The Day We Went to War

by Terry Charman

  3.40am, SS ATHENIA, ATLANTIC OCEAN

  The liner passes Inishtrahull, on the north-western corner of Ireland, as she sails into the Eastern Atlantic.

  3.50am (4.50am), FOREIGN MINISTRY, BERLIN

  Already, there is a great deal of German criticism of Italy ‘ratting’ on the Pact of Steel, which was signed less than four months ago. It is 1914 all over again. To defuse such criticism, von Ribbentrop sends a message to all German missions abroad, ‘German-Italian policy is based on complete and clear agreement between the Fuehrer and the Duce. In case you are addressed on the subject, you should adopt this point of view. There must be no criticism of the Italian attitude and, if made, it will be severely punished.’

  5.00am, FOREIGN MINISTRY, QUAI D’ORSAY, PARIS

  Georges Bonnet hears from André François-Poncet, his ambassador in Rome. The ambassador reports on the collapse of the Italian proposal for a five-power conference. Any hopes of pulling off another Munich are now dead. Realising now that war is inevitable, Bonnet’s mind goes back to August 1914: ‘the mobilisation drums, the departure for the front of trains covered with slogans, carrying away friends and brothers’. Having been a soldier in 1914–18, and decorated for bravery, Bonnet knows only too well the horrors of war. He has hoped to spare France from those horrors this time. Reluctantly, he now accepts that war with Germany is just a matter of hours away.

  5.00am (6.00am), GERMAN-POLISH BORDER

  Fervent Nazi Wilhelm Prueller writes an anniversary letter in his diary to his wife Henny: ‘Today our first anniversary! How can we celebrate it? I: in the woods ready to attack. You: thinking of me, not knowing where I am. Sad, isn’t it? But there’s nothing to do about it, is there? It’s war! Just what is war? A compilation of sacrifices and exhaustion, of thirst and occasionally hunger, of heat and cold. I hope it’s finished soon.’

  6.16am, BRITAIN: It is sunrise, British Summer Time and therefore the official end of last night’s blackout.

  7.00am, BRITAIN: All over the country, newspaper boys are delivering the Sunday newspapers. In them are the first eyewitness accounts of the German invasion of Poland, now entering its third day. The Sunday Express carries a vivid description by special correspondent Denis Sefton Delmer of the first raids on the outskirts of Warsaw:

  I was driving out to Modlin, twenty miles from Warsaw, to check up on the casualties and damage of the morning’s raid there. Just across the Vistula I sighted the first group of raiders, four German bombers, being headed off from the bridge by Polish fighters. The fighters were driving them on to Polish anti-aircraft fire.

  Truly it was superb shooting the Polish batteries were putting up, and sure enough it told. I saw one German machine come heading earthwards like a great black arrow. A moment later a second followed on the left. Two black clouds of smoke half a mile from each other showed where they’d fallen.

  More and more German bombers came over. Though I still do not think it was the real mass stuff, there was one group of triple-engine bombers with three escort planes above and behind them. They tried to fly through a barrage of black anti-aircraft shrapnel – then suddenly the guns were silent and high out of the skies silver-glinting Polish fighters swooped down, machine guns going full out. They swept past the Germans. The Germans opened formation, then as the anti-aircraft fire started up again, they wheeled and bombs dropped harmlessly, judged by the cloud of smoke I saw coming up from riverside fields.

  Farther on a cottage was burning. A bomb had set it on fire. Behind this group had come another group of planes diving in circus. There was furious bombing. What they were after I do not know. Perhaps it was the bridge. But within a second the fighters were on their tail and the circus was forced to beat it. By the roadside stood a fair-haired girl weeping beside her two little blond children, a boy and a girl. She frantically waved at us. ‘Take me back to Warsaw, I can’t stand it here any longer,’ she pleaded.

  Somehow we piled them all in. The burning house was their country cottage. She had come out with them in the four o’clock bus this afternoon to have them safe outside Warsaw.

  As I put them down at the first waiting tram, an air raid warden rushed up to show us a ‘bit of bomb’, his first. It was a fragment of shrapnel.

  Driving back to Warsaw an hour and a half after the raid began, the alarm was still on. Behind us out in the country, the anti-aircraft firing away stopped the last wave of German afternoon raiders.

  No bomb had fallen in Warsaw. Fire brigades and ambulances were standing by unwanted . . .

  And the paper also features another story from the Polish capital that surely stretches the reader’s credulity this Sunday morning. It smacks of the rumours twenty-five years ago of Russian soldiers on the way to France with snow on their boots. ‘It has been reported that two out of three of the bombs used in the first air raids on Warsaw did not explode. On examination they were found to contain, instead of high explosive, slips of paper bearing the words, “We are with you in spirit,” and signed, “Workers of the Skoda Arms Factory, Czecho-Slovakia”.’

  8.00am, FOREIGN MINISTRY, QUAI D’ORSAY, PARIS

  Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, looking, an American reporter thinks, ‘how Pinnochio would have looked at forty-nine’, leaves the Foreign Ministry. He is driven to the Ministry of National Defence. He is going to meet Premier Edouard Daladier, who is also defence minister, to confer about the time limit in the French ultimatum Ambassador Coulondre is going to present in Berlin at midday. Daladier tells Bonnet to set the opening of hostilities for Monday, 4 September at 5am. The premier, who is highly distrustful of his foreign minister, tells Bonnet that the general staff refuse to accept a shorter delay. Bonnet now returns to the Quai d’Orsay and starts to draft the ultimatum, ‘weighing each word of this historic dispatch’.

  8.00am (9.00am), KONSTANCIN, WARSAW DISTRICT

  United States ambassador to Poland, the urbane Anthony J. Drexel Biddle Jr is at his emergency residence at Konstancin. It is about twelve miles south of Warsaw on the left bank of the Vistula. With Mrs Biddle, his daughter and some guests and staff, the ambassador left the capital last night to try and get some rest. Konstancin is a small town which has a dozen or so villas like the Biddles’, and also a brick factory. As his guests enjoy the morning sunshine, the ambassador is in the bathroom shaving. Suddenly a lone Dornier bomber dives out of the clouds. The ’plane straightens up and releases its load of eleven bombs. One hits a neighbouring villa and six fail to explode; they are either time bombs or duds. The Biddles are lucky. They receive no direct hits, but the windows of the ambassadorial villa have been blown in. And their Great Dane ‘Okay’ is badly shaken by the bomb blasts.

  8.00am (9.00am), LEKI DUZE, LODZ DISTRICT, POLAND

  Men of SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler enter the small village. They shoot a number of unarmed civilians. Among the dead are Anna Ostrycharz, her small child and brother Stanislaw. The SS men then set fire to Anna’s home. Moving on through the village they also murder Jozefa Wysota and Leon Kowalski. The villagers are at a loss to know why these indiscriminate killings are taking place because no one has fired on or attacked the Germans.

  8.00am (9.00am), FOREIGN MINISTRY, WILHELMSTRASSE, BERLIN

  Today of all days, Dr Schmidt has overslept. He has had to dash by taxi to get to the Foreign Ministry in time for his meeting with Sir Nevile Henderson. As he is driving across the Wilhelmplatz, Schmidt sees the elegant British envoy entering the building. By using a side entrance, he manages to catch up with himself. And he is in von Ribbentrop’s office when, punctually at 9am, Sir Nevile is shown in. Schmidt sees immediately that the ambassador is in a very serious frame of mind. The two men shake hands, but Sir Nevile declines Schmidt’s offer of a seat.

  ‘I regret,’ says Henderson in a voice of deep emotion, ‘that on the instructions of my government I have to hand you an ultimatum for the German Government. Still standing in the middle of the room, Sir Nevile reads out to Schmidt the British ultimatum:


  Sir

  In the communication which I had the honour to make to make to you on 1st September, I informed you on the instructions of His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs that unless the German Government were prepared to give His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom satisfactory assurances that the German Government had suspended all aggressive action against Poland and were prepared promptly to withdraw their forces from Polish territory His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom would without hesitation, fulfil our obligations to Poland.

  Although now it is more than twenty-four hours ago no reply has been received, and German attacks upon Poland have intensified.

  I have, therefore, to inform you that unless not later than 11am British Summer Time today, 3rd September, satisfactory assurances to the above effect have been given by the German Government and have reached His Majesty’s Government in London, a state of war would exist between the two countries as from that hour.

  Henderson finishes reading the ultimatum and hands it to the normally jovial Schmidt, a popular figure with foreign diplomats in Berlin. The ambassador tells him, ‘I am sincerely sorry that I must hand such a document to you in particular, as you have always been most anxious to help.’ Schmidt too expresses his regret and adds a few heartfelt words. He has the highest regard for Sir Nevile, who, despite all his many failings, has been pathetically sincere in his mission to bring peace and understanding between Britain and Germany. The two men shake hands in parting, and Henderson returns to the embassy. Schmidt hurriedly makes his way down the Wilhelmstrasse to the Reich Chancellery.

  8.20am (9.20am), REICH CHANCELLERY, VOSS-STRASSE, BERLIN Schmidt arrives at the Chancellery. It has been designed and built by Hitler’s favourite architect Albert Speer. The Fuehrer only moved into it this January. Schmidt has to virtually fight his way through a crowd of Government and Nazi Party officials that have collected in the room next to Hitler’s study.

  ‘What’s the news?’ Schmidt is asked, to which he can only reply, ‘Classroom dismissed’, before he is ushered into the Fuehrer’s presence. The study measures 400 square metres. Speer has placed the furniture, groups of chairs, map table and a huge globe, all of which he has designed himself, near the walls. This is in order to heighten the sense of size and spaciousness. Hitler’s desk, at which he is sitting as Schmidt enters, is decorated with a wooden inlay depicting a sword half drawn from the scabbard. ‘Good, good,’ Hitler had said when he first inspected it, ‘when the diplomats sitting in front of me at this desk see this, they’ll learn to shiver and shake.’

  But today the only other person present as Schmidt delivers the British ultimatum is von Ribbentrop, standing by the window. Both men look up expectantly as the interpreter comes in. Stopping at some distance from Hitler’s desk, Schmidt slowly translates the British ultimatum. When he finishes there is complete silence in the enormous room. Hitler sits immobile, gazing before him, completely silent and unmoving. After an interval that seems like eternity, Hitler turns to his foreign minister, still standing by the window, and with a savage look on his face asks von Ribbentrop, ‘What now?’

  To which von Ribbentrop quietly replies, ‘I assume that the French will hand in a similar ultimatum within the hour.’

  Schmidt now withdraws, and in the anteroom tells the waiting throng, ‘The English have just handed us an ultimatum. In two hours a state of war will exist between England and Germany.’ Just as in Hitler’s study a few minutes ago, the news is met by stunned silence. Goering turns to Schmidt and says, ‘If we lose this war, then God have mercy on us!’ And as he is about to make his way back to the Foreign Ministry, Schmidt sees Dr Goebbels standing in a corner. Hitler’s propaganda genius, he notices, looks downcast and self-absorbed, ‘like the proverbial drenched poodle’. So far today Hitler has retained his self-control, but now in the Chancellery’s conservatory in front of von Ribbentrop, Hess, Himmler and Dr Goebbels, he verbally savages the British:

  ‘The Poles are a miserable, good-for-nothing, loud-mouthed rabble. The British understand that as well as we do; the British gentlemen understand that might is right. When it comes to inferior races they were our first schoolmasters. It is disgraceful to present Czechs and Poles as sovereign states when this rabble is not a jot better than the Sudanese or the Indians – and only because on this occasion, it is about German interests and not British ones. My entire policy towards Britain has been based on recognising the natural realities as they exist on both sides, and now they want to put me in the pillory. That is an unspeakable vilification.’

  9.15am, OLYMPIA EXHIBITION HALL, LONDON

  Anti-Nazi activist Eugen Spier, a German Jewish refugee, wakes up after an incredible sixteen-hour sleep. He has been in detention since yesterday afternoon, and at Olympia is registered as Prisoner of War No. 1. Among his fellow prisoners are the Jewish former Police Vice-President of Berlin Bernhard Weiss and Ernst ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl. Up until two years ago, ‘Putzi’ was the Nazi Party’s Foreign Press Chief.

  9.15am (10.15am), BYDOSZCZ (BROMBERG)

  Polish troops are withdrawing through the western parts of the city when they are suddenly fired upon. The shooting comes from members of the German minority, the Volksdeutsche, who have featured so heavily in Dr Goebbels’s propaganda over the last few weeks. One eyewitness to the shootings is Lucy Baker-Beall. She is an English schoolteacher who has taught in Polish schools for the past thirty-two years. Today’s attacks on Poles by ethnic Germans are not the first. Miss Baker-Beall heard the first shots on Friday, and she herself has been fired on twice while in the street. Today, she has heard the firing intensify with the Germans using machine guns against the Poles. Among the Polish victims that Miss Baker-Beall sees is an unarmed air-raid warden shot dead with a bullet in his head. Two other wardens, a man and a women, who live in the same house as Miss Baker-Beall, have also been wounded. A nearby first-aid post is under constant fire from a German-inhabited house. The Poles are taking strong countermeasures. Any German caught with a weapon in his hand is shot. An official Polish count puts the fatalities today, ‘Bloody Sunday’, at 238 Poles and 223 Germans.

  9.20am, FOREIGN MINISTRY, QUAI D’ORSAY, PARIS

  Georges Bonnet telephones the text of the French ultimatum to his ambassador in Berlin, Robert Coulondre. He tells his ambassador, ‘If the reply . . . is negative . . . you will notify the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, or his representative, that from 5am, tomorrow September 4, France will be obliged to fulfil her obligations to Poland, which are known to the German government. You may then ask for your passports.’

  10.00am, 10 DOWNING STREET

  Over the BBC’s new Home Service, announcer Alvar Lidell broadcasts a statement from the Prime Minister’s residence: ‘Following the midnight meeting of the Cabinet, the British ambassador at 9.00am this morning gave the German Government two further hours in which to decide whether they would at once withdraw their troops from Poland. This ultimatum expires at 11.00am. The Prime Minister will broadcast to the nation at 11.15am.’

  10.00am, OXFORD

  Dorothy Bartlett is at her parents’ home when she hears the BBC announcement that Chamberlain is going to speak at 11.15am. The family are all out in the garden. The day has started off rather chilly, but the sun has gradually risen: it is now fine and rather warm. But the announcement has put them all in a strange mood. They all know or strongly suspect what Chamberlain is going to tell them. Dorothy notices that everybody finds it difficult to settle to the simplest of tasks. Her young sister Mary says, ‘Well, it is a good job that it is Sunday and time doesn’t really matter. We should be thankful that we have a few hours in which to get used to the idea.’

  10.00am (11.00am), GERMAN-POLISH BORDER

  Wilhelm Prueller’s unit is just about to go into action when the attack is called off. In his diary, he notes down the latest rumour: ‘11am: The Fuehrer is said is said to have issued an ultimatum to the Poles that they should give us the land we’v
e taken. If there’s no satisfactory answer by 12.00, 2,000 of our planes will take off at 12.01 and destroy cities and villages. That would mean practically the end of Poland. The Poles ought to accept.’

  10.00am (11.00am), MUNICH

  Unity Mitford, twenty-five-year-old daughter of Lord Redesdale, and a passionate admirer of Hitler and all things German, drives up to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior. She is promptly shown into the office of Munich Gauleiter Adolf Wagner. She hands Wagner a heavy envelope with the words, ‘I should like to give you this.’ She then abruptly leaves. The Gauleiter, with so much else on his plate today, puts the envelope to one side, and carries on dealing with official correspondence.

  10.15am (11.15am), GERMAN-POLISH BORDER

  Wilhelm Prueller and his comrades are still mulling over the rumour about the Fuehrer’s ultimatum to the Poles. Suddenly, Polish planes are spotted: ‘Plenty of excitement. Polish flyers appear and shoot at us, the flak goes into action. One, two, three, they are all shot down.’

  10.30am (11.30am), KONSTANCIN, WARSAW DISTRICT

  Hearing of the attack on the American ambassador’s villa, foreign correspondents have dashed from Warsaw to view the damage. They are now clamouring to interview Biddle. He puts on a brave front and jokingly tells them, ‘I am sure Hermann Goering knew my address but I hardly believed he would send a calling card so soon. As an American husband and father I’m proud of the way the women took the experience. They stood it like soldiers and never quivered.’ The Poles are naturally anxious for the popular ambassador’s safety. But they are delighted that such a leading foreign envoy can now be cited as a witness to the fact that the Germans, despite their promises, are deliberately bombing nonmilitary targets. Biddle now motors back to Warsaw. There he cables Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Washington an account of the bombing.