The Day We Went to War (20 page)

1.30am, C
ABINET
R
OOM
, 10 D
OWNING
S
TREET

Neville Chamberlain’s cabinet have been in session for the past two hours. The meeting is a fraught one and nerves are getting frayed. The French are insisting on further delay in presenting the Germans with an ultimatum to withdraw their troops from Poland. But Britain’s service chiefs oppose any further delay. War minister Leslie Hore-Belisha wants the ultimatum to expire at 6am, which is in
less than five hours’ time. Chamberlain replies that this is impractical. Eventually agreement is reached. Lord Halifax is to instruct Sir Nevile Henderson in Berlin to present the Germans with the British ultimatum, which will expire at 11am this morning. The ministers now disperse into Downing Street where they are met by blinding rain. In the mêlée, Government Chief Whip David Margesson tells ‘Chips’ Channon, ‘It must be War, “Chips”, old boy. There’s no other way out.’

1.30am, F
OREIGN
O
FFICE
, W
HITEHALL

A cluster of Foreign Office officials and Dr Hugh Dalton, Labour’s spokesman on foreign affairs, are watching the activity in Downing Street as the rain pelts down. Dalton sees that the cabinet meeting is breaking up and intends to buttonhole Lord Halifax to find out what the situation now is regarding a declaration of war. As Dalton makes to leave, Ivone Kirkpatrick, who has served in the Berlin embassy under Henderson, tells him, ‘If we rat on the Poles now, we are absolutely sunk, whatever the French do. We shall have no chance against Hitler. But if we go ahead, we shall have two chances. First, we may shame the French into coming in, even though they would not have moved unless we had; second, even if the French stay out, we shall have the opinion of the world behind us, and we at least have the Poles on our side with a chance that the United States and others will come in before we are beaten.’

Dalton is a fervent anti-appeaser who has many friends in Poland. He agrees with Kirkpatrick’s prognosis. As he goes down the Foreign Office’s wide central staircase, Dalton bumps into Sir William Malkin, the FO’s chief legal adviser. Sir William tells Dalton that he’s only just come from 10 Downing Street. The Labour politician asks him, ‘How are things going?’ and Sir William replies, ‘I have got the declaration in the bag now. It’s settled now.’ Slightly relieved, Dalton leaves to accost the Foreign Secretary.

1.40am, 10 D
OWNING
S
TREET

Dalton approaches Halifax and asks him what the British position is now and what the French are intending to do. The abrasive Dalton sternly tells Halifax, ‘I warn you that if the House of Commons meets again without our pledge to Poland having been fulfilled, there will be such an explosion as you in the House of Lords may not be able to imagine. It may well blow up the Government altogether.’ Halifax is put out by Dalton’s hectoring tone. But he assures the Labour politician ‘that we shall be at war in ten hours’. The delay has been caused by the French wanting more time to get their mobilisation completed, he tells Dalton. ‘We may have to go in a few hours before the French,’ Halifax continues, ‘but they will follow all right now.’ The two men part. Dalton is now much relieved.

2.00am, F
OREIGN
O
FFICE
, W
HITEHALL

Now the decision has been taken, there is a general feeling of relief and a lightening of tension. Lord Halifax calls for beer. And bottles are brought to the Foreign Secretary’s office by one of the resident clerks, who only looks half awake. Jokes are cracked. Kirkpatrick tells Halifax that news has just come in that Dr Goebbels has forbidden listening to foreign broadcasts. The Foreign Secretary quips, ‘He ought to pay me to listen to his.’

2.00am, P
OLISH
E
MBASSY
, L
ONDON

Mentally and physically exhausted ambassador Count Edward Raczynski receives a telephone call from Hugh Dalton. Dalton tells the ambassador, ‘Today both we and France shall be on your side. I hope this news will help you to get a little sleep tonight.’ Raczynski replies that he is indeed grateful. ‘Yes,’ he tells the Labour politician, ‘it’s true, it makes me feel just a little less unhappy.’ The ambassador then tells Dalton of the speeches made yesterday in the Polish parliament: ‘They were all brave speeches, but one thing was missing. None of the speakers felt able to make any reference to our friends.’

3.00am, F
OREIGN
O
FFICE
, W
HITEHALL

In anticipation of Britain and France going to war later today, officials have already drawn up a joint Anglo-French declaration on their proposed conduct of that war. It begins, ‘The Governments of the United Kingdom and France solemnly and publicly affirm their intention, should a war be forced upon them, to conduct hostilities with a firm desire to spare the civilian population and preserve in every way possible those monuments of human achievement which are treasured in all civilized countries.’

3.00am (4.00am), B
RITISH
E
MBASSY
, B
ERLIN

Sir Nevile Henderson receives instructions that he is to seek an interview with Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop to present the British ultimatum at 9am. The text of it is being prepared now. It will be sent to Henderson within the hour. The embassy now tries to get through to the Foreign Ministry to arrange the ambassador’s interview with von Ribbentrop. The obtuse Foreign Minister is with interpreter Dr Paul Schmidt when he receives Henderson’s request. Von Ribbentrop correctly suspects that the ambassador’s communication ‘could contain nothing agreeable’. He turns to Schmidt and says, ‘Really, you could receive the Ambassador in my place. Just ask the English whether that will suit them, and say the Foreign Minister is not available at 9am.’ Schmidt gets back to the embassy and it is agreed that Henderson will see him in five hours’ time.

3.40am, SS
A
THENIA
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

The liner passes Inishtrahull, on the north-western corner of Ireland, as she sails into the Eastern Atlantic.

3.50am (4.50am), F
OREIGN
M
INISTRY
, B
ERLIN

Already, there is a great deal of German criticism of Italy ‘ratting’ on the Pact of Steel, which was signed less than four months ago. It is 1914 all over again. To defuse such criticism, von Ribbentrop
sends a message to all German missions abroad, ‘German-Italian policy is based on complete and clear agreement between the Fuehrer and the Duce. In case you are addressed on the subject, you should adopt this point of view. There must be no criticism of the Italian attitude and, if made, it will be severely punished.’

5.00am, F
OREIGN
M
INISTRY
, Q
UAI D
’O
RSAY
, P
ARIS

Georges Bonnet hears from André François-Poncet, his ambassador in Rome. The ambassador reports on the collapse of the Italian proposal for a five-power conference. Any hopes of pulling off another Munich are now dead. Realising now that war is inevitable, Bonnet’s mind goes back to August 1914: ‘the mobilisation drums, the departure for the front of trains covered with slogans, carrying away friends and brothers’. Having been a soldier in 1914–18, and decorated for bravery, Bonnet knows only too well the horrors of war. He has hoped to spare France from those horrors this time. Reluctantly, he now accepts that war with Germany is just a matter of hours away.

5.00am (6.00am), G
ERMAN
-P
OLISH BORDER

Fervent Nazi Wilhelm Prueller writes an anniversary letter in his diary to his wife Henny: ‘Today our first anniversary! How can we celebrate it? I: in the woods ready to attack. You: thinking of me, not knowing where I am. Sad, isn’t it? But there’s nothing to do about it, is there? It’s war! Just what is war? A compilation of sacrifices and exhaustion, of thirst and occasionally hunger, of heat and cold. I hope it’s finished soon.’

6.16am, B
RITAIN
: It is sunrise, British Summer Time and therefore the official end of last night’s blackout.

7.00am, B
RITAIN
: All over the country, newspaper boys are delivering the Sunday newspapers. In them are the first eyewitness accounts of the German invasion of Poland, now entering its third
day. The
Sunday Express
carries a vivid description by special correspondent Denis Sefton Delmer of the first raids on the outskirts of Warsaw:

I was driving out to Modlin, twenty miles from Warsaw, to check up on the casualties and damage of the morning’s raid there. Just across the Vistula I sighted the first group of raiders, four German bombers, being headed off from the bridge by Polish fighters. The fighters were driving them on to Polish anti-aircraft fire.

Truly it was superb shooting the Polish batteries were putting up, and sure enough it told. I saw one German machine come heading earthwards like a great black arrow. A moment later a second followed on the left. Two black clouds of smoke half a mile from each other showed where they’d fallen.

More and more German bombers came over. Though I still do not think it was the real mass stuff, there was one group of triple-engine bombers with three escort planes above and behind them. They tried to fly through a barrage of black anti-aircraft shrapnel – then suddenly the guns were silent and high out of the skies silver-glinting Polish fighters swooped down, machine guns going full out. They swept past the Germans. The Germans opened formation, then as the anti-aircraft fire started up again, they wheeled and bombs dropped harmlessly, judged by the cloud of smoke I saw coming up from riverside fields.

Farther on a cottage was burning. A bomb had set it on fire. Behind this group had come another group of planes diving in circus. There was furious bombing. What they were after I do not know. Perhaps it was the bridge. But within a second the fighters were on their tail and the circus was forced to beat it. By the roadside stood a fair-haired girl weeping beside her two little blond children, a boy and a girl. She frantically waved at us. ‘Take me back to Warsaw, I can’t stand it here any longer,’ she pleaded.

Somehow we piled them all in. The burning house was their
country cottage. She had come out with them in the four o’clock bus this afternoon to have them safe outside Warsaw.

As I put them down at the first waiting tram, an air raid warden rushed up to show us a ‘bit of bomb’, his first. It was a fragment of shrapnel.

Driving back to Warsaw an hour and a half after the raid began, the alarm was still on. Behind us out in the country, the anti-aircraft firing away stopped the last wave of German afternoon raiders.

No bomb had fallen in Warsaw. Fire brigades and ambulances were standing by unwanted . . .

And the paper also features another story from the Polish capital that surely stretches the reader’s credulity this Sunday morning. It smacks of the rumours twenty-five years ago of Russian soldiers on the way to France with snow on their boots. ‘It has been reported that two out of three of the bombs used in the first air raids on Warsaw did not explode. On examination they were found to contain, instead of high explosive, slips of paper bearing the words, “We are with you in spirit,” and signed, “Workers of the Skoda Arms Factory, Czecho-Slovakia”.’

8.00am, F
OREIGN
M
INISTRY
, Q
UAI D
’O
RSAY
, P
ARIS

Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, looking, an American reporter thinks, ‘how Pinnochio would have looked at forty-nine’, leaves the Foreign Ministry. He is driven to the Ministry of National Defence. He is going to meet Premier Edouard Daladier, who is also defence minister, to confer about the time limit in the French ultimatum Ambassador Coulondre is going to present in Berlin at midday. Daladier tells Bonnet to set the opening of hostilities for Monday, 4 September at 5am. The premier, who is highly distrustful of his foreign minister, tells Bonnet that the general staff refuse to accept a shorter delay. Bonnet now returns to the Quai d’Orsay and starts to draft the ultimatum, ‘weighing each word of this historic dispatch’.

8.00am (9.00am), K
ONSTANCIN
, W
ARSAW DISTRICT

United States ambassador to Poland, the urbane Anthony J. Drexel Biddle Jr is at his emergency residence at Konstancin. It is about twelve miles south of Warsaw on the left bank of the Vistula. With Mrs Biddle, his daughter and some guests and staff, the ambassador left the capital last night to try and get some rest. Konstancin is a small town which has a dozen or so villas like the Biddles’, and also a brick factory. As his guests enjoy the morning sunshine, the ambassador is in the bathroom shaving. Suddenly a lone Dornier bomber dives out of the clouds. The ’plane straightens up and releases its load of eleven bombs. One hits a neighbouring villa and six fail to explode; they are either time bombs or duds. The Biddles are lucky. They receive no direct hits, but the windows of the ambassadorial villa have been blown in. And their Great Dane ‘Okay’ is badly shaken by the bomb blasts.

8.00am (9.00am), L
EKI
D
UZE
, L
ODZ DISTRICT
, P
OLAND

Men of SS
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler
enter the small village. They shoot a number of unarmed civilians. Among the dead are Anna Ostrycharz, her small child and brother Stanislaw. The SS men then set fire to Anna’s home. Moving on through the village they also murder Jozefa Wysota and Leon Kowalski. The villagers are at a loss to know why these indiscriminate killings are taking place because no one has fired on or attacked the Germans.

8.00am (9.00am), F
OREIGN
M
INISTRY
, W
ILHELMSTRASSE
, B
ERLIN