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

by William L. Shirer

  The Pope is unwilling to abandon hope that pending negotiations may lead to a just pacific solution.

  His Holiness, like almost everyone else in the world, did not realize that the “pending negotiations” were but a propaganda trick by Hitler to justify his aggression. Actually, as shortly will be shown, there were no bona fide negotiations, pending or otherwise, on that last afternoon of the peace.

  A few days earlier, on August 23, the King of the Belgians, in the name of the rulers of the “Oslo” powers (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland and the three Scandinavian states), had also broadcast a moving appeal for peace, calling “on the men who are responsible for the course of events to submit their disputes and their claims to open negotiation.” On August 28 the King of the Belgians and the Queen of the Netherlands jointly offered their good offices “in the hope of averting war.”24

  Noble in form and in intent as all these neutral appeals were, there is something unreal and pathetic about them when reread today. It was as if the President of the United States, the Pope and the rulers of the small Northern European democracies lived on a different planet from that of the Third Reich and had no more understanding of what was going on in Berlin than of what might be transpiring on Mars. This ignorance of the mind and character and purposes of Adolf Hitler, and indeed of the Germans, who, with a few exceptions, were ready to follow him blindly no matter where nor how, regardless of morals, ethics, honor, or the Christian concept of humanity, was to cost the peoples led by Roosevelt and the monarchs of Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway and Denmark dearly in the months to come.

  Those of us who were in Berlin during those last few tense days of peace and who were attempting to report the news to the outside world knew very little either of what was going on in the Wilhelmstrasse, where the Chancellery and the Foreign Office were, or in the Bendlerstrasse, where the military had their offices. We followed as best we could the frantic comings and goings in the Wilhelmstrasse. We sifted daily an avalanche of rumors, tips and “plants.” We caught the mood of the people in the street and of the government officials, party leaders, diplomats and soldiers of our acquaintance. But what was said at Ambassador Henderson’s frequent and often stormy interviews with Hitler and Ribbentrop, what was written between Hitler and Chamberlain, between Hitler and Mussolini, between Hitler and Stalin, what was talked about between Ribbentrop and Molotov and between Ribbentrop and Ciano, what was contained in all the secret, coded dispatches humming over the wires between the stumbling, harassed diplomats and foreign-office officials, and all the moves which the military chiefs were planning or making—of all this we and the general public remained almost completely ignorant at the time.

  A few things, of course, we, and the public, knew. The Nazi–Soviet Pact was trumpeted to the skies by the Germans, though the secret protocol dividing up Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe remained unknown until after the war. We knew that even before it was signed Henderson had flown to Berchtesgaden to emphasize to Hitler that the pact would not prevent Britain from honoring its guarantee to Poland. As the last week of August began we felt in Berlin that war was inevitable—unless there was another Munich—and that it would come within a few days. By August 25 the last of the British and French civilians had skipped out. The next day the big Nazi rally at Tannenberg scheduled for August 27, at which Hitler was to have spoken, was publicly called off, as was the annual party convention at Nuremberg (the “Party Rally of Peace,” Hitler had officially called it), due to convene the first week of September. On August 27 the government announced that rationing of food, soap, shoes, textiles and coal would begin on the following day. This announcement, I remember, above all others, woke up the German people to the imminence of war, and their grumbling about it was very audible. On Monday, August 28, the Berliners watched troops pouring through the city toward the east. They were being transported in moving vans, grocery trucks and every other sort of vehicle that could be scraped up.

  That too must have alerted the man in the street as to what was up. The weekend, I remember, had been hot and sultry and most of the Berliners, regardless of how near war was, had betaken themselves to the lakes and the woods which surround the capital. Returning to the city Sunday evening, they learned from the radio that there had been a secret, unofficial meeting of the Reichstag at the Chancellery. A D.N.B, communiqué stated that the “Fuehrer outlined the gravity of the situation”—this was the first the German public had been told by Hitler that the hour was grave. No details of the meeting were given and no one outside of the Reichstag members and of Hitler’s entourage could know of the mood the Nazi dictator was in that day. Halder’s diary of August 28 supplied—much later—one account, given him by Colonel Oster of the Abwehr.

  Conference at Reich Chancellery at 5:30 P.M. Reichstag and several Party notables … Situation very grave. Determined to solve Eastern question one way or another. Minimum demands: return of Danzig, settling of Corridor question. Maximum demands: “Depending on military situation.” If minimum demands not satisfied, then war: Brutal! He will himself be on front line. The Duce’s attitude served our best interests.

  War very difficult, perhaps hopeless; “As long as I am alive there will be no talk of capitulation.” Soviet Pact widely misunderstood by Party. A pact with Satan to cast out the Devil … “Applause on proper cues, but thin.”

  Personal impression of Fuehrer: exhausted, haggard, croaking voice, preoccupied. “Keeps himself completely surrounded now by his S.S. advisers.”

  In Berlin too a foreign observer could watch the way the press, under Goebbels’ expert direction, was swindling the gullible German people. For six years, since the Nazi “co-ordination” of the daily newspapers, which had meant the destruction of a free press, the citizens had been cut off from the truth of what was going on in the world. For a time the Swiss German-language newspapers from Zurich and Basel could be purchased at the leading newsstands in Germany and these presented objective news. But in recent years their sale in the Reich had been either prohibited or limited to a few copies. For Germans who could read English or French, there were occasionally a few copies of the London and Paris journals available, though not enough to reach more than a handful of persons.

  “How completely isolated a world the German people live in,” I noted in my diary on August 10, 1939. “A glance at the newspapers yesterday and today reminds you of it.” I had returned to Germany from a brief leave in Washington, New York and Paris, and coming up in the train from my home in Switzerland two days before I had bought a batch of Berlin and Rhineland newspapers. They quickly propelled one back to the cockeyed world of Nazism, which was as unlike the world I had just left as if it had been on another planet. I noted further on August 10, after I had arrived in Berlin:

  Whereas all the rest of the world considers that the peace is about to be broken by Germany, that it is Germany that is threatening to attack Poland … here in Germany, in the world the local newspapers create, the very reverse is maintained … What the Nazi papers are proclaiming is this: that it is Poland which is disturbing the peace of Europe; Poland which is threatening Germany with armed invasion …

  “POLAND, LOOK OUT!” warns the B.Z. headline, adding: “ANSWER TO POLAND, THE RUNNER-AMOK [AMOKLÄUFFER] AGAINST PEACE AND RIGHT IN EUROPE!”

  Or the headline in Der Fuehrer, daily paper of Karlsruhe, which I bought on the train: “WARSAW THREATENS BOMBARDMENT OF DANZIG—UNBELIEVABLE AGITATION OF THE POLISH ARCHMADNESS [POLNISCHEN GROESSEN-WAHSN]!”

  You ask: But the German people can’t possibly believe these lies? Then you talk to them. So many do.

  By Saturday, August 26, the date originally set by Hitler for the attack on Poland, Goebbels’ press campaign had reached its climax. I noted in my diary some of the headlines.

  The B.Z.: “COMPLETE CHAOS IN POLAND—GERMAN FAMILIES FLEE—POLISH SOLDIERS PUSH TO EDGE OF GERMAN BORDER!” The 12-Uhr Blatt: “THIS PLAYING WITH FIRE GOING TOO FAR—THREE GERMAN PASSENGER P
LANES SHOT AT BY POLES—IN CORRIDOR MANY GERMAN FARMHOUSES IN FLAMES!”

  On my way to Broadcast House at midnight I picked up the Sunday edition (August 27) of the Voelkischer Beobachter. Across the whole top of the front page were inch-high headlines:

  WHOLE OF POLAND IN WAR FEVER! 1,500,000 MEN MOBILIZED! UNINTERRUPTED TROOP TRANSPORT TOWARD THE FRONTIER! CHAOS IN UPPER SILESIA!

  There was no mention, of course, of any German mobilization, though, as we have seen, Germany had been mobilized for a fortnight.

  THE LAST SIX DAYS OF PEACE

  After recovering from the cold douche of Mussolini’s letter which had arrived early in the evening of August 25 and which, along with the news of the signing of the Anglo–Polish alliance, had caused him to postpone the attack on Poland scheduled for the next day, Hitler got off a curt note to the Duce asking him “what implements of war and raw materials you require and within what time” in order that Italy could “enter a major European conflict.” The letter was telephoned by Ribbentrop personally to the German ambassador in Rome at 7:40 P.M. and handed to the Italian dictator at 9:30 P.M.25

  The next morning, in Rome, Mussolini had a meeting with the chiefs of the Italian armed services to draw up a list of his minimum requirements for a war lasting twelve months. In the words of Ciano, who helped draw it up, it was “enough to kill a bull—if a bull could read it.”26 It included seven million tons of petroleum, six million tons of coal, two million tons of steel, one million tons of timber and a long list of other items down to 600 tons of molybdenum, 400 tons of titanium, and twenty tons of zirconium. In addition Mussolini demanded 150 antiaircraft batteries to protect the Italian industrial area in the north, which was but a few minutes’ flying time from French air bases, a circumstance which he reminded Hitler of in a letter which he now composed. This message was telephoned by Ciano to Attolico in Berlin shortly after noon on August 26 and immediately delivered to Hitler.27

  It contained more than a swollen list of materials needed. By now the deflated Fascist leader was obviously determined to wriggle out of his obligations to the Third Reich, and the Fuehrer, after reading this second letter, could no longer have the slightest doubt of it.

  FUEHRER [Mussolini wrote his comrade], I would not have sent you this list, or else it would have contained a smaller number of items and much lower figures, if I had had the time agreed upon beforehand to accumulate stocks and to speed up the tempo of autarchy.

  It is my duty to tell you that unless I am certain of receiving these supplies, the sacrifices I should call on the Italian people to make … could well be in vain and could compromise your cause along with my own.

  On his own hook, Ambassador Attolico, who was opposed to war, and especially to Italy’s joining Germany in it if it came, emphasized to Hitler, when he delivered the message, “that all material must be in Italy before the beginning of hostilities” and that this demand was “decisive.”*

  Mussolini was still hoping for another Munich. He added a paragraph to his note, declaring that if the Fuehrer thought there was still “any possibility whatsoever of a solution in the political field” he was ready, as before, to give his German colleague his full support. Despite their close personal relations and their Pact of Steel and all the noisy demonstrations of solidarity they had given in the past years, the fact remains that even at this eleventh hour Hitler had not confided to Mussolini his true aim, the destruction of Poland, and that the Italian partner remained quite ignorant of it. Only at the end of this day, the twenty-sixth, was this gulf between them finally bridged.

  Within three hours on August 26, Hitler sent a long reply to the Duce’s message. Ribbentrop again telephoned it, at 3:08 P.M., to Ambassador von Mackensen in Rome, who rushed it to Mussolini shortly after 5 P.M. While some of Italy’s requirements such as coal and steel, Hitler said, could be met in full, many others could not. In any case, Attolico’s insistence that the materials must be supplied before the outbreak of hostilities was “impossible.”

  And now, finally, Hitler took his friend and ally into his confidence as to his real and immediate aims.

  As neither France nor Britain can achieve any decisive successes in the West, and as Germany, as a result of the Agreement with Russia, will have all her forces free in the East after the defeat of Poland … I do not shrink from solving the Eastern question even at the risk of complications in the West.

  Duce, I understand your position, and would only ask you to try to achieve the pinning down of Anglo–French forces by active propaganda and suitable military demonstrations such as you have already proposed to me.29

  This is the first evidence in the German documents that, twenty-four hours after he had canceled the onslaught on Poland, Hitler had recovered his confidence and was going ahead with his plans, “even at the risk” of war with the West.

  The same evening, August 26, Mussolini made somewhat of an effort to still dissuade him. He wrote again to the Fuehrer, Ciano again telephoned it to Attolico and it reached the Reich Chancellery just before 7 P.M.

  FUEHRER:

  I believe that the misunderstanding into which Attolico involuntarily fell was cleared up immediately … That which I asked of you, except for the antiaircraft batteries, was to be delivered in the course of twelve months. But even though the misunderstanding has been cleared up, it is evident that it is impossible for you to assist me materially in filling the large gaps which the wars in Ethiopia and Spain have made in Italian armaments.

  I will therefore adopt the attitude which you advise, at least during the initial phase of the conflict, thereby immobilizing the maximum Franco–British forces, as is already happening, while I shall speed up military preparations to the utmost possible extent.

  But the anguished Duce—anguished at cutting such a sorry figure at such a crucial moment—still thought that the possibilities of another Munich should be looked into.

  … I venture to insist anew [he continued] and not at all from considerations of a pacifist character foreign to my nature, but by reason of the interests of our two peoples and our two regimes, on the opportunity for a political solution which I regard as still possible and such a one as will give full moral and material satisfaction to Germany.30

  The Italian dictator was, as the records now make clear, striving for peace because he was not ready for war. But his role greatly disturbed him. “I leave you to imagine,” he declared to Hitler in this last of the exchange of messages on August 26, “my state of mind in finding myself compelled by forces beyond my control not to afford you real solidarity at the moment of action.” Ciano noted in his diary after this busy day that “the Duce is really out of his wits. His military instinct and his sense of honor were leading him to war. Reason has now stopped him. But this hurts him very much … Now he has had to confront the hard truth. And this, for the Duce, is a great blow.”

  After such a plentiful exchange of letters, Hitler was now resigned to Mussolini’s leaving him in the lurch. Late on the night of August 26 he got off one more note to his Axis partner. It was dispatched by telegram from Berlin at 12:10 A.M. on August 27 and reached Mussolini that morning at 9 o’clock.

  DUCE:

  I have received your communication on your final attitude. I respect the reasons and motives which led you to take this decision. In certain circumstances it can nevertheless work out well.

  In my opinion, however, the prerequisite is that, at least until the outbreak of the struggle, the world should have no idea of the attitude Italy intends to adopt. I therefore cordially request you to support my struggle psychologically with your press or by other means. I would also ask you, Duce, if you possibly can, by demonstrative military measures, at least to compel Britain and France to tie down certain of their forces, or at all events to leave them in uncertainty.

  But, Duce, the most important thing is this: If, as I have said, it should come to a major war, the issue in the East will be decided before the two Western Powers can score a success. Then, t
his winter, at latest in the spring, I shall attack in the West with forces which will be at least equal to those of France and Britain …

  I must now ask a great favor of you, Duce. In this difficult struggle you and your people can best help me by sending me Italian workers, for both industrial and agricultural purposes … In specially commending this request of mine to your generosity, I thank you for all the efforts you have made for our common cause.

  ADOLF HITLER31

  The Duce replied meekly late in the afternoon that the world would “not know before the outbreak of hostilities what the attitude of Italy is”—he would keep the secret well. He would also tie down as many Anglo–French military and naval forces as possible and he would send Hitler the Italian workers he requested.32 Earlier in the day he had repeated to Ambassador von Mackensen “in forceful terms,” as the latter reported to Berlin, “that he still believed it possible to attain all our objectives without resort to war” and had added that he would again bring this aspect up in his letter to the Fuehrer.33 But he did not. For the moment he seemed too discouraged to even mention it again.