surveyed.112
The imperious image had been somewhat dented just after Burckhardt arrived, when one of the serving staff had managed to drop a heavy armchair on Hitler’s foot and had him hopping in pain.113 But he quickly recovered to play every register in driving home to Burckhardt — and through him to the western powers — the modesty and reasonableness of his claims on Poland and the futility of western support. It was a calculated attempt to keep the West out of the coming conflict. His voice rose in a crescendo of anger one moment, fell to feigned sadness and resignation the next. The threats gave way to hopes even at this stage of an arrangement with Britain. Almost speechless with rage, he denounced press suggestions that he had lost his nerve and been forced to give way over the issue of the Polish customs officers. His voice rising until he was shouting, he screamed his response to Polish ultimata: if the smallest incident should take place, he would smash the Poles without warning so that not a trace of Poland remained. If that meant general war, then so be it. He would not fight like Wilhelm II, held back by his conscience, but ruthlessly to the bitter end. He poured out, as usual, an array of facts and figures to demonstrate Germany’s superiority in armaments. He could hold the western line, thanks to his fortifications, with seventy-four divisions. The rest of his forces would be hurled against Poland, which would be liquidated within three weeks. All he wanted was land in the east to feed Germany, and a single colony for timber. International trade offered no basis of security. Germany had to live from its own resources. That was the only issue; the rest nonsense. He emphasized more than once that he wanted nothing of the West, but demanded only a free hand in the East. He was ready, he said, to negotiate, but not when he was insulted and confronted with ultimata. He accused Britain and France of interference in the reasonable proposals he had made to the Poles. Now the Poles had taken up a position that blocked any agreement once and for all. His generals, hesitant the previous year, were this time raring to be let loose against the Poles.
Hitler took Burckhardt outside on to the terrace. He had had enough turmoil, he intimated. He needed the peace and quiet that he found there. Burckhardt enjoined that this lay in his hands more than any other person’s. This was not so, replied Hitler in a low voice. If he knew that England and France were inciting Poland to war, he would prefer war ‘this year rather than next’ But he was coming to the point of Burckhardt’s visit. Were the Poles to leave Danzig in peace, he could wait. He was prepared for a pact with Britain, guaranteeing British possessions. For him, he repeated, it was a matter of grain and timber. He was ready for negotiations on this issue. ‘But it will be another matter if they revile me and cover me with ridicule as in May last. I do not bluff. If the slightest thing happens in Danzig or to our minorities I shall hit hard.’ Again shifting from threats to apparent reason, he suggested that a German-speaking Englishman, possibly General Ironside — tall, handsome, and dashing, but ‘more bluff and brawn than brain’, who had been dispatched to Poland by the British government for a time in July — should go to Berlin.114
Burckhardt, as intended, rapidly passed on to the British and French governments the gist of his talks with Hitler.115 The dictator had seemed much older than when he had last met him, two years earlier, Burckhardt told his British and French contacts, and had been nervous, even anxious.116 ‘Hitler apparently undecided, rather distracted, rather aged,’ was the laconic comment of Sir Alexander Cadogan, head of the Foreign Office.117 No conclusions were drawn from Burckhardt’s report other than to urge restraint on the Poles.118
While Hitler and Burckhardt were meeting at the Eagle’s Nest on the Kehlstein, another meeting was taking place only a few miles away, in Ribbentrop’s newly acquired splendrous residence overlooking the lake in Fuschl, not far from Salzburg. Count Ciano, resplendent in uniform, was learning from the German Foreign Minister, dressed, to his visitors’ surprise, in casual civilian dress, that the Italians had been deceived for months about Hitler’s intentions. The atmosphere was icy. Ribbentrop told Ciano that the ‘merciless destruction of Poland by Germany’ was inevitable. The conflict would not become a general one. Were Britain and France to intervene, they would be doomed to defeat. But his information ‘and above all his
The impression was reinforced when Ciano met Hitler at the Berghof the next day. Among the reasons put forward for the need to act, most of which echoed the points that had been made by Ribbentrop, Hitler again revealed the extent to which he was affected by matters of prestige. He claimed that Germany, as a great nation, could not tolerate the continued provocation by Poland ‘without losing prestige’. He was convinced that the conflict would be localized, that Britain and France, whatever noises they were making, would not go to war. It would be necessary one day to fight the western democracies. But he thought it ‘out of the question that this struggle can begin now’.121 Ciano noted that he realized immediately ‘that there is no longer anything that can be done. He has decided to strike, and strike he will.’122
Important news came through for Hitler at the very time that he was underlining to the disenchanted Ciano his determination to attack Poland no later than the end of August: the Russians were prepared to begin talks in Moscow, including the position of Poland. A beaming Ribbentrop took the telephone call at the Berghof. Hitler was summoned from the meeting with Ciano, and rejoined it in high spirits to report the breakthrough.123 The way was now open.
The idea seems initially to have been to send Hans Frank, the Nazis’ chief legal expert, who had been involved in the talks producing the Axis in 1936, to Moscow to conduct negotiations.124 But by 14 August Hitler had decided to send Ribbentrop.125 A flurry of diplomatic activity — Ribbentrop pressing with maximum urgency for the earliest possible agreement, Molotov cannily prevaricating until it was evident that Soviet interest in the Anglo-French mission was dead — unfolded during the following days.126 The text of a trade treaty, under which German manufactured goods worth 200 million Reich Marks would be exchanged each year for an equivalent amount of Soviet raw materials, was agreed.127 Finally, on the evening of 19 August, the chattering teleprinter gave Hitler and Ribbentrop, waiting anxiously at the Berghof, the news they wanted: Stalin was willing to sign a non-aggression pact without delay.128
Only the proposed date of Ribbentrop’s visit — 26 August — posed serious problems. It was the date Hitler had set for the invasion of Poland.129 Hitler could not wait that long. On 20 August, he decided to intervene personally. He telegraphed a message to Stalin, via the German Embassy in Moscow, requesting the reception of Ribbentrop, armed with full powers to sign a pact, on the 22nd or 23rd.130 Hitler’s intervention made a difference. But once more Stalin and Molotov made Hitler sweat it out. The tension at the Berghof was almost unbearable. It was more than twenty-four hours later, on the evening of 21 August, before the message came through. Stalin had agreed. Ribbentrop was expected in Moscow in two days’ time, on 23 August. Hitler slapped himself on the knee in delight. Champagne all round was ordered — though Hitler did not touch any. ‘That will really land them in the soup,’ he declared, referring to the western powers.131
The news, announced just before midnight, struck like a bombshell. Most German citizens, once they had adjusted to the surprise, felt simply a sense of relief. The understanding with the unlikely new friends in the east had eliminated the threat of encirclement and a war on two fronts.132 Older army leaders, schooled in the tradition of Seeckt’s Reichswehr of good relations with Russia, felt the same way. Most presumed that Poland would now not dare to fight, and that the conflict would be resolved in much the same way as the Sudeten crisis of the previous year.133 But reactions were mixed, even among the Nazi leadership. ‘We’re on top again. Now we can sleep more easily,’ recorded a delighted Goebbels.134 ‘The question of Bolshevism is for the moment of secondary importance,’ he later added, saying that was the Fuhrer’s view, too. ‘We’re in need and eat then like the devil eats flies.’135
For the dyed-in-the-wool old anti-Bolshevik Alfred Rosenberg, who hailed from the Baltic and had personal experience of conditions at the time of the Russian Revolution, the response was predictably different. ‘A moral loss of respect in the light of our by now twenty-year long struggle,’ was how he described the pact. Even so, he was prepared to attribute Hitler’s 180-degree shift — the U-turn of all time — to necessity, and blamed Ribbentrop, whom he believed occupied the post of Foreign Minister that ought to have been his own, for destroying any hopes of the desired alliance with Britain.136 In his dismay at the pact, but ready as always to place his
