Goering (32 page)

Hitler continued, his eyes glazed and his voice unnatural, revealing a fanatical belief that Germany's strength could overcome any form of opposition. The discussion culminated in a proposal from Hitler that Dahlerus should return to London and explain the German case. Drawing on his experience as a businessman, Dahlerus said he would do so if the exact nature of Germany's demands on Poland could be explained to him, for example about the Corridor to Danzig. Hitler gave the solitary smile his visitor saw that night, and Goering at once tore a map of Poland from an atlas and marked off with quick, rough strokes the territory Germany wanted. Then this strange conference in the small hours of the night turned into an attempt to fix in Dahlerus' mind—he was allowed to write down nothing, for security reasons—the terms of a pact offered by Hitler to Britain if she in her turn would help Germany obtain Danzig and the Corridor, and, for good measure, the former German colonies in Africa. Hitler became excited and difficult to pin down to essentials; Goering was self-satisfied and silent most of the time. His “strictly formal and obsequious behavior toward his chief” came as a deep shock to Dahlerus, who “resented” Hitler's manner to Goering, while the latter's fawning humility seemed to him utterly repellent.
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The interview ended about four o'clock in the morning; it was now Sunday, August 27, and some twelve hours later Dahlerus was in Downing Street with Chamberlain, Halifax and Sir Alexander Cadogan of the Foreign Office, trying as clearly as he could to elucidate the points in the German offer in an atmosphere of calm skepticism. It was finally decided to use Dahlerus as a secret messenger to test Hitler's advance reactions to England's response to the German proposals. Goering was telephoned; he consulted Hitler, who agreed to receive Dahlerus a second time in the capacity of unofficial diplomat. Once more the Swedish messenger settled down to learn by heart what might not be put on paper.

While the doors opened and closed on these secret conferences, the public atmosphere in both Germany and Britain was very tense. Dahlerus' business friends had clustered anxiously round him, acting as a screen against curiosity, when his special German plane landed at Croydon. Air communications between the two countries had been severed. In Britain there was partial mobilization; families were parting; trains were running hours late. In Germany rationing of food, soap, coal and clothing was being announced, while troop movements were only too obvious.

By a quarter past eleven that night Dahlerus was back in Berlin with Goering. The British reaction did not please Goering, and he rubbed his big nose. Dahlerus, who fully realized the solemnity of the moment and was determined to make the Germans understand the British position, was careful to make every detail clear. Goering said in the end, according to Dahlerus, that “he, personally, quite appreciated what Britain felt, but that he doubted if Hitler would do the same.” He saw Hitler and obtained an unexpectedly reasonable response from him; Goering telephoned that the Führer was ready to receive a British note along the lines explained by Dahlerus, who surprised the British embassy by telephoning them shortly before two in the morning requesting an immediate meeting. The coded telegram explaining the nature of his mission did not arrive until an hour later!

After leaving the embassy, Dahlerus, who had not been to bed for two successive nights, bathed and then went straight by car to Goering's special train. Goering received him in a green dressing gown fastened at the waist with a jeweled buckle; he was in a cheerful mood and showed off the skill of the German Intelligence Service by giving his guest an exact account of his telephone call to the embassy and the surprise that it had caused. There was no secrecy about the matter as far as Goering was concerned. Dahlerus met many senior members of Goering's staff—Koerner, Milch, Udet and Bodenschatz. No secret was made about the preparations for war; they all had lunch in the open air under the shade of the surrounding beech trees, and Goering showed Dahlerus where the attacks would be made if war broke out. He also described his Luftwaffe headquarters at Oranienburg, which had been blasted out of a cliff near the railway. Goering confided in him that his relations with Ribbentrop were bad, and Dahlerus “received the definite impression that there was a battle of wills going on between Goering . . . and other members of the government.”

All seemed set for negotiations to start. Dahlerus, in spite of his excitement, was at last able to get some sleep. The following day, August 29, he went to Goering's office, where “Goering dashed up to me, pressed my hand, and said excitedly: ‘We'll have peace. Peace has been assured.' ”

Dahlerus went straight to the British embassy; there he met Henderson for the first time and found him deeply skeptical, even about Goering, who, he said, was slightly different from the other Nazi leaders but was frequently guilty of lying when it suited him to do so. Nevertheless, they agreed that Goering was a far easier man to deal with than the rest. Henderson, who looked tired, said how much he dreaded meeting Hitler that evening to receive the German reply to Britain's formal communication.

That night Dahlerus learned how badly the meeting had gone. Hitler had inserted a new demand as the next stage in his plan to make any negotiations with Poland abortive, while at the same time putting Britain as far as possible in a position where she would be unwilling to use force. Evidently the influence of Ribbentrop was again replacing that of Goering. The demand was for Britain to see that a Polish representative would be in Berlin the following day, August 30, to negotiate on behalf of his government. Henderson had protested violently at this ultimatum, as he called it.

While Forbes of the British embassy was telling Dahlerus this disastrous piece of news, Goering himself telephoned, “exceedingly nervous and upset,” and asked Dahlerus to visit him at once. Dahlerus found him not only nervous but angry. Goering put the blame squarely on Henderson and fiercely underlined with his red pencil the points in the German note that he considered specially significant. He talked now like Hitler, against Britain, against Poland, near whose borders the German Army was massing. “Sixty German divisions—about one million men—are there waiting, but we all hope nothing will happen. The Poles are mad . . .” Only the hope of an agreement with Britain was preventing Hitler from marching in to stop the atrocities the Poles were at that moment practicing against the German minorities. Hitler was working on a plan to present to the Poles. Again Goering tore a page from an atlas and marked off the territories it would suit Germany to acquire. He begged Dahlerus to return to London in a special German plane; he then thanked him for what he had done, in case they never met again, hinting that there were certain people who were determined to prevent Dahlerus from “getting out of this alive.” By “certain people” he meant Ribbentrop. At five o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, August 30, the indefatigable Swede left by air for London, where elaborate precautions were taken to shield him from publicity.

In Downing Street the atmosphere still remained one of skepticism of Hitler's and Goering's intentions. Britain would not encourage Poland to send any representative to Berlin; negotiations should take place on neutral territory. Dahlerus telephoned Goering with this suggestion, but Goering turned it down flat. “Nonsense,” he said. “The negotiations must take place in Berlin, where Hitler has his headquarters.” Dahlerus flew back to Berlin with further assurances from Britain that they still wanted Hitler to negotiate. Still sleepless, he left Berlin shortly after midnight on the morning of Thursday, August 31, to meet Goering on his train —just, in fact, as Henderson was leaving a stormy interview with Ribbentrop following the British answer to Hitler's “ultimatum.” Ribbentrop had in the most insolent manner read Henderson the text of Hitler's terms to Poland in such a way that he could not grasp them, and had then refused to give him a copy for study, declaring that it was too late in any case, since it was past midnight and the Poles had failed to send their representative within the time limit that had been set by Hitler. When Goering boasted to Dahlerus about the generosity of Hitler's terms, a copy of which he had with him, Dahlerus asked permission to telephone the embassy. When he found out what had happened, he begged Goering to intervene and see at least that the ambassador received a copy of the terms. Goering paced about nervously, then said suddenly, “I'll do it. I'll take the responsibility! You can telephone him.” While Dahlerus dictated the terms to Forbes at the embassy, Goering kept hurrying him, anxious for the call to be over, because, it seemed, of his fear of Ribbentrop. Goering then persuaded his visitor to spend the rest of the night on the train.

On August 31, Weizsaecker, Ribbentrop's deputy and the moderate man on the Foreign Ministry staff, felt the situation to be so dangerous that he begged Hassell to intercede and warn Goering about Ribbentrop's intolerable attitude in recklessly encouraging Hitler to make war. “Carinhall will go up in flames,” was in his view the best way to put it to Goering. Hassell, was able to speak to Goering on the telephone through the help of the latter's sister, Olga Rigele, who was a friend; Goering maintained that the Poles must send a negotiator at once and told him to impress on Henderson the absolute necessity for this. Hassell was left with the impression that Goering genuinely wanted peace, and Olga Rigele told him with tears in her eyes how Goering had embraced her and said, “Now, you see, everybody is for war. Only I, the soldier and field marshal, am not.” But Goering had kept himself apart, at his “battle station” at Oranienburg, though he returned to Berlin later that day.
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By ten o'clock on the morning of August 31, Dahlerus was back in the British embassy, and Forbes took him to meet Polish Ambassador Lipski, with whom Henderson had been in constant touch since the small hours of the night. They found Lipski too distraught even to study Hitler's proposals, so Dahlerus dictated them to a secretary and left. Meanwhile Lipski had told Forbes that if there were war between Germany and Poland the Germans would rise against Hitler and the Polish Army would march into Berlin. Shortly after midday Hitler issued the final order to his commanders in chief for the invasion of Poland to start at dawn on September 1. The directive included the words, “It is important that the responsibility for the opening of hostilities should rest squarely on England and France.”

At one o'clock Dahlerus was back with Goering, whom he found instructing his secretary about the disposal of the art treasures in his Berlin palace in the event of war. An adjutant brought in a copy of an intercepted communication between Warsaw and Lipski, at the Polish embassy, which made Goering bound out of his chair and pace about in fury. It proved, he shouted, that the Poles had no intention of negotiating. He made a copy of this message in his own handwriting and gave it to Dahlerus for Henderson.
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After further raving, he proposed they should lunch together, and ended by inviting himself and his adjutant to eat at Dahlerus' hotel in the public restaurant, which led to the maximum publicity. Dahlerus decided to give his self-invited guest the finest possible meal, which ended with a cognac that so appealed to Goering's palate that he immediately ordered two bottles of it to be sent out to his car. Dahlerus, satisfied that Goering was mellow with food and drink, appealed to him to take over the negotiation with Henderson himself. Goering went off to get Hitler's permission to discuss the matter with the ambassador. Hitler consented, provided a neutral person were present, and the result was a strange tea party at Goering's residence, to which Henderson, Forbes and Dahlerus were invited. After rather elaborate civilities, the discussion began in vague terms, and it was agreed that Goering's proposal for Anglo-German negotiations, with Britain representing Poland, should be investigated. At the same time Goering showed Henderson the intercepted message from Warsaw. He spoke of the horror of war; he would hate, he said, to bomb England. When Henderson replied that he might die as a result, Goering promised to fly over England himself and drop a wreath on his grave as a final act of friendship.
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Henderson came away from this lengthy conversation convinced that Goering was prepared to give him so much time only because preparations for war were complete and there was nothing left for him to do but make a “forlorn effort” finally “to detach Britain from the Poles.” He was equally convinced that Goering did not want war, but Henderson remembered only too well what Goering had once said about Hitler: “When a decision has to be taken, none of us count more than the stones on which we are standing. It is the Führer alone who decides.” He also hinted that a military pact was being negotiated with Russia.

After a depressing evening and a little sleep, Dahlerus joined Goering on his train at eight o'clock on the morning of Friday, September 1. Goering seemed very depressed, and eventually he admitted that the German Army had crossed into Poland and that his Air Force was now destroying that of the Poles. Goering then abused both the Poles and the British, who had forced him to take this unnecessary action. Having said what Hitler wanted him to say, he agreed with Dahlerus that the war might be limited in its effect if Hitler were to permit him to meet the British representatives. He then left for the Kroll Opera House, where the Reichstag was assembled to hear the Führer give his own explanation of the failure of the negotiations on which he had pretended to place so much hope, after which Hitler proclaimed himself “the first soldier of the German Reich.” He also legitimized Goering as his rightful successor and so made legal and public the claim that Goering had been making for so many years in private.