The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (120 page)

Their course seemed clear, but Dahlerus and Henderson appeared to be doing their best to confuse it.

At 10:30
A.M
. the British ambassador telephoned a message to Halifax.

Only at the end of his dispatch did Henderson add:

What peace? Peace for Britain? For six hours Germany had been waging war—with all its military might—against Britain’s ally.

Hitler did not send for Henderson after his Reichstag speech, and the ambassador, who had accommodatingly passed along to London Goering’s lies about the Poles beginning the attack, became discouraged—but not completely discouraged. At 10:50
A.M
. he telephoned a further message to Halifax. A new idea had sprung up in his fertile but confused mind.

It does not seem to have occurred to this singular British ambassador that Marshal Smigly-Rydz might have his hands full trying to repel the massive and unprovoked German attack, or that if he could break off and did come to Berlin as a “plenipotentiary” it would be equivalent, under the circumstances, to surrender. The Poles might be quickly beaten but they would not surrender.

Dahlerus was even more active than Henderson during this first day of the German attack on Poland. At 8
A.M
. he had gone to see Goering, who told him that “war had broken out because the Poles had attacked the radio station at Gleiwitz and blown up a bridge near Dirschau.” The Swede immediately rang up the Foreign Office in London with the news.

“I informed somebody,” he later testified in cross-examination at Nuremberg, “that according to the information I had received the Poles had attacked, and they naturally wondered what was happening to me when I gave that information.”
⁵
But after all, it was only what H. M. Ambassador in Berlin would be telephoning a couple of hours later.

A confidential British Foreign Office memorandum records the Swede’s call at 9:05
A.M
. Aping Goering, Dahlerus insisted to London that “the Poles are sabotaging everything,” and that he had “evidence they never meant to attempt to negotiate.”
⁶

At half after noon Dahlerus was on the long-distance phone again to the Foreign Office in London, and this time got Cadogan. He again blamed the Poles for sabotaging the peace by blowing the Dirschau bridge and suggested that he once again fly to London with Forbes. But the stern and unappeasing Cadogan had had about enough of Dahlerus now that the war which he had tried to prevent had come. He told the Swede that “nothing could now be done.”

But Cadogan was merely the permanent Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, not even a member of the cabinet. Dahlerus insisted that his request be submitted to the cabinet itself, informing Cadogan haughtily that he would ring back in an hour. This he did, and got his answer.

At 10
A.M
. the Polish ambassador in London, Count Raczyński, had called on Lord Halifax and officially communicated to him the news of the German aggression, adding that “it was a plain case as provided for by the treaty.” The Foreign Secretary answered that he had no doubt of the facts. At 10:50 he summoned the German chargé d’affaires,
Theodor Kordt
, to the Foreign Office and asked him if he had any information. Kordt replied that he had neither information about a German attack on Poland nor any instructions. Halifax then declared that the reports which he had received “create a very serious situation.” But further than that he did not go. Kordt telephoned this information to Berlin at 11:45
A.M.

By noon, then, Hitler had reason to hope that Britain, though it considered the situation serious, might not go to war after all. But the hope was soon to be dashed.

At 7:15
P.M
. a member of the British Embassy in Berlin telephoned the German Foreign Office and requested Ribbentrop to receive Henderson and
Coulondre
“on a matter of urgency as soon as possible.” The French Embassy made a similar request a few minutes later. Ribbentrop, having declined to meet the two ambassadors together, received Henderson at 9
P.M
. and Coulondre an hour later. From the British ambassador he was handed a formal note from the British government.

The French communication was in identical words.

To both ambassadors Ribbentrop replied that he would transmit their notes to Hitler, whereupon he launched into a lengthy dissertation declaring that “there was no question of German aggression” but of Polish aggression and repeating the by now somewhat stale he that “regular” Polish troops had attacked German soil on the previous day. Still, the diplomatic niceties were maintained.
Sir Nevile Henderson
did not fail to note in his dispatch that night describing the meeting that Ribbentrop had been “courteous and polite.” As the ambassador prepared to take his leave an argument arose as to whether the German Foreign Minister had gabbled the text of the German “proposals” to Poland at their stormy meeting two evenings before. Henderson said he had; Ribbentrop said he had read them “slowly and clearly and even given oral explanations of the main points so that he could suppose Henderson had understood everything.” It was an argument that would never be settled—but what difference did it make now?
⁹

On the night of September 1, as the German armies penetrated further into Poland and the Luftwaffe bombed and bombed, Hitler knew from the Anglo–French notes that unless he stopped his armies and quickly withdrew them—which was unthinkable—he had a world war on his hands. Or did he still hope that night that his luck—his Munich luck—might hold? For his friend Mussolini, frightened by the advent of war and fearing that an overwhelming Anglo–French naval and military force might strike against Italy, was desperately trying to arrange another Munich.

As late as August 26, it will be remembered, the Duce, in ducking out of Italy’s obligations under the
Pact of Steel
, had insisted to the Fuehrer that there was still a possibility of “a political solution” which would give “full moral and material satisfaction to Germany.”
^*
Hitler had not bothered to argue the matter with his friend and ally, and this had discouraged the junior partner in the Axis. Nevertheless on August 31, as we have seen, Mussolini and Ciano, after being advised by their ambassador in Berlin that the situation had become desperate, had urged Hitler at least to see the Polish ambassador, Lipski, and had informed him that they were trying to get the British government to agree to the return of Danzig “as a first step” in
peace negotiations
.
^†

But it was too late for Hitler to be tempted by such small bait. Danzig was a mere pretense, as the Fuehrer had told his generals. What he wanted was to destroy Poland. But the Duce did not know this. On the morning of September 1, he himself was confronted with the choice of immediately declaring Italy’s neutrality or risking an attack by Britain and France. Ciano’s diary entries make clear what a nightmare this prospect was for his deflated father-in-law.
‡

Early on the morning of September 1 the unhappy Italian dictator personally telephoned Ambassador Attolico in Berlin and, in the words of Ciano, “urged him to entreat Hitler to send him a telegram releasing him from the obligations of the alliance.”
¹¹
The Fuehrer quickly and even graciously obliged. Just before he left for the Reichstag, at 9:40
A.M
., he got off a telegram to his friend which was telephoned through to the German Embassy in Rome to save time.

At 12:45
P.M
., after having addressed the Reichstag and after having, apparently, recovered from the effects of his outburst to Dahlerus, Hitler was moved to send a further message to Mussolini. Declaring that he had been prepared to solve the Polish problem “by negotiation” and that “for two whole days I have waited in vain for a Polish negotiator” and that “last night alone there were fourteen more cases of frontier violation” and that consequently he had “now decided to answer force with force,” he again expressed his gratitude to his welshing partner.

But Mussolini, prompted by Ciano, made one last desperate effort to expose himself to the danger of being a mediator. Already on the previous day, shortly after noon, Ciano had proposed to the British and French ambassadors in Rome that, if their governments agreed, Mussolini would invite Germany to a conference on September 5 for the purpose of “examining the clauses of the Treaty of Versailles which are the cause of the present troubles.”

It might have been thought that the news of the German invasion of Poland the next morning would have rendered Mussolini’s proposal superfluous. But to the Italian’s surprise Georges Bonnet, the French Foreign Minister and master appeaser, telephoned François-Poncet, who was now the ambassador of France in Rome, at 11:45
A.M
. on September 1 and asked him to tell Ciano that the French government welcomed such a conference provided that it did not try to deal with problems of countries
not represented and that it did not restrict itself to seeking “partial and provisional solutions for limited and immediate problems.” Bonnet made no mention of any withdrawal of German troops or even of their halting, as a condition for such a conference.
¹⁴
*

But the British were insistent upon that condition and succeeded in carrying the badly divided French cabinet along with them so that identical warning notes could be delivered in Berlin on the evening of September 1. Since the text of those notes giving notice that Britain and France would go to war unless the German troops were withdrawn from Poland was made public the same evening, it is interesting that Mussolini, now clutching desperately at every straw—or even at straws which were not there—went ahead the next morning in a further appeal to Hitler just as if he, the Duce, did not take the Anglo–French warnings at face value.

September 2, as Henderson noted in his
Final Report
, was a day of suspense.
†
He and
Coulondre
waited anxiously for Hitler’s reply to their notes, but none came. Shortly after midday Attolico, somewhat out of breath, arrived at the British Embassy and told Henderson he must know one thing immediately: Was the British note of the previous evening an ultimatum or not?

“I told him,” Henderson later wrote, “that I had been authorized to tell the Minister of Foreign Affairs if he had asked me—which he had not done—that it was not an ultimatum but a warning.”
¹⁶

Having received his answer, the Italian ambassador hastened down the Wilhelmstrasse to the German Foreign Office. Attolico had arrived at 10 o’clock that morning at the Wilhelmstrasse with a communication from Mussolini and, being told that Ribbentrop was unwell, handed it to Weizsaecker.

September 2,1939