It was inherent in his tactics that the very first mistake was irreparable. Hitler himself later recognized the fateful significance of his seizing Prague. But his impatience, his arrogance, and his far-flung plans left him no choice. On the day after the occupation of Prague he ordered Goebbels to give the following instructions to the press: “The employment of the term ‘Greater German Empire’ is undesirable…(and) reserved for later occasions.” And, in April, when he was preparing to celebrate his fiftieth birthday, he ordered Ribbentrop “to invite a number of foreign guests, among them as many cowardly civilians and democrats as possible, and I will show them a parade of the most modern of all armed forces.”109
Unleashing the War
The thought of striking was always in me.
Adolf Hitler
From the spring of 1939 Hitler exhibited a noteworthy inability to break his own momentum. The infallible sense of tempo he had shown only a few years before, in the course of taking power, now began to desert him and to give way to a neurasthenic craving for sheer movement. Faced with the weakness and disunity of his antagonists on the European scene, he undoubtedly could have won all his revisionist demands and probably some of his more far-reaching Lebensraum plans by means of his tactic of enlisting the co-operation of the conservative powers. Now he abandoned the tactic. The regime’s propaganda announced that the Führer’s genius consisted in his ability to wait. But now, whether out of arrogance, whether corrupted by the effectiveness of “non-negotiable demands,” or whether out of frantic restiveness—Hitler no longer waited.
Only a week after the occupation of Prague he boarded the cruiser Deutschland in Swinemünde and sailed toward Memel. This small seaport on the northern frontier of East Prussia had been annexed by Lithuania in 1919, in the confusion of the immediate postwar period. A demand for its return was only a matter of time. But in order to lend dramatic verve and proof of his imperiousness to the process of recovering the city, Hitler informed the Lithuanian government in Vilna on March 21 that its envoys were to arrive in Berlin “tomorrow by special plane” to sign the protocol of cession. Meanwhile, he himself, with the reply still in doubt, set out for Memel. And while Ribbentrop “Háchaed” the Lithuanian delegation, Hitler—seasick and in ill humor—held two impatient radio conversations from on board the Deutschland. He demanded to know whether he would be able to enter the city peaceably or would have to force his way in with the ship’s guns. On March 23, toward half past one in the morning, Lithuania consented to the cession, and at noon Hitler once again held one of his loudly cheered entries into Memel.
Two days earlier Ribbentrop had summoned Josef Lipski, the Polish ambassador in Berlin, to meet with him, and had proposed negotiations on a comprehensive German-Polish settlement. Ribbentrop returned with some emphasis to demands he had made several times before, including the return of the Free City of Danzig and the building of an extraterritorial road and rail link across the Polish Corridor. In return he offered to extend the 1934 Nonaggression Pact for twenty-five years and to guarantee formally Poland’s borders. How seriously the offer was meant is evident from the simultaneous attempt to enlist Poland in the Anti-Comintern Pact. In general Ribbentrop’s overtures were aimed at striking a bargain with a “distinctly anti-Soviet tendency.” One draft of a Foreign Office note, for example, rather brazenly offered Warsaw, as its reward for increased cooperation, the prospect of receiving possession of the Ukraine. Following this line, Hitler, in a conversation with Brauchitsch on March 25 rejected a violent solution of the Danzig question but thought a military action against Poland under “specially favorable political preconditions” worth considering.
There was a reason for the curious indifference with which Hitler left open the question of conquest or alliance. Actually it was not Danzig he was really concerned about. The city served him as the pretext for arranging a dialogue and, as he hoped, a deal with Poland. With some justice he considered his offer generous; it gave Poland the prospect of a gigantic acquisition in return for a meager concession. For Danzig was indeed a German city; its separation from the Reich had been imposed by the Treaty of Versailles in order to satisfy a Polish need for prestige that had steadily ebbed with the passing years. In the long run, Poland could have hardly held on to the city. The demand for a connecting link to East Prussia was likewise a relatively fair effort to amend the decision that had separated East Prussia from the Reich. What Hitler really wanted was related to the ultimate grand goal of all his policies: the winning of new living space.
Among the essentials of his planned march of conquest was a common boundary with the Soviet Union. Until that was attained, Germany was cut off from the Russian steppes by a belt of countries extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea. One or several of these must place at his disposal the area for military deployment so that he could get at Russia. Otherwise the war could not be begun.
Theoretically, Hitler could meet this condition in three possible ways. He could win the intervening states by alliances; he could annex some of them; or he could let the Soviet Union annex some, thus moving her border up to Germany. In the course of the following months Hitler made use of all these options. The alertness and iciness with which he switched, while a speechless world looked on, from one to the other, showed him for the last time at the height of his tactical intelligence. After the occupation of Prague, which had so patently put the patience of the Western powers to a hard test, he appeared determined to evoke no new tensions for the time being and to return to the first method: finding an ally against the Soviet Union. For a serious conflict with the West was bound to endanger all his expansionist goals. Among the intervening countries, Poland seemed best suited to his plans. Poland was a country with an authoritarian government and strong anti-Communist, anti-Russian, and even anti-Semitic tendencies. Thus there were “solid common factors”110 on which an expansionist partnership under German leadership might be founded. Moreover, Hitler himself was partly responsible for Poland’s recent good relationship with Germany, additionally secured by a nonaggression pact.
Consequently, far more than an ordinary swap, far more than satisfaction of the regime’s desire to revise the terms of the Versailles Treaty depended on the Polish government’s reply to Ribbentrop’s proposals. For Hitler, his whole Lebensraum idea was at stake. It is this aspect which explains the obstinacy and the consistent radical spirit that he manifested on this question. He saw this as a question of all or nothing.
Poland, however, was extremely vexed by the German proposals. For they endangered the foundations of her whole previous policy and made her critical situation even more critical. The country had hitherto found safety by maintaining the strictest equilibrium between her two neighboring giants, Germany and Russia. Their temporary impotence in 1919 had made possible the establishment of a Polish state, and subsequently Poland had enlarged her territory at the expense of these two countries. And if the Poles had learned in the course of their long history that they had as much reason to fear the friendship of these two neighbors as their hostility—the lesson was now more important than ever. The German offer ran strictly counter to this fundament of Polish policy.
It was an exceedingly perilous situation that demanded more prudence and adaptability than a romantic people, which for centuries had felt abused, could possibly summon up. Faced with a choice between its two neighbors, Poland on the whole inclined slightly more toward Germany. But the new Germany was also more restive and greedy than a Soviet Union involved in internal power struggles, purges, and doctrinaire disputes. Polish Foreign Minister Josef Beck, a man given to intrigues and engaged in reckless juggling, complicated the situation still further by pressing ambitious plans for a “third Europe.” His idea was to establish a neutral block of powers, under Polish leadership, extending from the Baltic to the Hellespont. And he thought that he could derive advantages for Poland from Hitler’s aggressive policy. His ostensibly pro-German policy secretly aimed at “methodically reinforcing the G
ermans in their errors,” and he hoped “not only for the unconditional integration of Danzig into Polish territory, but, also, far beyond that, for all of East Prussia, Silesia, even Pomerania… our Pomerania,” as Poland’s propagandists now began saying more and more frequently and more openly.111
These secret Polish dreams of becoming a great power underlay the unexpectedly sharp refusal with which Beck finally rebuffed Hitler’s proposal. Simultaneously, he mobilized a few divisions in the border area. In strictly objective terms he might not even have considered the German demands unjustified. Danzig, he admitted, was merely a kind of symbol for Poland.112 But every concession must seem like a reversal of the basic aims of Polish policy, the eifort to attain both equilibrium of power in Europe and a limited degree of hegemony for Poland herself. For this reason, too, the only tactical way out of the situation—gaining time by partial concessions—was barred. Moreover, Beck and the Warsaw government feared that Hitler’s first demands would be followed by an endless succession of new ones, so that only an unequivocal refusal could preserve the integrity of Poland. To sum up, Poland found herself confronted with her typical situation: she had no choice.
This impasse was fully exposed when Beck, on March 23, 1939, rejected the British proposal of consultative agreement between Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and Poland. He did not want to enter any group to which the Soviet Union belonged. He had rejected an anti-Soviet alliance with Germany and was still less prepared to accept an anti-German alliance with the Soviet Union. What he failed to see was that given the acuteness of the situation Hitler had created, he had to choose. From now on his only protection against the Soviet Union was the dread protection of Germany; and only the aid of the Soviet Union could save him from the German demands. He knew quite well—and the Soviet Union confirmed his knowledge in a Tass communiqué of March 22—that such aid meant the equivalent of suicide for Poland. But Beck was prepared to face destruction rather than to accept protection from Poland’s old oppressor to the East. Politically, he based his attitude on the dogma of the insurmountable antagonism between Germany and the Soviet Union. But by rejecting both his neighbors with equal vehemence he unwittingly created the conditions for a rapprochement between them. The front for the outbreak of the war was beginning to take shape.
Simultaneously, Beck was reassured by the attitude of the British government. Still indignant at Hitler’s occupation of Prague, Chamberlain at the end of March decided upon a desperate step. Acting on the basis of several unconfirmed reports of an impending German coup de main against Danzig, he asked Warsaw whether Poland had any objections to a British declaration guaranteeing her integrity. Despite the warnings of some of his more perspicacious fellow countrymen, who regarded it as “childish, naïve and at the same time unfair to propose to a country in Poland’s situation that it compromise its relations with so strong a neighbor as Germany,”113 Beck promptly consented. He later declared that he needed less time to make his decision than was needed to flip the ash from a cigarette. On March 31 Chamberlain made his famous statement in the House ol Commons: England and France “in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence… would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power.”114
This promise of assistance was the great turning point in the policies of that phase. England had decided unconditionally to oppose Hitler’s expansionist ambitions wherever and whenever it encountered them. It was an extraordinary and impressive decision, though one as deficient in wisdom as it was superabundant in dramatic consequences. Its origins in the emotions of a disappointed man were all too apparent, and critics quickly pointed to the inherent flaws of such a guarantee: it required no counterguarantee from the Poles if Hitler attacked some other European country, and did not oblige the Poles to conduct negotiations for aid with the Soviet Union, whose partnership would necessarily be of crucial importance. Moreover, the grave question of war or peace for Europe was being given into the keeping of a handful of stubborn, nationalistic men in Warsaw who a short while ago had made common cause with Hitler against Czechoslovakia, betraying the very principles of independence they were now so anxiously appealing to.
Chamberlain’s decision of March 31 forced Hitler to reassess his position. He considered the British guarantee a warrant for the eccentric Poles to involve Germany in military undertakings whenever it pleased them. But far more crucial in his eyes was that England had now at last revealed herself as an enemy. She would not allow him to move freely against the East and was evidently resolved to push matters to the ultimate confrontation. He could not obtain the grand mandate of the bourgeois powers to proceed against the Soviet Union. Consequently, his whole strategic concept was threatened. It seems clear that this last day of March gave him the final impetus to that radical turn which had been hinted at in various remarks since the end of 1936, but which had been repeatedly postponed. Now he actually proceeded “to the liquidation of the Work of his youth,” as he had phrased it a short while before. He abandoned his courtship of England, which had rejected him. He concluded correctly that whenever he set out to conquer new Lebensraum in the East he would clash with England. Consequently, to achieve his central idea he would first have to defeat Great Britain. If he wished to avoid a two-front war, one more thing followed: he would have to come to a temporary arrangement with the future enemy. It so happened that the conduct of Poland provided him with an opening. An alliance with the Soviet Union was now within reach.
Hitler’s policy during the following months was one grand, large-scale maneuver to bring about this swing and so shape the antagonistic fronts in Europe to accord with his purposes. Admiral Canaris, who happened to be present when news of the British guaranty to Poland arrived, reported Hitler’s furious outburst: “I’ll cook them a stew that they’ll choke on.”115 The following day he utilized the launching of the Tirpitz in Wilhelmshaven for a violent speech against the British “encirclement policy.” He issued a dire warning to the “satellite states whose task is to be set against Germany” and indicated that he was about to terminate the Anglo-German Naval Treaty:
I once made an agreement with England—namely, the Naval Treaty. It is based on the earnest desire which we all share never to have to go to war against England. But this wish can only be a mutual one.
If this wish no longer exists in England, then the practical preconditions for this agreement are removed and Germany also would accept this very calmly. We are self-assured because we are strong, and we are strong because we are united…. Those who are powerless lose the right to live!116
Everyone who met Hitler during this period has reported him flaring up furiously against England.117 Early in April the Propaganda Minister issued a directive whose tenor was that England must be represented as Germany’s most dangerous adversary. Simultaneously Hitler broke off his negotiations with Poland. He ordered State Secretary von Weizsäcker to inform the Poles that the offer had been unique and would not be repeated. At the same time new demands, as yet unspecified, were hinted at. And, as if to stress the gravity of the situation, Hitler suddenly once more expressed interest in the German minorities in Poland, whom he had overlooked for years during which they, together with the Jews, had been the favorite victims of the Poles’ resentments and outbreaks of chauvinistic arrogance.
But even more can be read from the secret message Hitler issued to the armed forces on April 3, setting up a new operation with the code name “Case White”:
The present attitude of Poland requires… the initiation of military preparations to remove, if necessary, any threat from this direction for all future time.
The German relationship to Poland continues to be governed by the principle of avoiding trouble. Poland’s policy toward Germany hitherto has been based upon the same principle, but if she should change it and adopt an attitude threatening to the Reich, a final reckoning may become requisite without regard to the existing treaty.
The
aim then will be to shatter the Polish forces and create in the East a situation in keeping with the requirements of national defense. The Free State of Danzig will be declared territory of the German Reich by the beginning of the conflict at the latest….
The major goals in the build-up of the German Armed Forces will continue to be determined by the hostility of the western democracies. “Case White” merely forms a precautionary supplement to the preparations.118
A note appended to the document referred to a directive from Hitler to “make the preparations in such a way that execution will be possible at any time from September 1, 1939, on.”
Although outwardly everything remained unchanged, Europe now seemed to be gripped by a nervous tension. In Germany a propaganda campaign translated Hitler’s aggressive remarks into screeching agitation. In Poland, and for the first time in England also, there were more or less violent anti-German demonstrations. And, as if Italian pride forbade that country’s keeping out of the bickerings and brawls of Europe, Mussolini now reminded the world of his existence by a great show of Italy’s strength and courage. On April 7, 1939, he sent his troops to attack little Albania, and in imitation of his envied German model set up a protectorate over the country. Shortly before in Berlin he had let it be known that he felt called upon “to acquire something” also.
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