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

by William L. Shirer

  “There will be no more orders regarding Y Day and X Hour,” General Halder noted in his diary. “Everything is to roll automatically.”

  But the Chief of the Army General Staff was wrong. On August 25 two events occurred which made Adolf Hitler shrink back from the abyss less than twenty-four hours before his troops were scheduled to break across the Polish frontier. One originated in London, the other in Rome.

  On the morning of August 25, Hitler, who on the previous day had returned to Berlin to welcome Ribbentrop back from Moscow and receive a firsthand report on the Russians, got off a letter to Mussolini. It contained a belated explanation as to why he had not been able to keep his Axis partner informed of his negotiations with the Soviet Union. (He had “no idea,” he said, that they would go so far so fast.) And he declared that the Russo–German pact “must be regarded as the greatest possible gain for the Axis.”

  But the real purpose of the letter, whose text is among the captured documents, was to warn the Duce that a German attack on Poland was liable to take place at any moment, though Hitler refrained from giving his friend and ally the exact date which he had set. “In case of intolerable events in Poland,” he said, “I shall act immediately … In these circumstances no one can say what the next hour may bring.” Hitler did not specifically ask for Italy’s help. That was, by the terms of the Italo–German alliance, supposed to be automatic. He contented himself with expressing the hope for Italy’s understanding.4 Nevertheless, he was anxious for an immediate answer. The letter was telephoned by Ribbentrop personally to the German ambassador in Rome and reached the Duce at 3:20 P.M.

  In the meantime, at 1:30 P.M., the Fuehrer had received Ambassador Henderson at the Chancellery. His resolve to destroy Poland had in no way lessened but he was more anxious than he had been two days before, when he had talked with Henderson at Berchtesgaden, to make one last attempt to keep Britain out of the war.* The ambassador found the Fuehrer, as he reported to London, “absolutely calm and normal and [he] spoke with great earnestness and apparent sincerity.” Despite all his experience of the past year Henderson could not, even at this late date, see through the “sincerity” of the German Leader. For what Hitler had to say was quite preposterous. He “accepted” the British Empire, he told the ambassador, and was ready “to pledge himself personally to its continued existence and to commit the power of the German Reich for this.”

  He desired [Hitler explained] to make a move toward England which should be as decisive as the move towards Russia … The Fuehrer is ready to conclude agreements with England which would not only guarantee the existence of the British Empire in all circumstances so far as Germany is concerned, but would also if necessary assure the British Empire of German assistance regardless of where such assistance should be necessary.

  He would also be ready, he added, “to accept a reasonable limitation of armaments” and to regard the Reich’s western frontiers as final. At one point, according to Henderson, Hitler lapsed into a typical display of sentimental hogwash, though the ambassador did not describe it as that when he recounted it in his dispatch to London. The Fuehrer stated

  that he was by nature an artist, not a politician, and that once the Polish question was settled he would end his life as an artist and not as a warmonger.

  But the dictator ended on another note.

  The Fuehrer repeated [says the verbal statement drawn up by the Germans for Henderson] that he is a man of great decisions … and that this is his last offer. If they [the British government] reject these ideas, there will be war.

  In the course of the interview Hitler repeatedly pointed out that his “large comprehensive offer” to Britain, as he described it, was subject to one condition: that it would take effect only “after the solution of the German–Polish problem.” When Henderson kept insisting that Britain could not consider his offer unless it meant at the same time a peaceful settlement with Poland, Hitler replied, “If you think it useless then do not send my offer at all.”

  However, the ambassador had scarcely returned to the embassy a few steps up the Wilhelmstrasse from the Chancellery before Dr. Schmidt was knocking at the door with a written copy of Hitler’s remarks—with considerable deletions—coupled with a message from the Fuehrer begging Henderson to urge the British government “to take the offer very seriously” and suggesting that he himself fly to London with it, for which purpose a German plane would be at his disposal.5

  It was rarely easy, as readers who have got this far in this book are aware, to penetrate the strange and fantastic workings of Hitler’s fevered mind. His ridiculous “offer” of August 25 to guarantee the British Empire was obviously a brain storm of the moment, for he had not mentioned it two days before when he discussed Chamberlain’s letter with Henderson and composed a reply to it. Even making allowances for the dictator’s aberrations, it is difficult to believe that he himself took it as seriously as he made out to the British ambassador. Besides, how could the British government, as he requested, be asked to take it “very seriously” when Chamberlain would scarcely have time to read it before the Nazi armies hurtled into Poland at dawn on the morrow—the X Day which still held?

  But behind the “offer,” no doubt, was a serious purpose. Hitler apparently believed that Chamberlain, like Stalin, wanted an out by which he could keep his country out of war.* He had purchased Stalin’s benevolent neutrality two days before by offering Russia a free hand in Eastern Europe “from the Baltic to the Black Sea.” Could he not buy Britain’s nonintervention by assuring the Prime Minister that the Third Reich would never, like the Hohenzollern Germany, become a threat to the British Empire? What Hitler did not realize, nor Stalin—to the latter’s awful cost—was that to Chamberlain, his eyes open at long last, Germany’s domination of the European continent would be the greatest of all threats to the British Empire—as indeed it would be to the Soviet Russian Empire. For centuries, as Hitler had noted in Mein Kampf, the first imperative of British foreign policy had been to prevent any single nation from dominating the Continent.

  At 5:30 P.M. Hitler received the French ambassador but had little of importance to say to him beyond repeating that “Polish provocation of the Reich” could no longer be endured, that he would not attack France but that if France entered the conflict he would fight her to the end. Whereupon he started to dismiss the French envoy by rising from his chair. But Coulondre had something to say to the Fuehrer of the Third Reich and he insisted on saying it. He told him on his word of honor as a soldier that he had not the least doubt “that if Poland is attacked France will be at the side of Poland with all its forces.”

  “It is painful to me,” Hitler replied, “to think of having to fight your country, but that does not depend on me. Please say that to Monsieur Daladier.”6

  It was now 6 P.M. of August 25 in Berlin. Tension in the capital had been building up all day. Since early afternoon all radio, telegraph and telephone communication with the outside world had been cut off on orders from the Wilhelmstrasse. The night before, the last of the British and French correspondents and nonofficial civilians had hurriedly left for the nearest frontier. During the day of the twenty-fifth, a Friday, it became known that the German Foreign Office had wired the embassies and consulates in Poland, France and Britain requesting that German citizens be asked to leave by the quickest route. My own diary notes for August 24–25 recall the feverish atmosphere in Berlin. The weather was warm and sultry and everyone seemed to be on edge. All through the sprawling city antiaircraft guns were being set up, and bombers flew continually overhead in the direction of Poland. “It looks like war,” I scribbled on the evening of the twenty-fourth; “War is imminent,” I repeated the next day, and on both nights, I remember, the Germans we saw in the Wilhelmstrasse whispered that Hitler had ordered the soldiers to march into Poland at dawn.

  Their orders, we now know, were to attack at 4:30 on Saturday morning, August 26.* And up until 6 P.M. on the twenty-fifth nothing that had happened during
the day, certainly not the personal assurances of Ambassadors Henderson and Coulondre that Britain and France would surely honor their commitments to Poland, had budged Adolf Hitler from his resolve to go ahead with his aggression on schedule. But about 6 P.M., or shortly afterward, there arrived news from London and Rome that made this man of apparently unshakable will hesitate.

  It is not quite clear from the confidential German records and the postwar testimony of the Wilhelmstrasse officials at just what time Hitler learned of the signing in London of the formal Anglo–Polish treaty which transformed Britain’s unilateral guarantee of Poland into a pact of mutual assistance.† There is some evidence in Halder’s diary and in the German Naval Register that the Wilhelmstrasse got wind at noon on August 25 that the pact would be signed during the day. The General Staff Chief notes that at 12 noon he got a call from OKW asking what was the latest deadline for postponement of the decision to attack and that he replied: 3 P.M. The Naval Register also mentions that news of the Anglo–Polish pact and of “information from the Duce” was received at noon.7 But this is impossible. Word from Mussolini did not arrive, according to a German notation on the document, until “about 6 P.M.” And Hitler could not have learned of the signing of the Anglo–Polish treaty in London until about that time, since this event only took place at 5:35 P.M.—and, at that, barely fifteen minutes after the Polish ambassador in London, Count Edward Raczyński, had received permission from his Foreign Minister in Warsaw over the telephone to affix his signature.*

  Whatever time he received it—and around 6 P.M. is an accurate guess—Hitler was moved by the news from London. This could well be Britain’s answer to his “offer,” the terms of which must have reached London by now. It meant that he had failed in his bid to buy off the British as he had bought off the Russians. Dr. Schmidt, who was in Hitler’s office when the report arrived, remembered later that the Fuehrer, after reading it, sat brooding at his desk.8

  MUSSOLINI GETS COLD FEET

  His brooding was interrupted very shortly by equally bad news from Rome. Throughout the afternoon the German dictator had waited with “unconcealed impatience,” as Dr. Schmidt describes it, for the Duce’s reply to his letter. The Italian ambassador, Attolico, was summoned to the Chancellery at 3 P.M., shortly after Henderson had departed, but he could only inform the Fuehrer that no answer had been received as yet. By this time Hitler’s nerves were so strained that he sent Ribbentrop out to get Ciano on the long-distance telephone, but the Foreign Minister was unable to get through to him. Attolico, Schmidt says, was dismissed “with scant courtesy.”9

  For some days Hitler had been receiving warnings from Rome that his Axis partner might go back on him at the crucial moment of the attack on Poland, and this intelligence was not without foundation. No sooner had Ciano returned from his disillusioning meetings with Hitler and Ribbentrop on August 11 to 13, than he set to work to turn Mussolini against the Germans—an action which did not escape the watchful eyes of the German Embassy in Rome. The Fascist Foreign Minister’s diary traces the ups and downs of his efforts to make the Italian dictator see the light and disassociate himself, in time, from Hitler’s war.10 On the evening of his return from Berchtesgaden on August 13, Ciano saw the Duce and after describing his talks with Hitler and Ribbentrop tried to convince his chief that the Germans “have betrayed us and lied to us” and “are dragging us into an adventure.”

  The Duce’s reactions are varied [Ciano noted in his diary that night]. At first he agrees with me. Then he says that honor compels him to march with Germany. Finally, he states that he wants his part of the booty in Croatia and Dalmatia.

  August 14.—I find Mussolini worried. I do not hesitate to arouse in him every possible anti-German reaction by every means in my power. I speak to him of his diminished prestige and his playing the role of second fiddle. And, finally, I turn over to him documents which prove the bad faith of the Germans on the Polish question. The alliance was based on premises which they now deny; they are traitors and we must not have any scruples in ditching them. But Mussolini still has many scruples.

  On the next day, Ciano talked it out with Mussolini for six hours.

  August 15.—The Duce … is convinced that we must not march blindly with the Germans. However … he wants time to prepare the break with Germany … He is more and more convinced that the democracies will fight … This time it means war. And we cannot engage in war because our plight does not permit us to do so.

  August 18.—A conversation with the Duce in the morning; his usual shifting feelings. He still thinks it possible that the democracies will not march and that Germany might do good business cheaply, from which business he does not want to be excluded. Then, too, he fears Hitler’s rage. He believes that a denunciation of the pact or something like it might induce Hitler to abandon the Polish question in order to square accounts with Italy. All this makes him nervous and disturbed.

  August 20.—The Duce made an about-face. He wants to support Germany at any cost in the conflict which is now close at hand … Conference between Mussolini, myself, and Attolico. [The ambassador had returned from Berlin to Rome for consultations.] This is the substance: It is already too late to go back on the Germans … The press of the whole world would say that Italy is cowardly … I try to debate the matter but it is useless now. Mussolini holds very stubbornly to his idea …

  August 21.—Today I have spoken very clearly … When I entered the room Mussolini confirmed his decision to go along with the Germans. “You, Duce, cannot and must not do it … I went to Salzburg in order to adopt a common line of action. I found myself face to face with a Diktat. The Germans, not ourselves, have betrayed the alliance … Tear up the pact. Throw it in Hitler’s face! …”

  The upshot of this conference was that Ciano should seek a meeting with Ribbentrop for the next day at the Brenner and inform him that Italy would stay out of a conflict provoked by a German attack on Poland. Ribbentrop was not available for several hours when Ciano put in a call for him at noon, but at 5:30 he finally came on the line. The Nazi Foreign Minister could not give Ciano an immediate answer about meeting on the Brenner on such quick notice, because he was “waiting for an important message from Moscow” and would call back later. This he did at 10:30 P.M.

  August 22.—Last evening at 10:30 a new act opened [Ciano recorded in his diary]. Ribbentrop telephoned that he would prefer to see me in Innsbruck rather than at the frontier, because he was to leave later for Moscow to sign a political pact with the Soviet Government.

  This was news, and of the most startling kind, to Ciano and Mussolini. They decided that a meeting of the two foreign ministers “would no longer be timely.” Once more their German ally had shown its contempt for them by not letting them know about the deal with Moscow.

  The hesitations of the Duce, the anti-German feelings of Ciano and the possibility that Italy might, crawl out of its obligations under Article III of the Pact of Steel, which called for the automatic participation in war of one party if the other party “became involved in hostilities with another Power,” became known in Berlin before Ribbentrop set off for Moscow on August 22.

  On August 20, Count Massimo Magistrati, the Italian chargé d’affaires in Berlin, called on Weizsaecker at the Foreign Office and revealed “an Italian state of mind which, although it does not surprise me,” the State Secretary informed Ribbentrop in a confidential memorandum,11 “must in my opinion definitely be considered.” What Magistrati brought to the attention of Weizsaecker was that since Germany had not adhered to the terms of the alliance, which called for close contact and consultation on major questions, and had treated its conflict with Poland as an exclusively German problem, “Germany was thus forgoing Italy’s armed assistance.” And if contrary to the German view the Polish conflict developed into a big war, Italy did not consider that the “prerequisites” of the alliance existed. In brief, Italy was seeking an out.

  Two days later, on August 23, a further warning was received in
Berlin from Ambassador Hans Georg von Mackensen in Rome. He wrote to Weizsaecker on what had been happening “behind the scenes.” The letter, according to a marginal note in Weizsaecker’s handwriting on the captured document, was “submitted to the Fuehrer.” It must have opened his eyes. The Italian position, following a series of meetings between Mussolini, Ciano and Attolico, was, Mackensen reported, that if Germany invaded Poland she would violate the Pact of Steel, which was based on an agreement to refrain from war until 1942. Furthermore, contrary to the German view, Mussolini was sure that if Germany attacked Poland both Britain and France would intervene—“and the United States too after a few months.” While Germany remained on the defensive in the west the French and British,

  in the Duce’s opinion, would descend on Italy with all the forces at their disposal. In this, situation Italy would have to bear the whole brunt of the war in order to give the Reich the opportunity of liquidating the affair in the East …12

  It was with these warnings in mind that Hitler got off his letter to Mussolini on the morning of August 25 and waited all day, with mounting impatience, for an answer. Shortly after midnight of the day before, Ribbentrop, after an evening recounting to the Fuehrer the details of his triumph in Moscow, rang up Ciano to warn him, “at the instigation of the Fuehrer,” of the “extreme gravity of the situation due to Polish provocations.”* A note by Weizsaecker reveals that the call was made to “prevent the Italians from being able to speak of unexpected developments.”