Read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Online
Authors: William L. Shirer
At the same time Henderson wrote a long letter to Halifax: “… The German proposals do not endanger the independence of Poland … She is likely to get a worse deal later …”
Still keeping at it, Henderson wired Halifax at 12:30
A.M
. on September 1, four hours before the German attack was scheduled to begin (though he did not know this): “German proposals … are not unreasonable … I submit that on German offer war would be completely unjustifiable.” He urged again that the British government pressure the Poles “in unmistakable language” to state “their intention to send a plenipotentiary to Berlin.”
The British ambassador in Warsaw took a different view. He wired to Halifax on August 31: “H. M. Ambassador at Berlin appears to consider German terms reasonable. I fear that I cannot agree with him from point of view of Warsaw.”
65
†
There was another somewhat weird diplomatic episode this last day of peace which deserves a footnote. Dahlerus returned from the visit with Lipski to the British Embassy, where from Henderson’s office he put through at midday a telephone call to Sir Horace Wilson at the British Foreign Office in London. He told Wilson that the German proposals were “extremely liberal” but that the Polish ambassador had just rejected them. “It is clear,” he said, “that the Poles are obstructing the possibilities of negotiations.”
At this moment Wilson heard certain noises on the long-distance line which sounded to him as though the Germans were listening in. He tried to end the conversation, but Dahlerus persisted in rambling on about the unreasonableness of the Poles. “I again told Dahlerus,” Sir Horace noted in a Foreign Office memorandum, “to shut up, but as he did not I put down the receiver.”
Wilson reported this indiscretion, committed in the very office of H. M. Ambassador in Berlin, to his superiors. At 1
P.M
., less than an hour later, Halifax wired Henderson in code: “You really must be careful of use of telephone. D’s conversation [Dahlerus was always referred to in the messages between the Foreign Office and the Berlin Embassy as “D”] at midday from Embassy was most indiscreet and has certainly been heard by the Germans.”
66
*
The emphasis is in the original German text.
*
A marginal note in the directive clears up this ambiguous point—“Thus, Atlantic forces will for the time being remain in a waiting position.”
*
He may have drafted it that evening but he did not send it to London until 3:45
P.M
. the next day, nearly twelve hours after the German attack on Poland had begun. It followed several of his telegrams, which like it were telephoned to London—so that transmission was simultaneous—reporting the outbreak of hostilities. It read: “Mutual distrust of Germans and Poles is so complete that I do not feel I can usefully acquiesce [
sic
] in any further suggestions from here, which would only once again be outstripped by events or lead to nothing as the result of methods followed or of considerations of honor and prestige.
“Last hope lies in inflexible determination on our part to resist force by force.”
77
†
Since friends who have read this section have expressed doubts about this writer’s objectivity in dealing with Henderson, perhaps another’s view of the British ambassador in Berlin should be given. Sir L. B. Namier, the British historian, has summed up Henderson as follows: “Conceited, vain, self-opinionated, rigidly adhering to his preconceived ideas, he poured out telegrams, dispatches and letters in unbelievable numbers and of formidable length, repeating a hundred times the same ill-founded views and ideas. Obtuse enough to be a menace and not stupid enough to be innocuous, he proved
un homme néfaste.
” (Namier,
In the Nazi Era
, p. 162.)
*
See above, pp. 518–20.
*
The speech in Polish had been outlined by Heydrich to Naujocks. It contained inflammatory statements against Germany and declared that the Poles were attacking. See above, p. 519.
†
The “Polish attack” at Gleiwitz was used by Hitler in his speech to the Reichstag the next day and was cited as justification for the Nazi aggression by Ribbentrop, Weizsaecker and other members of the Foreign Office in their propaganda. The New York
Times
and other newspapers reported it, as well as similar incidents, in their issues of September 1, 1939. It remains only to be added that according to the testimony at Nuremberg of General Lahousen, of the Abwehr, all the S.S. men who wore Polish uniforms in the simulated attacks that evening were, as the General put it, “put out of the way.”
78
*
During the day Hitler found time to send a telegram to the Duke of Windsor at Antibes, France.
Berlin, August 31, 1939
I thank you for your telegram of August 27. You may rest assured that my attitude toward Britain and my desire to avoid another war between our peoples remain unchanged. It depends on Britain, however,’ whether my wishes for the future development of German-British relations can be realized.
A
DOLF
H
ITLER
80
This is the first mention of the former King of England, but by no means the last, in the captured German documents. Subsequently, for a time, as will be recorded further on, the Duke of Windsor loomed large in certain calculations of Hitler and Ribbentrop.
A
T DAYBREAK
on September 1, 1939, the very date which Hitler had set in his first directive for “Case White” back on April 3, the German armies poured across the Polish frontier and converged on
Warsaw
from the north, south and west.
Overhead German warplanes roared toward their targets: Polish troop columns and ammunition dumps, bridges, railroads and open cities. Within a few minutes they were giving the Poles, soldiers and civilians alike, the first taste of sudden death and destruction from the skies ever experienced on any great scale on the earth and thereby inaugurating a terror which would become dreadfully familiar to hundreds of millions of men, women and children in Europe and Asia during the next six years, and whose shadow, after the nuclear bombs came, would haunt all mankind with the threat of utter extinction.
It was a gray, somewhat sultry morning in Berlin, with clouds hanging low over the city, giving it some protection from hostile bombers, which were feared but never came.
The people in the streets, I noticed, were apathetic despite the immensity of the news which had greeted them from their radios and from the extra editions of the morning newspapers.
*
Across the street from the
Adlon Hotel
the morning shift of laborers had gone to work on the new I. G. Farben building just as if nothing had happened, and when newsboys came by shouting their extras no one laid down his tools to buy one. Perhaps, it occurred to me, the German people were simply dazed at waking up on this first morning of September to find themselves in a war which they had been sure the Fuehrer somehow would avoid. They could not quite believe it, now that it had come.
What a contrast, one could not help thinking, between this gray apathy and the way the Germans had gone to war in 1914. Then there had been a wild enthusiasm. The crowds in the streets had staged delirious demonstrations,
tossed flowers at the marching troops and frantically cheered the Kaiser and Supreme Warlord, Wilhelm II.
There were no such demonstrations this time for the troops or for the Nazi warlord, who shortly before 10
A.M
. drove from the Chancellery to the Reichstag through empty streets to address the nation on the momentous happenings which he himself, deliberately and cold-bloodedly, had just provoked. Even the robot members of the Reichstag, party hacks, for the most part, whom Hitler had appointed, failed to respond with much enthusiasm as the dictator launched into his explanation of why Germany found itself on this morning engaged in war. There was far less cheering than on previous and less important occasions when the Leader had declaimed from this tribune in the ornate hall of the
Kroll Opera House
.
Though truculent at times he seemed strangely on the defensive, and throughout the speech, I thought as I listened, ran a curious strain, as though he himself were dazed at the fix he had got himself into and felt a little desperate about it. His explanation of why his Italian ally had reneged on its automatic obligations to come to his aid did not seem to go over even with this hand-picked audience.
I should like [he said] here above all to thank Italy, which throughout has supported us, but you will understand that for the carrying out of this struggle we do not intend to appeal for foreign help. We will carry out this task ourselves.
Having lied so often on his way to power and in his consolidation of power, Hitler could not refrain at this serious moment in history from thundering a few more lies to the gullible German people in justification of his wanton act.
You know the endless attempts I made for a peaceful clarification and understanding of the problem of Austria, and later of the problem of the
Sudetenland
,
Bohemia
and
Moravia
. It was all in vain …
In my talks with Polish statesmen … I formulated at last the German proposals and … there is nothing more modest or loyal than these proposals. I should like to say this to the world. I alone was in the position to make such proposals, for I know very well that in doing so I brought myself into opposition to millions of Germans. These proposals have been refused….
For two whole days I sat with my Government and waited to see whether it was convenient for the Polish Government to send a plenipotentiary or not … But I am wrongly judged if my love of peace and my patience are mistaken for weakness or even cowardice … I can no longer find any willingness on the part of the Polish Government to conduct serious negotiations with us … I have therefore resolved to speak to Poland in the same language that Poland for months past has used toward us …
This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our own territory. Since 5:45
A.M
. we have been returning the fire, and from now on bombs will be met with bombs.
Thus was the faked German attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz, which, as we have seen, was carried out by S.S. men in Polish uniforms under the direction of Naujocks, used by the Chancellor of Germany as justification of his cold-blooded aggression against Poland. And indeed in its first communiqués the German High Command referred to its military operations as a “counterattack.” Even Weizsaecker did his best to perpetrate this shabby swindle. During the day he got off a circular telegram from the Foreign Office to all German diplomatic missions abroad advising them on the line they were to take.
In defense against Polish attacks, German troops moved into action against Poland at dawn today. This action is for the present not to be described as war, but merely as engagements which have been brought about by Polish attacks.
1
Even the German soldiers, who could see for themselves who had done the attacking on the Polish border, were bombarded with Hitler’s lie. In a grandiose proclamation to the German Army on September 1, the Fuehrer said:
The Polish State has refused the peaceful settlement of relations which I desired, and has appealed to arms … A series of violations of the frontier, intolerable to a great Power, prove that Poland is no longer willing to respect the frontier of the Reich.
In order to put an end to this lunacy, I have no other choice than to meet force with force from now on.
Only once that day did Hitler utter the truth.
I am asking of no German man [he told the Reichstag] more than I myself was ready throughout four years to do … I am from now on just the first soldier of the German Reich. I have once more put on that coat that was most sacred and dear to me. I will not take it off again until victory is secured, or I will not survive the outcome.
In the end, this once, he would prove as good as his word. But no German I met in Berlin that day noticed that what the Leader was saying quite bluntly was that he could not face, not take, defeat should it come.
In his speech Hitler named Goering as his successor should anything happen to him.
Hess
, he added, would be next in line. “Should anything happen to Hess,” Hitler advised, “then by law the Senate will be called and will choose from its midst the most worthy—that is to say, the bravest—successor.” What law? What Senate? Neither existed!
Hitler’s relatively subdued manner at the Reichstag gave way to another and uglier mood as soon as he had returned to the Chancellery. The ubiquitous Dahlerus, in tow of Goering, found him there in an “exceedingly nervous and very agitated” state.
He told me [the Swedish mediator later testified] he had all along suspected that England wanted the war. He told me further that he would crush Poland and annex the whole country …
He grew more and more excited, and began to wave his arms as he shouted in my face: “If England wants to fight for a year, I shall fight for a year; if England wants to fight two years, I shall fight two years …” He paused and then yelled, his voice rising to a shrill scream and his arms milling wildly: “If England wants to fight for three years, I shall fight for three years …”
The movements of his body now began to follow those of his arms, and when he finally bellowed: “
Und wenn es erforderlich ist, will ich zehn Jahre kaempfen
” (“And if necessary, I will fight for ten years”) he brandished his fist and bent down so that it nearly touched the floor.
2
Yet for all his hysteria Hitler was by no means convinced that he would have to fight Great Britain at all. It was now past noon, German armored columns were already several miles inside Poland and advancing rapidly and most of Poland’s cities, including
Warsaw
, had been bombed with considerable civilian casualties. But there was not a word from London or Paris that Britain and France were in any hurry to honor their word to Poland.