The Day We Went to War (11 page)

30 August, T
AKELEY

‘At one, four, six and nine as usual, we listened to the news. We got Hitler’s answer (though it has not been made public) and he is now waiting for ours. The idea of writing and exchanging polite replies can’t go on interminably and one wishes to goodness it could be decided one way or the other. This is a deadlock and one is bored and anxious of waiting.

‘Tonight’s news was more sinister. Hitler won’t relinquish one jot of his Polish demands and troops are massing on the frontiers. Aircraft and searchlights very busy to-night but there is brilliant moonlight.’ (Moyra Charlton)

31 August, B
ERLIN

Just after midnight, von Ribbentrop and Sir Nevile Henderson have a stormy interview. At one point, interpreter Paul Schmidt thinks that the two men are going to come to blows. Von Ribbentrop, despite his perfect English, reads out quickly in German to Sir Nevile sixteen proposals to be put to a Polish plenipotentiary. Hitler has been working on these for most of the day, although they are only intended to be a smokescreen for his real intention to invade Poland. Henderson’s German is less than perfect, and he is unable to take them all down, but von Ribbentrop refuses to let him read them. He tells the ambassador that they are now out of date anyway, as no emissary arrived from Warsaw by midnight to negotiate. Sir Nevile, whose own diplomatic manners are faultless, reports to
London, ‘Herr von Ribbentrop’s whole demeanour during an unpleasant interview was aping Herr Hitler at his worst.’

Hitler sends a reply to the Duke of Windsor’s telegram of 27 August. He tells the Duke, ‘You may rest assured that my attitude towards Britain and my desire to avoid another war between our two peoples remain unchanged. It depends on Britain, however, whether my wishes for the future development of German–British relations can be realised.’

31 August, L
ONDON

At 11.17am, the Government issues orders that the evacuation from Britain’s towns and cities of schoolchildren and other vulnerable groups is to begin tomorrow morning.

31 August, R
OME

Count Ciano and Mussolini meet mid-morning and come up with a proposal that they hope might yet prevent war. The Italians suggest that there should be a five-power conference to be held on 5 September, perhaps at San Remo, ‘for the purpose of reviewing those clauses of the Treaty of Versailles which disturb European life’. The proposal is sent to the British and French. Their initial reaction is favourable.

31 August, B
ERLIN

At 12.30pm, Hitler issues his Directive No. 1 for the Conduct of War. Its preamble reads, ‘Now that every political possibility has been exhausted for ending by peaceful means the intolerable situation on Germany’s eastern frontier I have determined on a solution by force. The date and time of the attack are now fixed: 1 September at 4.45am.’

31 August, R
OME

Count Ciano calls in British ambassador Sir Percy Lorraine and commits ‘an indiscretion’. Ciano tells Sir Percy that Italy, despite
the Pact of Steel, will not be going to war at Germany’s side. ‘Can’t you understand,’ he asks Lorraine, ‘that we shall never start a war against you and the French?’ Lorraine is much moved and near to tears as he departs. Ciano then telephones Mussolini to tell him of the interview. To lessen the tension, the Duce has ordered that Rome’s blackout be suspended.

31 August, L
ONDON

At 11pm, the Foreign Office receives a telegram from the embassy in Rome. In the telegram, Sir Percy Lorraine passes on Count Ciano’s message. As he told Ciano earlier, Sir Percy has been aware for over a fortnight that Italy would not be marching with Germany. But the fact that the Italian foreign minister has now told him officially surely means that Germany is about to invade Poland.

31 August, G
LEIWITZ

At 8pm, Alfred Naujocks’s party of five SS men force their way into the Gleiwitz radio station and overpower the staff. Breaking into a relay broadcast from Radio Breslau, a Polish-speaking SS man takes over the microphone. Claiming to represent the ‘High Command of Polish Volunteer Corps of Upper Silesia’, he tells listeners that Gleiwitz is in Polish hands. He calls on local Poles to rise up against the Nazis. After four minutes, the broadcast ends with shouts of ‘Long Live Poland!’ To make the ‘attack’ sound authentic, revolver shots are fired in the air. A grislier touch is added when the body of a murdered anti-Nazi, Silesian Franciszek Honiok, is left on the scene to provide ‘proof’ of the Polish ‘attack’ to foreign correspondents. Two similar ‘incursions’ take place near Gleiwitz at Pitschen and at Hochlinden. At Hochlinden, ‘Polish’ soldiers and irregulars storm the customs house and hold it for an hour and a half before it is ‘recaptured’ by German border guards. Six concentration-camp inmates, dressed in Polish uniforms, drugged and then shot, are left by the building to demonstrate
Polish ‘guilt’. Heydrich has given them the cynical codename Canned Goods.

31 August, B
ERLIN

At 9pm the German home service radio broadcasts the sixteen proposals that von Ribbentrop so rudely read out to Sir Nevile Henderson nine hours ago. But as ‘the Fuehrer and the German government have now waited for two days in vain for the arrival of a Polish plenipotentiary’, they are considered to have now been rejected by Poland. A quarter of an hour after they are broadcast, at the foreign ministry State Secretary Ernst von Weizsacker hands Sir Nevile Henderson a copy of the sixteen proposals. When Sir Nevile asks why they are being given to him only at this late stage, von Weizsacker tells the ambassador that he is only obeying orders.

31 August, R
OME

At midnight, Count Ciano receives a ’phone call from Berlin. It is his brother-in-law and embassy counsellor Massimo Magistrati on the line. Magistrati tells Ciano that newspapers are now being distributed free in the German capital. Their headlines read, ‘Poland Refuses! Attack About To Begin!’

31 August, B
ERLIN

Sunday Times
special correspondent, American Virginia Cowles, is in Berlin on a flying visit. After a hectic day, she dines at Horcher’s, Goering’s favourite restaurant. On the way back to her hotel she passes Hitler’s Chancellery and reflects that, ‘Only twenty years before ten million had died in the most savage conflict the world had ever known. They had died violently: burnt, suffocated, gassed, drowned, bayoneted and blown to atoms. Now once again the German nation was going to unloose the same, and even greater horrors. Any hour now, one man would give the signal.’

31 August, H
UDDERSFIELD

‘We think in our hearts that peace will prevail.’ (Marjorie Gothard)

31 August, G
ERMANY

‘After an uninterrupted journey we reached the frontier at Kreuzburg in the morning and took our position in a wood near the town. In the wood we shaved in coffee, because not even the cooks had water. We wondered how long we should stay there. I couldn’t sleep the whole night long in the wood; for along all the roads and paths the German Army was rattling and clattering its way towards the frontier. We were lying only eight kilometres from the Polish boundary. At 2am we heard the news that the infantry was to cross the border at quarter to five in the morning. After hearing this news, there was no more sleep for us. Everyone was speculating on what the day would bring forth. We all knew now that it was serious, and the guns would soon be rolling forward.’ (Corporal Wilhelm Krey, 13th Artillery Observation Battery, German Army)

31 August, T
AKELEY

‘It looks as if we are “for it”! One doesn’t evacuate three million children and then halt, maim and blind just for the fun of it. Heigho! God must be sick of this world of ours.’ (Moyra Charlton)

31 August, W
ORTHING

‘Wireless news at one o’clock told us that London school children will be evacuated tomorrow. Worthing is to expect 13,000 and me two! Terrible, as it makes war seem nearer. Surely it
can’t
happen. It’s dreadful to think that the “victors” will be those who use most effectively the most diabolical instruments of death as quickly as possible . . . The papers are very depressing – all the pictures are of soldiers – sandbags – ARP city girls evacuating from their offices – guns, aeroplanes and so on.’ (Joan Strange)

‘In spite of the Polish warmongers’ arrogant provocations, supported by the British, the Fuehrer still tries to avoid war. Late at night the English ambassador, Sir Neville
[sic]
Henderson
(second from left),
brings the Fuhrer an answer from the English government’ was the original German caption to this photograph, taken on 28 August 1939.

‘If only this waiting were over. If only something would happen. One way or the other.’ Men of an SS signals battalion at Knipprode, East Prussia, 31 August 1939.

31 August, C
ITY OF
L
ONDON

‘We heard yesterday from one of the boys . . . that he had been digging for days, digging trenches for the soldiers and, having finished, they have been put to digging trenches in a nearby park for civilians – I notice as I passed the signals barracks yesterday that the “Terriers” there were stripped to the waist and shovelling sand into the bags as hard as they could go, placing the full bags against their barracks. They all seem to be growing moustaches and are now very “tough!!”’ (Vivienne Hall)

31 August, T
EDDINGTON

‘This month has been an unbroken series of incidents to goad Poland to war, culminating in the Russia–German Pact which was ratified last night but which failed in its object of making us give in to German demands. “Demands” has become about the most stinking word in the whole German vocabulary, though many run it close for the honour. Justice! Race! Kultur!’ (Helena Mott)

C
HAPTER
2

Friday,
1 September 1939

Introduction: resumé of 31 August

Europe now stood on the brink of war. All day long, on 31 August, crowds had gathered in London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw, watching the comings and goings of statesmen and diplomats. Everywhere people hoped against hope that peace might still be preserved.

In Britain, the general mood on that last day of August was still one of unwarranted optimism. Only 18 per cent of people when polled admitted that they expected war to break out. A large majority, when asked whether they thought Hitler was bluffing or not, answered Yes. But the announcement that the official evacuation of schoolchildren and others was to begin the next day seemed to many an ominous sign: ‘War seems nearer after the evacuation news,’ recorded one thirty-year-old man in the diary he was keeping for Mass Observation. Another diarist, a woman of twenty-four, thought, ‘Every day gained makes one still hope. Strain is very great. Evacuation seems to imply the worst.’

In Germany, there was still the hope that, having successfully brought off so many bloodless ‘victories’, the Fuehrer would do it again. Other Germans were not so sure, and American correspondent William Shirer recorded in his diary, ‘optimism in official circles [is] melting away this morning’. At the same time many Germans wondered why there was any crisis at all. ‘The Corridor?’ one man remarked to Shirer, ‘Hell, we haven’t heard about
that
for twenty years. Why bring it up now?’

In France, the mood of ordinary people was perhaps more pessimistic than in Britain. There was a widespread feeling of resigned acceptance that war would come. Already one could hear the slogan ‘
Il faut en finir
’ (We’ve got to put a stop to it) among the public and the mobilised soldiers. Some in official circles clung to the hope that Mussolini’s conference plan would yet preserve peace. Minister Anatole de Monzie urged its acceptance on his colleague Georges Bonnet: ‘Georges . . . if the project for a conference fails . . . we will be caught up and pulverised in the wheels of war . . .’