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

by William L. Shirer

  Hitler finally got to the core of his answer to the President’s request that he give assurances not to attack any of thirty-one nations.

  Answer: How has Mr. Roosevelt learned which nations consider themselves threatened by German policy and which do not? Or is Mr. Roosevelt in a position, in spite of the enormous amount of work which must rest upon him in his own country, to recognize of his own accord all these inner spiritual and mental impressions of other peoples and their governments?

  Finally, Mr. Roosevelt asks that assurance be given him that the German armed forces will not attack, and above all, not invade the territory or possessions of the following independent nations …

  Hitler then read out slowly the name of each country and as he intoned the names, I remember, the laughter in the Reichstag grew. Not one member, no one in Berlin, I believe, including this writer, noticed that he slyly left out Poland.

  Hitler now pulled the ace out of the pack, or so he must have thought.

  Answer: I have taken the trouble to ascertain from the States mentioned, firstly, whether they feel themselves threatened, and secondly and above all, whether this inquiry by the American President was addressed to us at their suggestion, or at any rate, with their consent.

  The reply was in all cases negative … It is true that I could not cause inquiries to be made of certain of the States and nations mentioned because they themselves—as for example, Syria—are at present not in possession of their freedom, but are occupied and consequently deprived of their rights by the military agents of democratic States.

  Apart from this fact, however, all States bordering on Germany have received much more binding assurances … than Mr. Roosevelt asked from me in his curious telegram….

  I must draw Mr. Roosevelt’s attention to one or two historical errors. He mentioned Ireland, for instance, and asks for a statement that Germany will not attack Ireland. Now, I have just read a speech by De Valera, the Irish Taoiseach,* in which, strangely enough, and contrary to Mr. Roosevelt’s opinion, he does not charge Germany with oppressing Ireland but he reproaches England with subjecting Ireland to continuous aggression …

  In the same way, the fact has obviously escaped Mr. Roosevelt’s notice that Palestine is at present occupied not by German troops but by the English; and that the country is having its liberty restricted by the most brutal resort to force …

  Nevertheless, said Hitler, he was prepared “to give each of the States named an assurance of the kind desired by Mr. Roosevelt.” But more than that! His eyes lit up.

  I should not like to let this opportunity pass without giving above all to the President of the United States an assurance regarding those territories which would, after all, give him most cause for apprehension, namely the United States itself and the other States of the American continent.

  I here solemnly declare that all the assertions which have been circulated in any way concerning an intended German attack or invasion on or in American territory are rank frauds and gross untruths, quite apart from the fact that such assertions, as far as the military possibilities are concerned, could have their origin only in a stupid imagination.

  The Reichstag rocked with laughter; Hitler did not crack a smile, maintaining with great effect his solemn mien.

  And then came the peroration—the most eloquent for German ears, I believe, he ever made.

  Mr. Roosevelt! I fully understand that the vastness of your nation and the immense wealth of your country allow you to feel responsible for the history of the whole world and for the history of all nations. I, sir, am placed in a much more modest and smaller sphere …

  I once took over a State which was faced by complete ruin, thanks to its trust in the promises of the rest of the world and to the bad regime of democratic governments … I have conquered chaos in Germany, re-established order and enormously increased production … developed traffic, caused mighty roads to be built and canals to be dug, called into being gigantic new factories and at the same time endeavored to further the education and culture of our people.

  I have succeeded in finding useful work once more for the whole of the seven million unemployed … Not only have I united the German people politically, but I have also rearmed them. I have also endeavored to destroy sheet by sheet that treaty which in its four hundred and forty-eight articles contains the vilest oppression which peoples and human beings have ever been expected to put up with.

  I have brought back to the Reich provinces stolen from us in 1919. I have led back to their native country millions of Germans who were torn away from us and were in misery … and, Mr. Roosevelt, without spilling blood and without bringing to my people, and consequently to others, the misery of war …

  You, Mr. Roosevelt, have a much easier task in comparison. You became President of the United States in 1933 when I became Chancellor of the Reich. From the very outset you stepped to the head of one of the largest and wealthiest States in the world … Conditions prevailing in your country are on such a large scale that you can find time and leisure to give your attention to universal problems … Your concerns and suggestions cover a much larger and wider area than mine, because my world, Mr. Roosevelt, in which Providence has placed me and for which I am therefore obliged to work, is unfortunately much smaller, although for me it is more precious than anything else, for it is limited to my people!

  I believe however that this is the way in which I can be of the most service to that for which we are all concerned, namely, the justice, well-being, progress and peace of the whole community.

  In the hoodwinking of the German people, this speech was Hitler’s greatest masterpiece. But as one traveled about Europe in the proceeding days it was easy to see that, unlike a number of Hitler’s previous orations, this one no longer fooled the people or the governments abroad. In contrast to the Germans, they were able to see through the maze of deceptions. And they realized that the German Fuehrer, for all his masterful oratory, though scoring off Roosevelt, had not really answered the President’s fundamental questions: Had he finished with aggression? Would he attack Poland?

  As it turned out, this was the last great peacetime public speech of Hitler’s life. The former Austrian waif had come as far in this world as was possible by the genius of his oratory. From now on he was to try to make his niche in history as a warrior.

  Retiring for the summer to his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden, Hitler did not publicly respond to the Polish answer to him which was given on May 5 in a speech by Colonel Beck to Parliament and in an official government memorandum presented to Germany on that date. The Polish statement and Beck’s speech constituted a dignified, conciliatory but also firm reply.

  It is clear [it. said] that negotiations, in which one State formulates demands and the other is obliged to accept those demands unaltered, are not negotiations.

  THE INTERVENTION OF RUSSIA: I

  In his speech to the Reichstag on April 28, Hitler had omitted his customary attack on the Soviet Union. There was not a word about Russia. Colonel Beck, in his reply, had mentioned “various other hints” made by Germany “which went much further than the subjects of discussion” and reserved the right “to return to this matter, if necessary”—a veiled but obvious reference to Germany’s previous efforts to induce Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact against Russia. Though Beck did not know it, nor did Chamberlain, those anti-Russian efforts were now being abandoned. Fresh ideas were beginning to germinate in Berlin and Moscow.

  It is difficult to ascertain exactly when the first moves were made in the two capitals toward an understanding between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which was to lead to such immense consequences for the world. One of the first slight changes in the wind, as has already been noted,* took place as far back as October 3, 1938, four days after Munich, when the counselor of the German Embassy in Moscow informed Berlin that Stalin would draw certain conclusions from the Sudeten settlement, from which he had been excluded, and might well become “more positive
” toward Germany. The diplomat strongly advocated a “wider” economic collaboration between the two countries and renewed his appeal in a second dispatch a week later.27 Toward the end of October, the German ambassador in Moscow, Friedrich Werner Count von der Schulenburg, notified the German Foreign Office that it was his “intention in the immediate future to approach Molotov, the Chairman of the Council of the People’s Commissars, in an attempt to reach a settlement of the questions disturbing German–Soviet relations.”28 The ambassador would hardly have conceived such an intention on his own, in view of Hitler’s previous extremely hostile attitude toward Moscow. The hint must have come from Berlin.

  That it did becomes clear from a study of the captured Foreign Office archives. The first step, in the German view, was to improve trade between the two countries. A Foreign Office memorandum of November 4, 1938, reveals “an emphatic demand from Field Marshal Goering’s office at least to try to reactivate our Russian trade, especially insofar as Russian raw materials are concerned.”29 The Russo–German economic agreements expired at the end of the year and the Wilhelmstrasse files are full of material showing the ups and downs experienced in negotiating a renewal. The two sides were highly suspicious of each other but were vaguely drawing closer together. On December 22, there were lengthy talks in Moscow between Russian trade officials and Germany’s crack economic troubleshooter, Julius Schnurre.

  Shortly after the New Year, the Soviet ambassador in Berlin, Alexei Merekalov, made one of his infrequent trips to the Wilhelmstrasse to inform it “of the Soviet Union’s desire to begin a new era in German–Soviet economic relations.” And for a few weeks there were promising talks, but by February 1939 they had pretty much broken down, ostensibly over whether the main negotiations should be conducted in Moscow or Berlin. But the real reason was revealed in a memorandum of the director of the Economic Policy Department of the German Foreign Office on March 11, 1939: Though Germany was hungry for Russia’s raw materials and Goering was constantly demanding that they be obtained, the Reich simply could not supply the Soviet Union with the goods which would have to be exchanged. The director thought the “rupture of negotiations” was “extremely regrettable in view of Germany’s raw-materials position.”30

  But if the first attempt to draw nearer in their economic relations had failed for the time being, there were other straws in the wind. On March 10, 1939, Stalin made a long speech at the first session of the Eighteenth Party Congress in Moscow. Three days later the attentive Schulenburg filed a long report on it to Berlin. He thought it “noteworthy that Stalin’s irony and criticism were directed in considerably sharper degree against Britain than against the so-called aggressor States, and in particular, Germany.” The ambassador underlined Stalin’s remarks that “the weakness of the democratic powers … was evident from the fact that they had abandoned the principle of collective security and had turned to a policy of nonintervention and neutrality. Underlying this policy was the wish to divert the aggressor States to other victims.” And he quoted further the Soviet dictator’s accusations that the Western Allies were

  pushing the Germans further eastward, promising them an easy prey and saying: “Just start a war with the Bolsheviks, everything else will take care of itself. This looks very much like encouragement … It looks as if the purpose … was to engender the fury of the Soviet Union against Germany … and to provoke a conflict with Germany without apparent reasons….

  In conclusion Stalin formulated the guiding principles:

  To continue to pursue a policy of peace and consolidation of economic relations with all countries.

  … Not to let our country be drawn into conflict by warmongers, whose custom it is to let others pull their chestnuts out of the fire.31

  This was a plain warning from the man who made all the ultimate decisions in Russia that the Soviet Union did not intend to be maneuvered into a war with Nazi Germany in order to spare Britain and France; and if it was ignored in London, it was at least noticed in Berlin.*

  Still, it is evident from Stalin’s speech and from the various diplomatic exchanges which shortly took place that Soviet foreign policy, while cautious, was still very much open. Three days after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia on March 15, the Russian government proposed, as we have seen,* a six-power conference to discuss means of preventing further aggression, and Chamberlain turned it down as “premature.”† That was on March 18. Two days later an official communiqué in Moscow, which the German ambassador there hurriedly wired to Berlin, denied that the Soviet Union had offered Poland and Rumania assistance “in the event of their becoming the victims of aggression.” Reason: “Neither Poland nor Rumania had approached the Soviet government for assistance or informed [it] of any danger threatening them.”34

  The British government’s unilateral guarantee of Poland of March 31 may have helped to convince Stalin that Great Britain preferred an alliance with the Poles to one with the Russians and that Chamberlain was intent, as he had been at the time of Munich, on keeping the Soviet Union out of the European concert of powers.35

  In this situation the Germans and Italians began to glimpse certain opportunities. Goering, who now had an important influence on Hitler in foreign affairs, saw Mussolini in Rome on April 16 and called the Duce’s attention to Stalin’s recent speech to the Communist Party Congress. He had been impressed by the Soviet dictator’s statement that “the Russians would not allow themselves to be used as cannon fodder for the capitalist powers.” He said he “would ask the Fuehrer whether it would not be possible to put out feelers cautiously to Russia … with a view to rapprochement.” And he reminded Mussolini that there had been “absolutely no mention of Russia in the Fuehrer’s latest speeches.” The Duce, according to the confidential German memorandum of the meeting, warmly welcomed the idea of a rapprochement of the Axis Powers with the Soviet Union. The Italian dictator too had sensed a change in Moscow; he thought a rapprochement could be “effected with comparative ease.”

  The object [said Mussolini] would be to induce Russia to react coolly and unfavorably to Britain’s efforts at encirclement, on the lines of Stalin’s speech … Moreover, in their ideological struggle against plutocracy and capitalism the Axis Powers had, to a certain extent, the same objectives as the Russian regime.36

  This was a radical turn in Axis policy, and no doubt it would have surprised Chamberlain had he learned of it. Perhaps it would have surprised Litvinov too.

  On the very day of this discussion between Goering and Mussolini, April 16, the Soviet Foreign Commissar received the British ambassador in Moscow and made a formal proposal for a triple pact of mutual assistance between Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. It called for a military convention between the three powers to enforce the pact and a guarantee by the signatories, to be joined by Poland, if it desired, of all the nations in Central and Eastern Europe which felt themselves menaced by Nazi Germany. It was Litvinov’s last bid for an alliance against the Third Reich, and the Russian Foreign Minister, who had staked his career on a policy of stopping Hitler by collective action, must have thought that at last he would succeed in uniting the Western democracies with Russia for that purpose. As Churchill said in a speech on May 4, complaining that the Russian offer had not yet been accepted in London, “there is no means of maintaining an Eastern front against Nazi aggression without the active aid of Russia.” No other power in Eastern Europe, certainly not Poland, possessed the military strength to maintain a front in that region. Yet the Russian proposal caused consternation in London and Paris.

  Even before it was rejected, however, Stalin made his first serious move to play the other side of the street.

  The day after Litvinov made his far-reaching offer to the British ambassador in Moscow, on April 17, the Soviet ambassador in Berlin paid a visit to Weizsaecker at the German Foreign Office. It was the first call, the State Secretary noted in a memorandum, that Merekalov had made on him since he assumed his post nearly a year before. After so
me preliminary remarks about German–Russian economic relations, the ambassador turned to politics and

  asked me point-blank [Weizsaecker wrote] what I thought of German–Russian relations … The Ambassador spoke somewhat as follows:

  Russian policy had always followed a straight course. Ideological differences had had very little adverse effect on relations between Russia and Italy and need not disturb those with Germany either. Russia had not exploited the present friction between Germany and the Western democracies against us, neither did she wish to do that. As far as Russia was concerned, there was no reason why she should not live on a normal footing with us, and out of normal relations could grow increasingly improved relations.

  With this remark, toward which he had been steering the conversation, M. Merekalov ended the talk. He intends to visit Moscow in a day or two.37

  In the Russian capital, to which the Soviet ambassador returned, there was something up.

  It came out on May 3. On that date, tucked away on the back page of the Soviet newspapers in a column called “News in Brief,” appeared a small item: “M. Litvinov has been released from the Office of Foreign Commissar at his own request.” He was replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov, Chairman of the Council of the People’s Commissars.