The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

by William Shirer

  All these fortunate circumstances will not prevail in two to three years. No one knows how long I shall live. Therefore a showdown, which it would not be safe to put off for four to five years, had better take place now.

  Such was the Nazi Leader’s fervid reasoning.

  He thought it “highly probable” that the West would not fight, but the risk nevertheless had to be accepted. Had he not taken risks—in occupying the Rhineland when the generals wanted to pull back, in taking Austria, the Sudetenland and the rest of Czechoslovakia? “Hannibal at Cannae, Frederick the Great at Leuthen, and Hindenburg and Ludendorff at Tannenberg,” he said, “took chances. So now we also must take risks which can only be mastered by iron determination.” There must be no weakening.

  It has done much damage that many reluctant Germans in high places spoke and wrote to Englishmen after the solution of the Czech question. The Fuehrer carried his point when you lost your nerve and capitulated too soon.

  Halder, Witzleben and Thomas and perhaps other generals who had been in on the Munich conspiracy must have winced at this. Hitler obviously knew more than they had realized.

  At any rate, it was now time for them all to show their fighting qualities. Hitler had created Greater Germany, he reminded them, “by political bluff.” It had now become necessary to “test the military machine. The Army must experience actual battle before the big final showdown in the West.” Poland offered such an opportunity.

  Coming back to England and France:

  The West has only two possibilities to fight against us:

  1. Blockade: It will not be effective because of our self-sufficiency and our sources of aid in the East.

  2. Attack from the West from the Maginot Line. I consider this impossible.

  Another possibility is the violation of Dutch, Belgium and Swiss neutrality.

  England and France will not violate the neutrality of these countries. Actually they cannot help Poland.

  Would it be a long war?

  No one is counting on a long war. If Herr von Brauchitsch had told me that I would need four years to conquer Poland I would have replied, It cannot be done. It is nonsense to say that England wants to wage a long war.

  Having disposed, to his own satisfaction, at least, of Poland, Britain and France, Hitler pulled out his ace card. He turned to Russia.

  The enemy had another hope, that Russia would become our enemy after the conquest of Poland. The enemy did not count on my great power of resolution. Our enemies are little worms. I saw them at Munich.

  I was convinced that Stalin would never accept the English offer. Only a blind optimist could believe that Stalin would be so crazy as not to see through England’s intentions. Russia has no interest in maintaining Poland … Litvinov’s dismissal was decisive. It came to me like a cannon shot as a sign of a change in Moscow toward the Western Powers.

  I brought about the change toward Russia gradually. In connection with the commercial treaty we got into political conversations. Finally a proposition came from the Russians for a nonaggression treaty. Four days ago I took a special step which brought it about that Russia announced yesterday that she is ready to sign. The personal contact with Stalin is established. The day after tomorrow Ribbentrop will conclude the treaty. Now Poland is in the position in which I wanted her … A beginning has been made for the destruction of England’s hegemony. The way is open for the soldier, now that I have made the political preparations.

  The way would be open for the soldiers, that is, if Chamberlain didn’t pull another Munich. “I am only afraid,” Hitler told his warriors, “that some Schweinehund* will make a proposal for mediation.”

  At this point the meeting broke up for lunch, but not until Goering had expressed thanks to the Fuehrer for pointing the way and had assured him that the armed services would do their duty.†

  The afternoon lecture was devoted by Hitler mainly to bucking up his military chiefs and trying to steel them for the task ahead. The rough jottings of all three records of the talk indicate its nature.

  The most iron determination on our part. No shrinking back from anything. Everyone must hold the view that we have been determined to fight the Western powers right from the start. A life-and-death struggle…. A long period of peace would not do us any good … A manly bearing … We have the better men … On the opposite side they are weaker … In 1918 the nation collapsed because the spiritual prerequisites were insufficient. Frederick the Great endured only because of his fortitude.

  The destruction of Poland has priority. The aim is to eliminate active forces, not to reach a definite line. Even if war breaks out in the West, the destruction of Poland remains the primary objective. A quick decision, in view of the season.

  I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war—never mind whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterward whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war it is not right that matters, but victory.

  Close your hearts to pity! Act brutally! Eighty million people must obtain what is their right … The stronger man is right … Be harsh and remorseless! Be steeled against all signs of compassion! … Whoever has pondered over this world order knows that its meaning lies in the success of the best by means of force…

  Having thundered such Nietzschean exhortations, the Fuehrer, who had worked himself up to a fine fit of Teutonic fury, calmed down and delivered a few directives for the campaign ahead. Speed was essential. He had “unshakable faith” in the German soldier. If any crises developed they would be due solely to the commanders’ losing their nerve. The first aim was to drive wedges from the southeast to the Vistula, and from the north to the Narew and the Vistula. Military operations, he insisted, must not be influenced by what he might do with Poland after her defeat. As to that he was vague. The new German frontier, he said, would be based on “sound principles.” Possibly he would set up a small Polish buffer state between Germany and Russia.

  The order for the start of hostilities, Hitler concluded, would be given later, probably for Saturday morning, August 26.

  The next day, the twenty-third, after a meeting of the OKW section chiefs, General Halder noted in his diary: “Y Day definitely set for the 26th (Saturday).”

  ALLIED STALEMATE IN MOSCOW

  By the middle of August the military conversations in Moscow between the Western democracies and the Soviet Union had come to a virtual standstill—and for this the intransigence of the Poles was largely to blame. The Anglo–French military missions, it will be remembered, after taking a slow boat to Leningrad, had arrived in Moscow on August 11, exactly one week after the frustrated Mr. Strang had left the Russian capital, obviously relieved to be able to turn over to the generals and admirals the difficult and unpleasant job of trying to negotiate with the Russians. *

  What now had to be worked out hurriedly was a military convention which would spell out in detail just how and where, and with what, Nazi armed force could be met. But as the confidential British minutes of the day-to-day military conversations and the reports of the British negotiators reveal29 the Anglo–French military team had been sent to Moscow to discuss not details but rather “general principles.” The Russians, however, insisted on getting down at once to hard, specific and—in the Allied view—awkward facts, and Voroshilov’s response to the Allied declaration of principles made at the first meeting by General Doumenc was that they were “too abstract and immaterial and do not oblige anyone to do anything … We are not gathered here,” he declared coolly, “to make abstract declarations, but to work out a complete military convention.”

  The Soviet Marshal posed some very definite questions: Was there any treaty which defined what action Poland would take? How many British troops could reinforce the French Army on the outbreak of the war? What would Belgium do? The answers he got were not very reassuring. Doumenc said he had no knowledge of Polish plans. General Heywood answered that the British envisaged “a first contingent of sixteen divisions,
ready for service in the early stages of a war, followed later by a second contingent of sixteen divisions.” Pressed by Voroshilov to reveal how many British troops there would be immediately on the outbreak of war, Heywood replied, “At the moment there are five regular divisions and one mechanized division in England.” These paltry figures came as an unpleasant surprise to the Russians, who were prepared, they said, to deploy 120 infantry divisions against an aggressor in the west at the very outbreak of hostilities.

  As for Belgium, General Doumenc answered the Russian question by saying that “French troops cannot enter unless and until they are asked to, but France is ready to answer any call.”

  This reply led to the crucial question before the military negotiators in Moscow and one which the British and French had been anxious to avoid. During the very first meeting and again at a critical session on August 14, Marshal Voroshilov insisted that the essential question was whether Poland was willing to permit Soviet troops to enter her territory to meet the Germans. If not, how could the Allies prevent the German Army from quickly overrunning Poland? Specifically—on the fourteenth—he asked, “Do the British and French general staffs think that the Red Army can move across Poland, and in particular through the Vilna gap and across Galicia in order to make contact with the enemy?”

  This was the core of the matter. As Seeds wired London, the Russians had now

  raised the fundamental problem, on which the military talks will succeed or fail and which has indeed been at the bottom of all our difficulties since the very beginning of the political conversations, namely, how to reach any useful agreement with the Soviet Union as long as this country’s neighbors maintain a sort of boycott which is only to be broken … when it is too late.

  If the question came up—and how could it help coming up?—Admiral Drax had been instructed by the British government on how to handle it. The instructions, revealed in the confidential British papers, seem unbelievably naïve when read today. The “line of argument” he was to take in view of the refusal of Poland and Rumania “even to consider plans for possible co-operation” was:

  An invasion of Poland and Rumania would greatly alter their outlook. Moreover, it would be greatly to Russia’s disadvantage that Germany should occupy a position right up to the Russian frontier … It is in Russia’s own interest therefore that she should have plans ready to help both Poland and Rumania should these countries be invaded.

  If the Russians propose that the British and French governments should communicate to the Polish, Roumanian or Baltic States proposals involving co-operation with the Soviet Government or General Staff, the Delegation should not commit themselves but refer home.

  And this is what they did.

  At the August 14 session Voroshilov demanded “straightforward answers” to his questions. “Without an exact and unequivocal answer,” he said, “continuance of the military conversations would be useless … The Soviet Military Mission,” he added, “cannot recommend to its Government to take part in an enterprise so obviously doomed to failure.”

  From Paris General Gamelin counseled General Doumenc to try to steer the Russians off the subject. But they were not to be put off.30

  The meeting of August 14, as General Doumenc later reported, was dramatic. The British and French delegates were cornered and they knew it. They tried to evade the issue as best they could. Drax and Doumenc asserted they were sure the Poles and Rumanians would ask for Russian aid as soon as they were attacked. Doumenc was confident they would “implore the Marshal to support them.” Drax thought it was “inconceivable” that they should not ask for Soviet help. He added—not very diplomatically, it would seem—that “if they did not ask for help when necessary and allow themselves to be overrun, it may be expected that they would become German provinces.” This was the last thing the Russians wanted, for it meant the presence of the Nazi armies on the Soviet border, and Voroshilov made a special point of the Admiral’s unfortunate remark.

  Finally, the uncomfortable Anglo–French representatives contended that Voroshilov had raised political questions which they were not competent to handle. Drax declared that since Poland was a sovereign state, its government would first have to sanction the entry of Russian troops. But since this was a political matter, it would have to be settled by the governments. He suggested that the Soviet government put its questions to the Polish government. The Russian delegation agreed that this was a political matter. But it insisted that the British and French governments must put the question to the Poles and pressure them to come to reason.

  Were the Russians, in view of their dealings with the Germans at this moment, negotiating in good faith with the Franco–British military representatives? Or did they, as the British and French foreign offices, not to mention Admiral Drax, later concluded, insist on the right to deploy their troops through Poland merely to stall the talks until they saw whether they could make a deal with Hitler?*

  In the beginning, the British and French confidential sources reveal, the Western Allies did think that the Soviet military delegation was negotiating in good faith—in fact, that it took its job much too seriously. On August 13, after two days of staff talks, Ambassador Seeds wired London that the Russian military chiefs seemed really “to be out for business.” As a result, Admiral Drax’s instructions to “go very slowly” were changed and on August 15 he was told by the British government to support Doumenc in bringing the military talks to a conclusion “as soon as possible.” His restrictions on confiding confidential military information to the Russians were partially lifted.

  Unlike the British Admiral’s original instructions to stall, those given General Doumenc by Premier Daladier personally had been to try to conclude a military convention with Russia at the earliest possible moment. Despite British fears of leaks to the Germans, Doumenc on the second day of the meetings had confided to the Russians such “highly secret figures,” as he termed them, on the strength of the French Army that the Soviet members promised “to forget” them as soon as the meeting was concluded.

  As late as August 17, after he and Drax had waited vainly for three days for instructions from their governments as to how to reply to the Polish question, General Doumenc telegraphed Paris: “The U.S.S.R. wants a military pact … She does not want us to give her a piece of paper without substantial undertakings. Marshal Voroshilov has stated that all problems … would be tackled without difficulty as soon as what he called the crucial question was settled.” Doumenc strongly urged Paris to get Warsaw to agree to accepting Russian help.

  Contrary to a widespread belief at the time, not only in Moscow but in the Western capitals, that the British and French governments did nothing to induce the Poles to agree to Soviet troops meeting the Germans on Polish soil, it is clear from documents recently released that London and Paris went quite far—but not quite far enough. It is also clear that the Poles reacted with unbelievable stupidity.31

  On August 18, after the first Anglo–French attempt was made in Warsaw to open the eyes of the Poles, Foreign Minister Beck told the French ambassador, Léon Noël, that the Russians were “of no military value,” and General Stachiewicz, Chief of the Polish General Staff, backed him up by declaring that he saw “no benefit to be gained by Red Army troops operating in Poland.”

  The next day both the British and French ambassadors saw Beck again and urged him to agree to the Russian proposal. The Polish Foreign Minister stalled, but promised to give them a formal reply the next day. The Anglo–French démarche in Warsaw came as the result of a conversation earlier on the nineteenth in Paris between Bonnet, the French Foreign Minister, and the British chargé d’affaires. Somewhat to the Briton’s surprise, this archappeaser of Hitler was now quite aroused at the prospect of losing Russia as an ally because of Polish stubbornness.

  It would be disastrous [Bonnet told him] if, in consequence of a Polish refusal, the Russian negotiations were to break down … It was an untenable position for the Poles to take up in refus
ing the only immediate efficacious help that could reach them in the event of a German attack. It would put the British and French Governments in an almost impossible position if we had to ask our respective countries to go to war in defense of Poland, which had refused this help.

  If this were so—and there is no doubt that it was—why then did not the British and French governments at this crucial moment put the ultimate pressure on Warsaw and simply say that unless the Polish government agreed to accept Russian help Britain and France could see no use of themselves going to war to aid Poland? The formal Anglo–Polish mutual-security treaty had not yet been signed. Could Warsaw’s acceptance of Russian military backing not be made a condition of concluding that pact?*

  In his talk with the British chargé in Paris on August 19, Bonnet suggested this, but the government in London frowned upon such a “maneuver,” as Downing Street called it. To such an extreme Chamberlain and Halifax would not go.