Canaris and his fellow plotters were exposed that day to a constant flux of belief, hope, illusion and self-deception. Convinced in the morning that Hitler had shot his bolt, Canaris informed General Thomas only a few hours later that ‘the attack date had been postponed for a few days’.37 On 26 August Canaris had informed the Italian military attaché Roatta that the attack order had been cancelled, and Roatta had telephoned the information immediately to the chief of the Italian General Staff, Pariani, but the line was tapped and the conversation recorded in Berlin. Hitler summoned Canaris and confronted him with the evidence. Groscurth noted: ‘Chief is worried . . . I try to calm him, but don’t succeed.’38
The ‘Eleventh Hour Show’39 continued. French ambassador Coulondre brought to Hitler Daladier’s appeal to settle the crisis by negotiation, offering himself as intermediary. Hitler replied by raising the stakes; it was no longer Danzig and an extraterritorial route through the Polish Corridor that he wanted, but the whole Corridor as sovereign German territory.40 Swedish businessman Birger Dahlerus, an acquaintance of Goering who had often acted as intermediary and courier, was sent to London with a new offer.
The atmosphere was feverish, ‘rich in apparent dialogue, transparent confusion and occasionally grotesque pretence’.41 Groscurth learned from Berlin Police Chief Helldorf that
a man close to Heydrich has fears that H-H [Himmler and Heydrich] have a chance to act against ambushed generals . . . advise generals to attempt something at once and demand the removal of the criminals who had brought the Führer and us into this situation. A stone would fall from the heart of the Wehrmacht if the Führer finally took steps.42
When Groscurth first drew this to Canaris’s attention, he rejected it: ‘Chief not interested,’ Groscurth noted,43 but in the end Canaris sent him to Zossen to Ober-QM I von Stülpnagel with the latest messages prophesying doom from von Helldorf, who, fearing unrest, was asking for troops and wanted direct contact to the Berlin Wachregiment.44 Perhaps he was hoping to motivate the generals to move against the SS and even Hitler,45 but upon his return to Berlin, all he had for Canaris was the Führer’s thanks to Brauchitsch that the Army ‘had done a good number’.46 Canaris showed Groscurth other extracts from his diary about Keitel, and he was apparently shocked to discover that Hitler’s adjutants were working against Keitel. ‘Finally!’ Groscurth wrote.
Back at Zossen, Groscurth saw Krichbaum, head of the GFP, in the latter’s private suite: ‘He has attempted to make himself influential, not successful. Strange company. They listen to every word in the bunkers. Stülpnagel took me into the gardens! . . . What goings-on!’47
The next day all hopes of a peaceful solution to the crisis were finally shattered. On the morning of 27 August, Groscurth and Canaris discussed the absurd demands Mussolini had made the day before for weapons and materials to make his participation in a war possible – the Duce had a shopping list so long that he obviously knew that there was no chance of it being met. Daladier’s appeal and his preparations to fight were considered, together with Japan’s protest against the German–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, which was diametrically opposed to Japanese interests. Groscurth noted: ‘6th Mob[ilisation Day] is new attack date.48 Two to three days before, the Führer will notify ObdH [Brauchitsch]. K[eitel] already talking of possibly earlier date. Halder explained no question of it. Either a surprise or invasion to plan. No half-measures are possible.’49
General Thomas – presumably with Canaris’s knowledge – undertook one last desperate mission to Keitel, presenting him with a memorandum that Oster, Gisevius, Schacht, Beck and Goerdeler were hoping might convince the OKW chief, by the use of many statistics, that the military–economic efficiency of Germany was no match for the alliance of the major powers. Thomas reported that Keitel had shown the document to Hitler, who read it and said that he did not share the generals’ fears now that ‘he had the Soviet Union in his pocket’. The treaty with Russia had been the greatest political success of a German politician in recent decades. Thomas said later: ‘I have never been sure whether Hitler, under the influence of Ribbentrop, really believed that Britain would not come into the Polish war, or if Keitel deceived me.’50
On 28 August Oster and Groscurth arrived for discussions with Halder and StHpnagel at Zossen. Oster was apparently still hoping to drive a wedge between the Army and Hitler. He carried an ‘official’ warning from the Prussian finance minister to the Wehrmacht, in which Hitler had threatened: ‘I can also be a Communist and apply Bolshevist methods,’51 a clear reference to the 1937 purge of the Soviet officer corps by Stalin in which thousands of officers had been killed. In his diary, Halder noted that the warning was addressed to everybody who wanted to stab Hitler in the back.52 Oster and Groscurth also reported on the conversations involving Hitler, the Reichstag deputies and party chiefs, including Himmler, Heydrich, Bormann, Goebbels and the Gauleiters at the Reich Chancellery the previous afternoon. Military officers had not been invited but Oster and Groscurth were told about it by security men.53
Groscurth summarised the content of Hitler’s speech:
Situation very grave. He [Hitler] was determined to resolve the Eastern question one way or the other. He had made certain suggestions to Henderson and was now awaiting the answer. Least demands: Danzig and Corridor. Greatest demands: depending on military situation. If least demands not met, then war. War by the most brutal and inhuman means . . . war would be difficult, perhaps even lacking any prospect of success, but an honourable defeat was preferable to capitulation. He said, ‘So long as I live, I will never use the word capitulation.’54
Hitler seemed nervous and weak and gave the impression of being firmly in the grip of his SS advisers;55 Mussolini had come up with a hurried idea for a compromise which proposed the immediate return of Danzig to Germany in return for German participation in a European conference. Late on the evening of 28 August Henderson came to the Reich Chancellery bringing a letter from the British Government confirming that it would stand by its pact with Poland but had reached an agreement with the Poles for direct talks with Berlin. This forced Hitler on the defensive diplomatically and from the aspect of propaganda; he appeared to consider the British offer and told Henderson that he was ready for direct talks with Poland provided a Polish negotiator presented himself within twenty-four hours in Berlin. Henderson interpreted the condition as an ultimatum to gain Hitler time in order to keep to his schedule for war,56 but London kept the usual diplomatic channels open and the German Foreign Ministry responded with a thoroughly moderate memorandum signalling a readiness for compromise. It provided sixteen points, a mixture of demands and suggestions to resolve the conflict, which Interpreter Schmidt translated with incredulity: ‘It was a real League of Nations type of thing.’57 It was also merely a delaying tactic. Shortly before midnight on 30 August Ribbentrop received the British ambassador, read him the sixteen points but refused to let Henderson have them in writing, which made it clear that the proposal was not meant to be taken seriously. When Henderson asked in disbelief what was going on, Ribbentrop tossed the paper on the table and said: ‘It has all fallen through because the Polish negotiator did not come.’58
Secretary of State von Weizsäcker wrote next day
Since the evening of 30 August one is determined to have a war, come what may. I guess that Ribbentrop’s advice was decisive, for he cut all strings which still offered something. Why the Führer is starting the war without Italy and against the Western Powers, which he avoided before, is not clear to me; I had understood his aim until 30 August to be a very tense bluff with the intention of eventually falling back in line. I will write nothing further about my unending attempts to avert this development, since they lack interest because ultimately they were unsuccessful. A new stage is now beginning. It remains to be seen if my life still has a purpose.59
Groscurth noted in his diary on 31 August: ‘17oohrs: orders to march given for tomorrow at 0430hrs!!! So, the madness unfolds.’60 Late that afternoon Gisevi
us received a call from Oster asking him to come to OKW headquarters at the Bendlerstrasse; although Oster spoke in veiled terms, Gisevius inferred from it at once that Hitler had given fresh orders to attack Poland. In the porch leading to the Abwehr offices, he saw a group of officers approaching, amongst them Canaris. He wanted to avoid a meeting with the admiral so as to keep their friendship secret, but Canaris hung back and drew Gisevius into a dark corner. ‘What do you say now?’ Canaris asked. When Gisevius made no reply, Canaris sobbed: ‘It is the end of Germany.’61
Canaris was convinced that Hitler’s order would plunge Germany into the final disaster, having long anticipated it and discussed it continually amongst his closest circle.62 To prevent war had been the primary goal of the various circles of conspirators; to the bitter end, even in the chaotic last days of peace, they had wavered between euphoria and despair. Now they were thwarted by Hitler and Ribbentrop’s will for force, their own weakness and that of the Wehrmacht heads. The war on Poland signalled the defeat of the military and civilian opposition to Hitler.63
19
The War of Extermination – Act One
In the hours before the attack, both despair and stoic application to duty reigned amongst Canaris and his entourage. General Erich Hoepner, a member of the Resistance, commented on 1 September: ‘The Polish question has to be resolved,’1 and even Halder and other generals were of the opinion that a correction of the borders in the East was unavoidable and von Brauchitsch saw it as his duty to adhere to Hitler’s political guidelines. When von Weizsäcker explained to Brauchitsch on 31 August that the intervention of France and Britain was now to be expected, and history would judge that the responsibility for it lay with the military commanders, Brauchitsch merely shrugged; the Führer did not think so, he replied.2 But even von Weizsäcker, a severe critic of the regime, saw in the ‘Danzig Question’ and the ‘North East Problem’ political aims that needed to be settled – Danzig and the overland bridge to East Prussia were important territorial claims of the Reich3 – so nobody condemned the attack on Poland out of hand.4
On the morning of 1 September 1939, Hitler went to the Reichstag wearing an SS jacket made for him by his aides. He addressed the deputies – one hundred of whom had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht, the remainder of the seats being filled by party functionaries – with a delivery that seemed forced and was not received with the customary storm of applause when he justified the attack on Poland as a necessary defence: ‘In the early hours Polish regular troops fired on us for the first time on our national territory. We fired back at 0545 [actually 0445]. And from now on we shall retaliate bomb for bomb.’5
Groscurth, who heard the speech at Zossen, commented: ‘Reichstag speech, fearsome impression everywhere;’6 he had been called several hours before by Canaris, to tell him the latest news, but there was little information to hand from the front so early. The commando mission to take the Vistula bridges at Dirschau intact had failed; Königsberg Abwehr reported that the bridges were demolished after Polish units took the bridgeheads. Dirschau was not captured until the following day.7
The same morning, Canaris addressed his senior staff at the Tirpitzufer, demanding their loyalty to Führer and Reich and an ‘unconditionally positive attitude’,8 afterwards listening to Hitler’s broadcast speech in silence. When Hitler spoke of the fourteen border incidents that had already occurred the previous night,9 Hans Piekenbrock, leader of Gruppe I Secret Report Service stated: ‘Now we know why we had to supply the Polish uniforms.’10
Although Hitler had not mentioned the raid on Gleiwitz radio station, Canaris repeated Piekenbrock’s observations to Lahousen and other Abteilung heads;11 in fact, the Polish uniforms had not been used at Gleiwitz,12 only at ‘other theatres’ that night. Concentration camp inmates were murdered by the SD, Sipo and SS to play their allotted roles.13
The same day, Brauchitsch appealed to the Polish people: ‘The Wehrmacht does not see the people as its enemy. All provisions of international law will be respected. Industry and public administration will continue working, and will be expanded.’14 What such assurances were worth would be seen in the first days of the military campaign, when the Poles were given a foretaste of the ‘orgy of atrocities’15 to come.
Army Quartermaster-General Oberst Eduard Wagner, Heydrich and Werner Best agreed to the arrest and incarceration in concentration camps of 10,000 Poles in a ‘first stage’, and 20,000 more in a ‘second stage’.16 The arrestees were catalogued on SD and police-Abwehr priority-capture lists, a method which had been used in the invasions of Austria, Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia; they were Poles identified as ‘anti-German’: clerics, Communists and so-called insurgents who had taken part in the Polish revolts in Upper Silesia in the early 1920s.17 The mass arrests were primarily the responsibility of Einsatzgruppen attached to each of the five invading armies and would follow close behind their advance, with each Einsatzgruppe consisting of one Gestapo, Kripo (criminal police) and SD unit with specific police and intelligence missions. In Berlin a special office codenamed ‘Tannenberg’ was set up under Best’s direct control for contact to the Einzsatzgruppen, whose aim was ‘to combat anti-German and anti-Reich elements in enemy territories behind the fighting troops’.18 Enemies of the Reich were all those who resisted the German occupation, Communists and leftist Social Democrats, including those active before the invasion, and all Jews. Halder expressed ‘some doubts about Himmler’s proposed measures’19 in a conversation with Goering’s liaison officer, but this was the sum total of the protests.
In principle, there was agreement between Sipo and the Wehrmacht regarding the action against the ‘anti-German’ elements,20 open to individual interpretation. Although the military commander-in-chief controlled the police and there was no talk of shootings and deportations, the Einsatzgruppen demonstrated from the start that the SS leadership thought otherwise. The events of the so-called ‘Bromberg Bloody Sunday’ of 3 September 1939 were the decisive excuse for the dramatic ‘intensification and radicalisation’21 of their activities.22
That day, Canaris, Piekenbrock and Oster toured the front23 from Neisee to Breslau via Tschenstochau and Oppeln.24 On his return, Canaris related to Groscurth the favourable impression he had gained:25 morale at the front was good.26
Speaking of the British and French declarations of war on 3 September 1939, Groscurth wrote: ‘I was correct in my pessimism. Frightful!’,27 believing that the protests against false propaganda reports of alleged Polish atrocities28 were justified, and annoyed that OKH deliberately understated German casualty figures.29 On the other hand, he noted – not without satisfaction – ‘good progress in the East’30 and the success of the K-Organisations, one of which had captured the industrial city of Kattowitz before regular troops arrived, a feat expressly recognised as an achievement.31
Best remembered that shortly after the war began,32 he had invited Canaris, Lahousen, Pieckenbrock and von Bentivegni for wine at his Berlin flat:
My wife and I were horrified and depressed about the British and French declarations of war. The Abwehr officers were surprisingly optimistic, however, and thought it would last only a few months. When with my approval my wife said ‘The war will last five years’, Oberst Bentivegni smiled and told her that she did not understand and was wrong. Canaris made no comment, although in this situation he could easily have shared our fears.33
In any case, this incident is noteworthy for the mood that prevailed in Canaris’s closest circle after the outbreak of war.
German propaganda about Polish tactics involving fifth columnists, snipers and partisans, which had led to disproportionate reprisals in the First World War, was now rife in the press.34 This resulted from the outset in heightened aggression especially towards irregulars and civilian militia,35 and in turn members of the German minority in Poland were held liable for German acts of sabotage and espionage. Despite grave warnings against the practice from the Foreign Ministry the previous year, numerous Volksdeutsche had
been recruited as spies by the military Abwehr and police-Abwehr, and ‘used for illegal operations’,36 and Poles had been asked to keep vigilant for German spies and saboteurs.37
Although the events are still unclear, it seems likely that, around noon on ‘Bromberg Bloody Sunday’, members of the German minority fired on Polish soldiers, which led to reprisals by the Polish military, militia and civilians against the Volksdeutsche. Between the departure of Polish troops from Bromberg on the evening of 3 September, and the arrival of the first German units on 5 September, the Polish ‘citizen’s army’ had taken their revenge on the Volksdeutsche insurgents, leaving a trail of murders, rapes and beatings;38 no figure had been given of the exact number of German victims of this ‘local pogrom’39 and the original estimate of 140 rose to one thousand the next day.40 As similar measures had been taken in other Polish towns, the events later became known as ‘the September murders’ and claimed around 5,400 victims of German stock, a figure that in February 1940 became 54,000, apparently on Hitler’s personal order for propaganda purposes.41
Ignorant of the events at Bromberg,42 on 3 September Himmler ordered the Einsatzgruppen that all ‘Polish insurgents caught red-handed or carrying a weapon’43 were to be shot on the spot without trial. In a telex the same evening he appointed SS-Gruppenführer Udo von Woyrsch as Special Police Commander and authorised him to set up an Einsatzgruppe zbV (special purposes) whose purpose was ‘the radical destruction of the burgeoning Polish insurgency in the occupied regions of Upper Silesia, by all means at their disposal, above all the overwhelming and disarming of Polish gangs, executions and arrests’.44 Von Woyrsch had orders to work closely with the Wehrmacht and ‘civilian centres’ and was formally subordinate to the commander, 8.Armee, Army Group South.
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