3
A Frightful Futility
The morning of Friday 1 September was warm and oppressive, like the heatwave that had preceded it. As most Britons still slumbered, the first news arrived of the German invasion of Poland: a report by the Reuters News Agency citing a German radio announcement.1 Soon after, a telegram from the British Embassy in Warsaw to the Foreign Office in London confirmed the account, stating that the Germans had indeed crossed the Polish frontier, and widespread bombing was already under way.
The daily newspapers, however, carried nothing of the latest events. They were full of details of the civilian evacuation from the cities, due to get under way that day, and reports of Hitler’s latest terms to ease the crisis over Poland. For most people, then, word came by radio, with the first news bulletin, at 10.30 a.m.: a sombre announcement for which children would be hushed and necks craned. There was a rush of momentous words, with which the listener would struggle to keep pace: ‘invasion … general mobilisation … Parliament summoned … cabinet meeting … air raids … military objectives.’ Not for the last time, the newsreader would mangle Polish place names in listing the locations that had already been bombed: ‘Tczew, Toruń, Jasło …’2
The news was primarily met with a sense of disappointment. Given that the Polish–German crisis had been rumbling on for much of the summer, there was scarcely any feeling of surprise; indeed the ongoing evacuation showed that both the government and the people were quite well prepared for the necessities of war. Rather there was an angered resignation. As one diarist put it: ‘Surely a nation has never gone to war so grim and disillusioned and coldly resentful as we are now.’3 An imaginative housewife in Bolton had a clear target for her ire. ‘I would just like to get Hitler on this field at the top of our street just to give him some punishment,’ she was recorded as saying. ‘First thing I would do, saw his feet at the ankles, sharpen the shin bones and force him down into the earth, down to his shoulders, then I would just hammer the top of his head with my big saucepan until I’d driven him down out of sight.’4
Britain’s politicians were no less angered and no less resigned. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain called a cabinet meeting for 11.30 that morning, which took place, he intoned, ‘under the gravest possible conditions’: ‘The event against which we had fought so long and so earnestly had come upon us.’ But, he said, ‘our consciences were clear, and there should be no possible question now where our duty lay’.5 Despite that expression of determination and clarity, what followed was a rather agonised discussion in which the cabinet tried to catch up with the ongoing gallop of events. They were not aided in their task by the disinformation still emanating from Berlin – and relayed by the German chargé d’affaires in London, Theo Kordt – that German forces were merely ‘returning fire’ and denying that Polish cities had been bombed. Italian offers of help – and the brokering of a peace conference – did little to ease the growing confusion, while French concerns about the prospect of immediate military action provided another source of hesitation.
At the same time, the Poles were nudging the British government towards a position of active support in their defence. That morning, the Polish Foreign Ministry had cabled its embassies in London and Paris, providing clarification on the German attack, and expressing the conviction that ‘in accordance with the existing treaties of alliance, [Poland] will receive immediate help from its Allies’.6 The Polish ambassador in London, Count Edward Raczyński, then declared in his conversations with Foreign Secretary Viscount Halifax that, in his opinion, ‘the circumstances had arisen which called for the implementation of [the British] guarantee’.7 And, in the afternoon, the Polish foreign minister, Colonel Beck, had sent a telegram to the British ambassador in Warsaw in which he requested that the RAF begin military action against Germany forthwith.8
In the cabinet meeting, meanwhile, it was the minister for defence, Lord Chatfield, who gave the lead, reporting the opinion of the Chiefs of Staff that if the conclusion were reached that the guarantee should be implemented, then an ultimatum should be despatched to Germany ‘without undue delay’. Chamberlain concurred and a draft was prepared, warning Germany that ‘unless the German Government are prepared to give … satisfactory assurances that all aggressive action against Poland has been suspended and are prepared promptly to withdraw their forces from Polish territory, His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom will without hesitation fulfil their obligations to Poland’. The telegram was despatched, en clair, to the British Embassy in Berlin, at 5.45 that evening.9
Soon after, at 6.15 p.m., Chamberlain appeared in a packed and grimly expectant House of Commons chamber. His personal agony was clearly evident. ‘Eighteen months ago in this House,’ he said, ‘I prayed that the responsibility might not fall upon me to ask this country to accept the awful arbitrament of war. I fear that I may not be able to avoid that responsibility.’ But, he went on, it was clear as to where his duty lay. ‘No man can say that the government could have done more to try to keep open the way for an honourable and equitable settlement of the dispute between Germany and Poland,’ he said, adding that ‘we shall stand at the bar of history knowing that the responsibility for this terrible catastrophe lies on the shoulders of one man – the German chancellor, who has not hesitated to plunge the world into misery in order to serve his own senseless ambitions.’ He explained that, in the circumstances, there was ‘only one course open to us’, and that was the delivery – in concert with the French – of what he called a ‘last warning’. He then read to the House the telegram whose text had been agreed by the cabinet that afternoon.
In closing, Chamberlain struck a strong moral tone, stating that ‘there will be no peace in Europe’ as long as the Nazi regime existed. He ended on a defiant note:
Now it only remains for us to set our teeth and to enter upon this struggle, which we have so earnestly endeavoured to avoid, with determination to see it through to the end. We shall enter it with a clear conscience, with the support of the Dominions and the British Empire, and with the moral approval of the greater part of the world.10
It had been a strong performance, in which the normally reserved Chamberlain had reportedly struck the despatch box with his fist for emphasis.11 But crucially, his last warning had not included a time limit, and many of the more belligerent MPs in the House of Commons feared that the British and French governments were still looking for a way to evade their commitments.
That evening, as the House broke for the night, the British ambassador in Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson, finally succeeded in meeting with his German counterpart, Joachim von Ribbentrop.12 On arrival at Wilhelmstrasse, he was met by Hitler’s interpreter, Paul Schmidt, and ushered into Ribbentrop’s presence, where Chamberlain’s note was duly translated. Throughout, Schmidt recalled, Ribbentrop remained calm.13 Evidently under instructions not to give any response, the minister reacted with incomprehension, ‘as though he understood no English’. He gave the same reaction when he learned of the French ambassador’s note, half an hour later.14 When he subsequently took both missives to Hitler for his response, the Führer accepted them with derision, saying: ‘We will now see if they come to Poland’s aid.’15
*
The following day, 2 September, had the same febrile, expectant mood; for Henderson in Berlin it was ‘a day of suspense’.16 But in place of the speculation and rumour, there was at least a little more concrete information about events in Poland. The Daily Telegraph, for instance, provided readers with a full-page map and extensive details of the German attack, as well as an editorial that praised Parliament for its stand ‘For Freedom against Brutal Oppression’.17 Only the Communist Daily Worker sounded a rather discordant note, criticising the government for ‘doing nothing’ to support Spain and Czechoslovakia, and portraying the new conflict as a ‘two-front war’ that would deliver ‘victory against Fascism’ and ‘victory over Chamberlain and the enemies of democracy’.18
Conservative MP Henry ‘Ch
ips’ Channon, a prominent supporter of Chamberlain, noted in his diary that ‘we are on the very verge of war’. He declared himself ‘dejected, despondent, despairing’.19 But, the public mood, was – if anything – rather more positive, and certainly more phlegmatic than it had been the day before. One contributor to the new Mass-Observation survey noted that though his customers ‘realised things were as bad as could be’, there was still a determination that ‘Hitler must be taught a lesson’. Another correspondent discerned an ‘improvement in public morale’ and a ‘quieting effect’ thanks to what she called ‘the certainty of war’.20 Of course, such sentiments were not universal. One Briton confessed to a ‘dose of the jitters’ after listening to the news; others reported ‘feeling sick’ or ‘upset’ at the prospect of war. But there were also the eternal optimists, who opined that ‘we are certain to win … we always do’.21
Aside from such bravado, there were some reasons for optimism on the British and French side. Britain, of course, was primarily a naval power in 1939. Her empire had been built on international trade and her global reach traditionally required a navy to police sea lanes and protect her far-flung interests. Consequently, with over 1,400 vessels of all types, including 15 battleships, 184 destroyers and 60 submarines, Britain boasted the largest navy in the world.22 She also had the globe’s largest merchant fleet, amounting to fully one in three of all merchant vessels.23 In addition, though Britain’s land forces were limited – numbering a little over 200,000 men in September 1939 – they were mainly professional soldiers, with only a minority having been brought in by partial conscription earlier that year. In addition, they could call on 200,000 reservists and an additional 450,000 territorials.24
British equipment, meanwhile, was certainly not inferior to that of its would-be opponents. As well as the venerable, standard issue Lee-Enfield rifle, British army units were armed with the Bren light machine gun – modified from an original Czech design – which had entered service the previous year, and was durable, accurate and effective. Armoured units, however, were rather less well prepared. Though the Matilda Mark II was already in production – which had the thickest armour of any tank at the time, and boasted a potent 2-pounder gun – only a handful had been delivered by September 1939, so British forces had to rely on the Mark I model; armed with only a heavy machine gun, and the lightly armoured Mark I Cruiser tank.
In the air, the RAF had a total complement of front-line aircraft of 1,660 machines, in September 1939.25 Of its 155 squadrons, sixteen were flying the redoubtable Hawker Hurricane, as well as twenty-six in the Blenheim light bomber and ten in the twin-engine Handley Page Hampden. In addition, over 300 Mark I examples of the Supermarine Spitfire had already been received, with a further 2,000 on order.26 Though the RAF was not yet the formidable force it would later become, it certainly did not lack firepower.
French forces, too, were considerable. Essentially a mirror image of Britain’s military, they boasted a large standing army, with a smaller navy and air force. The army, raised via conscription, numbered around 900,000 men in the autumn of 1939, with a further five million trained reservists. Well armed and equipped, across some ninety-one infantry divisions and thirty-nine armoured divisions, it was the second largest army in the world – after that of Stalin’s USSR – and boasted much state-of-the-art equipment, such as the Char B1 heavy tank, which was widely considered as the best tank then available.
Away from land forces, the French were less well equipped. In the air, they had around 1,000 operational aircraft, divided across twenty-four front-line fighter and thirty-four bomber squadrons, comprising primarily the sturdy but underpowered Morane-Saulnier 406 fighter, and the unreliable Breguet 691 twin-engine light bomber.27 The French navy, meanwhile, was much smaller than that of its primary ally, numbering some seventy destroyers, nineteen cruisers and seven battleships, crewed by a total of 160,000 personnel.28
British and French forces complemented each other well, therefore, with one’s shortcomings in one sphere compensated by the other’s preponderance in that area. As such, Anglo-French forces were a good match for their German opponents; arguably, indeed, they would hold the upper hand. Yet despite this apparent strength, there were a number of issues that precluded the effective deployment of that power.
The first was that Britain was effectively dependent on French cooperation. Separated from the continent by the English Channel, the British army needed the French as comrades-in-arms to launch any effective action against Germany. So, while Britain could rage over German aggression against Poland, the key to any effective counter-measures lay in French hands. For her part, meanwhile, France was divided. Though the cabinet had committed the country to meeting its alliance obligations towards Poland the previous week,29 there were some who did not share that principled defiance, not least among them the foreign minister, Georges Bonnet. For one thing, huge French losses – human and material – in the First World War, coupled with political turmoil thereafter, had fostered a faith in the policy of appeasing Germany, which had endured long after it had been shown to be counter-productive. For another, French society laboured under what has become known as the ‘Maginot mentality’ – named after the extensive line of fortifications stretching along the Franco-German frontier – which engendered a false sense of security and an insularity that would inevitably cast doubt on France’s foreign commitments. As the minister of war, General Louis Maurin, had asked the Chamber of Deputies in 1935: ‘How can anyone believe that we continue to think of offensives when we have spent billions of francs to establish a fortified barrier?’30
In addition, when the crisis of September 1939 broke, decisive action was hampered by a number of more practical concerns – the first was the understandable French desire to complete the evacuation of Paris and the frontier areas, in the expectation that a German attack would follow swiftly from any declaration of war.31 Moreover, both the French and (to a lesser extent) the British wished to give the Italian government a last chance to salvage peace via mediation – a trick that Mussolini had pulled off the previous autumn in Munich. With the French, and Bonnet especially, desperate for a solution to the crisis that stopped short of war, the Italians were happy to play along, though Mussolini’s foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, was well aware that – given the British demand for a German withdrawal as a prerequisite to talks – the approach would find little traction in Berlin. ‘It isn’t my business’, Ciano wrote in his diary, ‘to give Hitler advice that he would reject decisively, and maybe with contempt.’32
In the circumstances, it was understandable that some grew increasingly nervous on 2 September as no news arrived that the British and the French governments would be honouring their treaty commitments. Winston Churchill spoke for many when he wrote to Neville Chamberlain that morning to express his concern that ‘a further note’ was being discussed in Paris. ‘The Poles have now been under heavy attack for thirty hours,’ he reminded the prime minister. ‘I trust you will be able to announce our Joint Declaration of War at latest when Parliament meets this afternoon.’33
The Poles, too, were growing restive. That afternoon, the Polish ambassador in London had approached Chamberlain directly, requesting ‘the immediate fulfilment of British obligations to Poland’. He was also reported to have been buttonholing cabinet members in the House of Commons with the same demand.34 In due course, a cable was drawn up by the Polish foreign minister, Colonel Józef Beck, which sought to stiffen British resolve further by giving a résumé of events. ‘We are already fighting along the entire front with the bulk of the German forces,’ it read, ‘fighting for every metre, even the garrison at Westerplatte is defending itself. The intervention of the entire air force is taking on an increasingly brutal form. Today we have extensive civilian casualties.’ He ended by tartly making reference to the Polish–British alliance, signed the previous week in London, and asked: ‘Please inform [us] of the British government’s decision without delay.’35
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p; When cabinet met that afternoon, therefore, the mood was tense. While Chamberlain and Halifax were pressing for a further postponement of any decision – or, indeed, ultimatum – mindful of the French desire for an extension of 48 hours to sound out Italian proposals and evacuate Paris, there were others who strongly argued against. The secretary of state for air, Sir Kingsley Wood, opposed any delay because the ‘moral effect’ of Britain ‘redeeming her pledge to Poland’ would thereby be diminished. The secretary of state for war, Leslie Hore-Belisha, agreed, stating that public opinion was ‘strongly against our yielding an inch’ and reminding his cabinet colleagues that ‘the Dictators had made demand after demand’. Others concurred. By the conclusion of the meeting, Chamberlain believed he had agreement on ‘two main points’: first, that there should be no negotiation with Germany unless it was prepared to withdraw its troops from Poland; and second, that any delay beyond midnight that night was ‘undesirable’ and a communication to that effect to Germany therefore ‘clearly constituted an ultimatum’.36
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