whom they had given their guarantee.”
That guarantee would be honored, but because the British government was “scrupulous” concerning its obligations to Poland the Chancellor must not think it was not anxious for an equitable settlement.
It follows that the next step should be the initiation of direct discussions between the German and Polish Governments on a basis … of safeguarding Poland’s essential interests and the securing of the settlement by an international guarantee.
They [the British government] have already received a definite assurance from the Polish Government that they are prepared to enter into discussions on this basis, and H. M. Government hope the German Government would also be willing to agree to this course.
… A just settlement … between Germany and Poland may open the way to world peace. Failure to reach it would ruin the hopes of an understanding between Germany and Great Britain, would bring the two countries into conflict and might well plunge the whole world into war. Such an outcome would be a calamity without parallel in history.
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When Hitler had finished reading the communication, Henderson began to elaborate on it from notes, he told the Fuehrer, which he had made during his conversations with Chamberlain and Halifax. It was the only meeting with Hitler, he said later, in which he, the ambassador, did most of the talking. The gist of his remarks was that Britain wanted Germany’s friendship, it wanted peace, but it would fight if Hitler attacked Poland. The Fuehrer, who was by no means silent, replied by expatiating on the crimes of Poland and on his own “generous” offers for a peaceful settlement with her, which would not be repeated. In fact today “nothing less than the return of Danzig and the whole of the Corridor would satisfy him, together with a rectification in
Silesia
, where ninety per cent of the
population voted for Germany at the postwar plebiscite.” This was not true nor was Hitler’s rejoinder a moment later that a million Germans had been driven out of the Corridor after 1918. There had been only 385,000 Germans there, according to the German census of 1910, but by this time, of course, the Nazi dictator expected everyone to swallow his lies. For the last time in his crumbling mission to Berlin, the British ambassador swallowed a good deal, for, as he declared in his
Final Report
, “Herr Hitler on this occasion was again friendly and reasonable and appeared to be not dissatisfied with the answer which I had brought to him.”
“In the end I asked him two straight questions,” Henderson wired London at 2:35
A.M
. in a long dispatch describing the interview.
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Was he willing to negotiate direct with the Poles, and was he ready to discuss the question of an exchange of populations? He replied in the affirmative as regards the latter (though I have no doubt that he was thinking at the same time of a rectification of frontiers).
As to the first point, he would first have to give “careful consideration” to the whole British note. At this point, Henderson recounted in his dispatch, the Chancellor turned to Ribbentrop and said, “We must summon Goering to discuss it with him.” Hitler promised a written reply to the British communication on the next day, Tuesday, August 29.
“Conversation was conducted,” Henderson emphasized to Halifax, “in quite a friendly atmosphere in spite of absolute firmness on both sides.” Probably Henderson, despite all of his personal experience with his host, did not quite appreciate why Hitler had made the atmosphere so friendly. The Fuehrer was still resolved to go to war that very weekend against Poland; he was still hopeful, despite all the British government and Henderson had said, of keeping Britain out of it.
Apparently, Hitler, encouraged by the obsequious and ignorant Ribbentrop, simply could not believe that the British meant what they said, though he said he did.
The next day Henderson added a postscript to his long dispatch.
Hitler insisted that he was not bluffing, and that people would make a big mistake if they believed that he was. I replied that I was fully aware of the fact and that we were not bluffing either. Herr Hitler stated that he fully realized that.
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He said so, but did he realize it? For in his reply on August 29 he deliberately tried to trick the British government in a way which he must have thought would enable him to eat his cake and have it too.
The British reply and Hitler’s first reaction to it generated a burst of optimism in Berlin, especially in Goering’s camp, where the inimitable Dahlerus now spent most of his time. At 1:30 in the morning of August 29 the Swede received a telephone call from one of the Field Marshal’s
adjutants, who was calling from the Chancellery, where Hitler, Ribbentrop and Goering had pondered the British note after Henderson’s departure. The word to Dahlerus from his German friend was that the British reply “was highly satisfactory and that there was every hope that the threat of war was past.”