Hitler (115 page)

Significantly, the evening in Moscow took an almost comradely turn. Ribbentrop later reported that Stalin and Molotov had been “very nice,” that being with them “felt like being among old party comrades.”
¹³³
Although he was, somewhat embarrassed when, in the course of the night the conversation turned to the Anti-Comintern Pact, of which Ribbentrop was the author, Stalin's geniality encouraged him to scoff at the pact. According to the account of a German participant, he declared that the agreement had “basically not been directed against the Soviet Union, but against the Western democracies.... Mr. Stalin interjected that the Anti-Comintern Pact in fact had alarmed chiefly the City of London and the English shopkeepers. The Reich Foreign Minister agreed and remarked jokingly that Mr. Stalin was surely less alarmed by the Anti-Comintern Pact than the City of London and the English shopkeepers.” The report continues:

 

In the course of the conversation Mr. Stalin spontaneously proposed a toast to the Führer in the following words: “I know how much the German people love their Führer and I therefore should like to drink to his health.”

Mr. Molotov drank to the health of the Reich Foreign Minister and Ambassador Count von der Schulenburg. Furthermore, Mr. Molotov toasted Mr. Stalin, remarking that it had been Stalin who by his speech of March this year, which was well understood in Germany, had initiated the reversal of relations. Messrs. Molotov and Stalin drahk repeatedly to the Nonaggression Pact, the new era in German-Russian relations, and to the German people....

In parting Mr. Stalin addressed the following words to the Reich Foreign Minister: The Soviet Union takes the new Pact very seriously; he could guarantee on his word of honor that the Soviet Union would not betray her partner.
¹³⁴

 

It truly seemed as if, amid toasts and clinking glasses, the deceptive veil of old hostility had been parted and that only now, in the fateful intimacy of that night, the closeness between the two regimes was revealed to themselves and the world. In fact August 23, 1939, has been repeatedly cited by those who wish to prove a conformity in nature between the two regimes. In truth, it was much more a conformity in methods and, as now became evident, in the men. Stalin's toast to Hitler was no empty phrase; he kept his promise with pedant loyalty. In spite of all the omens and warnings from experts, in June, 1941, barely two years later, he refused to the last to believe that Hitler was going to attack the Soviet Union. Even as the German troops advanced, the freight cars rolled westward with the supplies the Russians were obligated to deliver under the economic accord. The astonishing gullibility of the crafty Soviet ruler rested to a considerable degree upon the admiration he felt for a man who, like himself, had risen from low estate to historic importance. In Hitler he respected the only man of the period whom he regarded as his equal; and as we know, Hitler reciprocated this feeling. All “deadly enmity” could never diminish the two men's mutual sense of the other's greatness; and beyond ideologies they felt themselves linked by the rank that history confers. In his memoirs, Rumanian Foreign Minister Grigore Gafencu has cited the observations of the French historian Albert Sorel on the first partition of Poland: “Everything that increased Russia's distance from other powers brought it closer to Prussia. Like Russia, Prussia was a parvenu on the great stage of the world. It had to clear the way for its own future, and Catherine saw that it had every intention of doing so with great methods, great possibilities and great aims.”

These sentences apply as neatly both to the situation and the psychology of Hitler and Stalin: their restive desire for change, their gigantic dreams, and the bold stroke that brought them together in one of the most dramatic coups in history. The ideologies of both were marked by an acute sense of power politics. Hitler once said that “he was not among those who let historic moments pass by unused,” and the same was true of Stalin. Neither man was in the least disturbed by the expostulations of uncomprehending followers. The Moscow Pact threw the Communist parties of the world into one of those crises that consumed what was left of their influence. Similarly, on the morning of August 25 indignant followers of Hitler threw hundreds of swastika armbands over the fence of the Brown House in Munich.
¹³⁵

On the same day the Western military missions left Moscow. Subordinate Soviet generals saw them off. The day before, they had asked Marshal Voroshilov for a meeting, but Voroshilov later apologized, saying that he had been duck hunting.

 

From Hitler's point of view, the conclusion of the Moscow Pact had paved the way for a quick, stunning victory over Poland. What followed was merely a mechanical procedure, “as when a fuse bums to the end.” In the interval he was concerned entirely with the effort to strengthen his alibi, to fend off any mediation, and to separate the Western powers from Poland even further than he had done so far so successfully. All the initiatives and final offers of the remaining week, all those sham negotiations to which so many vain hopes were attached, sprang from this triple aim.

Hitler's address to the High Command on August 22 at Obersalzberg had already been dominated by these considerations. In the best of spirits, fully confident of success in Moscow, he reported on the situation and once more justified his unshakable determination to go to war. His own standing and authority, as well as the economic situation, required the conflict. “There is no other choice left to us; we must act.” Political considerations and the alliances also argued for a rapid decision: “In two or three years all these fortunate circumstances will no longer exist. No one knows how long I may live. Therefore conflict better now,” one of the jottings taken by a participant reads.
¹³⁶
Once more Hitler outlined why the Western powers would not seriously intervene:

 

The opponent still had the hope that Russia would come forth as an adversary after the conquest of Poland. The opponents have not reckoned with my great resoluteness. Our opponents are little worms. I saw them in Munich.

I was convinced that Stalin would never accept the English offer. Russia has no interest in the preservation of Poland. In connection with the trade treaty we arrived at the political dialogue. Proposal of a Nonaggression Pact. Then came a comprehensive proposal from Russia.... Now Poland is in the situation I wanted to have her.

We need have no fear of blockade. The East will supply us with grain, cattle, coal, lead, zinc. It is a great goal that demands a great commitment. My only fear is that at the last moment some
Schweinehund
will present me with a mediation plan.

In the second part of his address, held after a simple meal, Hitler seemed somewhat less certain about the attitude of the Western powers. “There can be no other outcome.” Consequently, “the most iron resolution” was requisite. “Shrink from nothing... life-and-death struggle.” This formula promptly transported him into one of his mythologizing moods in which history appeared before him as a bloody panorama filled with battles, victories, and downfalls. In the earlier part of his address he had referred to the “founding of Greater Germany” as “a great achievement,” but commented that it was “regrettable that it was achieved by a bluff on the part of the political leadership.” Now he declared:

 

A long period of peace would not be good for us.... Manly bearing. Not machines struggling with one another, but human beings. The qualitatively better man on our side. Spiritual factors decisive.

Annihilation of Poland in foreground. Goal is elimination of the vital forces, not the attainment of a specific line....

I shall provide the propagandistic pretext for launching the war, no matter whether it is credible. The victor is not asked afterward whether or not he has told the truth. What matters in beginning and waging the war is not righteousness, but victory.

Close heart to pity. Proceed brutally. Eighty million people must obtain what they have a right to. Their existence must be guaranteed. The stronger is in the right. Supreme hardness.

 

Hitler dismissed his generals by remarking that the order for commencing hostilities would be issued later, probably for Saturday morning, August 26. On the following day General Halder noted in his diary: “Y [Day] = Aug. 26 (Saturday) final—no further orders.”

This timetable, however, was once again upset. For although practically the entire framework of Western policy had collapsed as soon as the pact was signed, England led the way in demonstrating a stoic equanimity. Poland was as good as doomed, but the British cabinet dryly announced that the latest events had changed nothing. Military preparations were ostentatiously continued and increased. In a letter to Hitler Chamberlain warned against any doubts of the British determination to fight:

 

No greater mistake could be made.... It has been alleged that, if His Majesty's Government had made their position more clear in 1914, the great catastrophe would have been avoided.... His Majesty's Government are resolved that on this occasion there shall be no such tragic misunderstanding.
¹³⁷

 

The Prime Minister also made a statement to the House of Commons pitched in the same tone. England would not retreat an inch—unlike France, which kept up an air of resolution with considerable difficulty and whose press expressed its defeatist attitude in the question,
“Mourir pour Dantzig?”
Danzig was no more the issue for Chamberlain than for Hitler. For him, as for the French, it was “a far-away city in a foreign land.” No one was going to have to die for it. But now, when the Moscow Pact had shattered her whole policy, England recognized the things her people would have to fight and die for. The policy of appeasement had been partly based on and sustained by the bourgeois world's fear of Communist revolution. In the script of English statesmen, Hitler was assigned the role of a militant defender of the bourgeois world. That was why they had endured all his slaps in the face, his provocations and outrages. But this was the only reason. By coming to an agreement with the Soviet Union, he indicated that he was not the opponent of revolution that he had pretended to be; he was no protector of the bourgeois order, no “General Wrangel of the world bourgeoisie.” Although the pact with Stalin was a masterpiece of diplomacy, it contained an inconspicuous flaw: it abrogated the premises on which Hitler and the West had carried on their dealings. Here was something that could not be glossed over, and with rare unanimity the British, including the stoutest spokesmen for appeasement, now showed their resolve to oppose him. Although Hitler had a deserved reputation for psychological acuity, it became clear in this decisive moment that, after all, he was the psychologist only of the exhausted, the resigned, the doomed. And he was far better able to estimate the moves of victims than of adversaries.

Consequently, Hitler reacted with extreme ire to the many evidences of British determination. When Ambassador Henderson delivered his Prime Minister's letter at Obersalzberg, he had to listen to a tirade which ended with Hitler's saying he was now finally convinced that Germany and England would never be able to come to an agreement. Nevertheless, two days later, in the early afternoon of August 25, he repeated his “great bid” to divide the world. He offered a German guarantee for the existence of the British Empire, a limit on armaments, and a formal acknowledgment of the German western border in return for the right of Germany to move to the East without restriction. And as he had done so often before, he linked his outrageous demand with one of those ploys with which he tried to prove his essential harmlessness. “He said he was an artist by nature and not a politician and once the Polish question was settled he would conclude his life as an artist and not as a warmaker; he did not want to transform Germany into a great military barracks; and he would do so only if he were forced to. Once the Polish question was settled, he would retire.”

Ambassador Henderson was implored to pass the offer on at once. But no sooner had he left the room, at 3:02
P.M.
on August 25, than Hitler sent for General Keitel and confirmed his order to attack Poland at dawn the next day.

A few hours later, he was once more deep in doubt. Two messages had arrived at the chancellery in the course of the afternoon. One came from London and made it plain that Hitler's last attempt to drive a wedge between England and Poland had failed. After months of protracted negotiations, the British government now transformed the temporary guarantee of aid to Poland into a treaty of assistance. Hitler could not fail to see in this the most resolute rejection of his great offer. Nor could there any longer be doubt that England was determined to intervene. One of those present saw Hitler after receiving the news “sitting at the table for a considerable time, brooding.”

He was harder hit by the other message, which roused him from his brooding. It came from Rome and made it clear that Italy was trying to creep out of the alliance so recently and pompously concluded. For weeks, as the conflict seemed to be coming closer, Mussolini had alternated abruptly between sanguine exultation and moods of despair. Ciano's diary notes with some irony the way the Duce rocked back and forth on his “emotional seesaw.” At one time he appeared determined to keep out of Hitler's war; “then he says that honor compels him to march with Germany. Finally he states that he wants his part of the booty in Croatia and Dalmatia.” Two days later “he wants time to prepare the break with Germany”; then again “he still thinks it possible that the democracies will not march and that Germany might do good business cheaply, from which business he does not want to be excluded. Then, too, he fears Hitler's rage.”

Amid this confusion of crisscrossing impulses, at 3:30
P.M.
on August 25, Mussolini assured the German ambassador of unconditional assistance, only to send a telegram to Hitler two hours later taking it all back, or at any rate making his assistance dependent on a vast amount of material aid that Germany could not possibly deliver—“enough to kill a bull,” Ciano commented. Reminding Hitler that they had not envisaged the war's coming so soon and that Italy's army was not equipped, Mussolini tried to wriggle out of the alternative between doom and betrayal.