Alone, 1932-1940

  The Danzig crisis became public knowledge on the last Friday in April, when Hitler revealed to the Reichstag and the listening world—including the dismayed governments in London and Paris—that the Wilhelmstrasse had been negotiating with Beck over German claims against Poland for the past six months. Danzig was a German city, the Führer shouted; it must “zurückkehren” (“revert”) to the Reich. He also demanded the right to build an autobahn and a double-track railroad across the Polish Corridor to East Prussia. Finally, Poland must join the Anti-Comintern Pact. Hitler called his Polish proposals “the greatest imaginable concession in the interests of European peace.” Yet, he added in a sinister note, the Poles had refused “my one and only offer.”44

  All this was stage business. The OKW and the inner Nazi circle knew that the Führer had already decided to invade Poland whatever happened. Nearly a month earlier, he had issued to his high command copies of Fall Weiss (Case White), each numbered and labeled Geheimhaltungsstufe—Most Secret. “The task of the Wehrmacht,” he had written, “is to destroy the Polish armed forces. To this end a surprise attack is to be aimed at and prepared.” He added: “Surprise occupation of Danzig may become possible independently of Case White by exploiting a favorable political situation.”45

  He had created that situation by one of his cleverest strokes. Danzig now had the undivided attention of Ausländspolitiker. The free city, they were convinced, was his next objective. Meantime he would exploit their preoccupation as he prepared to achieve his real goal: the seizure of all Poland. He knew his Chamberlain. “Danzig at present is the danger spot,” the prime minister wrote his sister, thrusting aside all warnings of a larger onslaught. He was “thinking of making a further proposal to Musso that he should move for a twelve months truce to let the temperature cool down.” The Duce, eager to fuel the myth that Hitler took his advice seriously, wrote the Reich chancellor that “the British requests” for a cooling-off period over Danzig “contain the prerequisites… for reaching a solution favourable to Germany” which would not disturb the “rhythm of your splendid achievements… and you will add a fresh indubitable success to those you have already obtained.”46

  But a Danzig solution—incorporating the city in the Reich—would deprive Hitler of an excuse to invade Poland. On May 23 he summoned all OKW commanders in chief and Chiefs of Staff, each Generalstab officer with the distinctive red stripe running down his field gray trousers, to tell them they would “attack Poland at the first opportunity.” There would be “no repetition of the Czech affair,” the Kriegsherr warned them; instead, “There will be war.” He was convinced that the British guarantee of Poland’s frontiers was a bluff. Several weeks later in Zossen, twenty miles southeast of Berlin, where he had established General Staff headquarters and a small chancellery for himself, he assembled his generals and told them that they should not flinch “from solving the Eastern questions even at the risk of complications in the West,” because he was sure the democracies would not fight, that such “complications” would never arise.47

  Zossen thought him wrong, but he wasn’t; throughout the summer of 1939 the appeasers remained in firm control of HMG’s foreign policy. Lord Rothermere wrote Churchill on July 17: “Carefully handled I don’t think there will be war over Danzig. Hitler left upon me the indelible impression that overtly he will never take the initiative in resorting to bloodshed. I suppose when I had my long talk with him he mentioned this matter at least a dozen times.” Yet, he wrote, England was going on “arming night and day using up if necessary whatever available resources we can lay our hands on.” Rothermere thought Hitler had been “badly handled. Instead of the language of reproach and rebuke constantly applied to him, I should have tried out the language of butter…. The language of guns may not go nearly as far as the language of butter.” He ended, memorably, “I have never yet seen an authoritative statement made in England complimenting Hitler on his tremendous record of achievement in Germany.”48

  Churchill replied two days later: “You may well be right about Danzig; but does it really matter very much what the thing is called? Evidently a great ‘crunch’ is coming, and all preparations in Germany are moving ceaselessly to some date in August. Whether H. will call it off or not is a psychological problem which you can probably judge as well as any living man. I fear he despises Chamberlain, and is convinced that the reason he does not broaden his Government is because he means to give in once Parliament has risen [adjourned].” Plugging away at his book, Winston was, he said, “remaining entirely quiescent at the present time…. I have given my warnings, and I am consoled for being condemned to inaction by being free from responsibility.” But of course he would never be free from responsibility. The pressure from without—to remain silent—was over-powered by the pressure from within. His conscience, his very essence, compelled him to shoulder his way into the public forum again and again.49

  The first occasion was a 1900 Club dinner on June 21. Lord Londonderry, Winston’s Germanophile cousin, was in the chair, and the guest of honor was Halifax. After his ritualistic, oleaginous tribute to those with whom he differed profoundly on the issues of the hour, Winston reminded Londonderry of “the flagrant and brutal manner in which the Munich agreement has been torn to pieces by the Nazi Government” and “the folly or villainy of the Nazi outrage” upon the rump Czech state. Summing up the case for the triple alliance, he concluded: “I believe most who are here tonight approve and endorse the willingness of His Majesty’s Government to make an alliance with Soviet Russia, without which no effective stability can be created or long maintained in the East.”50

  Privately he was discouraged. Cripps visited him at his flat the following afternoon and stayed for over an hour. In his diary he noted that Winston “inveighed strongly against the PM, said he and Eden had been ready to join the Cabinet since Hitler went into Prague but would not be admitted as it would stop all possibility of appeasement.” He agreed with Cripps that Parliament needed a coalition government “but despaired of any way of getting rid of or convincing Chamberlain.” Cripps added with relish: “Amongst other things he pointed out that but for Chamberlain’s shift on Foreign Policy after Prague, the Popular Front [left-wing] movement would have swept the country and I gather he could have supported it!” On Thursday, June 22, Churchill warned readers of the Daily Telegraph that reports of German troops massing on the Slovak frontier meant the Wehrmacht was intent on driving in Poland’s “southern flank,” and that Hitler wanted Danzig in order “to cut Poland [off] from the sea.” The following day, Winston wrote G. M. Young: “I am afraid I continue to take a sombre view of our affairs,” but in public he kept his spirits high. On Tuesday, June 27, he spoke to the Carlton Club before what the Yorkshire Post called “the largest audience ever gathered there on such an occasion” and appealed for “a full and solid alliance” with Russia. He told his audience that he wished he “could convince Herr Hitler of the fact that the British nation and, surely also, the British Empire, have reached the limit of their patience. We have receded and acquiesced time after time in breaches of solemn promises and treaties. Herr Hitler would make a profound mistake if he persuaded himself that all these retreats were merely the results of cowardice and degeneracy.”51

  However, that was precisely what Hitler thought. Moreover, successful criminals rarely change their M.O.—their method of operation. The Germans in the Sudetenland had led to Chamberlain’s surrender at Munich, and there was a larger percentage of Germans in Danzig than in Czechoslovakia. He would stick to his M.O. He thought the British prime minister would come round to his way of thinking. And he was right. To Ida Chamberlain, Neville wrote that “should the [Danzig] issue come to a head now” he doubted that “any solution short of war is practicable,” but if the Führer “would have a modicum of patience I can imagine a way could be found of meeting German claims while safeguarding Poland’s independence and Economic Security.” He listened again, with thirsty ear, for the cheers acclaiming his return fro
m Munich. His M.O. had been established, too.52

  Late in June another Goebbels rumor predicted a coup in Danzig for the weekend. He was testing British resolve, and he found it weak. Ribbentrop’s under secretary, Weizsäcker, told Ambassador Coulondre: “We know you [France] would fight, but we are not sure about England.” Daladier, disturbed, advised the British that “only a declaration couched in very energetic terms… will stop the Danzig coup,” and in Warsaw a member of the ruling military junta told Clifford Norton, chargé d’affairs at the British embassy, that if Britain and France remained “unshaken,” there would be no coup. At the same time, the British consul general in Danzig let the Foreign Office know that Germans there were saying that the Western Allies “will leave Poland in the lurch by not fighting on account of Danzig.”53

  The consul general recommended a strong stand by Britain, and Halifax dismissed him. The foreign secretary had no intention of fighting for Danzig. On July 1 the French, acting alone, informed Ribbentrop: “Any action, whatever its form, which would tend to modify the status quo in Danzig, and so provoke armed resistance by Poland, would bring the Franco-Polish agreement into play and oblige France to give immediate assistance to Poland.” Bonnet suggested that Halifax take a similar step “at an early date.” Halifax refused. In Parliament on July 10 Chamberlain declared that a Danzig coup “would involve a menace to Poland’s independence which we have undertaken to defend,” but added that future negotiations “ought to be possible… as the atmosphere cools.”54

  Churchill knew that the prime minister was putting pressure on the Poles; J. L. Garvin, editor of the Observer, had repeatedly accused him of it, and presently it became common knowledge. As Chamberlain wrote his sister on July 23, he had “heard last week that Hitler had told Herr Förster, the Danzig Nazi Leader, that he was going to damp down the agitation. True, the German claim that Danzig should be incorporated in the Reich was to be maintained, but that could wait until next year or even longer.” Meantime “the city would be demilitarized and the press muzzled, but particular stress was laid on the need for secrecy at present and for restraint on the Polish side.” Chamberlain had undertaken to send “all sorts of warnings to the Poles accompanied by exhortations to let nothing leak out.” Unfortunately, the Germans had “let the cat out of the bag,” giving “all my enemies” a chance “to say ‘There I told you so. He means to sell the Poles,’ and [making] it impossible for me to enter into conversations with Germans on any subject.”55

  That was shading the truth. He was talking to both the Germans and the Poles through Halifax, and he was consistently taking the Nazis’ side, with his foreign secretary concurring. A remarkable example of their double standard arose when the Poles asked for a loan to buy arms. Colonel Adam Koc, a member of the Warsaw junta, had arrived in London on June 14 with a financial commission. The British had pledged a “general decision on principle,” but during Koc’s first ten days in England he was received but once by England’s chief economic adviser, and that meeting was “purely nominal.” Two weeks later the Treasury offered the Poles eight million pounds. It was far less than they needed, and was accompanied by so many strings that Koc returned to Warsaw alarmed and depressed. The Poles, after deliberations, decided with “great reluctance” that they could not accept the terms. Koc then requested a loan convertible into dollars, permitting Poland to buy weapons in the United States. Chancellor of the Exchequer Simon, who had been willing to let Czech gold slip through his “butter-fingers,” as Churchill called them, replied that because “this would seriously affect our own financial position,” he “could not agree.” Yet at the same time, as Gilbert and Gott found in their study of these transactions, “Treasury officials were offering the Germans widespread economic advantages in return for an Anglo-German non-aggression pact.” Sir Orme Sargent, who had become the strongest Foreign Office opponent of appeasement since the fall of Vansittart, thought it lunacy to extend such privileges to Nazi Germany while Poland was so “roughly handled.” During that summer one of those catchy, anonymous phrases which arise in times of great stress was heard on the lips of Englishmen who agreed with him: “It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.” Proud men all, His Majesty’s Government never dreamed of living on their knees, but they believed that peace would be their reward if they answered the polemics of the Führer by keeping their other cheek turned and extending boundless generosity to Berlin. Meanwhile the Poles, who had been encouraged to entrust their independence to England, were consigned to march into battle carrying obsolete weapons and defective ammunition.56

  The present is never tidy, or certain, or reasonable, and those who try to make it so, once it has become the past, succeed only in making it seem implausible. Among the perceptive observations and shrewd conclusions of the Churchills and Sargents were clutters of other reports and forecasts, completely at odds with them. All of it, the prescient and the cockeyed, always arrives in a promiscuous rush, and most men in power, sorting through it, believe what they want to believe, accepting whatever justifies their policies and convictions while taking out insurance, whenever possible, against the possibility that the truth may lie in their wastebaskets.

  Neville Chamberlain required a very large wastebasket, for he was stubborn and strong-willed, and long after his subordinates had abandoned their faith in appeasement he clung to the conviction that if he could just put the proper deal together, Hitler would buy it. “Hitler,” Macmillan recalled, “was always regarded by British politicians as if he were a brilliant but temperamental genius who could be soothed by kindness or upset by hard words. It was this fearful misconception about the nature of dictators that was… the root-cause of much that went amiss in these tragic years.” Somehow an excuse had been found for every wild threat and instance of extravagant behavior in the Reich Chancellery. Karl Burckhardt, the League of Nations high commissioner of Danzig, who later wrote Meine Danziger Mission 1937–1939, told Halifax that the Führer had said to him: “If the slightest incident happens now, I shall crush the Poles without warning in such a way that no trace of Poland can be found afterwards. I shall strike with the full force of a mechanized army, of which the Poles have no conception.” Burckhardt thought the Führer’s “boasting” arose from “fear,” and Halifax accepted that explanation as reasonable.57

  By the end of May virtually every powerful Ausländspolitiker in Europe had endorsed the triple alliance except the British prime minister. He wrote his sisters that Halifax had written that he had been “unable to shake Maisky on his demand for the 3 party alliance & Daladier had insisted that it was necessary, Poland had raised no objection…. It seemed clear that the choice lay between acceptance & the breaking off of negotiations,” which “no doubt” would “rejoice the heart of Berlin & discourage Paris.” There was “no sign of opposition to the Alliance in the Press & it was obvious that refusal would create immense difficulties in the House even if I could persuade my Cabinet.” Nevertheless, he still distrusted the Russians, still lacked faith in the Red Army, and still thought it disastrous to divide Europe into two armed camps. The only supporter he could find, he wrote, was “Rab Butler & he was not a very influential ally.” The P.M. was searching for an escape hatch, instructing Horace Wilson to work out a plan which would give the Russians “what they want” but avoid “the idea of an Alliance” by substituting “a declaration of intentions in certain circumstances.”58

  That was on May 28, 1939. Churchill’s repeated calls for swift execution of the alliance were a growing irritant to Chamberlain, a variant of the Chinese water torture; another of them appeared in the Daily Telegraph of June 8, and this time Winston struck a new, somber note. There was, he wrote, reason to doubt that His Majesty’s Government was negotiating in good faith. This opinion seemed confirmed by HMG’s response to a suggestion from the Kremlin that Britain send a special envoy to Moscow. Eden quickly volunteered. He would have been an excellent choice; he was a former foreign secretary, he had met Stalin se
veral times under agreeable circumstances, and his resignation from the cabinet on a matter of principle had enhanced his prestige on the Continent. Instead, Chamberlain sent William Strang, “an able official,” as Churchill described him, “but without any standing outside the Foreign Office.” It was, as Winston called it, “another mistake. The sending of so subordinate a figure gave actual offence.” The Russians were highly sensitive on matters of protocol, and the junior diplomat from Whitehall, having presented his credentials, was ignored by the new commissar for foreign affairs. On June 19 Nicolson wrote: “Strang has not seen Molotov again since Friday. Yet… Halifax told Winston yesterday that all was well. I confess I am most uneasy.”59

  In Parliament the prime minister repeated his pledge to stand by Poland if she were invaded. Nevertheless, Churchill felt a thickening sludge of defeatism. As so often in moments of despair, he looked westward across the Atlantic toward the one power which, if aroused and armed, could crush Nazi Germany without mortgaging Europe’s future to Stalin. In News of the World on June 18, after outlining ways in which the “atrocity” of bombing civilian targets could be countered, he wrote: “Of these grievous events the people of the United States may soon become the spectators. But it sometimes happens that the audience becomes infuriated by a revolting exhibition. In that case we might see the spectators leaving their comfortable seats and hastening to the work of rescue and of retribution.”