Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

and defend the British Empire (even against Italy, Goring added). Britain was to help Germany acquire Danzig and the Corridor, and have Germany’s colonies returned. Guarantees were to be provided for the German minority in Poland.²³⁴ Hitler had altered the stakes in a bid to break British backing for Poland. In contrast to the ‘offer’ made to Henderson, the alliance with Britain now appeared to be available before any settlement with Poland.

Dahlerus took the message to London next morning, 27 August. The response was cool and sceptical. Dahlerus was sent back to report that Britain was willing to reach an agreement with Germany, but would not break its guarantee to Poland. Following direct negotiations between Germany and Poland on borders and minorities, the results would require international guarantee. Colonies could be returned in due course, but not under threat of war. The offer to defend the British Empire was rejected.²³⁵ Astonishingly, to Dahlems, back in Berlin late that evening, Hitler accepted the terms, as long as the Poles had been immediately instructed to contact Germany and begin negotiations.²³⁶ Halifax made sure this was done. In Warsaw, Beck agreed to begin negotiations.²³⁷ Meanwhile, the German mobilization, which had never been cancelled along with the invasion, rolled on.²³⁸ On the very day of Dahlerus’s shuttling, the Abwehr had word that the new date for the attack was 31 August.²³⁹ Next day, before Henderson arrived back in Berlin to bring the official British response, Brauchitsch informed Halder that Hitler had provisionally fixed the invasion for 1 September.²⁴⁰

As Henderson was setting out for Berlin, Hitler was addressing a meeting of SS and Party leaders in the Reich Chancellery. Himmler, Heydrich, Bormann, and Goebbels were among those present. Whatever his state of mind, Hitler could expect nothing but enthusiastic backing from this grouping for whatever hard line he wished to take. He told them he was determined to have the eastern question settled one way or the other. He posed a minimal demand of the return of Danzig and the settling of the Corridor issue. The maximum demand depended upon the military situation. He could not retreat from the minimalist position, and would attain it. ‘It has already become a question of honour,’ Goebbels noted.²⁴¹ If the minimum demands were not met, ‘then war: brutal!’ The war would be hard, and Hitler did not even rule out eventual failure. But, Halder recorded him saying, ‘as long as I am alive, there will be no talk of capitulation’. The agreement with the Soviets had been widely misunderstood in the Party. It was nothing but ‘a pact with Satan to cast out the Devil’, Hitler declared. He looked worn and haggard to Halder, speaking in a breaking voice. It was said he kept himself completely surrounded by his SS advisers.²⁴²

Henderson handed Hitler a translation of the British reply to his ‘offer’ of 25 August at 10.30p.m. that evening, the 28th. Ribbentrop and Schmidt were there.²⁴³ Hitler and Henderson spoke for over an hour. For once, Hitler neither interrupted, nor harangued Henderson. He was, according to the British Ambassador, polite, reasonable, and not angered by what he read.²⁴⁴ The ‘friendly atmosphere’ noted by Henderson was so only in relative terms. Hitler still spoke of annihilating Poland.²⁴⁵ The British reply did not in substance extend beyond the informal answer that Dahlems had conveyed (and had been composed after Hitler’s response to that initiative was known).²⁴⁶ The British government insisted upon a prior settlement of the differences between Germany and Poland. Britain had already gained assurances of Poland’s willingness to negotiate. Depending upon the outcome of any settlement and how it was reached, Britain was prepared to work towards a lasting understanding with Germany. But the obligation to Poland would be honoured.²⁴⁷ Hitler promised a written reply the next day.²⁴⁸

Goebbels quickly learned that Hitler was not satisfied with what he had seen.²⁴⁹ The Propaganda Minister nonetheless thought he detected a weakening of the British stance, a greater readiness to negotiate. The Fuhrer, he commented, now wanted a plebiscite in the Corridor under international control. He hoped through this device to prise London away from Warsaw ‘and to find an occasion to strike’.²⁵⁰ Hitler planned to ponder his reply overnight, and come up, Himmler noted, with a ‘masterpiece of diplomacy (ein Meisterstuck an Diplomatie)’ that would put the British on the spot.²⁵¹

At 7.15p.m. on the evening of 29 August, Henderson, sporting as usual a dark red carnation in the buttonhole of his pin-striped suit, passed down the darkened Wilhelmstra?e — Berlin was undergoing experimental blackouts — through a silent, but not hostile, crowd of 300–400 Berliners, to be received at the Reich Chancellery as on the previous night with a roll of drums and guard of honour.²⁵² Otto Meissner, whose role as head of the so-called Presidential Chancellery was largely representational, and Wilhelm Bruckner, the chief adjutant, escorted him to Hitler. Ribbentrop was also present. Hitler was in a less amenable mood than on the previous evening. He gave Henderson his reply. He had again raised the price — exactly as Henlein had been ordered to do in the Sudetenland the previous year, so that it was impossible to meet it. Hitler now demanded the arrival of a Polish emissary with full powers by the following day, Wednesday 30 August. Even the pliant Henderson, protesting at the impossible time-limit for the arrival of the Polish emissary, said it sounded like an ultimatum.²⁵³ Hitler replied that his generals were pressing him for a decision. They were unwilling to lose any more time because of the onset of the rainy season in Poland.²⁵⁴ Henderson told Hitler that the success or failure of any talks with Poland depended upon his good will, or lack of it. The choice was his. But any attempt to use force against Poland would inevitably result in conflict with Britain.²⁵⁵ Henderson’s telegram to the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, early the following afternoon, stated: ‘If Herr Hitler is allowed to continue to have the initiative, it seems to me that [the] result can only be either war or once again victory for him by a display of force and encouragement thereby to pursue the same course again next year or the year after.’²⁵⁶

When Henderson had left, the Italian Ambassador Attolico was ushered in. He had come to tell Hitler that Mussolini was prepared to intercede with Britain if required. The last thing Hitler wanted, as he had made clear to his generals at the meeting on 22 August, was a last-minute intercession to bring about a new Munich — least of all from the partner who had just announced that he could not stand by the pact so recently signed. Hitler coldly told Attolico that direct negotiations with Britain were in hand and that he had already declared his readiness to accept a Polish negotiator.²⁵⁷

Hitler had been displeased at Henderson’s response to his reply to the British government. He now called in Goring to send Dahlerus once more on the unofficial route to let the British know the gist of the ‘generous’ terms he was proposing to offer the Poles — return of Danzig to Germany, and a plebiscite on the Corridor (with Germany to be given a ‘corridor through the Corridor’ if the result went Poland’s way). By 5a.m. on 30 August, Dahlerus was again heading for London in a German military plane.²⁵⁸ An hour earlier Henderson had already conveyed Lord Halifax’s unsurprising response, that the German request for the Polish emissary to appear that very day was unreasonable.²⁵⁹

During the day, while talking of peace Hitler prepared for war. In the morning he instructed Albert Forster, a week earlier declared Head of State in Danzig, on the action to be taken in the Free City at the outbreak of hostilities.²⁶⁰ Later, he signed the decree to establish a Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich with wide powers to promulgate decrees. Chaired by Goring, its other members were He? as Deputy Leader of the Party, Frick as plenipotentiary for Reich administration, Funk as plenipotentiary for the economy, Lammers, the head of the Reich Chancellery, and Keitel, chief of the High Command of the Wehrmacht.²⁶¹ It had the appearance of a ‘war cabinet’ to administer the Reich while Hitler preoccupied himself with military matters. In reality, the fragmentation of Reich government had gone too far for that. Hitler’s own interest in preventing any centralized body operating as a possible check on his own power was to mean that the Ministerial Council was destined not to bring even a limited resurrection of collective government.²⁶²

Hitler spent much of the day working on his ‘proposals’ to be put to the Polish negotiator who, predictably, never arrived. From the outset it had not been a serious suggestion. But when Henderson returned to the Reich Chancellery at midnight to present the British reply to Hitler’s communication of the previous evening, he encountered Ribbentrop in a highly nervous state and in a vile temper. Diplomatic niceties were scarcely preserved. At one point it seemed to the interpreter Paul Schmidt — in attendance though Henderson, as usual, insisted on speaking his less than perfect German — that the German Foreign Minister and the British Ambassador were going to come to blows.²⁶³ After Ribbentrop had read out Hitler’s ‘proposals’ at breakneck speed, so that Henderson was unable to note them down, he refused — on Hitler’s express orders — to let the British Ambassador read the document, then hurled it on the table stating that it was now out of date (uberholt), since no Polish emissary had arrived in Berlin by midnight.²⁶⁴ Henderson reported to Halifax ‘that Herr von Ribbentrop’s whole demeanour during an unpleasant interview was aping Herr