The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

by William Shirer

This was bound to be a policy of suicide. And indeed when one considers Poland’s position 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.*

  Seizing an opportunity to gain the friendship of a country so stoutly anti-Russian and at the same time to detach her from Geneva and Paris, thus undermining the system of Versailles, Hitler had taken the initiative in bringing about the Polish–German pact of 1934. It was not a popular move in Germany. The German Army, which had been pro-Russian and anti-Polish since the days of Seeckt, resented it. But it served Hitler admirably for the time being. Poland’s sympathetic friendship helped him to get first things done first: the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the destruction of independent Austria and Czechoslovakia. On all of these steps, which strengthened Germany, weakened the West and threatened the East, Beck and his fellow colonels in Warsaw looked on benevolently and with utter and inexplicable blindness.

  If the Polish Foreign Minister at the very start of the new year had, as he said, been plunged into a pessimistic mood by Hitler’s demands, his spirits sank much lower with the coming of spring. Though in his anniversary speech to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, Hitler spoke in warm terms of “the friendship between Germany and Poland” and declared that it was “one of the reassuring factors in the political life in Europe,” Ribbentrop had talked with more frankness when he paid a state visit to Warsaw four days before. He again raised with Beck the question of Hitler’s demands concerning Danzig and communications through the Corridor, insisting that they were “extremely moderate.” But neither on these questions nor on his insistence that Poland join the Anti-Comintern Pact against the Soviet Union did the German Foreign Minister get a satisfactory answer.6 Colonel Beck was becoming wary of his friends. As a matter of fact, he was beginning to squirm. On February 26, the German ambassador in Warsaw informed Berlin that Beck had taken the initiative in getting himself invited to visit London at the end of March and that he might go on to Paris afterward. Though it was late in the day, Poland, as Moltke put it in his dispatch, “desires to get in touch with the Western democracies … [for] fear that a conflict might arise with Germany over Danzig.”7 With Beck too, as with so many others who had tried to appease the ravenous appetite of Adolf Hitler, the scales were falling from the eyes.

  They fell completely and forever on March 15 when Hitler occupied Bohemia and Moravia and sent his troops to protect “independent” Slovakia. Poland woke up that morning to find itself flanked in the south along the Slovak border, as it already was in the north on the frontiers of Pomerania and East Prussia, by the German Army. Its military position had overnight become untenable.

  March 21, 1939, is a day to be remembered in the story of Europe’s march toward war.

  There was intense diplomatic activity that day in Berlin, Warsaw and London. The President of the French Republic, accompanied by Foreign Minister Bonnet, arrived in the British capital for a state visit. To the French Chamberlain suggested that their two countries join Poland and the Soviet Union in a formal declaration stating that the four nations would consult immediately about steps to halt further aggression in Europe. Three days before, Litvinov had proposed—as he had just a year before, after the Anschluss—a European conference, this time of France, Britain, Poland, Russia, Rumania and Turkey, which would join together to stop Hitler. But the British Prime Minister had found the idea “premature.” He was highly distrustful of Moscow and thought a “declaration” by the four powers, including the Soviet Union, was as far as he could go.*

  His proposal was presented to Beck in Warsaw by the British ambassador on the same day, March 21, and received a somewhat cool reception, as far as including the Russians was concerned. The Polish Foreign Minister was even more distrustful of the Soviet Union than Chamberlain and, moreover, shared the Prime Minister’s views about the worthlessness of Russian military aid. He was to hold these views, unflinchingly, right up to the moment of disaster.

  But the most fateful event of this day of March 21 for Poland took place in Berlin. Ribbentrop invited the Polish ambassador to call on him at noon. For the first time, as Lipski noted in a subsequent report, the Foreign Minister was not only cool toward him but aggressive. The Fuehrer, he warned, “was becoming increasingly amazed at Poland’s attitude.” Germany wanted a satisfactory reply to her demands for Danzig and a highway and railroad through the Corridor. This was a condition for continued friendly Polish–German relations. “Poland must realize,” Ribbentrop laid it down, “that she could not take a middle course between Russia and Germany.” Her only salvation was “a reasonable relationship with Germany and her Fuehrer.” That included a joint “anti-Soviet policy.” Moreover, the Fuehrer desired Beck “to pay an early visit to Berlin.” In the meantime, Ribbentrop strongly advised the Polish ambassador to hurry to Warsaw and explain to his Foreign Minister in person what the situation was. “He advised,” Lipski informed Beck, “that the talk [with Hitler] should not be delayed, lest the Chancellor should come to the conclusion that Poland was rejecting all his offers.”8

  A SLIGHT AGGRESSION BY THE BY

  Before leaving the Wilhelmstrasse, Lipski had asked Ribbentrop whether he could tell him anything about his conversation with the Foreign Minister of Lithuania. The German replied that they had discussed the Memel question, “which called for a solution.”

  As a matter of fact, Ribbentrop had received the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Juozas Urbays, who was passing through Berlin after a trip to Rome, on the previous day and demanded that Lithuania hand back the Memel district to Germany forthwith. Otherwise “the Fuehrer would act with lightning speed.” The Lithuanians, he warned, must not deceive themselves by expecting “some kind of help from abroad.”9

  Actually, some months before, on December 12, 1938, the French ambassador and the British chargé d’affaires had called the attention of the German government to reports that the German population of Memel was planning a revolt and had asked it to use its influence to see that the Memel Statute, guaranteed by both Britain and France, was respected. The Foreign Office reply had expressed “surprise and astonishment” at the Anglo–French démarche, and Ribbentrop had ordered that if there were any further such steps the two embassies should be told “that we had really expected that the French and British would finally become tired of meddling in Germany’s affairs.”10

  For some time the German government and particularly the party and S.S. leaders had been organizing the Germans of Memel along lines with which we are now familiar from the Austrian and Sudeten affairs. The German armed forces had also been called in to co-operate and, as we have seen,* three weeks after Munich Hitler had ordered his military chiefs to prepare, along with the liquidation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia, the occupation of Memel. Since the Navy had had no opportunity for glory in the march-in to landlocked Austria and Sudetenland, Hitler decided that Memel should be taken from the sea. In November, naval plans for the venture were drawn up under the code name “Transport Exercise Stettin.” Hitler and Admiral Raeder were so keen on this little display of naval might that they actually put to sea from Swinemuende aboard the pocket battleship Deutschland for Memel on March 22, exactly a week after the Fuehrer’s triumphant entry into Prague, before defenseless Lithuania had time to capitulate to a German ultimatum.

  On March 21, Weizsaecker, who much later would proclaim his distaste for the brutality of Nazi m
ethods, notified the Lithuanian government that “there was no time to lose” and that its plenipotentiaries must come to Berlin “by special plane tomorrow” to sign away to Germany the district of Memel. The Lithuanians had obediently arrived late in the afternoon of March 22, but despite German pressure administered in person by Ribbentrop, egged on by a seasick Hitler aboard his battleship at sea, they took their time about capitulating. Twice during the night, the captured German documents reveal, the Fuehrer got off urgent radiograms from the Deutschland to Ribbentrop asking whether the Lithuanians had surrendered, as requested. The dictator and his Admiral had to know whether they must shoot their way into the port of Memel. Finally, at 1:30 A.M. on March 23, Ribbentrop was able to transmit by radio to his master the news that the Lithuanians had signed.11

  At 2:30 in the afternoon of the twenty-third, Hitler made another of his triumphant entries into a newly occupied city and at the Stadttheater in Memel again addressed a delirious “liberated” German throng. Another provision of the Versailles Treaty had been torn up. Another bloodless conquest had been made. Although the Fuehrer could not know it, it was to be the last.

  THE HEAT ON POLAND

  The German annexation of the Memelland came as “a very unpleasant surprise” to the Polish government, as the German ambassador to Poland, Hans-Adolf von Moltke, reported to Berlin from Warsaw on the following day. “The main reason for this,” he added, “is that it is generally feared that now it will be the turn of Danzig and the Corridor.”12 He also informed the German Foreign Office that Polish reservists were being called up. The next day, March 25, Admiral Canaris, chief of the Abwehr, reported that Poland had mobilized three classes and was concentrating troops around Danzig. General Keitel did not believe this showed “any aggressive intentions on the part of the Poles,” but the Army General Staff, he noted, “took a somewhat more serious view.”13

  Hitler returned to Berlin from Memel on March 24 and on the next day had a long talk with General von Brauchitsch, the Commander in Chief of the Army. From the latter’s confidential memorandum of the conversation it appears that the Leader had not yet made up his mind exactly how to proceed against Poland.14 In fact, his turbulent brain seemed to be full of contradictions. Ambassador Lipski was due back on the next day, March 26, and the Fuehrer did not want to see him.

  Lipski will return from Warsaw on Sunday, March 26 [Brauchitsch noted]. He was commissioned to ask whether Poland would be prepared to come to some terms with regard to Danzig. The Fuehrer left during the night of March 25: he does not wish to be here when Lipski returns. Ribbentrop shall negotiate at first. The Fuehrer does not wish, though, to solve the Danzig problem by force. He would not like to drive Poland into the arms of Great Britain by doing so.

  A military occupation of Danzig would have to be taken into consideration only if Lipski gives a hint that the Polish Government could not take the responsibility toward their own people to cede Danzig voluntarily and the solution would be made easier for them by a fait accompli.

  This is an interesting insight into Hitler’s mind and character at this moment. Three months before, he had personally assured Beck that there would be no German fait accompli in Danzig. Yet he remembered that the Polish Foreign Minister had stressed that the Polish people would never stand for turning over Danzig to Germany. If the Germans merely seized it, would not this fait accompli make it easier for the Polish government to accept it? Hitherto Hitler had been a genius at sizing up the weaknesses of his foreign opponents and taking advantage of them, but here, for almost the first time, his judgment has begun to falter. The “colonels” who governed Poland were a mediocre and muddling lot, but the last thing they wanted, or would accept, was a fait accompli in Danzig.

  The Free City was uppermost in Hitler’s mind, but he was also thinking beyond it, just as he had done in regard to Czechoslovakia after Munich had given him the Sudetenland.

  For the time being [Brauchitsch noted], the Fuehrer does not intend to solve the Polish question. However, it should be worked on. A solution in the near future would have to be based on especially favorable political conditions. In that case Poland shall be knocked down so completely that it need not be taken into account as a political factor for the next few decades. The Fuehrer has in mind as such a solution a borderline advanced from the eastern border of East Prussia to the eastern tip of Upper Silesia.

  Brauchitsch well knew what that border signified. It was Germany’s prewar eastern frontier, which Versailles had destroyed, and which had prevailed as long as there was no Poland.

  If Hitler had any doubts as to what the Polish reply would be they were dissipated when Ambassador Lipski returned to Berlin on Sunday, March 26, and presented his country’s answer in the form of a written memorandum.15 Ribbentrop read it at once, rejected it, stormed about Polish mobilization measures and warned the envoy “of possible consequences.” He also declared that any violation of Danzig territory by Polish troops would be regarded as aggression against the Reich.

  Poland’s written response, while couched in conciliatory language, was a firm rejection of the German demands. It expressed willingness to discuss further means of facilitating German rail and road traffic across the Corridor but refused to consider making such communications extraterritorial. As for Danzig, Poland was willing to replace the League of Nations status by a Polish–German guarantee but not to see the Free City become a part of Germany.

  Nazi Germany by this time was not accustomed to see a smaller nation turning down its demands, and Ribbentrop remarked to Lipski that “it reminded him of certain risky steps taken by another state”—an obvious reference to Czechoslovakia, which Poland had helped Hitler to dismember. It must have been equally obvious to Lipski, when he was summoned again to the Foreign Office the next day by Ribbentrop, that the Third Reich would now resort to the same tactics against Poland which had been used so successfully against Austria and Czechoslovakia. The Nazi Foreign Minister raged at the alleged persecution of the German minority in Poland, which, he said, had created “a disastrous impression in Germany.”

  In conclusion, the [German] Foreign Minister remarked that he could no longer understand the Polish Government … The proposals transmitted yesterday by the Polish Ambassador could not be regarded as a basis for a settlement. Relations between the two countries were therefore rapidly deteriorating.16

  Warsaw was not so easily intimidated as Vienna and Prague. The next day, March 28, Beck sent for the German ambassador and told him, in answer to Ribbentrop’s declaration that a Polish coup against Danzig would signify a casus belli, that he in turn was forced to state that any attempt by Germany or the Nazi Danzig Senate to alter the status of the Free City would be regarded by Poland as a casus belli.

  “You want to negotiate at the point of a bayonet!” exclaimed the ambassador.

  “This is your own method,” Beck replied.17

  The reawakened Polish Foreign Minister could afford to stand up to Berlin more firmly than Beneš had been able to do, for he knew that the British government, which a year before had been anxious to help Hitler obtain his demands against Czechoslovakia, was now taking precisely the opposite course in regard to Poland. Beck himself had torpedoed the British proposal for a four-power declaration, declaring that Poland refused to associate itself with Russia in any manner. Instead, on March 22, he had suggested to Sir Howard Kennard, the British ambassador in Warsaw, the immediate conclusion of a secret Anglo–Polish agreement for consultation in case of a threatened attack by a third power. But, alarmed by German troop movements adjacent to Danzig and the Corridor and by British intelligence concerning German demands on Poland (which the tricky Beck had denied to the British), Chamberlain and Halifax wanted to go further than mere “consultations.”

  On the evening of March 30, Kennard presented to Beck an Anglo–French proposal for mutual-assistance pacts in case of German aggression.* But even this step was overtaken by events. Fresh reports of the possibility of an imminent Germa
n attack on Poland prompted the British government on the same evening to ask Beck whether he had any objection to an interim unilateral British guarantee of Poland’s independence. Chamberlain had to know by the morrow, as he wished to answer a parliamentary question on the subject. Beck—his sense of relief may be imagined—had no objection. In fact, he told Kennard, he “agreed without hesitation.”19

  The next day, March 31, as we have seen, Chamberlain made his historic declaration in the House of Commons that Britain and France “would lend the Polish Government all support in their power” if Poland were attacked and resisted.†

  To anyone in Berlin that weekend when March 1939 came to an end, as this writer happened to be, the sudden British unilateral guarantee of Poland seemed incomprehensible, however welcome it might be in the lands to the west and the east of Germany. Time after time, as we have seen, in 1936 when the Germans marched into the demilitarized Rhineland, in 1938 when they took Austria and threatened a European war to take the Sudetenland, even a fortnight before, when they grabbed Czechoslovakia, Great Britain and France, backed by Russia, could have taken action to stop Hitler at very little cost to themselves. But the peace-hungry Chamberlain had shied away from such moves. Not only that: he had gone out of his way, he had risked, as he said, his political career to help Adolf Hitler get what he wanted in the neighboring lands. He had done nothing to save the independence of Austria. He had consorted with the German dictator to destroy the independence of Czechoslovakia, the only truly democratic nation on Germany’s eastern borders and the only one which was a friend of the West and which supported the League of Nations and the idea of collective security. He had not even considered the military value to the West of Czechoslovakia’s thirty-five well-trained, well-armed divisions entrenched behind their strong mountain fortifications at a time when Britain could put only two divisions in France and when the German Army was incapable of fighting on two fronts and, according to the German generals, even incapable of penetrating the Czech defenses.