The Day We Went to War (12 page)

In Poland, the people faced the prospect of war with a stolidity which amazed every foreigner. One reported, ‘The crowds in Warsaw showed no emotion whatever. I suppose it was fatalism.’ Some Poles still talked of riding in victory into Berlin, but most thought that if war came, it would be a long and arduous conflict. Only a very few realists were doubtful that resistance could last for very long without effective aid from Britain and France. Warsaw newspaper man Wladyslaw Besterman told his American colleague Ed Beattie, ‘Poland is going to fight if she has to. No government could possibly give in to Hitler. But make no mistake, either. We are going to need every last ounce of pressure that Britain and France can bring to bear . . . They must come in at once, and when they do come in, they must hit Germany hard in the west.’

Beattie had been in Warsaw for a week, staying at the Europejski
Hotel. ‘At dinner’, he wrote, ‘someone had the straight tip that war would start the next morning. Everyone at the table laughed. Setting dates for “Hitler’s next move” had been a favourite sport in Europe for years. For once, the date was right.’

3.17am (4.17am), D
ANZIG

German forces, including the locally raised Danzig Heimwehr, have just started firing on Polish-occupied positions in the Free City of Danzig.

3.45am (4.45am), D
ANZIG

The old German battleship
Schleswig-Holstein
, in Danzig on a ‘courtesy visit’, starts bombarding the Polish military garrison on the small peninsula of Westerplatte.

4.00am (5.00am), D
ANZIG

Expectant mother Sybil Bannister, the English wife of a German doctor, wakes up to the sound of gunfire. ‘This is the end,’ Sybil thinks as she dresses quickly. She is trembling so violently that she can scarcely grasp her clothes or stand on her shaking legs. She rushes downstairs and runs into the caretaker. He tells her that Gauleiter Albert Forster has broadcast a proclamation that Danzig has returned to the ‘Greater German Reich’. He also says that the shooting and explosions are coming from the Polish Post Office on the Heveliusplatz in the city and Westerplatte.

4.00am (5.00am), K
ATOWICE

Daily Telegraph
string correspondent Clare Hollingworth wakes up suddenly. She hears what sounds like doors slamming and then the roar of aeroplanes. Clare runs to the window and sees the ’planes high in the sky and below them bursts of anti-aircraft fire. She also sees what she thinks are incendiary bombs falling in a nearby park. ‘It’s the beginning of war!’ Clare is told. Without
waiting for confirmation, she telephones
Daily Telegraph
correspondent Hugh Carleton Greene in Warsaw with the news. Clare sets out for the British Consulate. She is now having doubts and is afraid that she has made the gaffe of her life by reporting a nonexisting war. But at the Consulate the news is confirmed. One of the German employees weeps at the news. She tells Clare, ‘This is the end of poor Germany.’

4.20am (5.20am), W
ARSAW

The Times’
correspondent Patrick Maitland is fast asleep when the telephone rings. It is his colleague Hugh Carleton Greene of the
Daily Telegraph
on the line. Greene tells Maitland that he has just heard from Clare Hollingworth in Katowice. Clare has woken up to the sound of bombing and shelling. It looks as if war has begun. More than half asleep still, Maitland puts the receiver down and totters back to bed and drops off to sleep again.

4.30am (5.30am), U
NITED
S
TATES
E
MBASSY
, B
ERLIN

Embassy clerk William Russell is on night duty in the office of the Chargé d’Affaires Alexander Kirk when the telephone rings. Kirk appears and takes the phone from Russell. He listens and then puts the phone down without a word. ‘Russell, will you wake the code clerk?’ he asks quietly. ‘That was the British Embassy calling. The first German bombers left for Poland ten minutes ago.’

4.35am (5.35am), W
ARSAW

Patrick Maitland wakes up with a start. Has he really been phoned up by Greene with news that war has begun? He rings Greene, who confirms the news, as does the British Embassy who have just heard the news from the Consulate in Katowice.

4.40am (5.40am),
ALL
G
ERMAN
R
ADIO
S
TATIONS

Hitler’s proclamation to the Wehrmacht is read out over the radio:

The Polish state has refused the peaceful settlement of relations which I desired and has resorted to arms. Germans in Poland are persecuted with bloody terror and driven from their homes. A series of violations of the frontier, intolerable to a great power, prove that Poland is no longer willing to respect the frontier of the Reich. In order to put an end to this lunacy I have no choice than to meet force with force; the German Army will fight for the honour and rights of a new-born Germany . . .

5.00am (6.00am), K
UTNO, EAST OF
W
ARSAW

A thirty-coach passenger train from the Baltic port of Gdynia to Warsaw is just leaving Kutno station. On board the train, which left Gdynia yesterday, are the wives and children of civil servants, officers and railway officials. A few soldiers and reservists are also passengers on the train. Suddenly six two-engine bombers appear. They fly low over the railway line. The passengers watch the ’planes calmly. They believe that they are Polish bombers on an exercise. Then equally suddenly, they hear an explosion and a shower of machine-gun bullets hits the sides and roofs of the carriages. Many of the passengers are hit, while others in a panic jump through the doors into a ploughed field. The German ’planes fly over, circle and return, sending another shower of machine-gun fire into the crowd before flying off. Near the end of the train in a third-class Pullman, survivors can hear the moans of badly wounded Polish soldiers. They have been literally cut to pieces by bullets and flying glass. Further on, a goods van has been split into two and the bodies of eight soldiers thrown out on the roof by the effects of blast. A stunned woman sits on the ground by the train, staring at the bodies of her two dead daughters and son.

5.15am (6.15am), W
ARSAW

Patrick Maitland has just finished telephoning when the sirens sound the air-raid warning. He and his housemates, some grabbing gas masks, make for the shelter.

5.30am (6.30am), W
ARSAW

British military attaché Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Roland Sword is woken by the telephone ringing. His colleague Robin Hankey is on the line. He tells Sword that the Germans have just started bombing Katowice. The military attaché rings a Polish staff officer who confirms the news.

6.00am (7.00am), M
OABIT
, B
ERLIN

John ‘Jack’ McCutcheon Raleigh of the
Chicago Tribune
is called to the telephone in his
pension.
Because of the crisis, he has had only two hours’ sleep. Picking up the receiver, his boss, Sigrid Schlutz, tells him, ‘The Germans have marched into Poland. Early this morning – 5.45am. It’s really war. Get down to the office quickly.’ Raleigh rushes back to his room to dress. His landlady follows him. She asks the correspondent what’s the latest news. She is very worried as she has two sons in the army. ‘War,’ Raleigh tells her briefly. He gets a taxi and makes for the city centre. Berlin looks the same. Passers-by seem calm enough.

6.00am (7.00am), Z
RARDOW
, W
ARSAW
D
ISTRICT

Fourteen-year-old Zbigniew Leon wakes up in bed. He is on the country estate of a friend of his father’s. He hears air-raid sirens, but thinks that it is an emergency drill. There have been several in the last few days. But when he gets up and goes outside, Zbigniew sees two large and strange-looking aeroplanes. They do not look like Polish ’planes. Suddenly, two smaller ’planes appear. They are Polish fighters and they start shooting at the larger aircraft. Zbigniew is completely taken by surprise and it dawns on him that something is not right.

7.28am, F
OREIGN
O
FFICE
, W
HITEHALL

The first news of the German invasion of Poland reaches the British Government via a Reuter’s News Agency report.

8.00am (9.00am), E
UROPEJSKI
H
OTEL
, W
ARSAW

The sirens sound as United Press correspondent Ed Beattie is on the ’phone to Amsterdam. The morning is hazy and overcast. Beattie cannot see the German raiders, but he hears ‘the bark of anti-aircraft in the distance’ as it moves gradually closer. Then the American sees ‘little puffs from the shell-bursts, showing black against the white cloud layer’. From the suburbs of the city, Beattie hears ‘a sound different from the sharp AA fire, a sort of heavy
c-r-r-r-rumph
’. He realises that the sounds that he is hearing are the first bombs falling on the Polish capital. Smoke emerges from the west of the city. Beattie’s hotel window overlooks Pilsudski Square, which is rapidly emptying. A peasant, in for Friday market, dutifully turns his horse round in its harness. He dumps some hay in the road for feed and then makes his way to the nearest shelter. After a while the gunfire ceases, and the All Clear sounds. The peasant re-emerges, turns his horse around again and calmly drives off.

8.30am,
HEAD OFFICE, GRANADA THEATRES LTD, GOLDEN SQUARE, LONDON

Managers of the Granada cinemas in the London area have just received the following announcement to be read out if war is declared:

Ladies and gentlemen,

I want you to listen very quietly to what I have to say and I want you to remain in your seats until I have finished. We have just received orders from the authorities that a state of emergency has arisen and that all theatres are to be closed immediately. There is no cause for undue alarm. Will you please leave the theatre quietly. Attendants at the exits will issue readmission tickets to all who care to ask for them. The authorities advise you to go home. Thank you.

8.30am, F
OREIGN
O
FFICE
, W
HITEHALL

A telegram arrives from the British Embassy in Warsaw, reporting that Poland has been invaded and bombing is taking place.

8.45am (9.45am), G
ERMAN
-P
OLISH
B
ORDER

Twenty-three-year-old Viennese Wilhelm Prueller is with the 10th Rifle Regiment of the 4th Light Division. He just has time to jot in his diary, ‘9.45: We’ve crossed the border. We’re in Poland.
Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles!
’

8.50am (9.50am), B
RITISH
E
MBASSY
, B
ERLIN

Birger Dahlerus, the Swedish businessman and friend of Goering, telephones with an offer to fly to Britain to try to end the fighting. He repeats what Goering has told him earlier: ‘The Poles are sabotaging everything . . . The Poles do not want to negotiate . . .’

9.00am (10.00am), K
ROLL
O
PERA
H
OUSE
, B
ERLIN

Hitler arrives to address a special sitting of the Reichstag. Before leaving the Reich Chancellery, his doctor Theodor Morell has injected him with a stimulant. It is very hot and humid in the opera house as Hitler, in a new field-grey tunic, mounts the podium. He tells the deputies that Poland has not only intensified the campaign of atrocities against ethnic Germans, but ‘for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our territory’. Now, Germany is being forced to retaliate: ‘Bombs will be met by bombs. Whoever fights with poison gas will be fought with poison gas. Whoever departs from the rules of humane warfare can only expect that we shall do the same.’ But, the Fuehrer tells the Reichstag: ‘I will not wage war against women and children. I have ordered my air force to restrict itself to attacks on military objectives.’ Hitler goes on to say that if he should fall in battle, then Goering is to be his successor, and if Goering too should fall, then Deputy Fuehrer Rudolf Hess will take over. Referring to his new uniform, Hitler says, ‘I am from
now on just the First Soldier of the German Reich. I have once more put on that coat that was most sacred and dear to me. I will not take it off again until victory is secured or I will not survive the outcome . . .’

9.30am (10.30am), U
NITED
S
TATES
E
MBASSY
, B
ERLIN

William Russell and other embassy staff listen to Hitler’s speech on the radio. Russell expects ‘something terrific to happen immediately’ but nothing does. And opposite the embassy a group of workmen continue moving concrete blocks, ‘undisturbed by the declaration of war’. And why not? After all, Russell muses, nobody has asked their opinion about it.

10.00am, C
ITY OF
L
ONDON

‘Evacuation of the children to the country. The children (I saw some of them at Waterloo on my way to work) are all labelled, carry packets of food and their gas masks and are taking a change of clothing and essentials for carrying on for a day or two. All roads and railways are requisitioned for today, from nine until 5.30 and as we have, most of us, managed to get up to the City early, heaven knows what will happen to us if there is a war before we get home.’ (Vivienne Hall)

10.00am, H
IGHGATE
H
OSPITAL
, L
ONDON

Nursing Sister Gwyneth Thomas is supervising the last patients to be evacuated. All this week, she has been busy either getting them ready for evacuation, or preparing strips of cardboard for the sides of the windows as a precaution against bomb blast. Everybody is pitching in, and even the Medical Superintendent is helping to fill sandbags. One of the last patients to leave is a little boy, ‘clutching his gas mask as if it were a toy’. Sister Thomas fervently hopes that ‘it will not mean any more than that to him’. Another patient, Paul, only nine months old, has been very ill in the hospital’s isolation ward. Now he too has to go. Sister Thomas hopes ‘they will be kind to him in the hospital he is going to – but how silly of me to worry about that. He is such a darling, they couldn’t help loving him.’ Amidst all the turmoil of the hospital’s evacuation, Sister Thomas wonders, ‘What type of lunatic is this man Hitler to cause such an upheaval in our lives?’