“On my return to the embassy,” Lipski later related, “I found myself unable to communicate with Warsaw, as the Germans had cut my telephone.” The questions of Weizsaecker and Ribbentrop as to the ambassador’s status as a negotiator were purely formal, with an eye, no doubt, for the record, for ever since noon, when Lipski’s communication had been received by telegram from Warsaw, the Germans had known that he was not coming, as they had demanded, as a plenipotentiary. They had decoded the telegram immediately.
