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

by William L. Shirer

  Although France would provide almost the entire Allied army on Germany’s western border if war were suddenly to come, and although, in the initial weeks, it would far outnumber the German forces there, Hitler seemed unconcerned as August began to run out about what the French would do. On August 26, Premier Daladier dispatched to him a moving and eloquent letter reminding him of what France would do; it would fight if Poland were attacked.

  Unless you attribute to the French people [Daladier wrote] a conception of national honor less high than that which I myself recognize in the German people, you cannot doubt that France will be true to her solemn promises to other nations, such as Poland …

  After appealing to Hitler to seek a pacific solution of his dispute with Poland, Daladier added:

  If the blood of France and of Germany flows again, as it did twenty-five years ago, in a longer and even more murderous war, each of the two peoples will fight with confidence in its own victory, but the most certain victors will be the forces of destruction and barbarism.34

  Ambassador Coulondre, in presenting the Premier’s letter, added a passionate verbal and personal appeal of his own, adjuring Hitler “in the name of humanity and for the repose of his own conscience not to let pass this last chance of a peaceful solution.” But the ambassador had the “sadness” to report to Paris that Daladier’s letter had not moved the Fuehrer—“he stands pat.”

  Hitler’s reply to the French Premier the next day was cleverly calculated to play on the reluctance of Frenchmen to “die for Danzig,” though he did not use the phrase—that was left for the French appeasers. Germany had renounced all territorial claims on France after the return of the Saar, Hitler declared; there was therefore no reason why they should go to war. If they did, it was not his fault and it would be “very painful” to him.

  That was the extent of the diplomatic contact between Germany and France during the last week of peace. Coulondre did not see Hitler after the meeting on August 26 until all was over. The country that concerned the German Chancellor the most at this juncture was Great Britain. As Hitler had told Goering on the evening of August 25, when he postponed the move into Poland, he wanted to see whether he could “eliminate British intervention.”

  GERMANY AND GREAT BRITAIN AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR

  “Fuehrer considerably shaken,” General Halder had noted in his diary on August 25 after the news from Rome and London had induced Hitler to draw back from the precipice of war. But the next afternoon the General Staff Chief noticed an abrupt change in the Leader. “Fuehrer very calm and clear,” he jotted down in his diary at 3:22 P.M. There was a reason for this and the General’s journal gives it. “Get everything ready for morning of 7th Mobilization Day. Attack starts September 1.” The order was telephoned by Hitler to the Army High Command.

  Hitler, then, would have his war with Poland. That was settled. In the meantime he would do everything he could to keep the British out. Halder’s diary notes convey the thinking of the Fuehrer and his entourage during the decisive day of August 26.

  Rumor has it that England is disposed to consider comprehensive proposal.* Details when Henderson returns. According to another rumor England stresses that she herself must declare that Poland’s vital interests are threatened. In France more and more representations to the government against war …

  Plan: We demand Danzig, corridor through Corridor, and plebiscite on the same basis as Saar. England will perhaps accept. Poland probably not. Wedge between them.35

  The emphasis is Halder’s and there is no doubt that it accurately reflects up to a point what was in Hitler’s mind. He would contrive to drive a wedge between Poland and Britain and give Chamberlain an excuse to get out of his pledge to Warsaw. Having ordered the Army to be ready to march on September 1, he waited to hear from London about his grandiose offer to “guarantee” the British Empire.

  He now had two contacts with the British government outside of the German Embassy in London, whose ambassador (Dirksen) was on leave, and which played no part in the frenzied eleventh-hour negotiations. One contact was official, through Ambassador Henderson, who had flown to London in a special German plane on the morning of Saturday, August 26, with the Fuehrer’s proposals. The other was unofficial, surreptitious and, as it turned out, quite amateurish, through Goering’s Swedish friend, the peripatetic Birger Dahlerus, who had flown to London from Berlin with a message for the British government from the Luftwaffe chief on the previous day.

  “At this time,” Goering related later during an interrogation at Nuremberg, “I was in touch with Halifax by a special courier outside the regular diplomatic channels.”*36 It was to the British Foreign Secretary in London that the Swedish “courier” made his way at 6:30 P.M. on Friday, August 25. Dahlerus had been summoned to Berlin from Stockholm the day before by Goering, who informed him that despite the Nazi–Soviet Pact, which had been signed the preceding night, Germany wanted an “understanding” with Great Britain. He put one of his own planes at the Swede’s disposal so that he could rush to London to apprise Lord Halifax of this remarkable fact.

  The Foreign Secretary, who an hour before had signed the Anglo–Polish mutual-assistance pact, thanked Dahlerus for his efforts and informed him that Henderson had just conferred with Hitler in Berlin and was flying to London with the Fuehrer’s latest proposals and that since official channels of communication between Berlin and London had now been reopened he did not think the services of the Swedish intermediary would be needed any longer. But they soon proved to be. Telephoning Goering later that evening to report on his conference with Halifax, Dahlerus was informed by the Field Marshal that the situation had deteriorated as the result of the signing of the Anglo–Polish treaty and that probably only a conference between representatives of Britain and Germany could save the peace. As he later testified at Nuremberg, Goering, like Mussolini, had in mind another Munich.

  Late the same night the indefatigable Swede informed the British Foreign Office of his talk with Goering, and the next morning he was invited to confer again with Halifax. This time he persuaded the British Foreign Secretary to write a letter to Goering, whom he described as the one German who might prevent war. Couched in general terms, the letter was brief and noncommittal. It merely reiterated Britain’s desire to reach a peaceful settlement and stressed the need “to have a few days” to achieve it.†

  Nevertheless it struck the fat Field Marshal as being of the “greatest importance.” Dahlerus had delivered it to him that evening (August 26), as he was traveling in his special train to his Luftwaffe headquarters at Oranienburg outside Berlin. The train was stopped at the next station, an automobile was commandeered and the two men raced to the Chancellery, where they arrived at midnight. The Chancellery was dark. Hitler had gone to bed. But Goering insisted on arousing him. Up to this moment Dahlerus, like so many others, believed that Hitler was not an unreasonable man and that he might accept a peaceful settlement, as he had the year before at Munich. The Swede was now to confront for the first time the weird fantasies and the terrible temper of the charismatic dictator.38 It was a shattering experience.

  Hitler took no notice of the letter which Dahlerus had brought from Halifax and which had seemed important enough to Goering to have the Fuehrer waked up in the middle of the night. Instead, for twenty minutes he lectured the Swede on his early struggles, his great achievements and all his attempts to come to an understanding with the British. Next, when Dahlerus had got in a word about his having once lived in England as a worker, the Chancellor questioned him about the strange island and its strange people whom he had tried so vainly to understand. There followed a long and somewhat technical lecture on Germany’s military might. By this time, Dahlerus says, he thought his visit “would not prove useful.” In the end, however, the Swede seized an opportunity to tell his host something about the British as he had come to know them.

  Hitler listened without interrupting me … but then suddenly got up, and, becoming very excited and nervou
s, walked up and down saying, as though to himself, that Germany was irresistible … Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the room and stood there staring. His voice was blurred, and his behavior that of a completely abnormal person. He spoke in staccato phrases: “If there should be war, then I shall build U-boats, build U-boats, U-boats, U-boats, U-boats.” His voice became more indistinct and finally one could not follow him at all. Then he pulled himself together, raised his voice as though addressing a large audience and shrieked: “I shall build airplanes, build airplanes, airplanes, airplanes, and I shall annihilate my enemies.” He seemed more like a phantom from a storybook than a real person. I stared at him in amazement and turned to see how Goering was reacting, but he did not turn a hair.

  Finally the excited Chancellor strode up to his guest and said, “Herr Dahlerus, you who know England so well, can you give me any reason for my perpetual failure to come to an agreement with her?” Dahlerus confesses that he “hesitated at first” to answer but then replied that in his personal opinion the British “lack of confidence in him and in his Government was the reason.”

  “Idiots!” Dahlerus says Hitler stormed back, flinging out his right arm and striking his breast with his left hand. “Have I ever told a lie in my life?”

  The Nazi dictator thereupon calmed down, there was a discussion of Hitler’s proposals made through Henderson and it was finally settled that Dahlerus should fly back to London with a further offer to the British government. Goering objected to committing it to writing and the accommodating Swede was told he must, instead, commit it to memory. It contained six points:

  Germany wanted a pact or alliance with Britain.

  Britain was to help Germany obtain Danzig and the Corridor, but Poland was to have a free harbor in Danzig, to retain the Baltic port of Gdynia and a corridor to it.

  Germany would guarantee the new Polish frontiers.

  Germany was to have her colonies, or their equivalent, returned to her.

  Guarantees were to be given for the German minority in Poland.

  Germany was to pledge herself to defend the British Empire.

  With these proposals imprinted in his memory, Dahlerus flew to London on the morning of Sunday, August 27, and shortly after noon was whisked by a roundabout route so as to avoid the snooping press reporters and ushered into the presence of Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, Sir Horace Wilson and Sir Alexander Cadogan. It was obvious that the British government now took the Swedish courier quite seriously.

  He had brought with him some hastily scribbled notes jotted down in the plane describing his meeting with Hitler and Goering the night before. In these notes he assured the two leading members of the British cabinet who now scanned his memorandum that during the interview Hitler had been “calm and composed.” Although no record of this extraordinary Sabbath meeting has been found in the Foreign Office archives, it has been reconstructed in the volume of Foreign Office papers (Volume VII, Third Series) from data furnished by Lord Halifax and Cadogan and from the emissary’s memorandum. The British version differs somewhat from that given by Dahlerus in his book and at Nuremberg, but taking the various accounts together what follows seems as accurate a report as we shall ever get.

  Chamberlain and Halifax saw at once that they were faced with two sets of proposals from Hitler, the one given to Henderson and the other now brought by Dahlerus, and that they differed. Whereas the first had proposed to guarantee the British Empire after Hitler had settled accounts with Poland, the second seemed to suggest that the Fuehrer was ready to negotiate through the British for the return of Danzig and the Corridor, after which he would “guarantee” Poland’s new boundaries. This was an old refrain to Chamberlain, after his disillusioning experiences with Hitler over Czechoslovakia, and he was skeptical of the Fuehrer’s offer as Dahlerus outlined it. He told the Swede that he saw “no prospect of a settlement on these terms; the Poles might concede Danzig, but they would fight rather than surrender the Corridor.”

  Finally it was agreed that Dahlerus should return to Berlin immediately with an initial and unofficial reply to Hitler and report back to London on Hitler’s reception of it before the official response was drawn up and sent to Berlin with Henderson the next evening. As Halifax put it (according to the British version), “the issues might be somewhat confused as a result of these informal and secret communications through M. Dahlerus. It was [therefore] desirable to make it clear that when Dahlerus returned to Berlin that night he went, not to carry the answer of His Majesty’s Government, but rather to prepare the way for the main communication” which Henderson would bring.39

  So important had this unknown Swedish businessman become as an intermediary in the negotiations between the governments of the two most powerful nations in Europe that, according to his own account, he told the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary at this critical juncture that “they should keep Henderson in London until Monday [the next day] so that the answer could be given after they had been informed how Hitler regarded the English standpoint.”40

  And what was the English standpoint, as Dahlerus was to present it to Hitler? There is some confusion about it. According to Halifax’s own rough notes of his verbal instructions to Dahlerus, the British standpoint was merely this:

  i. Solemn assurance of desire for good understanding between G. and Gt.B. [The initials are Halifax’s.] Not a single member of the Govt. who thinks different. ii. Gt.B. bound to honor her obligations to Poland. iii. German–Polish differences must be settled peacefully.41

  According to Dahlerus, the unofficial British reply entrusted to him was more comprehensive.

  Naturally, Point 6, the offer to defend the British Empire, was rejected. Similarly they did not want to have any discussion on colonies as long as Germany was mobilized. With regard to the Polish boundaries, they wanted them to be guaranteed by the five great powers. Concerning the Corridor, they proposed that negotiations with Poland be undertaken immediately. As to the first point [of Hitler’s proposals] England was willing in principle to come to an agreement with Germany.42

  Dahlerus flew back to Berlin Sunday evening and saw Goering shortly before midnight. The Field Marshal did not consider the British reply “very favorable.” But after seeing Hitler at midnight, Goering rang up Dahlerus at his hotel at 1 A.M. and said that the Chancellor would “accept the English standpoint” provided the official version to be brought by Henderson Monday evening was in agreement with it.

  Goering was pleased, and Dahlerus even more so. The Swede woke up Sir George Ogilvie Forbes, the counselor of the British Embassy, at 2 A.M. to give him the glad tidings. Not only to do that but—such had his position become, at least in his own mind—to advise the British government what to say in its official reply. That note, which Henderson would be bringing later on this Monday, August 28, must contain an undertaking, Dahlerus emphasized, that Britain would persuade Poland to negotiate with Germany directly and immediately.

  Dahlerus has just telephoned [read a later dispatch from Forbes on August 28] from Goering’s office following suggestions which he considers most important.

  1. British reply to Hitler should not contain any reference to Roosevelt plan.*

  2. Hitler suspects Poles will try to avoid negotiations. Reply should therefore contain clear statement that the Poles have been strongly advised to immediately establish contact with Germany and negotiate.†43

  Throughout the day the now confident Swede not only heaped advice on Forbes, who dutifully wired it to London, but himself telephoned the British Foreign Office with a message for Halifax containing further suggestions.

  At this critical moment in world history the amateur Swedish diplomat had indeed become the pivotal point between Berlin and London. At 2 P.M. on August 28, Halifax, who had been apprised both from his Berlin embassy and from Dahlerus’ telephone call to the Foreign Office of the Swede’s urgent advice, wired the British ambassador in Warsaw, Sir Howard Kennard, to see Foreign Minister Beck “at once” and get him
to authorize the British government to inform Hitler “that Poland is ready to enter at once into direct discussion with Germany.” The Foreign Secretary was in a hurry. He wanted to include the authorization in the official reply to Hitler which Henderson was waiting to carry back to Berlin this same day. He urged his ambassador in Warsaw to telephone Beck’s reply. Late in the afternoon Beck gave the requested authorization and it was hastily inserted in the British note.44

  Henderson arrived back in Berlin with it on the evening of August 28, and after being received at the Chancellery by an S.S. guard of honor, which presented arms and rolled its drums (the formal diplomatic pretensions were preserved to the end), he was ushered into the presence of Hitler, to whom he handed a German translation of the note, at 10:30 P.M. The Chancellor read it at once.

  The British government “entirely agreed” with him, the communication said, that there must “first” be a settlement of the differences between Germany and Poland. “Everything, however,” it added, “turns upon the nature of the settlement and the method by which it is to be reached.” On this matter, the note said, the Chancellor had been “silent.” Hitler’s offer to “guarantee” the British Empire was gently declined. The British government “could not, for any advantage offered to Great Britain, acquiesce in a settlement which put in jeopardy the independence of a State to whom they had given their guarantee.”