Himmler (Peter Padfield's Second World War)

by Peter Padfield

There is no doubt that Hitler would have preferred an agreement with England. That comes through as plainly from the records of the bewildering number of unofficial mediators between England and Germany during this fateful summer of 1939 as from the pages of Mein Kampf, and all subsequent speeches. But when it became clear to Hitler that the price for agreement with England was disarmament, hence the end of his aim to carve out an eastern empire by military force, he had only two options, outside the two-front war he was determined to avoid: either renounce his sacred mission or come to terms with his mortal enemies in the Kremlin to secure his eastern flank. The former was impossible personally and politically. The latter it had to be. He hoped, he even expected, that when England saw the Russian sword snatched from her hand and understood that she had no prospect of intervening effectively in eastern Europe she would renege on her pledge to Poland; if not he would finish off Poland in short time with a Blitzkrieg, then loose his Luftwaffe and Panzers in the west to smash France.