Should Poland, however, change her policy towards Germany, which so far has been based on the same principles as our own, and adopt a threatening attitude towards Germany, a final settlement might become necessary in spite of the Treaty in force with Poland. The aim then will be to destroy Polish military strength, and create in the East a situation which satisfies the requirements of national defence. The Free State of Danzig will be proclaimed a part of the Reich territory by the outbreak of hostilities at the latest. The political leaders consider it their task in this case to isolate Poland if possible, that is to say, to limit the war to Poland only.’144 The Wehrmacht had to be ready to carry out ‘Case White’ at any time after 1 September 1939.145
Army commanders had been divided over the merits of attacking Czechoslovakia only a few months earlier. Now, there was no sign of hesitation. The aims of the coming campaign to destroy Poland were outlined within a fortnight or so by Chief of the General Staff Haider to generals and General Staff officers. Oppositional hopes of staging a coup against Hitler the previous autumn, as the Sudeten crisis was reaching its denouement, had centred upon Haider. At the time, he had indeed been prepared to see Hitler assassinated.146 It was the same Haider who now evidently relished the prospect of easy and rapid victory over the Poles and envisaged subsequent conflict with the Soviet Union or the western powers. Haider told senior officers that ‘thanks to the outstanding, I might say, instinctively sure policy of the Fuhrer’, the military situation in central Europe had changed fundamentally. As a consequence, the position of Poland had also significantly altered. Haider said he was certain he was speaking for many in his audience in commenting that with the ending of ‘friendly relations’ with Poland ‘a stone has fallen from the heart’. Poland was now to be ranked among Germany’s enemies. The rest of Haider’s address dealt with the need to destroy Poland ‘in record speed’
On Poland, there was no divergence between Hitler and his Chief of the General Staff. Both wanted to smash Poland at breakneck speed, preferably in an isolated campaign but, if necessary, even with western intervention (though both thought this more improbable than probable). And both looked beyond Poland to a widening of the conflict, eastwards or westwards, at some point. Hitler could be satisfied. He need expect no problems this time from his army leaders.
The contours for the summer crisis of 1939 had been drawn. It would end not with the desired limited conflict to destroy Poland, but with the major European powers locked in another continental war. This was in the first instance a consequence of Hitler’s miscalculation that spring. But, as Haider’s address to the generals indicated, it had not been Hitler’s miscalculation alone.
5. GOING FOR BROKE
‘The answer to the question of how the problem “Danzig and the Corridor” is to be solved is still the same among the general public: incorporation in the Reich? Yes. Through war? No.’
‘When starting and waging a war it is not right that matters, but victory.’
‘In my life I’ve always gone for broke.’
For 20 April 1939, Hitler’s fiftieth birthday, Goebbels had orchestrated an astonishing extravaganza of the Fuhrer cult. The lavish outpourings of adulation and sycophancy surpassed those of any previous ‘Fuhrer’s Birthday’. The festivities had already begun on the afternoon of the 19th. In mid-evening, followed by a cavalcade of fifty limousines, Hitler was driven along the thronged seven kilometres of the newly opened ‘East-West Axis’, lit by flaming torches and bedecked with hundreds of banners, built as the main boulevard of the intended new capital of the Nazi empire, ‘Germania’. After Albert Speer had declared the new road open, Hitler returned to the Reich Chancellery, watching from the balcony, as Party deputations from all the Gaue wound their way in torchlight procession through the vast, cheering crowd assembled in Wilhelmsplatz. At midnight he was congratulated by all the members of his personal entourage, beginning with his secretaries. Speer, by now the firmly established court favourite, presented a delighted Hitler with a four-metre model of the gigantic triumphal arch that would crown the rebuilt Berlin. Captain Hans Baur, Hitler’s pilot, gave him a model of the four-engined Focke-Wulf 200 ‘Condor’, under construction to take service as the ‘Fuhrer Machine’ in the summer. Row upon row of further gifts — marble-white nude statues, bronze casts, Meissen porcelain, oil-paintings (some valuable, including a Lenbach and even a Titian, but mostly the standard dreary exhibits found in the House of German Art in Munich), tapestries, rare coins, antique weapons, and a mass of other presents, many of them kitsch (like the cushions embroidered with Nazi emblems or ‘Heil mein Fuhrer’) — were laid out on long tables in the hall where Bismarck had presided over the Berlin Congress of 1878. Hitler admired some, made fun of others, and ignored most.1
The central feature of the birthday itself was a mammoth display of the might and power of the Third Reich, calculated to show the western powers what faced them if they should tangle with the new Germany. The ambassadors of Britain, France, and the USA, recalled after the march into Czecho-Slovakia, were absent. The Poles had sent no delegation.2 The parade on the ‘East-West Axis’ began at 11a.m. and lasted almost five hours. His secretaries returned to the Reich Chancellery exhausted from the ‘dreadfully long’ show; but Hitler never tired of being the centre of attraction at propaganda displays, however long he had to stand with his arm raised.3 The entire parade was recorded on 10,000 metres of film. The image of Hitler the ‘statesman of genius’ had now to be complemented by the portrayal of the ‘future military leader, taking muster of his armed forces’.4
‘The Fuhrer is feted like no other mortal has ever been,’ effused Goebbels.5 Hitler’s most adoring disciple was scarcely a rational judge. But, elaborately stage-managed though the entire razzmatazz had been, there was no denying Hitler’s genuine popularity — even near-deification by many — among the masses. What had been before 1933 bitterly anti-Nazi Communist and Socialist sub-cultures remained, despite terror and propaganda, still largely impervious to the Hitler adulation. Many Catholics, relatively immune throughout to Nazism’s appeal, and, in lesser measure, Protestant churchgoers had been alienated by the ‘Church Struggle’ (though Hitler was held less generally to blame than his subordinates, especially Rosenberg and Goebbels). Intellectuals might be disdainful of Hitler, old-fashioned, upper-class conservatives bemoan the vulgarity of the Nazis, and those with remaining shreds of liberal, humanitarian values feel appalled at the brutality of the regime, displayed in full during ‘Crystal Night’. Even so, Hitler was without doubt the most popular government head in Europe. The exiled Social Democratic leaders, analysing the Fuhrer cult as reflected in the plethora of letters, poems, and other
