A World at Arms (11 page)

There were, as we now know, a few skeptics in the German armed forces intelligence service, but all they could do was to leak an account of Hitler’s comments to the British.
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The vast majority of Germany’s military leaders were either enthusiastic or acquiescent. In the first days of World War I, there had been a sense of national unity in Germany transcending all divisions of class, party, and religion; something the Germans called a
Burgfrieden,
a peace inside a castle under siege. This time, in the last moments before the launching of World War II, all that the regime needed was such a
Burgfrieden
among the holders of military authority; they were the only ones who could conceivably threaten the government and its policy. With war to be waged against Poland, and with what looked like a successful avoidance of the dreaded two-front war, the military were for the most part prepared to follow Hitler into the abyss. To Hitler it all looked much better than 1938; to most of his generals, it also looked better than 1914.

Almost as soon as the German Foreign Minister began talking with Stalin on August 23, it became obvious to Hitler that agreement with the Soviet Union would certainly be attained. Partitioning Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union presented no difficulties. In the area of the Baltic States, von Ribbentrop had been instructed to suggest the river Dvina as a new border between the two partners, an arrangement
which would have left Estonia to the Soviet Union and Lithuania to Germany, while dividing Latvia between them. Stalin wanted all of Latvia; and von Ribbentrop, who had received instructions from Hitler to make extensive concessions in the negotiations, was inclined to agree. His telegram from Moscow asking for Hitler’s approval on this point–an approval that was promptly given–showed Hitler that a treaty with the Soviet Union was assured. Without waiting for the final signing, to say nothing of von Ribbentrop’s personal report, Hitler on August 23 ordered war to begin with the attack on Poland on August 26.

As the German military machine moved into position for the invasion of Poland, and while the civilian agencies of the German government made their last moves to be ready for the other steps timed to coincide with the beginning of hostilities, Hitler planned his final diplomatic moves. He met with Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop on the latter’s return from Moscow on the 24th and together the two appear to have worked out in detail the steps to be taken that day and the next, the last hours before war.
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Mussolini was informed of what was coming by a telephone call to Ciano in the night of August 24–25, and a detailed letter was delivered to him on the 25th. The favorable situation created by the Nazi–Soviet Pact was described and the imminence of hostilities to crush Poland was announced–but with no reference to the fact that war had already been ordered for the next day. Hitler called on Italy to fulfill her obligations under the terms of the alliance, the “Pact of Steel” signed in May, and he apparently assumed that, under what looked like most favorable circumstances for the Axis, Mussolini would surely join in promptly.
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Japan certainly could not be expected to come in on Germany’s side; on the contrary, the government in Tokyo–which imagined itself to be involved in negotiations with Germany for an alliance
against
the Soviet Union–toppled under the political shock of the Nazi–Soviet Pact even as it ordered a protest in Berlin against what looked to Tokyo like an outrageous violation of the Japanese–German Anti-Comintern Pact.

While Japan, still engaged in actual hostilities with Russia at the time, was not expected by Berlin to be of assistance in ending the German-Polish dispute in a manner suitable to Germany, the Soviet Union naturally was. On August 25, therefore, Germany urgently asked for the appointment of a new Soviet ambassador to Berlin and the prompt
dispatch of a Soviet military representative to help coordinate the forthcoming campaigns against Poland. The newly formed and loudly trumpeted association of the Soviet Union with Germany was seen as a means of forestalling Western intervention on behalf of Poland, and Berlin was accordingly interested in publicly visible signs of the new alignment.

Simultaneously with the notification to Italy and the invitation to Moscow, the German diplomatic staging actions of August 25 included special messages to the smaller countries of Western Europe: Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. All were to be promised German respect for their neutrality and threatened with war and destruction if any of them failed to protect Germany’s rear by abandoning neutrality in favor of the Western Powers. The German government, as will be shown, intended to end the existence of all four countries, but at the moment when Germany was about to attack the first of the many nations it had promised to leave in peace, more promises were cheap and might be useful.

On the same day special efforts were also made to discourage Britain and France from siding with Poland; Hitler still hoped that the war with the Western Powers could be started at a time of his own selection after Poland had been crushed. If during the time needed for the Polish campaign London and Paris could be preoccupied with the hope of new agreements, the possibility of any danger to Germany in the West could be obviated until she was ready to strike herself. On the day before war was to begin, therefore, Hitler sent new messages to London and Paris, anticipating that these would be received and discussed by the governments there on the following morning–at the same time as they learned of the German invasion of Poland a few hours earlier.

On the entirely correct assumption that the French would not move without the certainty of British support, the more elaborate German message was sent to London. Pointing out to the British government that his new treaty with Russia meant both that there would be no real Eastern Front since “Russia and Germany would never again take up arms against each other,” and that there would be no possibility of an effective blockade of a Germany that could now draw on the raw materials of the Soviet Union, Hitler promised that, after the German-Polish dispute had been settled, he would send an alliance offer to London. Instead of war with Germany under circumstances far less favorable to the Western Powers than in 1914, he offered the prospect of Germany’s defending the British empire against any enemy, a promise of no territorial demands in the West, moderation in colonial demands, and an agreement on the limitation of armaments. Just as in March 1936 the breach of the Locarno Treaty of 1925, the only defensive alliance
Germany ever had with England, had been accompanied by a vast array of German promises and offers which could be debated while German troops marched West to remilitarize and refortify the Rhineland–and all of which were broken or withdrawn once they had served this purpose–so now a lengthy list of tempting bait was to be dangled before British eyes as German troops marched eastwards into Poland. Between the dispatch of this offer and the arrangement for the message to Paris, Hitler gave the final go-ahead for the attack on Poland at 4:30 a.m. the following morning, August 26.

Hoping to discourage the French from honoring their alliance with Poland, Hitler next saw the French ambassador to Germany and asked him to inform Edouard Daladier, the Prime Minister of France, that Germany did not want war with France and had no claims on her, but that the situation in German–Polish relations was intolerable. If France wanted a war with Germany that would be unfortunate, but it would be their choice. With the Soviet Union already aligned on Germany’s side, with Britain, as Hitler hoped, deflected by his offer, the French Cabinet would have his kind words in front of it as its members debated what to do the following morning. The strong pacifist sentiments known to exist in France might well keep the French from going to war while Germany secured its Eastern Front for the turn against the West. All seemed ready for war as German troops moved toward the border, ration books were ready for issue to the civilian population, and the concentration camp inmates who were to be murdered wearing Polish uniforms were prepared for the staged incidents that would prove to Germany and the world that it was the Poles who had begun hostilities.

Two developments which became known in Berlin in the afternoon of August 25 caused Hitler to consider a minor alteration in the stage management of Germany’s initiation of hostilities. These two developments shed considerable light on the policies of other powers, while Hitler’s response to these underlines his continued overwhelming preference for war as opposed to any peaceful settlement. The German government learned that Italy was not willing to join in and that Great Britain had just signed an alliance treaty with Poland. The first news item is revealing about Italian, the second about British, policy.

In Rome, the news of the forthcoming signing of a Nazi–Soviet Pact had for a very short time been seen as possibly creating a situation in which Germany could fight Poland in an isolated war. Under such happy circumstances, Italy could follow her own inclinations and German advice by attacking Yugoslavia, that country on the other side of the Adriatic which Italy had long hoped to destroy and which was now outflanked by the earlier Italian seizure of Albania. Ciano first and then
Mussolini, however, returned quickly to the firm belief that Britain and France would fight alongside Poland regardless of Soviet actions, and they tried to convince their German ally of this view. In any case, they were now confronted by a German request for an unequivocal answer.

The Italian government had the option of promising full support in what its leaders were certain would be a general war, and one in which the first blows of the Western Powers were almost certain to hit them. And they would be moving under circumstances they had not foreseen: Germany had kept its intentions secret from them until the last moment, intentions about which the Germans were not giving them the full details even now. Alternatively they could explain that they were not yet ready and could come in only after making up the deficiencies in their preparations. Mussolini followed the advice of most of those around him and reluctantly informed Hitler that Italy could not yet commit herself to entering the war. Having anticipated the full support of Mussolini, Hitler was astounded by Italy’s decision, news of which reached him right after his meeting with the French ambassador and about the time he learned of the signing of the Anglo-Polish alliance.

The British government had reached its basic decision in the early weeks of 1939 when rumors of a forthcoming attack on Holland had produced a decision to fight Germany if she attacked any nation which resisted. It had subsequently turned out that the information pointing to an imminent attack in the West was incorrect, and the next German move had instead been the destruction of Czechoslovakia’s independence. That country, stripped of its military defenses by the territorial concessions made to Germany in 1938 and demoralized by its abandonment by the Western Powers, had not resisted the final German onslaught; but Germany’s breach of the Munich agreement showed that the alleged German concern about the fate of her minorities abroad was fakery designed to obscure the actual aim of subduing
non
-Germans.

The subsequent British policy in the face of possible German moves against Romania and Poland, therefore, was one characterized by three consistent themes. In the first place, with the previously accepted assumption that a war started anywhere in Europe was, like that of 1914, certain to spread to the whole continent, it made little difference whether Germany first attacked in the West or in the East; Britain would be involved anyway. In view of this, it might well be wise to reverse the diplomatic strategy followed in 1938, when a firm warning to Germany had been postponed in the hope that uncertainty of British support might make for maximum concessions by Czechoslovakia, while the possibility of British intervention might persuade the Germans to accept such concessions rather than risk a general war. Now the British government
would announce its position early rather than late, hoping that firmness would deter Germany, reassure her victims, and rally others to their side. This shift in approach was in large part due to the second characteristic of London’s view of the situation in 1939.

German propaganda in 1938 about the real or imagined grievances of the over three million people of German descent in Czechoslovakia had had a substantial impact on the British government, the British public, and the positions of the governments in the British Commonwealth. It was generally known in government circles in London that the Germans living in Poland might well have something to complain about–in fact that they had been treated more harshly than those in Czechoslovakia and that Poland should be urged to restrain such harsh treatment–but all this was now seen as obviously a manipulated pretext for German policies aiming at the domination of all of Europe. Only one German step could reverse that view: a restoration of independence to Czechoslovakia. And that was as permanent and clear a British pre-condition for any new agreement with Germany as it was a step that the German government was under no circumstances prepared to take.
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The third characteristic of the British perception was that the firm public posture, which took the specific form of an announcement at the end of March 1939 that Britain would go to war alongside Poland if that country were attacked by Germany and defended herself, had to be accompanied by measures to attract other allies to Britain’s side. The most obvious ally was France, herself threatened by the rising might of Germany and tied to Poland by an alliance of many years. The utter panic in Paris on September 12 and 13, 1938, when a British statement that England would fight if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia showed that the French could no longer hide behind Britain’s alleged unwillingness to fight, had at that time triggered Chamberlain’s first trip to Germany;
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it suggested that in future crises London would be well advised to be most considerate of French concerns. It is in this context that one should see the reversal of Britain’s neglect of her ground forces, and in particular the introduction of the first peacetime conscription law in the spring of 1939.
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France could not be expected to fight together with England unless she could anticipate a British army fighting on the continent beside her own.