Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

Hitler at his worst’.²⁶⁵ In retrospect, Henderson thought that Ribbentrop ‘was wilfully throwing away the last chance of a peaceful solution’.²⁶⁶

There had, in fact, been no ‘last chance’… No Polish emissary had been expected. Ribbentrop was concerned precisely not to hand over terms which the British might have passed to the Poles, who might have been prepared to discuss them. Hitler had needed his ‘generous suggestion over the regulation of the Danzig and Corridor Question’, as Schmidt later heard him say, as ‘an alibi, especially for the German people, to show them that I have done everything to preserve peace’.²⁶⁷ Immediately following Henderson’s audience with Ribbentrop, Hitler had told Goebbels that he wanted the document published ‘at a suitable opportunity’.²⁶⁸ It was arranged for a radio broadcast that evening.²⁶⁹ By then, Goring had heard, unsurprisingly, from his intermediary Dahlerus that there was no further movement in London: the British government insisted, as it had throughout, on peaceful settlement of the Polish question before there could be any negotiations towards a better relationship between Britain and Germany.²⁷⁰

The army had been told on 30 August to make all preparations for attack on 1 September at 4.30a.m. If negotiations in London required a postponement, notification would be given before 3p.m. next day. But 2 September was the last day possible for a strike.²⁷¹ At 6.30a.m. on the morning of 31 August, within hours of Henderson’s departure from the Reich Chancellery after hearing the terms of the German ‘offer’ to Poland, Halder learnt that Hitler had given the order to attack on 1 September — a day before the deadline ran out.²⁷² For some reason, Goring, on behalf of the Luftwaffe, had objected to having the timing set for 4.30a.m.²⁷³ By 12.40p.m. the order directive had been completed and signed by Hitler.²⁷⁴ At 1.50p.m. — still well before the possible cancellation point of 3p.m. — the order was confirmed to go ahead, with the starting time changed to 4.45a.m. ‘Armed intervention by Western powers now said to be unavoidable,’ noted Halder. ‘In spite of this, Fuhrer has decided to strike.’²⁷⁵

When informed that Ribbentrop had arrived at the Reich Chancellery, Hitler told him he had given the order, and that ‘things were rolling (die Sache rolle)’. Ribbentrop wished him luck.²⁷⁶ ‘It looks as if the die is finally cast,’ wrote Goebbels.²⁷⁷

After making his decision, Hitler cut himself off from external contact.²⁷⁸ He refused to see the Polish Ambassador, Jozef Lipski, later in the afternoon. Ribbentrop did see him a little later. But hearing that the Ambassador carried no plenipotentiary powers to negotiate he immediately terminated the interview. Lipski returned to find telephone lines to Warsaw had been cut off.²⁷⁹

At 9p.m. the German radio broadcast Hitler’s ‘sixteen-point proposal’ which Ribbentrop had so crassly presented to Henderson at midnight.²⁸⁰ By 10.30p.m. the first reports were coming in of a number of serious border incidents, including an armed ‘Polish’ assault on the German radio station at Gleiwitz in Upper Silesia. These had been planned for weeks by Heydrich’s office, using SS men dressed in Polish uniforms to carry out the attacks. To increase the semblance of authenticity, a number of concentration-camp inmates killed by lethal injections and carried to the sites provided the bodies required.²⁸¹

Throughout Germany, people went about their daily business as normal. But the normality was deceptive. All minds now were fixed on the likelihood of war. A brief war, with scarcely any losses, and confined to Poland, was one thing. But war with the West, which so many with memories of the Great War of 1914–18 had dreaded for years, now seemed almost certain. There was now no mood like that of August 1914, no ‘hurrah-patriotism’. The faces of the people told of their anxiety, fears, worries, and resigned acceptance of what they were being faced with. ‘Everybody against the war,’ wrote the American correspondent William Shirer on 31 August. ‘How can a country go into a major war with a population so dead against it?’ he asked.²⁸² ‘Trust in the Fuhrer will now probably be subjected to its hardest acid test,’ ran a report from the Upper Franconian district of Ebermannstadt. ‘The overwhelming proportion of people’s comrades expects from him the prevention of the war, if otherwise impossible even at the cost of Danzig and the Corridor.’²⁸³

How accurate such a report was as a reflection of public opinion cannot be ascertained. The question is in any case irrelevant. Ordinary citizens, whatever their fears, were powerless to affect the course of events. While many of them were fitfully sleeping in the hope that even now, at the eleventh hour and beyond, some miracle would preserve peace, the first shots were fired and bombs dropped near Dirschau at 4.30a.m. And just over quarter of an hour later in Danzig harbour the elderly German battleship Schleswig- Holstein, now a sea-cadet training-ship, focused its heavy guns on the fortified Polish munitions depot on the Westerplatte and opened fire.²⁸⁴

By late afternoon the army leadership reported: ‘Our troops have crossed the frontier everywhere and are sweeping on toward their objectives of the day, checked only slightly by the Polish forces thrown against them.’²⁸⁵ In Danzig itself, the purported objective of the conflict between Germany and Poland, border posts and public buildings manned by Poles had been attacked at dawn. The League of Nations High Commissioner had been forced to leave, and the swastika banner raised over his building.²⁸⁶ Gauleiter Albert Forster proclaimed Danzig’s reincorporation in the Reich.²⁸⁷ In the turmoil of the first day of hostilities, probably few people in Germany took much notice.

On a grey, overcast morning Shirer had found the few people on the streets apathetic.²⁸⁸ There were not many cheers from those thinly lining the pavements when Hitler drove to the Reichstag shortly before 10a.m. A hundred or so deputies had been called up to serve in the army. But Goring saw to it that there were no empty spaces when Hitler spoke. The vacancies were simply filled by drafting in Party functionaries.²⁸⁹ Hitler, now wearing Wehrmacht uniform, was on less than top form. He sounded strained. There was less cheering than usual.²⁹⁰ After a lengthy justification of the alleged need for Germany’s military action, he declared: ‘Poland has now last night for the first time fired on our territory through regular soldiers. Since 5.45a.m.’ — he meant 4.45a.m. — ‘the fire has been returned. And from now on bomb will be met with bomb.’²⁹¹

Hitler had still not given up hope that the British could be kept out of the conflict. On his return from the Reichstag he had Goring summon Dahlerus to make a last attempt.²⁹² But he wanted no outside intercession, no repeat of Munich. Mussolini, under the influence of Ciano and Attolico, and unhappy at Italy’s humiliation at being unable to offer military support, had been trying for some days to arrange a peace conference. He was now desperate, fearing attack on Italy from Britain and France, to stop the war spreading.²⁹³ Before seeing Dahlerus, Hitler sent the Duce a telegram explicitly stating that he did not want his mediation.²⁹⁴ Then Dahlerus arrived. He found Hitler in a nervous state. The odour from his mouth was so strong that Dahlerus was tempted to move back a step or two. Hitler was at his most implacable. He was determined to break Polish resistance ‘and to annihilate (vernichten) the Polish people’, he told Dahlerus. In the next breath he added that he was prepared for further negotiations if the British wanted them. Again the threat followed, in ever more hysterical tones. It was in British interests to avoid a fight with him. But if Britain chose to fight, she would pay dearly. He would fight for one, two, ten years if necessary.²⁹⁵

Dahlerus’s reports of such hysteria could cut no ice in London.²⁹⁶ Nor did an official approach on the evening of 2 September, inviting Sir Horace Wilson to Berlin for talks with Hitler and Ribbentrop. Wilson replied straightforwardly that German troops had first to be withdrawn from Polish territory. Otherwise Britain would fight.²⁹⁷ This was only to repeat the message which the British Ambassador had already passed to Ribbentrop the previous evening.²⁹⁸ No reply to that message was received.²⁹⁹ At 9a.m. on 3 September, Henderson handed the British ultimatum to the interpreter Paul Schmidt, in place of Ribbentrop, who had been unwilling to meet the British Ambassador.³⁰⁰ Unless assurances were forthcoming by 11a.m. that Germany was prepared to end its military action and withdraw from Polish soil, the ultimatum read, ‘a state of war will exist between the two countries as from that hour’.³⁰¹ No such assurances were forthcoming. ‘Consequently,’ Chamberlain broadcast to the British people then immediately afterwards repeated in the House of Commons, ‘this country is at war with Germany.’³⁰² The French declaration of war followed that afternoon at 5p.m.³⁰³

Hitler had led Germany into the general European war he had wanted to avoid for several more years. Military ‘insiders’ thought the army, 2.3 million strong, through the rapidity of the rearmament programme, was less prepared for a major war than it had been in 1914.³⁰⁴ Hitler was fighting the war allied with the Soviet Union, the ideological arch-enemy. And he was at war with Great Britain, the would-be ‘friend’ he had for years tried to woo. Despite all warnings, his plans — at every turn backed by his warmongering Foreign Minister — had been predicated upon his assumption that Britain would not enter the war — though he had shown himself