The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

by William L. Shirer

  * When asked during cross-examination by Mr. Justice Jackson at Nuremberg whether he had actually said this, Goering replied, “Yes, this was said in a moment of bad temper and excitement … It was not meant seriously.”6

  * The American ambassador in Berlin, Hugh Wilson, was recalled by President Roosevelt on November 14, two days after Goering’s meeting, “for consultations,” and never returned to his post. The German ambassador in Washington, Hans Dieckhoff, who on that day reported to Berlin that “a hurricane is raging here” as the result of the German pogrom, was recalled on November 18 and likewise never returned. On November 30, Hans Thomsen, the German chargé d’affaires in Washington, advised Berlin by code that “in view of the strained relations and the lack of security for secret material” in the embassy, the “secret political files” be removed to Berlin. “The files,” he said, “are so bulky that they cannot be destroyed quickly enough should the necessity arise.”7

  * On January 28, 1939, Lord Halifax secretly warned President Roosevelt that “as early as November 1938, there were indications which gradually became more definite that Hitler was planning a further foreign adventure for the spring of 1939.” The British Foreign Secretary said that “reports indicate that Hitler, encouraged by Ribbentrop, Himmler and others, is considering an attack on the Western Powers as a preliminary to subsequent action in the East.”8

  * A German version of Ribbentrop’s talk with Ciano in Rome on October 28, drawn up by Dr. Schmidt, confirms Ribbentrop’s bellicose attitude and quotes him as saying that Germany and Italy must prepare for “armed conflict with the Western democracies … here and now.” At this meeting Ribbentrop also assured Ciano that Munich had revealed the strength of the isolationists in the U.S.A. “so that there is nothing to fear from America.”10

  † This fantastic retreat, built at great cost over three years, was difficult to reach. Ten miles of a hairpin road, cut into the mountainside, led up to a long underground passageway, drilled into the rock, from which an elevator carried one 370 feet to the cabin perched at an elevation of over 6,000 feet on the summit of a mountain. It afforded a breath-taking panorama of the Alps. Salzburg could be seen in the distance. Describing it later, François-Poncet wondered, “Was this edifice the work of a normal mind or of one tormented by megalomania and haunted by visions of domination and solitude?”

  * On November 24, Hitler issued another secret directive instructing the Wehrmacht to make preparations for the military occupation of Danzig, but that will be taken up later. Already the Fuehrer was looking beyond the final conquest of Czechoslovakia.

  * Hitler also demanded that the Czechoslovak National Bank turn over part of its gold reserve to the Reichsbank. The sum requested was 391.2 million Czech crowns in gold. On February 18 Goering wrote the German Foreign Office: “In view of the increasingly difficult currency position, I must insist most strongly that the 30 to 40 million Reichsmarks in gold [from the Czech National Bank] which are involved come into our possession very shortly; they are urgently required for the execution of important orders of the Fuehrer.”16

  † See above, p. 359.

  * Monsignor Tiso, as this writer recalls him, was almost as broad as he was high. He was an enormous eater. “When I get worked up,” he once told Dr. Paul Schmidt, “I eat half a pound of ham, and that soothes my nerves.” He was to die on the gallows. Arrested by American Army authorities on June 8, 1945, and turned over to the newly restored Czechoslovakia, he was condemned to death on April 15, 1947, after a trial lasting four months, and was executed on April 18.

  * Italics in the original German minutes.

  * There is a difference of opinion on this point. Some historians have contended that the Germans forced Hácha to come to Berlin. They probably base this contention on a dispatch of the French ambassador in Berlin, who said he had learned this “from a reliable source.” But the German Foreign Office documents, subsequently discovered, make it clear that the initiative came from Hácha. He first requested an interview with Hitler on March 13, through the German Legation in Prague, and repeated the request on the morning of the fourteenth. Hitler agreed to it that afternoon.25

  * The emphasis is in the German original.

  * On the stand in Nuremberg, Goering admitted that he told Hácha, “I should be sorry if I had to bomb beautiful Prague.” He really didn’t intend to carry out the threat—“that would not have been necessary,” he explained. “But a point like that, I thought, might serve as an argument and accelerate the whole matter.”27

  * On the stand at Nuremberg, Neurath stated that he was taken by “complete surprise” when Hitler named him Protector, and that he had “misgivings” about taking the job. However, he says, he took it when Hitler explained that by this appointment he wanted to assure Britain and France “that he did not wish to carry on a policy hostile to Czechoslovakia.”29

  * It might be of interest to skip ahead here and note what happened to some of the characters in the drama just recounted. Frank was sentenced to death by a postwar Czech court and publicly hanged near Prague on May 22, 1946. Henlein committed suicide after his arrest by Czech resistance forces in 1945. Chvalkovsky, who became the representative of the protectorate in Berlin, was killed in an Allied bombing there in 1944. Hácha was arrested by the Czechs on May 14, 1945, but died before he could be tried.

  * On March 16 Chamberlain told the Commons that “so far” no protest had been lodged with the German government.

  * Coulondre’s version of the interview is given in the French Yellow Book (No. 78, pp. 102–3, in the French edition). He confirms Weizsaecker’s account. Later, at his trial in Nuremberg, the State Secretary argued that in his memoranda of such meetings he had purposely exaggerated his Nazi sentiments in order to cover his real anti-Nazi activities. But Coulondre’s account of the meeting is only one piece of evidence that Weizsaecker did not exaggerate at all.

  14

  THE TURN OF POLAND

  ON OCTOBER 24, 1938, less than a month after Munich, Ribbentrop was host to Józef Lipski, the Polish ambassador in Berlin, at a three-hour lunch at the Grand Hotel in Berchtesgaden. Poland, like Germany and indeed in connivance with her, had just seized a strip of Czech territory. The luncheon talk proceeded, as a German Foreign Office memorandum stressed, “in a very friendly atmosphere.”1

  Nevertheless, the Nazi Foreign Minister lost little time in getting down to business. The time had come, he said, for a general settlement between Poland and Germany. It was necessary, first of all, he continued, “to speak with Poland about Danzig.” It should “revert” to Germany. Also, Ribbentrop said, the Reich wished to build a super motor highway and a double-track railroad across the Polish Corridor to connect Germany with Danzig and East Prussia. Both would have to enjoy extraterritorial rights. Finally, Hitler wished Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact against Russia. In return for all these concessions, Germany would be willing to extend the Polish–German treaty by from ten to twenty years and guarantee Poland’s frontiers.

  Ribbentrop emphasized he was broaching these problems “in strict confidence.” He suggested that the ambassador make his report to Foreign Minister Beck “orally—since otherwise there was great danger of its leaking out, especially to the press.” Lipski promised to report to Warsaw but warned Ribbentrop that personally he saw “no possibility” of the return of Danzig to Germany. He further reminded the German Foreign Minister of two recent occasions—November 5, 1937, and January 14, 1938—when Hitler had personally assured the Poles that he would not support any change in the Danzig Statute.2 Ribbentrop replied that he did not wish an answer now, but advised the Poles “to think it over.”

  The government in Warsaw did not need much time to collect its thoughts. A week later, on October 31, Foreign Minister Beck dispatched detailed instructions to his ambassador in Berlin on how to answer the Germans. But it was not until November 19 that the latter was able to secure an interview with Ribbentrop—the Nazis obviously wanted the Poles to cons
ider well their response. It was negative. As a gesture of understanding, Poland was willing to replace the League of Nations’ guarantee of Danzig with a German–Polish agreement about the status of the Free City.

  “Any other solution,” Beck wrote in a memorandum which Lipski read to Ribbentrop, “and in particular any attempt to incorporate the Free City into the Reich, must inevitably lead to conflict.” And he added that Marshal Pilsudski, the late dictator of Poland, had warned the Germans in 1934, during the negotiations for a nonaggression pact, that “the Danzig question was a sure criterion for estimating Germany’s intentions toward Poland.”

  Such a reply was not to Ribbentrop’s taste. “He regretted the position taken by Beck” and advised the Poles that it was “worth the trouble to give serious consideration to the German proposals.”3

  Hitler’s response to Poland’s rebuff on Danzig was more drastic. On November 24, five days after the Ribbentrop-Lipski meeting, he issued another directive to the commanders in chief of the armed forces.

  TOP SECRET

  The Fuehrer has ordered: Apart from the three contingencies mentioned in the instructions of 10/21/38* preparations are also to be made to enable the Free State of Danzig to be occupied by German troops by surprise.

  The preparations will be made on the following basis: Condition is a quasi-revolutionary occupation of Danzig, exploiting a politically favorable situation, not a war against Poland.† …

  The troops to be employed for this purpose must not simultaneously be earmarked for the occupation of the Memelland, so that both operations can, if necessary, take place simultaneously. The Navy will support the Army’s operation by attack from the sea … The plans of the branches of the armed forces are to be submitted by January 10, 1939.

  Though Beck had just warned that an attempt by Germany to take Danzig would lead “inevitably” to conflict, Hitler now convinced himself that it could be done without a war. Local Nazis controlled Danzig and they took their orders, as had the Sudeteners, from Berlin. It would not be difficult to stir up a “quasi-revolutionary” situation there.

  Thus, as 1938 approached its end, the year that had seen the bloodless occupation of Austria and the Sudetenland, Hitler was preoccupied with further conquest: the remainder of Czechoslovakia, Memel, and Danzig. It had been easy to humble Schuschnigg and Beneš. Now it was Józef Beck’s turn.

  Yet, when the Fuehrer received the Polish Foreign Minister at Berchtesgaden shortly after New Year’s—on January 5, 1939—he was not yet prepared to give him the treatment which he had meted out to Schuschnigg and was shortly to apply to President Hácha. The rest of Czechoslovakia would have to be liquidated first. Hitler, as the secret Polish and German minutes of the meeting make clear, was in one of his more conciliatory moods. He was “quite ready,” he began, “to be at Beck’s service.” Was there anything “special,” he asked, on the Polish Foreign Minister’s mind? Beck replied that Danzig was on his mind. It became obvious that it had also been on Hitler’s.

  “Danzig is German,” the Fuehrer reminded his guest, “will always remain German, and will sooner or later become part of Germany.” He could give the assurance, however, that “no fait accompli would be engineered in Danzig.”

  He wanted Danzig and he wanted a German highway and railroad across the Corridor. If he and Beck would “depart from old patterns and seek solutions along entirely new lines,” he was sure they could reach an agreement which would do justice to both countries.

  Beck was not so sure. Though, as he confided to Ribbentrop the next day, he did not want to be too blunt with the Fuehrer, he had replied that “the Danzig problem was a very difficult one.” He did not see in the Chancellor’s suggestion any “equivalent” for Poland. Hitler thereupon pointed out the “great advantage” to Poland “of having her frontier with Germany, including the Corridor, secured by treaty.” This apparently did not impress Beck, but in the end he agreed to think the problem over further.4

  After mulling it over that night, the Polish Foreign Minister had a talk with Ribbentrop the next day in Munich. He requested him to inform the Fuehrer that whereas all his previous talks with the Germans had filled him with optimism, he was today, after his meeting with Hitler, “for the first time in a pessimistic mood.” Particularly in regard to Danzig, as it had been raised by the Chancellor, he “saw no possibility whatever of agreement.”5

  It had taken Colonel Beck, like so many others who have figured in these pages, some time to awaken and to arrive at such a pessimistic view. Like most Poles, he was violently anti-Russian. Moreover, he disliked the French, for whom he had nursed a grudge since 1923, when, as Polish military attaché in Paris, he had been expelled for allegedly selling documents relating to the French Army. Perhaps it had been natural for this man, who had become Polish Foreign Minister in November 1932, to turn to Germany. For the Nazi dictatorship he had felt a warm sympathy from the beginning, and over the past six years he had striven to bring his country closer to the Third Reich and to weaken its traditional ties with France.

  Of all the countries that lay on the borders of Germany, Poland had, in the long run, the most to fear. Of all the countries, it had been the most blind to the German danger. No other provision of the Versailles Treaty had been resented by the Germans as much as that which established the Corridor, giving Poland access to the sea—and cutting off East Prussia from the Reich. The detachment of the old Hanseatic port of Danzig from Germany and its creation as a free city under the supervision of the League of Nations, but dominated economically by Poland, had equally outraged German public opinion. Even the weak and peaceful Weimar Republic had never accepted what it regarded as the Polish mutilation of the German Reich. As far back as 1922, General von Seeckt, as we have seen,* had defined the German Army’s attitude.

  Poland’s existence is intolerable and incompatible with the essential conditions of Germany’s life. Poland must go and will go—as a result of her own internal weaknesses and of action by Russia—with our aid … The obliteration of Poland must be one of the fundamental drives of German policy … [and] is attainable by means of, and with the help of, Russia.

  Prophetic words!

  The Germans forgot—or perhaps did not wish to remember—that almost all of the German land awarded Poland at Versailles, including the provinces of Posen and Polish Pomerania (Pomorze), which formed the Corridor, had been grabbed by Prussia at the time of the partitions when Prussia, Russia and Austria had destroyed the Polish nation. For more than a millennium it had been inhabited by Poles—and, to a large extent, it still was.

  No nation re-created by Versailles had had such a rough time as Poland. In the first turbulent years of its rebirth it had waged aggressive war against Russia, Lithuania, Germany and even Czechoslovakia—in the last instance over the coal-rich Teschen area. Deprived of their political freedom for a century and a half and thus without modern experience in self-rule, the Poles were unable to establish stable government or to begin to solve their economic and agrarian problems. In 1926 Marshal Pilsudski, the hero of the 1918 revolution, had marched on Warsaw, seized control of the government and, though an old-time Socialist, had gradually replaced a chaotic democratic regime with his own dictatorship. One of his last acts, before his death in 1935, was to sign a treaty of nonaggression with Hitler. This took place on January 26, 1934, and, as has been recounted,† was one of the first steps in the undermining of France’s system of alliances with Germany’s Eastern neighbors and in the weakening of the League of Nations and its concept of collective security. After Pilsudski’s death, Poland was largely governed by a small band of “colonels,” leaders of Pilsudski’s old Polish Legion which had fought against Russia during the First World War. At the head of these was Marshal Smigly-Rydz, a capable soldier but in no way a statesman. Foreign policy drifted into the hands of Colonel Beck. From 1934 on, it became increasingly pro-German.

  This was bound to be a policy of suicide. And indeed when one considers Poland’s positio
n in post-Versailles Europe it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Poles in the nineteen thirties, as on occasions in the centuries before, were driven by some fateful flaw in their national character toward self-destruction and that in this period, as sometimes formerly, they were their own worst enemies. As long as Danzig and the Corridor existed as they were, there could be no lasting peace between Poland and Nazi Germany. Nor was Poland strong enough to afford the luxury of being at odds with both her giant neighbors, Russia and Germany. Her relations with the Soviet Union had been uniformly bad since 1920, when Poland had attacked Russia, already weakened by the World War and the civil war, and a savage conflict had followed.*