Only Göring responded at the end of the forthright, if rambling, address. Not surprisingly, he wanted to hear something concrete about the priorities for raw materials, and about the likely timing of the conflict with the West. Hitler replied, vaguely, that the branches of the armed forces would determine what was to be constructed. On naval requirements, however, he was adamant, as his remarks had indicated: ‘Nothing will be changed in the shipbuilding programme.’ To the relief of those present, who took it as an indication of when he envisaged the conflict with the West taking place, he stipulated that the rearmament programmes were to be targeted at 1943–4 – the same time-scale he had given in November 1937. But no one doubted that Hitler intended to attack Poland that very year.51
II
Throughout the spring and summer frenzied diplomatic efforts were made to try to isolate Poland and deter the western powers from becoming involved in what was intended as a localized conflict. On the day before Hitler’s address to his military leaders, Italy and Germany had signed the so-called ‘Pact of Steel’, meant to warn Britain and France off backing Poland.52 The Italians had been soured by being kept in the dark about the invasion of Czecho-Slovakia. ‘Every time Hitler occupies a country he sends me a message,’ Mussolini had lamented.53 But Ribbentrop had striven to mend fences. The Italian annexation of Albania in early April – partly to show the Germans they could do it too – had been applauded by Berlin. The Japanese, interested only in an anti-Soviet alliance and keen to avoid any commitments involving the West, adamantly refused to fall in with Ribbentrop’s grand plan and establish a tripartite pact.54 But the pompous German Foreign Minister – even Hitler described him as swollen-headed – duped the Italians into signing a bilateral military pact on the understanding that the Führer wanted peace for five years and expected the Poles to settle peacefully once they realized that support from the West would not be forthcoming.55
In the attempt to secure the assistance or benevolent neutrality of a number of smaller European countries and prevent them being drawn into the Anglo-French orbit, the German government had mixed success. In the west, Belgian neutrality – whatever Hitler’s plans to ignore it when it suited him – was shored up to keep the western powers from immediate proximity to Germany’s industrial heartlands. Every effort had been made in preceding years to promote trading links with the neutral countries of Scandinavia to sustain, above all, the vital imports of iron ore from Sweden and Norway.56 In the Baltic, Latvia and Estonia agreed non-aggression pacts. But in central Europe, diplomatic efforts had more patchy results. Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Turkey were unwilling to align themselves closely with Berlin. Turkey could not be prevented from siding officially with Britain. But even here, Turkey’s need for good relations with Germany meant a willingness to provide the vital supplies of chrome. Economic penetration of the Balkans had, moreover, ensured that copper and other minerals would be forthcoming from Yugoslavia. And persistent pressure had turned Romania into an economic satellite, sealed by treaty in late March 1939, more or less assuring Germany of crucial access to Romanian oil and wheat in the event of hostilities.57
The big question-mark concerned the Soviet Union. The regime’s antichrist it might be. But it held the key to the destruction of Poland. If the USSR could be prevented from linking hands with the West in the tripartite pact that Britain and France were half-heartedly working towards; better still, if the unthinkable – a pact between the Soviet Union and the Reich itself – could be brought about: then Poland would be totally isolated, at Germany’s mercy, the Anglo-French guarantees worthless, and Britain – the main opponent – hugely weakened. Such thoughts began to gestate in the mind of Hitler’s Foreign Minister in the spring of 1939.58 In the weeks that followed, it was Ribbentrop on the German side, rather than a hesitant Hitler, who took the initiative in seeking to explore all hints that the Russians might be interested in a rapprochement – hints that had been forthcoming since March.59
Within the Soviet leadership, the entrenched belief that the West wanted to encourage German aggression in the East (that is, against the USSR), the recognition that following Munich collective security was dead, the need to head off any aggressive intent from the Japanese in the east, and above all the desperate need to buy time to secure defences for the onslaught thought certain to come at some time, pushed – if for a considerable time only tentatively – in the same direction.60 However, Stalin kept his options open. Not until August was the door finally closed on a pact with the foot-dragging western powers.61
Stalin’s speech to the Communist Party Congress on 10 March, attacking the appeasement policy of the West as encouragement of German aggression against the Soviet Union, and declaring his unwillingness to ‘pull the chestnuts out of the fire’ for the benefit of capitalist powers, had been taken by Ribbentrop, so he later claimed, as a hint that an opportunity might be opening up. He showed the speech to Hitler, asking for authorization to check what Stalin wanted. Hitler was hesitant. He wanted to await developments.62 Ribbentrop nevertheless put out cautious feelers. The unofficial response was encouraging. But Ribbentrop thought Hitler would disapprove, and did not bring it to his attention.63 By mid-April, however, the Soviet Ambassador was remarking to Weizsäcker that ideological differences should not hinder better relations.64 Still there was no response from Hitler. He remained unconvinced when Gustav Hilger, a long-serving diplomat in the German Embassy in Moscow, was brought to the Berghof to explain that the dismissal of the Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov (who had been associated with retaining close ties with the West, partly through a spell as Soviet Ambassador to the USA, and was moreover a Jew), and his replacement by Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s right-hand man, had to be seen as a sign that the Soviet dictator was looking for an agreement with Germany.65
Again it was Ribbentrop who was stirred by the suggestion.66 He heard around the same time from the German ambassador in Moscow, Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, that the Soviet Union was interested in a rapprochement with Germany.67 He scented a coup which would dramatically turn the tables on Britain, the country which had dared to spurn him – a coup that would also win him glory and favour in the Führer’s eyes, and his place in history as the architect of Germany’s triumph. Hitler for his part thought that Russian economic difficulties and the chance spotted by ‘the wily fox’ Stalin to remove any threat from Poland to the Soviet western borders were at the back of any opening towards Germany. His own interests were to isolate Poland and deter Britain.68
Ribbentrop was now able to persuade Hitler to agree to the Soviet requests for resumption of trade negotiations with Moscow, which had been broken off the previous February.69 Molotov told Schulenburg, however, that a ‘political basis’ would have to be found before talks could be resumed. He left unclear what he had in mind.70 Hitler again poured cold water on Ribbentrop’s eagerness to begin political talks. Weizsäcker’s view was that the Foreign Minister’s notions of offering mediation in the Soviet conflict with Japan and hinting at partition of Poland would be rejected ‘with a peal of Tartar laughter’.71 Deep suspicions on both sides led to relations cooling again throughout June. Molotov continued to stonewall and keep his options open. Desultory economic discussions were just kept alive. But at the end of June, Hitler, irritated by the difficulties raised by the Soviets in the trade discussions, ordered the ending of all talks.72 This time the Soviets took the initiative. Within three weeks they were letting it be known that trade talks could be resumed, and that the prospects for an economic agreement were favourable.73 This was the signal Berlin had been waiting for. Schulenburg in Moscow was ordered to ‘pick up the threads again’.74
Four days later, Ribbentrop’s Russian expert in the Foreign Ministry’s Trade Department, Karl Schnurre, invited the Soviet Chargé d’Affaires Georgei Astakhov and trade representative Evengy Babarin to dinner in Berlin. Acting under detailed instructions from the Foreign Minister himself, he indicated that the trade agreement could be accomp
anied by a political understanding between Germany and the Soviet Union, taking into account their mutual territorial interests. The response was encouraging.75 Within three days Ribbentrop was directing Schulenburg to put the same points directly to Molotov. Schnurre wrote himself to Schulenburg: ‘Politically, the problem of Russia is being dealt with here with extreme urgency.’ He was in daily contact with Ribbentrop, he stated, who in turn was in constant touch with the Führer. Ribbentrop was concerned to obtain a breakthrough in the Russian question, to disturb Soviet – British negotiations, but also to bring about an understanding with Germany. ‘Hence the haste with which we sent you the last instructions.’76 Molotov was non-committal and somewhat negative when he met Schulenburg on 3 August. But two days later, through his informal contacts with Schnurre, Astakhov was letting Riobentrop know that the Soviet government was seriously interested in the ‘improvement of mutual relations’, and willing to contemplate political negotiations.77
Towards the end of July, Hitler, Ribbentrop, and Weizsäcker had devised the basis of an agreement with the Soviet Union involving the partition of Poland and the Baltic states.78 Hints about such an arrangement were dropped to Molotov during his meeting with Schulenburg on 3 August.79 But Stalin was in no rush. And by now he had learned what the Germans were up to, and the broad timing of the intended action against the Poles.80 But for Hitler there was not a moment to lose. The attack on Poland could not be delayed. Autumn rains, he told Count Ciano in mid-August, would turn the roads into a morass and Poland into ‘one vast swamp… completely unsuitable for any military operations’. The strike had to come by the end of the month.81
III
Hitler, meanwhile, did everything possible to obscure what he had in mind to the general public in Germany and to the outside world. He had told the NSDAP’s press agency in mid-July to publish the dates of the ‘Reich Party Rally of Peace’ – longer than ever before, and scheduled to take place at Nuremberg on 2-II September 1939. It was also announced that he would attend a huge gathering, expected to attract 100,000 people, on 27 August to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Tannenberg.82 By then, detailed military plans to launch the attack to destroy Poland no later than 1 September had been in existence for several weeks.83
Remarkably, for the best part of three months during this summer of high drama, with Europe teetering on the brink of war, Hitler was almost entirely absent from the seat of government in Berlin. Much of the time, as always, when not at his alpine eyrie above Berchtesgaden, he was travelling around Germany. Early in June he visited the construction site of the Volkswagen factory at Fallersleben, where he had laid the foundation stone a year or so earlier. From there it was on to Vienna, to the ‘Reich Theatre Week’, where he saw the première of Richard Strauss’s Friedenstag, regaling his adjutants with stories of his visits to the opera and theatre there thirty years earlier, and lecturing them on the splendours of Viennese architecture. Before leaving, he visited the grave of his niece, Geli Raubal (who had shot herself in mysterious circumstances in his Munich flat in 1931). He flew on to Linz, where he criticized new worker flats because they lacked the balconies he deemed essential in every apartment. From there he was driven to Berchtesgaden via Lambach, Hafeld, and Fischlham – some of the places associated with his childhood and where he had first attended school.84
At the beginning of July, he was in Rechlin in Mecklenburg, inspecting new aircraft prototypes, including the He 176, the first rocket-propelled plane, with a speed of almost 1,000 kilometres an hour. Whenever he expressed particular interest, Göring told him that everything would be done to ensure it would soon be ready for service. No one dared explain that their deployment lay in the distant future.85
Then in the middle of the month Hitler attended an extraordinary four-day spectacular in Munich, the ‘Rally of German Art 1939’, culminating in a huge parade with massive floats and extravagant costumes of bygone ages to illustrate 2,000 years of German cultural achievement.86 Less than a week later he paid his regular visit to the Bayreuth festival. At Haus Wahnfried, in the annexe that the Wagner family had set aside specially for his use, Hitler felt relaxed. There he was ‘Uncle Wolf, as he had been known by the Wagners since his early days in politics. While in Bayreuth, looking self-conscious in his white dinner-jacket, he attended performances of Der fliegende Holländer, Tristan und Isolde, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung, greeting the crowds as usual from the window on the first floor.87
There was also a second reunion (following their meeting the previous year in Linz) with his boyhood friend August Kubizek. They spoke of the old days in Linz and Vienna, going to Wagner operas together. Kubizek sheepishly asked Hitler to sign dozens of autographs to take back for his acquaintances. Hitler obliged. The overawed Kubizek, the archetypal local-government officer of a sleepy small town, carefully blotted every signature. They went out for a while, reminiscing in the gathering dusk by Wagner’s grave. Then Hitler took Kubizek on a tour of Haus Wahnfried. Kubizek reminded his former friend of the Rienzi episode in Linz all those years ago. (Wagner’s early opera, based on the story of a fourteenth-century ‘tribune of the people’ in Rome, had so excited Hitler that late at night, after the performance, he had hauled his friend up the Freinberg, a hill on the edge of Linz, and regaled him about the meaning of what they had seen.) Hitler recounted the tale to Winifried Wagner, ending by saying, with a great deal more pathos than truth: ‘That’s when it began.’ Hitler probably believed his own myth. Kubizek certainly did. Emotional and impressionable as he always had been, and now a well-established victim of the Führer cult, he departed with tears in his eyes. Shortly afterwards, he heard the crowds cheering as Hitler left.88
Hitler spent most of August at the Berghof. Other than when he had important visitors to see, daily life there retained its usual patterns. The routine was more relaxed than in Berlin, but its rituals were equally fixed and tedious. Lengthy midday meals, dominated by the sound of Hitler’s voice, the arrival of the press reports (typed in large letters on the special ‘Führer typewriter’, and usually necessitating the household to search for the misplaced reading glasses that he refused to be seen wearing in public), walks down the hill to the ‘Tea House’ for afternoon tea or coffee and cakes (usually producing further monologues on favourite themes), an evening snack followed by a film and more late-night talk for those unable to escape. Magda Goebbels told Ciano of her boredom. ‘It is always Hitler who talks!’ he recalled her saying. ‘He can be Führer as much as he likes, but he always repeats himself and bores his guests.’89
If less so than in Berlin, strict formalities were still observed. The atmosphere was stuffy, especially in Hitler’s presence. Only Eva Braun’s sister, Gretl, lightened it somewhat, even smoking (which was much frowned upon), flirting with the orderlies, and determined to have fun whatever dampening effect the Führer might have on things. What little humour otherwise surfaced was often in dubious taste in the male-dominated household, where the women in attendance, including Eva Braun, served mainly as decoration. But in general, the tone was one of extreme politeness, with much kissing of hands, and expressions of ‘Gnädige Frau’.90 Despite Nazi mockery of the bourgeoisie, life at the Berghof was imbued with the intensely bourgeois manners and fashions of the arriviste Dictator.
Hitler’s lengthy absence from Berlin, while European peace hung by a thread, illustrates how far the disintegration of anything resembling a conventional central government had gone. Few ministers were permitted to see Hitler. Even the usual privileged few had dwindled in number. Goebbels – the most hated man in Germany according to Rosenberg (who, as the Party’s self-professed ideological ‘expert’ was himself detested so much for his radical attacks on the Christian Churches, and ought to have been a good judge) – was still out of favour following his affair with Lida Baarova.91 Göring had not recovered the ground he had lost since Munich.92 Speer enjoyed the special status of the protégé. He spent much of the summer at Berchtesgaden.93 But m
ost of the time he was indulging Hitler’s passion for architecture, not discussing details of foreign policy. Hitler’s ‘advisers’ on the only issue of real consequence, the question of war and peace, were now largely confined to Ribbentrop, even more hawkish, if anything, than he had been the previous summer, and the military leaders. On the crucial matters of foreign policy, Ribbentrop – when not represented through the head of his personal staff, Walther Hewel, far more liked by the Dictator and everyone else than the preening Foreign Minister himself – largely had the field to himself. The second man at the Foreign Ministry, Weizsäcker, left to mind the shop while his boss absented himself from Berlin, claimed not to have seen Hitler, even from a distance, between May and the middle of August. What the Dictator was up to on the Obersalzberg was difficult to fathom in Berlin, Weizsäcker added.94
The personalization of government in the hands of one man – amounting in this case to concentration of power to determine over war or peace – was as good as complete.
IV
Danzig, allegedly the issue dragging Europe towards war, was in reality no more than a pawn in the German game being played from Berchtesgaden. Gauleiter Albert Forster – a thirty-seven-year-old former Franconian bank clerk who had learnt some of his early political lessons under Julius Streicher and had been leader of the NSDAP in Danzig since 1930 – had received detailed instructions from Hitler on a number of occasions throughout the summer on how to keep tension simmering without allowing it to boil over. As had been the case in the Sudetenland the previous year, it was important not to force the issue too soon.95 Local issues had to chime exactly with the timing determined by Hitler. Incidents were to be manufactured to display to the population in the Reich, and to the world outside, the alleged injustices perpetrated by the Poles against the Germans in Danzig. Instances of mistreatment – most of them contrived, some genuine – of the German minority in other parts of Poland, too, provided regular fodder for an orchestrated propaganda campaign which, again analogous to that against the Czechs in 1938, had been screaming its banner headlines about the iniquities of the Poles since May.