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Even to Hassell the Poles, who were threatened with imminent attack on trumped-up Nazi charges, were not supposed to ask questions.
One can only ask what chance they missed except to surrender to Hitler’s full demands.
If an educated, cultivated and experienced diplomat such as Hassell could be so woolly in his thinking is it any wonder that it was easy for Hitler to take in the mass of the German people?
The cognac was of such high quality that Goering insisted on lugging away two bottles of it when he left.
I augured the worst from the fact that he was in a position at such a moment to give me so much of his time… He could scarcely have afforded at such a moment to spare time in conversation if it did not mean that everything down to the last detail was now ready for action.”
And though he would suffer one more typical, incredible lapse the next day, the first day of war, an ancient truth was dawning on him: that there were times and circumstances when, as he at last said, force must be met by force.
“The victor,” he had told them, “will not be asked afterward whether he told the truth or not.
Good propaganda, to be effective, as Hitler and Goebbels had learned from experience, needs more than words. It needs deeds, however much they may have to be fabricated.
Berlin that evening was largely shut off from the outside world, except for outgoing press dispatches and broadcasts which reported the Fuehrer’s “offer” to Poland and the German allegations of Polish “attacks” on German territory. I tried to get through on the telephone to Warsaw, London and Paris but was told that communications with these capitals were cut.
He thought both governments must fall. He was brought down to earth by being told of the firm speeches of Chamberlain and Halifax in Parliament the day before.
There was a secret protocol to this treaty which stated that the “European Power” mentioned in Article 1, whose aggression would bring about mutual military assistance, was Germany. This saved the British government from the disastrous step of having to declare war on the Soviet Union when the Red Army, in cahoots with the Germans, invaded eastern Poland. * Germany did not observe summer time, as did Great Britain. Therefore the one-hour difference in time between Berlin and London was canceled out.
It is strange that the Nazis falsified even the secret documents deposited in their official government archives.
As if Mussolini’s letter were not bad enough medicine for Hitler, a number of German writers, mostly observers at first hand of the dramatic events of the last days of peace, have published an imaginary text of this letter of the Duce to the Fuehrer.
It was omitted from all published British records until the above volume came out in 1954, an omission much commented upon by British historians.
At this moment Wilson heard certain noises on the long-distance line which sounded to him as though the Germans were listening in.
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.
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.”
During the day Hitler found time to send a telegram to the Duke of Windsor at Antibes, France.
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.
What a contrast, one could not help thinking, between this gray apathy and the way the Germans had gone to war in 1914.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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!
Only at the end of his dispatch did Henderson add: This information comes from Goering himself.
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.
A new idea had sprung up in his fertile but...
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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.
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.”
Still, the diplomatic niceties were maintained.
It was an argument that would never be settled—but what difference did it make now?
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.
Attolico, of course, had no authority whatsoever to make such a statement, which was not true, but at this late hour he probably thought he could lose nothing by being reckless.
He confirmed that the British note was not an ultimatum—one marvels at the splitting of hairs among the statesmen over a single word, for the Anglo–French declarations spoke for themselves unequivocably—but added that in his own view the British could not accept Mussolini’s proposal for a conference unless the German armies withdrew from Poland, a matter on which Bonnet again was silent.
Only the contempt of silence toward an ally who was trying to cheat Germany of its Polish spoils.
At 9 P.M. the pusillanimous Bonnet telephoned Ciano, confirmed once more that the French note to Germany did not have the “character of an ultimatum” and reiterated that the French government was prepared to wait until noon of September 3—the next day—for a German response.
But this shows that France is moving toward the great test without enthusiasm and full of uncertainty.
Sunday, September 3, 1939, in Berlin was a lovely, end-of-the-summer day. The sun was shining, the air was balmy—“the sort of day,” I noted in my diary, “the Berliner loves to spend in the woods or on the lakes nearby.”
Indeed, the badly divided French cabinet had had a difficult time over the past week reaching a decision to honor France’s obligations to Poland—and to Britain—in the first place.
But the French mobilization by itself would bring some relief to Poland by tying down some considerable German units at our frontier. …General Gamelin, asked how long Poland and Rumania could resist, says that he believes Poland would honorably resist, which would prevent the bulk of the German forces from turning against France before next spring; by then Great Britain would be by her side.
In the course of the discussion it is pointed out that if we are stronger a few months hence, Germany will have gained even more, for she will have the Polish and Rumanian resources at her disposal.
The French attitude is very embarrassing to H. M. Government.” It was to become dangerously so a couple of hours later when Chamberlain rose to address a House of Commons whose majority of members, regardless of party, was impatient at the British delay in honoring its obligations.
After thirty-nine hours of war in Poland the House of Commons was in no mood for such dilatory tactics. A smell of Munich seemed to emanate from the government bench.
“I wonder how long we are prepared to vacillate,” said Greenwood, “at a time when Britain and all that Britain stands for, and human civilization, are in peril…
It was proving difficult at this moment to get the French to march.
The inexorable approach of the greatest ordeal in British history was announced, as Namier later wrote, “in a singularly halting manner.”
Chamberlain well understood, as the confidential British papers make clear, that he was in deep trouble with his own people and that at this critical moment for his country his own government was in danger of being overthrown.
The House of Commons was to meet at noon, on Sunday, September 3, and it was obvious to Chamberlain and Halifax from the mood of Saturday evening’s session that in order to survive they would have to give Parliament the answer it demanded.
