A World at Arms (22 page)

The reaction of the German government to the responses they received from London and Paris to their public and private peace soundings was as negative as Britain and France had expected. The Germans were not about to evacuate Poland, to say nothing of restoring independence to Czechoslovakia. As for Poland, it had been to assure a quiet Eastern Front in preparation for attacking in the West that Hitler had invaded that country in the first place; he was not about to allow an independent nation there again. Time and again he asserted that the Polish question was entirely for Germany and the Soviet Union to settle according to their preferences; he was certainly not prepared to consider any British interest in the fate of that country’s ally.
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Suggestions that Czechoslovakia should regain her independence
aroused him to even greater anger. Since he had never taken seriously the fate of the over three million people of German descent living in that country, whom he had used as a propaganda pretext for destroying Czechoslovakia, he could not understand that anyone else had. The British insistence on reversing his breach of the Munich agreement as a prerequisite for restoring the German government’s international credibility was, therefore, completely beyond his comprehension. If his own and Göring’s soundings could sow doubt and confusion in the enemy camp, that was just fine. As for concessions he would make none.
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As he told Goebbels on October 14, he was pleased that the talk of peace was over and that all could now be concentrated on the war against England.
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Not everyone in Germany shared Hitler’s enthusiasm for continued war, and, as previously mentioned, elements in the German military made approaches to the British government through diplomatic and other channels. It was the hope of those involved in these soundings that with some assurances from the Western Powers not to take advantage of any change of government in Germany, the military leaders who had doubts about Hitler’s insistence on an offensive in the West could be encouraged to launch a coup to displace him, perhaps at first by Göring, and then by a non-NazL
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The most promising of these approaches was made by German high command intelligence(Abwehr) to Rome and involved Pope Pius XII, who took the matter up with the British Minister to the Vatican.
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Another contact was made in behalf of the former German ambassador to Italy, Ulrich von Hassell, by a man who, unknown to von Hassell, turned out to be a rather dubious character.
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Since the British, as we have seen, looked to the elimination of the Hitler regime as a major war aim, they were naturally interested in these soundings, though several factors made them suspicious. The intermediaries all too often wanted to retain all or most of the very gains Hitler had made, and thus the Germans these intermediaries represented looked little better from the outside than the government they expected to displace. There was always the shadow of Venlo, something not likely to be dispelled easily when there were serious doubts about von Hassell’s intermediary. Most important, there was no sign that the opponents of the regime in the army would ever muster the courage to move; and, as is well known, they did not do so until years later. Although the British, therefore, made clear to their interlocutors London’s interest in seeing a new government in Germany and in making peace with such a government on a basis that would assure Germany a fair place in a peaceful Europe, they would commit themselves no further. The implication was that Germany would have to disgorge its loot and could count on the
maintenance of its independence. Beyond that London would and could not go until those in Germany who were always about to strike against the Nazi regime actually did so

In November 1939 a German by the name of Johann Georg Elser, working entirely by himself, did carry out a daring and well-conceived plan to blow up Hitler when he gave his annual speech to the party faithful in Munich on the anniversary of the failed coup attempt of 1923. Because Hitler left early for a military conference in Berlin, he was not killed when the bomb exploded. Elser was killed in 1945.
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The German military leaders, on the other hand, were unwilling to take any action against the Fuhrer. Instead, they prepared and subsequently carried out attacks on a whole series of neutral countries, thereby hopelessly undermining any credibility they or their civilian associates had in Allied capitals whenever the question of contacts between opposition elements within Germany and the Allies came up later. The war continued.

EARLY DEVELOPMENTS ON THE HOME FRONT

Inside each of the major belligerent powers, the first dislocation of war caused local problems and dissatisfactions. In Britain and France the absence of serious fighting on land in the West and the failure of the anticipated massive German air raids to take place gave an unreal atmosphere to the situation. The description of the conflict as a “phony war” mirrored a sense of confusion which, in the absence of clear and determined leadership at the top, led to internal divisiveness rather than sustained effort. In Germany, too, there was considerable dissatisfaction, along with a sense of triumph over the quick victory in battle against the hated Poles. But there was also the beginning of a major intensification of the National Socialist revolution.

The racialist core of National Socialist ideology had been apparent from the beginning, and the first measures of implementation had come in the first months of Nazi rule in 1933. One aspect of this had been the persecution of the Jews, an immensely popular program of discriminating against Germany’s Jewish citizens–less than 1 percent of the population. Over the years from 1933–39, these measures had been made increasingly stringent, ruthless and violent; designed to drive Jews out of the country after the stealing of their property, this process had attained about half of the former and most of the latter goal by September 1939. More dramatic and extreme measures were yet to come: in his speech of January 30, 1939, Hitler announced to the Reichstag and the world that in any new war the Jews of Europe would be exterminated.
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When he started the war in September, large numbers of Polish
Jews were killed by German soldiers, police, and special SS murder squads, but the systematic extermination program was still to come. Hitler would begin that with segments of his own “Aryan” people.

The racialist measures aimed at the over 99 percent of Germans who were not Jewish had also begun in 1933 with encouragement for early marriage and numerous progeny on the one hand and compulsory sterilization for those allegedly afflicted with hereditary diseases on the other. In this field, also, there were additional steps in the years after 1933, but it was in this regard that a major radicalization occurred soon after the outbreak of war. For years the government had propagated the idea that the incurable should be killed, not cared for. In July 1939, with war planned for that year, the initiation of such a program was advanced for the near future. Now, under the cover of war, action was taken to implement a program of mass murder. Ordered by a secret written decree of Hitler in October, which was back–dated to September 1, the day Germany began the war, the program, usually referred to under the euphemistic term of “euthanasia,” provided for the first German effort at systematically identifying a group of people, shipping them to institutions designed and equipped for murdering them, killing those so identified and shipped, and then disposing of the bodies.

With the cooperation of important segments of the SS and the German medical profession, thousands of Germans were taken out of hospitals, mental institutions, and old peoples’ homes, transferred to a small number of what can only be called murder factories, and killed and cremated there. By August 1941, one of these factories, that at Hadamar, held a special party for its employees to celebrate the cremation of the ten thousandth body.
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Several aspects of this horrendous process merit special attention. Unlike other atrocities before and after 1939, these measures involved not random but systematic violence, not occasional murder but the systematic, bureaucratic selection of categories of people to be killed as a matter of routine. While engaged in this operation, the Germans developed both practical experience with procedures and a corps of individuals with a set of attitudes civilized societies do not need but German racial policies required: individuals who would murder others not in isolated incidents but day in and day out, from morning to lunchtime, from early afternoon until it was time to go home for dinner. Most of the techniques of identification, transportation, murder, and disposal of corpses which came to be the hallmark of what was called the “New Order” of Nazi-controlled Europe were experimented with and first perfected in this program. Others had held that charity begins at home; in Hitler’s Germany, it was systematic mass murder.

There was still one other way in which this program was distinctive. It provoked criticism and resistance within Germany. Some institutions refused to surrender their patients for murder; in a few instances, there were riots when the buses came to remove patients to what all assumed was certain death; and there was general unease, stimulated not only by the families of the victims–who quickly became suspicious–but by clergymen like Bishop Clemens August von Galen of Münster who denounced the murder program in public in August, 1941.
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In the face of such protests, and the (well-founded) rumors that this was the intended fate of the war wounded, the government temporarily halted major portions of the program. It continued on a somewhat lesser scale throughout the war, especially the killing of babies born with supposedly serious handicaps and elderly cripples who were deliberately starved to death, but at least some of the intended victims were safe until German victory when their turn was to come. By August 1941, over 100,000 had been killed, and the regime had a solid core of experts in bureaucratic mass murder for whom it would very quickly find other employment.

In the same days that the monstrous war on the ill and the aged was begun inside Germany, the German government also took the organizational steps to implement the regime of terror, deportation, and murder it intended for occupied Poland. The general nature of that system has already been sketched; the point which should be noted in this context is that in October 1939 the military administration of occupied Poland was terminated.
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As Hitler explained to Goebbels, the German military were too soft for him.
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Others would carry out the horrors he intended with fewer objections and more enthusiasm.
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The other country whose independence the Germans had ended and were so insistent must never be revived was Czechoslovakia. The large portions of that country annexed by Germany after the Munich agreement were integrated into Germany; similarly, the pieces annexed by Hungary in 1938 and 1939 were subjected to a policy of Magyarization. The western and central parts remaining had been declared a protectorate of Germany when occupied in March 1939, while the eastern part was awarded nominal independence under the name of Slovakia.

In the protectorate, German policy looked toward the removal of those Czechs who either could not or would not be Germanized. In the meantime, they would be allowed to collaborate by working hard for the German war effort under their own administration, which in turn was supervised by an enormous German administrative and police apparatus.
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The local Czech administration was secretly in touch with both the Czech leaders in exile and a minimal underground movement. They relieved the Germans of the need for even more administrators as long
as the exigencies of war led the Germans to postpone the fate ultimately in store for the bulk of the population. The concentration of the German mania for murder and resettlement on Poland left the far smaller Czech population under less pressure for the time being. A complicated racial census, somewhat similar to one also being conducted in occupied Poland, pointed the way to the future when other priorities were not so pressing in German eyes. With the beginning of World War II, the German police operating under Karl H. Frank were given even greater independence of the nominal administrative head, Constantin von Neurath, so that there could be no prospect of restraint from the latter if any danger threatened. When the Czechs tried to celebrate their “Fourth of July” equivalent, October 28, the situation quickly led to student demonstrations followed by massive German repression. The universities were closed, a number of students were shot, more than two thousand were sent to concentration camps, and more terror threatened. Thereafter, the situation was relatively quiet. The Czechs could go back to working for the German war effort.
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What Germans were available for settling Slavic areas would for now be sent to Poland.

As for the Slovak puppet government, it had already shown its good behavior by joining in the war against Poland. For this it was rewarded by its new allies: the Germans gave Slovakia pieces of Poland and the Soviets accorded the state formal recognition. Slovakia could serve at least until the German victory in the West in 1940 as a sort of model for other countries in Southeast Europe: here was the proof of how well Germany treated those who did as they were told.
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Germany even took the trouble to negotiate its periodic demands with them; their leaders were treated with respect; and their President, Monsignor Tiso, could have his birthday greetings to Stalin published in Pravda. What more could any state of Southeastern Europe possibly want?

As also already mentioned, the. Soviet Union was moving forward to secure the loot it had been promised in its secret bargain with Germany. As soon as she attacked Poland, she began insisting that Estonia and Latvia–both assigned to her sphere of interest by the Nazi–Soviet secret protocol of August 23 –sign pacts of mutual assistance allowing the stationing of Soviet troops at designated points in the country. Under threats and pressure, Estonia signed on September 29 and Latvia on October 5.
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