He was ready for war on 26 August, but postponed because the flexibility of the German mobilization timetable allowed him three more days of diplomacy, designed not to avoid war, but to split up the Allied coalition and to shift the burden of ‘war guilt’ to Britain and France. As of 28 August, Hitler was driving towards war, fully aware of the likely involvement of the British. Both at the time and after the event there were those in and around the leadership of the Third Reich who refused to believe that Hitler could be deliberately courting such an enormous risk.129 We, however, should not
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