Hitler left Berlin that afternoon, 22 March, for Swinemünde, where, along with Raeder, he boarded the pocket-battleship Deutschland. Late that evening, Ribbentrop and Urbsys agreed terms for the formal transfer of the Memel district to Germany. Hitler’s decree was signed the next morning, 23 March. German troops crossed the bridge near Tilsit and entered the Memel. Squadrons of the Luftwaffe landed at the same time. At 1.30p.m., Hitler was put on shore in the new German territory. He gave a remarkably short speech on the balcony of the theatre. In under three hours he was gone. He was back in Berlin by noon next day. This time, he dispensed with the hero’s return.123 Triumphal entries to Berlin could not be allowed to become so frequent that they were routine. Goebbels was aware of ‘the danger that the petty-bourgeois (Spießer) think it will go on like this forever. A lot of quite fantastic ideas about the next plans of German foreign policy are being put about.’124
According to Goebbels, Hitler repeated what he had said a few days earlier. He now wanted a period of calm in order to win new trust. ‘Then the colonial question will be brought up (aufs Tapet).’ ‘Always one thing after another,’ added the Propaganda Minister.125 He did not anticipate things becoming quiet. Hitler, however, was evidently not looking to war with the western powers within a matter of months.
V
His own pressure on Poland forced the issue. Wasting no time, Ribbentrop had pushed Ambassador Lipski on 21 March to arrange a visit to Berlin by Beck. He indicated that Hitler was losing patience, and that the German press was straining at the leash to be turned loose on the Poles – a threat that German feeling could be as easily inflamed against Poland as it had been against Czecho-Slovakia. He repeated the requests about Danzig and the Corridor. In return, Poland might be tempted by the exploitation of Slovakia and the Ukraine.126
But the Poles were not prepared to act according to the script. Beck, noting Chamberlain’s Birmingham speech, secretly put out feelers to London for a bilateral agreement with Britain.127 Meanwhile, the Poles mobilized their troops.128 On 25 March, Hitler still indicated that he did not want to solve the Danzig Question by force to avoid driving the Poles into the arms of the British.129 He had remarked to Goebbels the previous evening that he hoped the Poles would respond to pressure, ‘but we must bite into the sour apple and guarantee Poland’s borders’.130
However, just after noon on 26 March, instead of the desired visit by Beck, Lipski simply presented Ribbentrop with a memorandum representing the Polish Foreign Minister’s views. It flatly rejected the German proposals, reminding Ribbentrop for good measure of Hitler’s verbal assurance in his speech on 20 February 1938 that Poland’s rights and interests would be respected. Ribbentrop lost his temper. Going beyond his mandate from Hitler, he told Lipski that any Polish action against Danzig (of which there was no indication) would be treated as aggression against the Reich. The bullying attempt was lost on Lipski. He replied that any furtherance of German plans directed at the return of Danzig to the Reich meant war with Poland.131 Hitler’s response can be imagined.132 Goebbels recorded in his diary: ‘Poland still makes great difficulties. The Polacks are and remain naturally our enemies, even if from self-interest they have done us some service in the past.’133 Beck confirmed the unbending attitude of the Poles to the German ambassador in Warsaw on the evening of 28 March: if Germany tried to use force to alter the status of Danzig, there would be war.134
By 27 March, meanwhile, Chamberlain, warned that a German strike against Poland might be imminent, was telling the British cabinet he was prepared to offer a unilateral commitment to Poland, aimed at stiffening Polish resolve and deterring Hitler.135 The policy that had been developing since the invasion of Czecho-Slovakia found its expression in Chamberlain’s statement to the House of Commons on 31 March 1939: ‘In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power.’136
This was followed, at the end of Beck’s visit to London on 4–6 April, by Chamberlain’s announcement to the House of Commons that Britain and Poland had agreed to sign a mutual assistance pact in the event of an attack ‘by a European power’.137
On hearing the British Guarantee of 31 March, Hitler fell into a rage. He thumped his fist on the marble-topped table of his study in the Reich Chancellery. ‘I’ll brew them a devil’s potion,’ he fumed.138
Exactly what he had wanted to avoid had happened. He had expected the pressure on the Poles to work as easily as it had done in the case of the Czechs and the Slovaks. He had presumed the Poles would in due course see sense and yield Danzig and concede the extra-territorial routes through the Corridor. He had taken it for granted that Poland would then become a German satellite – an ally in any later attack on the Soviet Union. He had been determined to keep Poland out of Britain’s clutches. All of this was now upturned. Danzig would have to be taken by force. He had been thwarted by the British and spurned by the Poles. He would teach them a lesson.139
Or so he thought. In reality, Hitler’s over-confidence, impatience, and misreading of the impact of German aggression against Czecho-Slovakia had produced a fateful miscalculation.
The next day, 1 April, speaking in Wilhelmshaven after attending the launch of the Tirpitz (the second new modern battleship, following the Bismarck, intended to spearhead Germany’s challenge to the supremacy of the Royal Navy during the next few years),140 Hitler used the opportunity to castigate what he claimed was Britain’s ‘encirclement policy’, and to voice scarcely veiled threats at both Poland and Britain. He summarized his brutal philosophy in a single, short sentence: ‘He who does not possess power loses the right to life.’141
At the end of March Hitler had indicated to Brauchitsch, head of the army, that he would use force against Poland if diplomacy failed. Immediately, the branches of the armed forces began preparing drafts of their own operational plans. These were presented to Hitler in the huge ‘Führer type’ that he could read without glasses. He added a preamble on political aims. By 3 April the directive for ‘Case White’ (Fall Weiß) was ready.142 It was issued eight days later.143 Its first section, written by Hitler himself, began: ‘German relations with Poland continue to be based on the principles of avoiding any disturbances. Should Poland, however, change her policy towards Germany, which so far has been based on the same principles as our own, and adopt a threatening attitude towards Germany, a final settlement might become necessary in spite of the Treaty in force with Poland. The aim then will be to destroy Polish military strength, and create in the East a situation which satisfies the requirements of national defence. The Free State of Danzig will be proclaimed a part of the Reich territory by the outbreak of hostilities at the latest. The political leaders consider it their task in this case to isolate Poland if possible, that is to say, to limit the war to Poland only.’144 The Wehrmacht had to be ready to carry out ‘Case White’ at any time after 1 September 1939.145
Army commanders had been divided over the merits of attacking Czechoslovakia only a few months earlier. Now, there was no sign of hesitation. The aims of the coming campaign to destroy Poland were outlined within a fortnight or so by Chief of the General Staff Haider to generals and General Staff officers. Oppositional hopes of staging a coup against Hitler the previous autumn, as the Sudeten crisis was reaching its dénouement, had centred upon Haider. At the time, he had indeed been prepared to see Hitler assassinated.146 It was the same Haider who now evidently relished the prospect of easy and rapid victory over the Poles and envisaged subsequent conflict with the Soviet Union or the western powers. Haider told senior officers that ‘thanks to the outstanding, I might say, instinctively sure policy of the Führer’, the military situation in central Europe had changed fundamentally. As a consequence, the position of Poland had also significantly altered. Haider said he was certain he was speaking for man
y in his audience in commenting that with the ending of ‘friendly relations’ with Poland ‘a stone has fallen from the heart’. Poland was now to be ranked among Germany’s enemies. The rest of Haider’s address dealt with the need to destroy Poland ‘in record speed’ (‘einen Rekord an Schnelligkeit’). The British Guarantee would not prevent this happening. He was contemptuous of the capabilities of the Polish army.147 It formed ‘no serious opponent’. He outlined in some detail the course the German attack would take, acknowledging cooperation with the SS and the occupation of the country by the paramilitary formations of the Party. The aim, he repeated, was to ensure ‘that Poland as rapidly as possible was not only defeated, but liquidated’, whether France and Britain should intervene in the West (which on balance he deemed unlikely) or not. The attack had to be ‘crushing’ (‘zermalmend’). He concluded by looking beyond the Polish conflict: ‘We must be finished with Poland within three weeks, if possible already in a fortnight. Then it will depend on the Russians whether the eastern front becomes Europe’s fate or not. In any case, a victorious army, filled with the spirit of gigantic victories attained, will be ready either to confront Bolshevism or… to be hurled against the West…’148
On Poland, there was no divergence between Hitler and his Chief of the General Staff. Both wanted to smash Poland at breakneck speed, preferably in an isolated campaign but, if necessary, even with western intervention (though both thought this more improbable than probable). And both looked beyond Poland to a widening of the conflict, eastwards or westwards, at some point. Hitler could be satisfied. He need expect no problems this time from his army leaders.
The contours for the summer crisis of 1939 had been drawn. It would end not with the desired limited conflict to destroy Poland, but with the major European powers locked in another continental war. This was in the first instance a consequence of Hitler’s miscalculation that spring. But, as Haider’s address to the generals indicated, it had not been Hitler’s miscalculation alone.
5
GOING FOR BROKE
‘The answer to the question of how the problem “Danzig and the Corridor” is to be solved is still the same among the general public: incorporation in the Reich? Yes. Through war? No.’
Reported opinion in a district of Upper Franconia,
31 July 1939
‘When starting and waging a war it is not right that matters, but victory.’
Hitler to his military leaders, 22 August 1939
‘In my life I’ve always gone for broke.’
Hitler to Göring, 29 August 1939.
For 20 April 1939, Hitler’s fiftieth birthday, Goebbels had orchestrated an astonishing extravaganza of the Führer cult. The lavish outpourings of adulation and sycophancy surpassed those of any previous ‘Führer’s Birthday’. The festivities had already begun on the afternoon of the 19th. In mid-evening, followed by a cavalcade of fifty limousines, Hitler was driven along the thronged seven kilometres of the newly opened ‘East-West Axis’, lit by flaming torches and bedecked with hundreds of banners, built as the main boulevard of the intended new capital of the Nazi empire, ‘Germania’. After Albert Speer had declared the new road open, Hitler returned to the Reich Chancellery, watching from the balcony, as Party deputations from all the Gaue wound their way in torchlight procession through the vast, cheering crowd assembled in Wilhelmsplatz. At midnight he was congratulated by all the members of his personal entourage, beginning with his secretaries. Speer, by now the firmly established court favourite, presented a delighted Hitler with a four-metre model of the gigantic triumphal arch that would crown the rebuilt Berlin. Captain Hans Baur, Hitler’s pilot, gave him a model of the four-engined Focke-Wulf 200 ‘Condor’, under construction to take service as the ‘Führer Machine’ in the summer. Row upon row of further gifts – marble-white nude statues, bronze casts, Meissen porcelain, oil-paintings (some valuable, including a Lenbach and even a Titian, but mostly the standard dreary exhibits found in the House of German Art in Munich), tapestries, rare coins, antique weapons, and a mass of other presents, many of them kitsch (like the cushions embroidered with Nazi emblems or ‘Heil mein Führer’) – were laid out on long tables in the hall where Bismarck had presided over the Berlin Congress of 1878. Hitler admired some, made fun of others, and ignored most.1
The central feature of the birthday itself was a mammoth display of the might and power of the Third Reich, calculated to show the western powers what faced them if they should tangle with the new Germany. The ambassadors of Britain, France, and the USA, recalled after the march into Czecho-Slovakia, were absent. The Poles had sent no delegation.2 The parade on the ‘East-West Axis’ began at 11a.m. and lasted almost five hours. His secretaries returned to the Reich Chancellery exhausted from the ‘dreadfully long’ show; but Hitler never tired of being the centre of attraction at propaganda displays, however long he had to stand with his arm raised.3 The entire parade was recorded on 10,000 metres of film. The image of Hitler the ‘statesman of genius’ had now to be complemented by the portrayal of the ‘future military leader, taking muster of his armed forces’.4
‘The Führer is feted like no other mortal has ever been,’ effused Goebbels.5 Hitler’s most adoring disciple was scarcely a rational judge. But, elaborately stage-managed though the entire razzmatazz had been, there was no denying Hitler’s genuine popularity – even near-deification by many – among the masses. What had been before 1933 bitterly anti-Nazi Communist and Socialist sub-cultures remained, despite terror and propaganda, still largely impervious to the Hitler adulation. Many Catholics, relatively immune throughout to Nazism’s appeal, and, in lesser measure, Protestant churchgoers had been alienated by the ‘Church Struggle’ (though Hitler was held less generally to blame than his subordinates, especially Rosenberg and Goebbels). Intellectuals might be disdainful of Hitler, old-fashioned, upper-class conservatives bemoan the vulgarity of the Nazis, and those with remaining shreds of liberal, humanitarian values feel appalled at the brutality of the regime, displayed in full during ‘Crystal Night’. Even so, Hitler was without doubt the most popular government head in Europe. The exiled Social Democratic leaders, analysing the Führer cult as reflected in the plethora of letters, poems, and other devotalia sent in by ordinary citizens and published in German newspapers around Hitler’s fiftieth birthday, admitted that the phenomenon could not be explained by propaganda alone. Hitler, a national leader arising from the lower ranks of society, had tapped a certain ‘naïve faith’ embedded in lengthy traditions of ‘heroic’ leadership. Internal terror and the readiness of the western powers to hand Hitler one success after another in foreign policy had undermined the scepticism of many waverers. The result was that, although there was much fear of war, belief in the Führer was extensive.6 ‘A great man, a genius, a person sent to us from heaven,’ was one seventeen-year-old girl’s naïve impression.7 She spoke for many.
Whatever the criticisms ordinary people had about everyday life in the Third Reich, its irritations and vexations, the cult constructed around the Führer represented an enormous force for integration. The daily reality of Nazi rule spawned much antagonism. Grandiose Party buildings, erected at vast cost, greatly affronted a hard-pressed and poorly housed working population in the big cities. Massive criticism continued to be heaped on the self-evident corruption, scandalous high-living, and arrogance of Party functionaries. And, though the ‘Church struggle’ had died down somewhat, compared with intensity of the years 1936 and 1937, the attritional conflict between Party anti-Church fanatics and the churchgoing population remained a source of repeated friction.8 But Hitler’s ‘successes’ offered a counter – a set of ‘achievements’, put forward as those of a national, not party, leader, in which almost any German could take pride. ‘I have overcome the chaos in Germany,’ claimed Hitler in his speech to the Reichstag on 28 April, ‘restored order, massively raised production in all areas of our national economy.’ His litany of what were advanced as his own, personal accomplishments, continued:
‘I have succeeded in completely bringing back into useful production the seven [!] million unemployed who were so dear to all our own hearts, in keeping the German peasant on his soil despite all difficulties and in rescuing it for him, in attaining the renewed flourishing of German trade, and in tremendously promoting transportation. I have not only politically united the German people, but also militarily rearmed them, and I have further attempted to tear up page for page that Treaty, which contained in its 448 articles the most base violations ever accorded to nations and human beings. I have given back to the Reich the provinces stolen from us in 1919. I have led back into the homeland the millions of deeply unhappy Germans who had been torn away from us. I have recreated the thousand-year historic unity of the German living-space, and I have attempted to do all this without spilling blood and without inflicting on my people or on others the suffering of war. I have managed this from my own strength, as one who twenty-one years ago was an unknown worker and soldier of my people.’9
People worried how long it could all last. But the contrast with the dark days of economic depression and national humiliation was scarcely credible. What had been achieved seemed staggering. Most people did not want to see it put at risk through external conflict. For those who did not dwell too long on the causes and consequences, one man alone appeared to have masterminded it all. For that man, what had been achieved so far was no more than a preparation for what was to come.
As what was to prove the last peacetime spring and summer wore on, Hitler’s subordinates were in no doubt about the difficulties at home, and their impact on large sections of the population. The SD had spoken of a ‘mood close to complete despair’ among the peasantry at the end of 1938 owing to the ‘flight from the land’ and ensuing massive labour shortage. The feeling of being crushed, the SD claimed, was partly reflected in resignation, partly in outright revolt against the farmers’ leaders.10 In the first months of 1939, the peasants’ mood was said to have deteriorated still further.11 In Bavaria, it had reportedly reached ‘boilingpoint’ (‘Siedehitze’).12 The SD concluded that the ‘production battle’ had passed its peak, and was now facing decline, with the extensification of agriculture, and threat to the ‘völkisch substance’.13 In fact, the whole economic expansion, the SD suggested, had now reached its limits. Further pressure on the work-force would result only in declining performance and production.14