Goebbels34: Put Poland on Page TwoSEEN in retrospect those last days of March 1939 were the cradle of the comingwar.Dr Goebbels’ diary betrayed no awareness of the solemnity of the hour.Seeking relief from his matrimonial dolours, he was off, visiting Budapest, Athens,and Rhodes.1 In Budapest he was received by the prime minister, foreign minister,and minister of education.2 In Athens, though formally the guest of the mayor, heagain visited Prime Minister Metaxas. The Greeks reassured the British afterwardsthat they had stressed their special relationship with London: Goebbels, they reported,had told Metaxas that in his opinion Hitler was not planning any furthermove ‘for the moment’ (which was a faithful rendering of what Hitler had told him).3In Athens, he learned belatedly that Poland was still holding out over Danzig. ‘If thefat hits the fire the Führer will recall me,’ he decided, and travelled on.4In Rhodes he read that Mr Chamberlain had guaranteed Poland against any aggression.*Several more British guarantees followed to other states on Germany’s pe-* Except, it turned out, aggression by the Soviet Union; a secret addendum madethis clear.—It was Ian Colvin of the News Chronicle, whom Goebbels expelled a fewdays later, who tilted the balance to war by telling Chamberlain, untruthfully, onMarch 29 that Hitler had already drawn up plans to destroy Poland. However thecontingency plan (Hitler’s Case White) was now activated as a result of the Britishguarantee.10528 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHriphery. ‘Britain on the path of virtue,’ Goebbels scoffed. ‘What a hoot!’5 He flew onto Egypt, shadowed by British agents wherever he went.6Egypt impressed him. ‘Seldom in my life,’ he wrote, seeing the Sphinx for the firsttime, ‘has a sight so moved me. Normally one feels cheated. Here, reality surpasseswhat one had imagined.’7 He told the German community that he had not come withpots of gold for propaganda. Germany, he said, again faithfully representing Hitler’spolicies, had no interest in the Mediterranean, and was ‘now fully occupied’ digestingthe territories she had recently acquired.8 At this range, it seemed only a small flyin the ointment that Warsaw and London had signed a formal pact. ‘One day, perhaps,’he mused, ‘Poland will have to pay very dear for this.’ Czechoslovakia had,after all, made the same mistake.9After a brief stopover in Turkey11 he landed back at Tempelhof on April 14 andswapped travel anecdotes with Magda, who had returned from her own travels, atSchwanenwerder that evening. As for foreign affairs he told the diary nothing. Metaxashad speculated that Goebbels was somewhat out of favour.12 Hitler was certainly inlittle hurry to take him further into his confidence; four days passed before they nextmet.On April 18, after gathering with his family and Magda for his mother’s seventiethbirthday (‘she’s the one fixture in this stormy life of mine’) Goebbels was amongthose dining with Hitler. Göring was also there, bronzed and fit from a vacation atSan Remo; he would recall Hitler revealing at this dinner his determination to solvethe Danzig question by force if necessary. Goebbels noted in his diary only the words,‘We talked politics a bit.’13He was swamped in the preparations for Hitler’s grandiose fiftieth birthday parade.On the evening of the nineteenth he broadcast a special birthday tribute, thenwent immediately afterwards over to the Chancellery to join the leading party officialsassembled in the ceremonial rooms overlooking Hermann-Göring Strasse. Hitlerappeared an hour late, white-faced, as though he had received bad news. Speakingsoftly and deliberately, he indicated that he had just had a medical check-up; buildingon that remark, he added that he could not say how many years he still had in whichGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 529to achieve his life’s ambition.14 He spoke specifically of the grave risks that he wasprepared now to take.15More recently retrieved fragments of Goebbels’ hitherto unpublished diary throwfurther shafts of light on the development of Hitler’s plans. ‘England wants to mendher fences with us again,’ Goebbels wrote after lunch with Hitler on the twentythird.‘Chamberlain has already put out feelers to us. With France we won’t have toomuch difficulty. And Poland is none too comfortable in its policy toward us. But forthe time being the Führer doesn’t want to repeat his former offer to them on Danzigand the autobahn through the Corridor,’ a reference to his offer to settle for anextra-territorial freeway across the Polish territories to East Prussia. Hitler was nowmore confident in his military strength, augmented as it was by the Czech armsfactories like Skoda. ‘Will there be war?’ Goebbels asked his diary. ‘I don’t think so.At any rate nobody really wants it. And that is our best ally.’ Over dinner Hitlerrepeated that London and Paris were just bluffing; Poland would lose her nerve whenthe crunch came. ‘Our motto must be: keep arming, lie in wait, and strike when theiron’s hot.’16Over the next two weeks Hitler briefed him about Case White (war with Poland ‘ifneed be’). On May 1 Goebbels wrote: ‘The Poles are agitating violently against us.The Führer welcomes it. We are not to hit back for the time being, but to take note.Warsaw will end up one day the same way as Prague.’17 Two days later he ordered alleditors to go easy on the Soviet Union ‘until further notice.’18 His next VölkischerBeobachter leader article was widely seen as flinging down the gauntlet to Poland.19Hitler was away, down at the Berghof; but the two Nazis traded curses about thePoles on the phone and about how they were getting more insolent by the hour.Presumably with his Führer’s approval Goebbels now made Britain his prime target.Speaking without notes in Cologne on May 19 he blasphemed against the democracies,calling them ‘old whores’ turned sanctimonious nuns in their old age.‘For one like myself,’ reported a local British diplomat, ‘who had not heard Goebbelsbefore, the power of his voice was a revelation, coming as it does from such a punybody.’ He studied Goebbels’ gesticulations with fascination. Referring to the ‘intel-530 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHlectuals and
