Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

onslaught on the Lithuanians, Hitler had at the time done nothing. The matter died down as quickly as it had arisen. The Memel question was not raised again for another four years. But in March 1938, the German army had prepared plans to occupy the Memel in the event of war between Poland and Lithuania. Then in October Hitler had included the recovery of the Memel in the directive for taking over Czecho-Slovakia. By the end of the year, interested in agreement with Poland, Hitler had insisted that there should be no agitation from the restless Nazis in the Memel. Early in 1939, anxious to avoid any action which might provoke German intervention, the Lithuanians had yielded to all the wishes of the now largely nazified Memel population.¹¹⁸

Politically, the return of the territory to Germany was of no great significance. Even symbolically, it was of relatively little importance. Few ordinary Germans took more than a passing interest in the incorporation of such a remote fleck of territory into the Reich. But the acquisition of a port on the Baltic, with the possibility that Lithuania, too, might be turned into a German satellite, had strategic relevance. Alongside the subordination to German influence of Slovakia on the southern borders of Poland, it gave a further edge to German pressure on the Poles.¹¹⁹

On 20 March, Ribbentrop subjected the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Joseph Urbsys, to the usual bullying tactics. Kowno would be bombed, he threatened, if Germany’s demand for the immediate return of the Memel were not met.¹²⁰ Urbsys returned the next day, 21 March, to Kowno. The Lithuanians were in no mood for a fight. They sent in a draft communique. It did not suffice and had to be redrafted in Berlin. By then the Lithuanian ministers had gone to bed and had to be awakened by the German ambassador, who had been told, figuratively, to put a pistol to their chest. ‘Either-or,’ remarked Goebbels.¹²¹ At 3a.m. everything was finally accepted. The revised communique arrived about three hours later. A Lithuanian delegation was sent to Berlin to arrange the details. ‘If you apply a bit of pressure, things happen,’ noted Goebbels, with satisfaction.¹²²

Hitler left Berlin that afternoon, 22 March, for Swinemunde, where, along with Raeder, he boarded the pocket-battleship Deutschland. Late that evening, Ribbentrop and Urbsys agreed terms for the formal transfer of the Memel district to Germany. Hitler’s decree was signed the next morning, 23 March. German troops crossed the bridge near Tilsit and entered the Memel. Squadrons of the Luftwaffe landed at the same time. At 1.30p.m., Hitler was put on shore in the new German territory. He gave a remarkably short speech on the balcony of the theatre. In under three hours he was gone. He was back in Berlin by noon next day. This time, he dispensed with the hero’s return.¹²³ Triumphal entries to Berlin could not be allowed to become so frequent that they were routine. Goebbels was aware of ‘the danger that the petty-bourgeois (Spie?er) think it will go on like this forever. A lot of quite fantastic ideas about the next plans of German foreign policy are being put about.’¹²⁴

According to Goebbels, Hitler repeated what he had said a few days earlier. He now wanted a period of calm in order to win new trust. ‘Then the colonial question will be brought up (aufs Tapet).’ ‘Always one thing after another,’ added the Propaganda Minister.¹²⁵ He did not anticipate things becoming quiet. Hitler, however, was evidently not looking to war with the western powers within a matter of months.

V

His own pressure on Poland forced the issue. Wasting no time, Ribbentrop had pushed Ambassador Lipski on 21 March to arrange a visit to Berlin by Beck. He indicated that Hitler was losing patience, and that the German press was straining at the leash to be turned loose on the Poles — a threat that German feeling could be as easily inflamed against Poland as it had been against Czecho-Slovakia. He repeated the requests about Danzig and the Corridor. In return, Poland might be tempted by the exploitation of Slovakia and the Ukraine.¹²⁶

But the Poles were not prepared to act according to the script. Beck, noting Chamberlain’s Birmingham speech, secretly put out feelers to London for a bilateral agreement with Britain.¹²⁷ Meanwhile, the Poles mobilized their troops.¹²⁸ On 25 March, Hitler still indicated that he did not want to solve the Danzig Question by force to avoid driving the Poles into the arms of the British.¹²⁹ He had remarked to Goebbels the previous evening that he hoped the Poles would respond to pressure, ‘but we must bite into the sour apple and guarantee Poland’s borders’.¹³⁰

However, just after noon on 26 March, instead of the desired visit by Beck, Lipski simply presented Ribbentrop with a memorandum representing the Polish Foreign Minister’s views. It flatly rejected the German proposals, reminding Ribbentrop for good measure of Hitler’s verbal assurance in his speech on 20 February 1938 that Poland’s rights and interests would be respected. Ribbentrop lost his temper. Going beyond his mandate from Hitler, he told Lipski that any Polish action against Danzig (of which there was no indication) would be treated as aggression against the Reich. The bullying attempt was lost on Lipski. He replied that any furtherance of German plans directed at the return of Danzig to the Reich meant war with Poland.¹³¹ Hitler’s response can be imagined.¹³² Goebbels recorded in his diary: ‘Poland still makes great difficulties. The Polacks are and remain naturally our enemies, even if from self-interest they have done us some service in the past.’¹³³ Beck confirmed the unbending attitude of the Poles to the German ambassador in Warsaw on the evening of 28 March: if Germany tried to use force to alter the status of Danzig, there would be war.¹³⁴

By 27 March, meanwhile, Chamberlain, warned that a German strike against Poland might be imminent, was telling the British cabinet he was prepared to offer a unilateral commitment to Poland, aimed at stiffening Polish resolve and deterring Hitler.¹³⁵ The policy that had been developing since the invasion of Czecho- Slovakia found its expression in Chamberlain’s statement to the House of Commons on 31 March 1939: ‘In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power.’¹³⁶

This was followed, at the end of Beck’s visit to London on 4–6 April, by Chamberlain’s announcement to the House of Commons that Britain and Poland had agreed to sign a mutual assistance pact in the event of an attack ‘by a European power’.¹³⁷

On hearing the British Guarantee of 31 March, Hitler fell into a rage. He thumped his fist on the marble- topped table of his study in the Reich Chancellery. ‘I’ll brew them a devil’s potion,’ he fumed.¹³⁸

Exactly what he had wanted to avoid had happened. He had expected the pressure on the Poles to work as easily as it had done in the case of the Czechs and the Slovaks. He had presumed the Poles would in due course see sense and yield Danzig and concede the extra-territorial routes through the Corridor. He had taken it for granted that Poland would then become a German satellite — an ally in any later attack on the Soviet Union. He had been determined to keep Poland out of Britain’s clutches. All of this was now upturned. Danzig would have to be taken by force. He had been thwarted by the British and spurned by the Poles. He would teach them a lesson.¹³⁹

Or so he thought. In reality, Hitler’s over-confidence, impatience, and misreading of the impact of German aggression against Czecho-Slovakia had produced a fateful miscalculation.

The next day, 1 April, speaking in Wilhelmshaven after attending the launch of the Tirpitz (the second new modern battleship, following the Bismarck, intended to spearhead Germany’s challenge to the supremacy of the Royal Navy during the next few years),¹⁴⁰ Hitler used the opportunity to castigate what he claimed was Britain’s ‘encirclement policy’, and to voice scarcely veiled threats at both Poland and Britain. He summarized his brutal philosophy in a single, short sentence: ‘He who does not possess power loses the right to life.’¹⁴¹

At the end of March Hitler had indicated to Brauchitsch, head of the army, that he would use force against Poland if diplomacy failed. Immediately, the branches of the armed forces began preparing drafts of their own operational plans. These were presented to Hitler in the huge ‘Fuhrer type’ that he could read without glasses. He added a preamble on political aims. By 3 April the directive for ‘Case White’ (Fall Wei?) was ready.¹⁴² It was issued eight days later.¹⁴³ Its first section, written by Hitler himself, began: ‘German relations with Poland continue to be based on the principles of avoiding any disturbances.