The predominant instinct to reading this book, however renowned and respected due to the journalistic integrity and clean, brave persona of the journalist who authored this, is a reluctance, a strong albeit subliminal reluctance to plunge into this work, and that is of course due to the unpleasantness of the subject, not in a small way accentuated by the cover.
But then, having read a few other works of the author, one finally dares. And this resistance does not go away, but is even justified at the point where one is reading about the the so termed Beerhall Putsch, the violent and fraudulent way it was conducted, with guns, threats and lies. Shirer remains his self in writing it, factual and neutral, so far. That's quite enough to inform one how much of a lie it was that this movement, this leader rode to rule on wave of popularity.
One is disgusted, and hopes one gets through without being revolted further, but suspects it's a small chance. One has meanwhile read a dozen or so memoirs of victims of holocaust.
Reading the story of nazi military bulldozing through Denmark, Norway, and the low countries, one is inescapably reminded, over and over, of Mongol hordes in an earlier era - or two, counting Attila - invading through Asia to central, even to western, Europe, with the only difference being that of modern instruments, in vehicles and weaponry and communication. The aim of world conquest, of enslaving all others, is identical, as is the ruthless brutality of extermination of opposition, and the whole ideology, the megalomania of a tribe and a leader holding themselves above the world and born destined to conquer and rule.
One wonders if there was a whole bunch reborn across the old world after centuries, attempting to finish what they had achieved then spectacularly but the descendents lost over centuries.
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May 18, 2019.
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Quoted from the last page of Afterword by the author, which he wrote for the thirtieth anniversary edition, dated May 1990:-
"People ask now: Have the Germans changed? Many in the West appear to believe so. I myself am not so sure, my view no doubt clouded by the personal experience of having lived and worked in Germany in the Nazi time. The truth is that no one really knows the answer to that crucial question. And quite understandably the nations that were former victims of German conquest do not want to take any chances again.
"Perhaps it will help too if the erring governments and the wondering people of this world will remember the dark night of Nazi terror and genocide that almost engulfed our world and that is the subject of this book. Remembrance of the past helps us to understand the present."
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Book One
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THE RISE OF ADOLF HITLER
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The speech for defense in court after the putsch is eerily similar to most jihadist speeches one hears or reads on various media, and this is no accident. This guy was a self proclaimed admirer of the prophet and his holocaust was modelled on the Turkish genocide perpetrated against Armenians to the tune of over a million earlier in the century. His thinking, ideas, plans regarding "lebensraum", and his assertions of German racial superiority, too, are both reflections of similar thinking and assertions of Arab superiority over all others set out in sharia law, and the ever expanding territorial acquisitions since eighth century that wiped out whole cultures of ancient lands including Persia and Egypt, replacing them with those of invaders, which during crusades germany copied in wiping out Prussia as a people, language and even almost any memory that it was once not German.
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"The system of proportional representation and voting by list may have prevented the wasting of votes, but it also resulted in the multiplication of small splinter parties which eventually made a stable majority in the Reichstag impossible and led to frequent changes in government. In the national elections of 1930 some twenty-eight parties were listed.
"The Republic might have been given greater stability had some of the ideas of Professor Hugo Preuss, the principal drafter of the constitution, not been rejected. He proposed at Weimar that Germany be made into a centralized state and that Prussia and the other single states be dissolved and transformed into provinces. But the Assembly turned his proposals down.
"Finally, Article 48 of the constitution conferred upon the President dictatorial powers during an emergency. The use made of this clause by Chancellors Bruening, von Papen and von Schleicher under President Hindenburg enabled them to govern without approval of the Reichstag and thus, even before the advent of Hitler, brought an end to democratic parliamentary government in Germany.
"The “Black Reichswehr” troops, numbering roughly twenty thousand, were stationed on the eastern frontier to help guard it against the Poles in the turbulent days of 1920–23. The illicit organization became notorious for its revival of the horrors of the medieval Femegerichte—secret courts—which dealt arbitrary death sentences against Germans who revealed the activities of the “Black Reichswehr” to the Allied Control Commission. Several of these brutal murders reached the courts. At one trial the German Defense Minister, Otto Gessler, who had succeeded Noske, denied any knowledge of the organization and insisted that it did not exist. But when one of his questioners protested against such innocence Gessler cried, “He who speaks of the ‘Black Reichswehr’ commits an act of high treason!”"
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Hitler had set down his program, to be executed on his ascending to rulership, quite precisely, and the author quotes his words from the book he wrote during internment after Beerhall Putsch in Landsberg - it was, simply, Germany taking over and ruling the world, after having dealt with france by defeating her in a war once for all, and then expanding East "at the expense of Russia."
"“Today we count eighty million Germans in Europe! This foreign policy will be acknowledged as correct only if, after scarcely a hundred years, there are two hundred and fifty million Germans on this continent.”7 And all of them within the borders of the new and expanded Reich."
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Most thinking and writing, especially that prevalent in Germany and that much more so closer to the era, blames rise of nazis on the Versailles treaty, the French for imposing it and allies for not squashing the French, and the consequent travails of the German populace in the years prior to nazi regime.
"German memories did not appear to stretch back as far as one year, to March 3, 1918, when the then victorious German Supreme Command had imposed on a defeated Russia at Brest Litovsk a peace treaty which to a British historian, writing two decades after the passions of war had cooled, was a “humiliation without precedent or equal in modern history.”2 It deprived Russia of a territory nearly as large as Austria-Hungary and Turkey combined, with 56,000,000 inhabitants, or 32 per cent of her whole population; a third of her railway mileage, 73 per cent of her total iron ore, 89 per cent of her total coal production; and more than 5,000 factories and industrial plants. Moreover, Russia was obliged to pay Germany an indemnity of six billion marks.
"The day of reckoning arrived for the Germans in the late spring of 1919. The terms of the Versailles Treaty, laid down by the Allies without negotiation with Germany, were published in Berlin on May 7. They came as a staggering blow to a people who had insisted on deluding themselves to the last moment. Angry mass meetings were organized throughout the country to protest against the treaty and to demand that Germany refuse to sign it. Scheidemann, who had become Chancellor during the Weimar Assembly, cried, “May the hand wither that signs this treaty!” On May 8 Ebert, who had become Provisional President, and the government publicly branded the terms as “unrealizable and unbearable.” The next day the German delegation at Versailles wrote the un– bending Clemenceau that such a treaty was “intolerable for any nation.”
"What was so intolerable about it? It restored Alsace-Lorraine to France, a parcel of territory to Belgium, a similar parcel in Schleswig to Denmark—after a plebiscite—which Bismarck had taken from the Danes in the previous century after defeating them in war. It gave back to the Poles the lands, some of them only after a plebiscite, which the Germans had taken during the partition of Poland. This was one of the stipulations which infuriated the Germans the most, not only because they resented separating East Prussia from the Fatherland by a corridor which gave Poland access to the sea, but because they despised the Poles, whom they considered an inferior race. Scarcely less infuriating to the Germans was that the treaty forced them to accept responsibility for starting the war and demanded that they turn over to the Allies Kaiser Wilhelm II and some eight hundred other “war criminals.”"
In short, the claims and assertions of unfairness of Versailles treaty are based on an assumption that not only Germany is superior and has a right to impose such things on others with no equal and opposite treatment when circumstances are the other way, but that everyone must have the same thinking and hold the German superiority unquestionably fundamental to all human discourse. Which, again, reflects in various jihadist behaviours since eighth century till date, across the globe.
"And yet the hated Treaty of Versailles, unlike that which Germany had imposed on Russia, left the Reich geographically and economically largely intact and preserved her political unity and her potential strength as a great nation."
What's more, the terms were signed but never actually complied with, from payments of reparations and more which germany protested at every conference but never did pay, to the disarmament which never took place. Monasteries hid arms and ammunition successfully enough against any search by allies, and this cache helped the nazi thugs rise in their street battles finishing off any opposition. And military remained a separate state not loyal or subordinate to the republic, as were the judiciary that implemented laws favouring right wings.
"Yet hundreds of German liberals were sentenced to long prison terms on charges of treason because they revealed or denounced in the press or by speech the Army’s constant violations of the Versailles Treaty. The treason laws were ruthlessly applied to the supporters of the Republic; those on the Right who tried to overthrow it, as Adolf Hitler was soon to learn, got off either free or with the lightest of sentences. Even the assassins, if they were of the Right and their victims democrats, were leniently treated by the courts or, as often happened, helped to escape from the custody of the courts by Army officers and right-wing extremists.
"And so the mild Socialists, aided by the democrats and the Catholic Centrists, were left to carry on the Republic, which tottered from its birth. They bore the hatred, the abuse and sometimes the bullets of their opponents, who grew in number and in resolve. “In the heart of the people,” cried Oswald Spengler, who had skyrocketed to fame with his book The Decline of the West, “the Weimar Constitution is already doomed.” Down in Bavaria the young firebrand Adolf Hitler grasped the strength of the new nationalist, antidemocratic, antirepublican tide. He began to ride it."
And there was the economy disaster, blamed on the treaty but really due to the republic neither balancing the budget nor raising taxes to meet the reparations, so the mark fell.
"On the occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923, it fell to 18,000 to the dollar; by July 1 it had dropped to 160,000; by August 1 to a million. By November, when Hitler thought his hour had struck, it took four billion marks to buy a dollar, and thereafter the figures became trillions. German currency had become utterly worthless. Purchasing power of salaries and wages was reduced to zero. The life savings of the middle classes and the working classes were wiped out. But something even more important was destroyed: the faith of the people in the economic structure of German society. What good were the standards and practices of such a society, which encouraged savings and investment and solemnly promised a safe return from them and then defaulted? Was this not a fraud upon the people?
".. goaded by the big industrialists and landlords, who stood to gain though the masses of the people were financially ruined, the government deliberately let the mark tumble in order to free the State of its public debts, to escape from paying reparations and to sabotage the French in the Ruhr. Moreover, the destruction of the currency enabled German heavy industry to wipe out its indebtedness by refunding its obligations in worthless marks. The General Staff, disguised as the “Truppenamt” (Office of Troops) to evade the peace treaty which supposedly had outlawed it, took notice that the fall of the mark wiped out the war debts and thus left Germany financially unencumbered for a new war.
"The masses of the people, however, did not realize how much the industrial tycoons, the Army and the State were benefiting from the ruin of the currency."
As to his intentions, clearly set out in his book written during imprisonment, his agenda is unmistakable .
"And so we National Socialists… take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the East.
"If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states."
So Shirer is justified in saying
"So the great steppes to the East, Hitler implies, could be taken over easily on Russia’s collapse without much cost in blood to the Germans.
"Can anyone contend that the blueprint here is not clear and precise? France will be destroyed, but that is secondary to the German drive eastward. First the immediate lands to the East inhabited predominantly by Germans will be taken. And what are these? Obviously Austria, the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia and the western part of Poland, including Danzig. After that, Russia herself. Why was the world so surprised, then, when Chancellor Hitler, a bare few years later, set out to achieve these very ends?"
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One recalls seeing Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, in mid eighties in Boston when a festival of his repertoire was on, and finding it shocking, but fortunately, adequately answered at conclusion. The following brings that to mind vividly, and indeed, Rope was his answer to the:-
"Hitler’s Weltanschauung, his view of life, which some historians, especially in England, have seen as a crude form of Darwinism but which in reality, as we shall see, has its roots deep in German history and thought. Like Darwin but also like a whole array of German philosophers, historians, kings, generals and statesmen, Hitler saw all life as an eternal struggle and the world as a jungle where the fittest survived and the strongest ruled—a “world where one creature feeds on the other and where the death of the weaker implies the life of the stronger.”
"Mein Kampf is studded with such pronouncements: “In the end only the urge for self-preservation can conquer… Mankind has grown great in eternal struggle, and only in eternal peace does it perish…. Nature… puts living creatures on this globe and watches the free play of forces. She then confers the master’s right on her favorite child, the strongest in courage and industry… The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel…” For Hitler the preservation of culture “is bound up with the rigid law of necessity and the right to victory of the best and strongest in the world. Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight, in this world of eternal struggle, do not deserve to live. Even if this were hard—that is how it is!”"
But he borrowed heavily from an ancient culture far away in terms of both concepts and terminology, and then twisted it out of shape and mangled it out of all possible repair or recognition, when he used the words and the concepts, the symbol, Aaryan and Swastika.
"All the human culture, all the results of art, science and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan. This very fact admits of the not unfounded inference that he alone was the founder of all higher humanity, therefore representing the prototype of all that we understand by the word “man.” He is the Prometheus of mankind from whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has sprung at all times, forever kindling anew that fire of knowledge which illumined the night of silent mysteries and thus caused man to climb the path to mastery over the other beings of this earth… It was he who laid the foundations and erected the walls of every great structure in human culture."
But that fits into definition of the very word and implications thereof, as originally understood in Sanskrit and still so in India - Aarya is simply one enlightened or haloed, and it implies a civilised culture, with no reference whatsoever to any physical characteristics, especially those of colour. India was referred to in India as Aaryaavarta, land of Aaryans, and the name India is given by outsiders simply due to the reason that crossing the river Sindhu, the name deformed to Indus by West, was the only possible approach by land. And Swastika literally means well-being, and is a symbol thereof, drawn fresh on floor before home entrances for millennia in welcome, every morning. Taking this occult symbol and misusing it backfired heavily on Germany.
What follows in the book, where the author quotes the racial theories of Hitler, is a thorough mishmash of true and false, good and bad, so much so its not worth attempting to disentangle it in this review. Suffice it to say he borrows it from elsewhere and mangled it out of all recognition much as he did it to the two terms discussed above, Aaryan and Swastika.
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"In carrying out his racial ideas, it must again be admitted, Hitler was as good as his word. In the New Order which he began to impose on the Slavs in the East during the war, the Czechs, the Poles, the Russians were—and were to remain, if the grotesque New Order had endured—the hewers of wood and the drawers of water for their German masters."
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And the historical roots:-
" ... by the end of the Middle Ages, which had seen Britain and France emerge as unified nations, Germany remained a crazy patchwork of some three hundred individual states.
" ... Luther’s siding with the princes in the peasant risings, which he had largely inspired, and his passion for political autocracy ensured a mindless and provincial political absolutism which reduced the vast majority of the German people to poverty, to a horrible torpor and a demeaning subservience."
"The Peace of Westphalia was almost as disastrous to the future of Germany as the war had been. The German princes, who had sided with France and Sweden, were confirmed as absolute rulers of their little domains, some 350 of them, the Emperor remaining merely as a figurehead so far as the German lands were concerned. The surge of reform and enlightenment which had swept Germany at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries was smothered. In that period the great free cities had enjoyed virtual independence; feudalism was gone in them, the arts and commerce thrived. Even in the countryside the German peasant had secured liberties far greater than those enjoyed in England and France. Indeed, at the beginning of the sixteenth century Germany could be said to be one of the fountains of European civilization.
"Now, after the Peace of Westphalia, it was reduced to the barbarism of Muscovy. Serfdom was reimposed, even introduced in areas where it had been unknown. The towns lost their self-government. The peasants, the laborers, even the middle-class burghers, were exploited to the limit by the princes, who held them down in a degrading state of servitude. The pursuit of learning and the arts all but ceased."
"Germany never recovered from this setback. Acceptance of autocracy, of blind obedience to the petty tyrants who ruled as princes, became ingrained in the German mind. The idea of democracy, of rule by parliament, which made such rapid headway in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which exploded in France in 1789, did not sprout in Germany. This political backwardness of the Germans, divided as they were into so many petty states and isolated in them from the surging currents of European thought and development, set Germany apart from and behind the other countries of the West. There was no natural growth of a nation. ... In the end the German nation was forged by naked force and held together by naked aggression."
The author discusses Prussia but without quite mentioning that it was, until crusades, not German at all, in speech or culture or population , but was conquered and wiped out by massacres, until the very memory of this is suppressed. That there was a language named Prussian, is hardly ever mentioned.
" ... Prussia had pulled itself up by its own bootstraps to be one of the ranking military powers of Europe. It had none of the resources of the others. Its land was barren and bereft of minerals. The population was small. There were no large towns, no industry and little culture. Even the nobility was poor, and the landless peasants lived like cattle. Yet by a supreme act of will and a genius for organization the Hohenzollerns managed to create a Spartan military state whose well-drilled Army won one victory after another and whose Machiavellian diplomacy of temporary alliances with whatever power seemed the strongest brought constant additions to its territory.
"There thus arose quite artificially a state born of no popular force nor even of an idea except that of conquest, and held together by the absolute power of the ruler, by a narrow-minded bureaucracy which did his bidding and by a ruthlessly disciplined army. Two thirds and sometimes as much as five sixths of the annual state revenue was expended on the Army, which became, under the King, the state itself. “Prussia,” remarked Mirabeau, “is not a state with an army, but an army with a state.” And the state, which was run with the efficiency and soullessness of a factory, became all; the people were little more than cogs in the machinery. Individuals were taught not only by the kings and the drill sergeants but by the philosophers that their role in life was one of obedience, work, sacrifice and duty. Even Kant preached that duty demands the suppression of human feeling, and the Prussian poet Willibald Alexis gloried in the enslavement of the people under the Hohenzollerns. To Lessing, who did not like it, “Prussia was the most slavish country of Europe.”"
"“The great questions of the day,” Bismarck declared on becoming Prime Minister of Prussia in 1862, “will not be settled by resolutions and majority votes—that was the mistake of the men of 1848 and 1849—but by blood and iron.” That was exactly the way he proceeded to settle them, though it must be said that he added a touch of diplomatic finesse, often of the most deceitful kind. Bismarck’s aim was to destroy liberalism, bolster the power of conservatism—that is, of the Junkers, the Army and the crown—and make Prussia, as against Austria, the dominant power not only among the Germans but, if possible, in Europe as well. “Germany looks not to Prussia’s liberalism,” he told the deputies in the Prussian parliament, “but to her force.”"
"Bismarck first built up the Prussian Army and when the parliament refused to vote the additional credits he merely raised them on his own and finally dissolved the chamber. With a strengthened Army he then struck in three successive wars. The first, against Denmark in 1864, brought the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein under German rule. The second, against Austria in 1866, had far-reaching consequences. Austria, which for centuries had been first among the German states, was finally excluded from German affairs. It was not allowed to join the North German Confederation which Bismarck now proceeded to establish.
"“In 1866,” the eminent German political scientist Wilhelm Roepke once wrote, “Germany ceased to exist.” Prussia annexed outright all the German states north of the Main which had fought against her, except Saxony; these included Hanover, Hesse, Nassau, Frankfurt and the Elbe duchies. All the other states north of the Main were forced into the North German Confederation. Prussia, which now stretched from the Rhine to Koenigsberg, completely dominated it, and within five years, with the defeat of Napoleon III’s France, the southern German states, with the considerable kingdom of Bavaria in the lead, would be drawn into Prussian Germany.
"Bismarck’s crowning achievement, the creation of the Second Reich, came on January 18, 1871, when King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Germany had been unified by Prussian armed force. It was now the greatest power on the Continent; its only rival in Europe was England.
"Yet there was a fatal flaw. The German Empire, as Treitschke said, was in reality but an extension of Prussia. “Prussia,” he emphasized, “is the dominant factor… The will of the Empire can be nothing but the will of the Prussian state.” This was true, and it was to have disastrous consequences for the Germans themselves. From 1871 to 1933 and indeed to Hitler’s end in 1945, the course of German history as a consequence was to run, with the exception of the interim of the Weimar Republic, in a straight line and with utter logic."
" ... Thus, in contrast to the development in other countries in the West, the idea of democracy, of the people sovereign, of the supremacy of parliament, never got a foothold in Germany, even after the twentieth century began. To be sure, the Social Democrats, after years of persecution by Bismarck and the Emperor, had become the largest single political party in the Reichstag by 1912. They loudly demanded the establishment of a parliamentary democracy. But they were ineffective. And, though the largest party, they were still a minority. The middle classes, grown prosperous by the belated but staggering development of the industrial revolution and dazzled by the success of Bismarck’s policy of force and war, had traded for material gain any aspirations for political freedom they may have had.* They accepted the Hohenzollern autocracy. They gladly knuckled under to the Junker bureaucracy and they fervently embraced Prussian militarism. Germany’s star had risen and they—almost all the people—were eager to do what their masters asked to keep it high."
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"Though his opponents inside and outside Germany were too busy, or too stupid, to take much notice of it until it was too late, he had somehow absorbed, as had so many Germans, a weird mixture of the irresponsible, megalomaniacal ideas which erupted from German thinkers during the nineteenth century. Hitler, who often got them at second hand through such a muddled pseudo philosopher as Alfred Rosenberg or through his drunken poet friend Dietrich Eckart, embraced them with all the feverish enthusiasm of a neophyte. What was worse, he resolved to put them into practice if the opportunity should ever arise."
"There had been among the Germans, to be sure, some of the most elevated minds and spirits of the Western world—Leibnitz, Kant, Herder, Humboldt, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Bach and Beethoven—and they had made unique contributions to the civilization of the West. But the German culture which became dominant in the nineteenth century and which coincided with the rise of Prussian Germany, continuing from Bismarck through Hitler, rests primarily on Fichte and Hegel, to begin with, and then on Treitschke, Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, and a host of lesser lights not the least of whom, strangely enough, were a bizarre Frenchman and an eccentric Englishman. They succeeded in establishing a spiritual break with the West; the breach has not been healed to this day."
"On Fichte’s death in 1814, he was succeeded by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel at the University of Berlin. This is the subtle and penetrating mind whose dialectics inspired Marx and Lenin and thus contributed to the founding of Communism and whose ringing glorification of the State as supreme in human life paved the way for the Second and Third Reichs of Bismarck and Hitler. To Hegel the State is all, or almost all. Among other things, he says, it is the highest revelation of the “world spirit”; it is the “moral universe”; it is “the actuality of the ethical idea… ethical mind… knowing and thinking itself”; the State “has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State… for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges…”
"And the happiness of the individual on earth? Hegel replies that “world history is no empire of happiness. The periods of happiness,” he declares, “are the empty pages of history because they are the periods of agreement, without conflict.” War is the great purifier. In Hegel’s view, it makes for “the ethical health of peoples corrupted by a long peace, as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the result of a prolonged calm.”"
"Heinrich von Treitschke ... Though he was a Saxon, he became the great Prussianizer; he was more Prussian than the Prussians. Like Hegel he glorifies the State and conceives of it as supreme, but his attitude is more brutish: the people, the subjects, are to be little more than slaves in the nation. “It does not matter what you think,” he exclaims, “so long as you obey.”"
Moreover, according to him,
"War is not only a practical necessity, it is also a theoretical necessity, an exigency of logic. The concept of the State implies the concept of war, for the essence of the State is power… That war should ever be banished from the world is a hope not only absurd, but profoundly immoral. It would involve the atrophy of many of the essential and sublime forces of the human soul… A people which become attached to the chimerical hope of perpetual peace finishes irremediably by decaying in its proud isolation…”"
"Nietzsche, like Goethe, held no high opinion of the German people ... The Germans, he wrote in Ecce Homo, “have no conception how vile they are,” and he came to the conclusion that “wheresoever Germany penetrated, she ruins culture.” He thought that Christians, as much as Jews, were responsible for the “slave morality” prevalent in the world; he was never an anti-Semite. He was sometimes fearful of Prussia’s future, and in his last years, before insanity closed down his mind, he even toyed with the idea of European union and world government.
"A Nazi could proudly quote him on almost every conceivable subject, and did. ... "There is no such thing as the right to live, the right to work, or the right to be happy: in this respect man is no different from the meanest worm.”* And he exalted the superman as the beast of prey, “the magnificent blond brute, avidly rampant for spoil and victory.”
"And war? Here Nietzsche took the view of most of the other nineteenth-century German thinkers. In the thundering Old Testament language in which Thus Spake Zarathustra is written, the philosopher cries out: “Ye shall love peace as a means to new war, and the short peace more than the long. You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace but to victory… Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause. War and courage have done more great things than charity.”
"Finally there was Nietzsche’s prophecy of the coming elite who would rule the world and from whom the superman would spring. In The Will to Power he exclaims: “A daring and ruler race is building itself up… The aim should be to prepare a transvaluation of values for a particularly strong kind of man, most highly gifted in intellect and will. This man and the elite around him will become the “lords of the earth.”"
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About his admiration or more for Wagner,
"Though Hitler reiterated in his monologue that winter evening that to him Tristan und Isolde was “Wagner’s masterpiece,” it is the stupendous Nibelungen Ring, a series of four operas which was inspired by the great German epic myth, Nibelungenlied, and on which the composer worked for the better part of twenty-five years, that gave Germany and especially the Third Reich so much of its primitive Germanic mythos. Often a people’s myths are the highest and truest expression of its spirit and culture, and nowhere is this more true than in Germany. Schelling even argued that “a nation comes into existence with its mythology… The unity of its thinking, which means a collective philosophy, [is] presented in its mythology; therefore its mythology contains the fate of the nation.” And Max Mell, a contemporary poet, who wrote a modern version of the Song of the Nibelungs, declared, “Today only little has remained of the Greek gods that humanism wanted to implant so deeply into our culture… But Siegfried and Kriemhild were always in the people’s soul!”
"Siegfried and Kriemhild, Brunhild and Hagen—these are the ancient heroes and heroines with whom so many modern Germans liked to identify themselves. With them, and with the world of the barbaric, pagan Nibelungs—an irrational, heroic, mystic world, beset by treachery, overwhelmed by violence, drowned in blood, and culminating in the Goetterdaemmerung, the twilight of the gods, as Valhalla, set on fire by Wotan after all his vicissitudes, goes up in flames in an orgy of self-willed annihilation which has always fascinated the German mind and answered some terrible longing in the German soul. These heroes, this primitive, demonic world, were always, in Mell’s words, “in the people’s soul.” In that German soul could be felt the struggle between the spirit of civilization and the spirit of the Nibelungs, and in the time with which this history is concerned the latter seemed to gain the upper hand. It is not at all surprising that Hitler tried to emulate Wotan when in 1945 he willed the destruction of Germany so that it might go down in flames with him."
It wasn't suspected as widely then, but the last might be untrue after all; from recent researches and testimonies of those alive then to witness, he escaped to a destination across southern Atlantic via Canary islands where he had been taken by the only flight that managed to leave Berlin that day, with further travel from Canary islands via submarine, and was seen even attending an opera on occasion; but his emulating the mythology to the extent of letting Germany be destroyed rather than admit his own defeat is quite correct, and in this he hadn't after all changed since the Brauburgerkeller or Beerhall Putsch when, having several of his followers shot dead around him, he turned and ran to safety.
Germany, more than Wagner, was influenced by
"Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, a French diplomat and man of letters, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, one of the strangest Englishmen who ever lived. ...men of immense erudition, deep culture and wide experience of travel. Yet both concocted racial doctrines so spurious that no people, not even their own, took them seriously with the single exception of the Germans. To the Nazis their questionable theories became gospel. It is probably no exaggeration to say, as I have heard more than one follower of Hitler say, that Chamberlain was the spiritual founder of the Third Reich. This singular Englishman, who came to see in the Germans the master race, the hope of the future, worshiped Richard Wagner, one of whose daughters he eventually married; he venerated first Wilhelm II and finally Hitler and was the mentor of both. At the end of a fantastic life he could hail the Austrian corporal—and this long before Hitler came to power or had any prospect of it—as a being sent by God to lead the German people out of the wilderness. Hitler, not unnaturally, regarded Chamberlain as a prophet, as indeed he turned out to be."
Much of the theory of superiority of Germans and also use of the word Aryan for them, however, preceded Chamberlain and was due to Gobineau, whose teachings were popular in Germany and societies in his name sprang all over Germany.
"To Gobineau, as he stated in his dedication of the work to the King of Hanover, the key to history and civilization was race. ... The jewel of the white race was the Aryan, “this illustrious human family, the noblest among the white race,” whose origins he traced back to Central Asia. Unfortunately, Gobineau says, the contemporary Aryan suffered from intermixture with inferior races, as one could see in the southern Europe of his time. However, in the northwest, above a line running roughly along the Seine and east to Switzerland, the Aryans, though far from simon-pure, still survived as a superior race. This took in some of the French, all of the English and the Irish, the people of the Low Countries and the Rhine and Hanover, and the Scandinavians. Gobineau seemingly excluded the bulk of the Germans, who lived to the east and southeast of his line—a fact which the Nazis glossed over when they embraced his teachings."
Funny, while various scholars, especially German ones, are celebrated for having been Indophiles, nobody ever thought of correcting the misuse of the word Aarya in the extremely incorrect interpretation given by Gobineau ascribing physical colours, rather than ingrained values imbibed due to highly civilised culture of breeding and environment and one'sown character that the word means; that this wrong interpretation led to the disastrous consequences of those thus wrongly labelled Aryan without having the values inherent in the word, is still not understood by West, which can only be the huge racism that ignores all cultures subjected to colonial regimes looting and worse perpetrated against the said colonial subjects and denigrates them rather than the perpetrators, indicating the real caste system of Europe and those of the nations that are settled by dominating European migrants. That this same wrong value system is responsible for blaming Jews for holocaust and females for all crimes perpetrated against them, or even those that they are told to expect just by being female, isn't even seen as wrong, by this value system that worships brute force untamed by civilisation.
Also curious is the unquestioning assumption underlying their race theories, that this superior race that stemmed from Central Asia only streamed Westwards to Europe, rather than spreading every way, and in particular to the land famed since antiquity for its riches, India.
That they seem to assume that skin colour is a racial characteristic, rather than something modified over millennia by nature to suit climates, modified even over lifetimes of individuals who possess a healthy skin that can tan in heat or, over longer periods in dark and cold of polar latitudes, blanch with a pink tone brought out by cold and winds, simply shows their need of an assumption of superiority with no other basis to found it on; for, these are meat eating people of central Europe who of all the people are aware on an every day basis of just how flesh changes colour when treated with heat, from the raw white of fat and pink of blood to a brown of well done.
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Shirer's writing about Houston Stewart Chamberlain is very illuminating for a reader unaware of this influence in German mind and history, mostly unmentioned by name post WWII but seen in the influence he's had not just in Germany but across Europe and West in general in formation of opinions and mindset based in racism, consciously or otherwise.
His publication of Foundations Of Nineteenth Century in 1899 influenced Kaiser Wilhelm II, with whom he carried on a lifelong correspondence influencing his mind and speeches. Even now one finds idiots quoting his words on internet to say that anyone who claims Christ was a Jew is lying, which just proves the claim his biggest follower made about the bigger the lie the more people believe it - idiots do, at any rate.
Chamberlain's basis for claiming Christ being not a Jew seems based on his being from Galilee, which is an inland sea, with mountains nearby of the same name. Why that would constitute a non Jewish descent two millennia ago when most of the land, now divided into over half a dozen Arab countries apart from Israel, was all Judea and Israel, is far from clear.
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Shirer quotes Hitler, Hegel and Nietzsche about the hero being beyond morality. The following he quotes from Nietzsche, after similar quotes from Hegel and Hitler:-
"The strong men, the masters, regain the pure conscience of a beast of prey; monsters filled with joy, they can return from a fearful succession of murder, arson, rape and torture with the same joy in their hearts, the same contentment in their souls as if they had indulged in some student’s rag… When a man is capable of commanding, when he is by nature a “Master,” when he is violent in act and gesture, of what importance are treaties to him?… To judge morality properly, it must be replaced by two concepts borrowed from zoology: the taming of a beast and the breeding of a specific species."
Wonder if Nietzsche included Mongol conquerors who went invading through Asia and Europe from Mongolia to Russia, Hungary, even France, as they raided, pillaged, massacred and burned whole towns and cities in their way, as a routine? Are those his heroes too, or did he exclude them only due to race? For that matter Hitler did admire some of those not quite European, as he admitted, even if it was only the prophet, for their ruthless creed of conquering and bending others to their own will, without heeding humanitarian values.
"Women, whom Nietzsche never had, he consigned to a distinctly inferior status, as did the Nazis, who decreed that their place was in the kitchen and their chief role in life to beget children for German warriors. Nietzsche put the idea this way: “Man shall be trained for war and woman for the procreation of the warrior. All else is folly.” He went further. In Thus Spake Zarathustra he exclaims: “Thou goest to woman? Do not forget thy whip!”—which prompted Bertrand Russell to quip, “Nine women out of ten would have got the whip away from him, and he knew it, so he kept away from women…”"
Perhaps the following explains why Rick, a young British aristocrat and writer with a socialist mindset, in the World's End series by Upton Sinclair, declares, after watching a tumultuous Hitler event, to the effect that he wouldn't write about it, that it's of no importance; Rick generally represents the type, and here's evidence of what they thought.
"As late as 1929, Professor M. A. Gerothwohl, the editor of Lord D’Abernon’s diaries, wrote a footnote to the ambassador’s account of the Beer Hall Putsch in which, after mention of Hitler’s being sentenced to prison, he added: “He was finally released after six months and bound over for the rest of his sentence, thereafter fading into oblivion.” Lord D’Abernon was the British ambassador in Berlin from 1920 to 1926 and worked with great skill to strengthen the Weimar Republic."
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BOOK TWO
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TRIUMPH AND CONSOLIDATION
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"Between 1924 and 1930 German borrowing amounted to some seven billion dollars and most of it came from American investors, who gave little thought to how the Germans might make eventual repayment. The Germans gave even less thought to it."
Not that different from the jihadist factories parading as nations for use of U.S. as military bases since WWII, except this time it's labelled aid, and completely unaccounted for, but nevertheless goes with theft and backstabbing by the said aided jihadist factories parading as nations.
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Something very surprising for those having lived in Germany or even visited being wrong sort of foreigners, but familiar to those that have read about that era, is following by Shirer:-
"My own acquaintance with Germany began in those days. I was stationed in Paris and occasionally in London at that time, and fascinating though those capitals were to a young American happy to have escaped from the incredible smugness and emptiness of the Calvin Coolidge era, they paled a little when one came to Berlin and Munich. A wonderful ferment was working in Germany. Life seemed more free, more modern, more exciting than in any place I had ever seen. Nowhere else did the arts or the intellectual life seem so lively. In contemporary writing, painting, architecture, in music and drama, there were new currents and fine talents. And everywhere there was an accent on youth. One sat up with the young people all night in the sidewalk cafés, the plush bars, the summer camps, on a Rhineland steamer or in a smoke-filled artist’s studio and talked endlessly about life. They were a healthy, carefree, sun-worshiping lot, and they were filled with an enormous zest for living to the full and in complete freedom. The old oppressive Prussian spirit seemed to be dead and buried. Most Germans one met—politicians, writers, editors, artists, professors, students, businessmen, labor leaders—struck you as being democratic, liberal, even pacifist.
"One scarcely heard of Hitler or the Nazis except as butts of jokes—usually in connection with the Beer Hall Putsch, as it came to be known. In the elections of May 20, 1928, the Nazi Party polled only 810,000 votes out of a total of thirty-one million cast and had but a dozen of the Reichstag’s 491 members."
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Shirer sheds light on the subsequent events as they unfolded, by explaining just how Gregor Strasser and Ernst Roehm, came to be liquidated later, because they were threats to Hitler who declared early on that he'd be the sole dictator of the party. Roehm was successful at public meetings due to a forceful personality, and Strasser had joined National Socialist German Freedoms party, getting thirty two seats in the Reichstag, one for himself.
"Two weeks after the February 27 meeting, Hitler swallowed his personal pique, sent for Strasser, induced him to come back to the fold and proposed that he organize the Nazi Party in the north. Strasser accepted. Here was an opportunity to exercise his talents without the jealous, arrogant Leader being in a position to breathe down his neck.
"Within a few months he had founded a newspaper in the capital, the Berliner Arbeiterzeitung, edited by his brother, Otto Strasser, and a fortnightly newsletter, the N. S. Briefe, which kept the party officials informed of the party line. And he had laid the foundations for a political organization that stretched through Prussia, Saxony, Hanover and the industrial Rhineland. A veritable dynamo, Strasser traveled all over the north, addressing meetings, appointing district leaders and setting up a party apparatus. Being a Reichstag deputy gave him two immediate advantages over Hitler: he had a free pass on the railroads, so travel was no expense to him or the party; and he enjoyed parliamentary immunity. No authority could ban him from public speaking; no court could try him for slandering anyone or anything he wanted to. As Heiden wrote sardonically, “Free travel and free slander—Strasser had a big head start over his Fuehrer.”
"As his secretary and editor of the N. S. Briefe Gregor Strasser took on a twenty-eight-year-old Rhinelander named Paul Joseph Goebbels."
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Another fact mostly not very publicised and hence mostly little known, Goebbels not only had an education, but a doctorate from Heidelberg, after attending seven other universities - Bonn, Freiburg, Wurzburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin.
Strasser brothers and Goebbels were serious about joining program with leftists.
"The Strassers and Goebbels wanted to nationalize the big industries and the big estates and substitute a chamber of corporations on fascist lines for the Reichstag."
At the meeting they organised on November 22, 1925,
"When Dr. Ley and Feder argued that the meeting was out of order, that nothing could be done without Hitler, the Supreme Leader, Goebbels shouted (according to Otto Strasser, who was present), “I demand that the petty bourgeois Adolf Hitler be expelled from the Nazi Party!”"
"With only Ley and Feder dissenting, the Hanover meeting adopted Strasser’s new party program and approved the decision to join the Marxists in the plebiscite campaign to deprive the former kings and princes of their possessions."
Goebbels, however, capitulated to the wiley leader, who laid siege by using all his powers to Goebbel's loyalty, even to the extent of publicly chiding the former boss Strasser, who had employed him when Himmler had resigned to raise his children. Strasser and Ernst Roehm were eliminated subsequently by being murdered when the party liquidated the strong arm S.A. that had been used to bring them to threshhold of power, because they were by then a liability due to their power and their loyalty to leftist ideals of equality, rather than to the person of the leader who chose to sell those ideals out when convenient for sake of consolidating power.
By this time Hjalmer Horace Greeley Schacht and Walter Funk had joined. The party needed funding and concentrated on private contributions from businesses and persons of wealth, whose contributions to other, conservative, parties diminished when nazis assured them they were the choice for containment of left, rather than the left of choice inherent in name to attract membership of cadre.
"“In the summer of 1931,” Otto Dietrich, Hitler’s press chief first for the party and later for the Reich, relates, “the Fuehrer suddenly decided to concentrate systematically on cultivating the influential industrial magnates.”"
In the fall of 1930 Strasser, Feder and Frick introduced a bill in Reichstag to curb interests and incomes of bank and stock magnates, and of 'Eastern Jews', which Hitler ordered them to withdraw; communists then introduced it, and Hitler ordered nazis to fight it. He'd been in secret conferences with many, conferences at locations hidden in forests, so that press wouldn't know, while the party was still reassuring general public that they were fighting for the little man; meanwhile they were courting coal and steel magnates. Thyssen in fact had been impressed early, in 1923, and contributed 100,000 gold marks to the party.
"In fact the coal and steel interests were the principal sources of the funds that came from the industrialists to help Hitler over his last hurdles to power in the period between 1930 and 1933."
The list provided by Walter Funk at Nürnberg trials, although incomplete due to his fading memory, was long.
"It included Georg von Schnitzler, a leading director of I. G. Farben, the giant chemical cartel; August Rosterg and August Diehn of the potash industry (Funk speaks of this industry’s “positive attitude toward the Fuehrer”); Cuno of the Hamburg-Amerika line; the brown-coal industry of central Germany; the Conti rubber interests; Otto Wolf, the powerful Cologne industrialist; Baron Kurt von Schroeder, the Cologne banker, who was to play a pivotal role in the final maneuver which hoisted Hitler to power; several leading banks, among which were the Deutsche Bank, the Commerz und Privat Bank, the Dresdener Bank, the Deutsche Kredit Gesellschaft; and Germany’s largest insurance concern, the Allianz."
Southern wealthy men formed a friendship circle to contribute to Himmler's research in race. Hugo Beckman the Munich publisher and Carl Bechstein the manufacturer of pianos were early contributors. Bechstein had a larger role in Hitler meeting other wealthy men.
Siemens and A. E. G., Krupp and Halbach stood aloof. Krupp capitulated after Hitler was chancellor, although he opposed the move strongly and protested to Hindenburg against it.
"Ernst Roehm had broken with Hitler in 1925 and not long afterward gone off to join the Bolivian Army as a lieutenant colonel. Toward the end of 1930 Hitler appealed to him to return and take over again the leadership of the S.A., which was getting out of hand. Its members, even its leaders, apparently believed in a coming Nazi revolution by violence, and with increasing frequency they were taking to the streets to molest and murder their political opponents. No election, national, provincial or municipal, took place without savage battles in the gutters."
Until the Wall Street crash that had repercussions across much of the globe but especially in Germany due to the loans that helped industry and consequently middle class German people, there seemed little chance of nazis finding success again, but that changed with the crash when Hitler took advantage of the misery and blamed everything on Versailles treaty and Jews, and people beleaguered by war and post war duress now facing more of the same, thought this was hope for them.
"There were a good many at that time, within and without the party, who believed that Strasser might well supplant the moody, incalculable Austrian leader. This view was especially strong in the Reichswehr and in the President’s Palace.
"Otto, Gregor Strasser’s brother, had fallen by the wayside. Unfortunately for him, he had taken seriously not only the word “socialist” but the word “workers” in the party’s official name of National Socialist German Workers’ Party."
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Kurt von Schleicher, a friend of Oskar Hindenburg and of General Groener, was key in the turn of events. There were too many political parties in Germany, and votes divided to the tune of a million each between ten major parties, to carry on government work, and much of the time there was cattle trading. Schleicher preferred government by decree by a democratically elected president if the Reichstag couldn't do it.
"What the majority of Germans wanted, Schleicher was sure, was a government that would take a firm stand and lead them out of their hopeless plight. Actually, as the elections which Bruening called in September showed, that was not what the majority of Germans wanted. Or at least they did not want to be led out of the wilderness by the kind of government which Schleicher and his friends in the Army and in the Presidential Palace had chosen.
"In truth, Schleicher had committed two disastrous mistakes. By putting up Bruening as Chancellor and encouraging him to rule by presidential decree, he had cracked the foundation of the Army’s strength in the nation—its position above politics, the abandonment of which would lead to its own and Germany’s ruin. And he had made a bad miscalculation about the voters. When six and a half million of them, against 810,000 two years before, voted for the Nazi Party on September 14, 1930, the political General realized that he must take a new tack. By the end of the year he was in touch with Roehm, who had just returned from Bolivia, and with Gregor Strasser. This was the first serious contact between the Nazis and those who held the political power in the Republic. In just two years its development was to lead Adolf Hitler to his goal and General von Schleicher to his fall and ultimate murder."
"Bruening planned to move boldly on the home front too and to bring about by agreement of all the major parties save the Communists a fundamental change in the German constitution. He meant to restore the Hohenzollern monarchy. Even if Hindenburg could be persuaded to run again, he could not be expected at his age to live out another full term of seven years. Should he die in another year or two, the way would still be open to Hitler to be elected President. To forestall that, to assure permanency and stability in the office of head of state, Bruening broached the following plan: The 1932 presidential elections would be called off and Hindenburg’s term of office simply extended, as it could be, by a two-thirds vote in the two houses of Parliament, the Reichstag and the Reichsrat. As soon as that was achieved, he would propose that Parliament proclaim a monarchy with the President as regent. On his death one of the sons of the Crown Prince would be put on the Hohenzollern throne. This act too would take the wind out of the Nazis; in fact Bruening was confident that it would mean their end as a political force.
"But the aged President was not interested. He, whose duty it had been as Commander of the Imperial Army to tell the Kaiser on that dark fall day of November 1918 at Spa that he must go, that the monarchy was at an end, would not consider any Hohenzollern’s resuming the throne except the Emperor himself, who still lived in exile at Doom, in Holland. When Bruening explained to him that the Social Democrats and the trade unions, which with the greatest reluctance had given some encouragement to his plan if only because it might afford the last desperate chance of stopping Hitler, would not stand for the return of either Wilhelm II or his eldest son and that moreover if the monarchy were restored it must be a constitutional and democratic one on the lines of the British model, the grizzly old Field Marshal was so outraged he summarily dismissed his Chancellor from his presence. A week later he recalled him to inform him that he would not stand for re-election.
"In the meantime first Bruening and then Hindenburg had had their first meeting with Adolf Hitler. Both talks went badly for the Nazi leader. He had not yet recovered from the blow of Geli Raubal’s suicide; his mind wandered and he was unsure of himself. To Bruening’s request for Nazi support for the continuance in office of Hindenburg Hitler answered with a long tirade against the Republic which left little doubt that he would not go along with the Chancellor’s plans. With Hindenburg, Hitler was ill at ease. He tried to impress the old gentleman with a long harangue but it fell flat. The President, at this first meeting, was not impressed by the “Bohemian corporal,” as he called him, and told Schleicher that such a man might become Minister of Posts but never Chancellor—words which the Field Marshal would later have to eat."
"Both Hugenberg and Hitler refused to agree to Bruening’s proposal that Hindenburg’s term of office be prolonged. At the beginning of 1932 the Chancellor renewed his effort to get them to change their minds."
"To Otto von Meissner, the nimble Secretary of State at the Presidential Chancellery, who had zealously served in that capacity first the Socialist Ebert and then the conservative Hindenburg and who was beginning to think of a third term in office for himself with whoever the President might be—perhaps even Hitler?—the Nazi leader, in a secret conversation at the Kaiserhof, offered to support Hindenburg in the elections if he would first get rid of Bruening, name a “National” government and decree new elections for the Reichstag and the Prussian Diet.
"To this Hindenburg would not agree. Nettled by the refusal of the Nazis and the Nationalists, the latter his friends and supposed supporters, to agree to spare him the strain of an election battle, Hindenburg agreed to run again. But to his resentment against the nationalist parties was added a curious spleen against Bruening, who he felt had handled the whole matter badly and who was now forcing him into bitter conflict with the very nationalist forces which had elected him President in 1925 against the liberal–Marxist candidates. Now he could win only with the support of the Socialists and the trade unions, for whom he had always had an undisguised contempt. A marked coolness sprang up in his dealings with his Chancellor—“the best,” he had said not so long ago, “since Bismarck.”"
Hindenburg did get support of democratic parties.
"To Hitler, a Catholic, an Austrian, a former tramp, a “national socialist,” a leader of the lower-middle-class masses, was rallied, in addition to his own followers, the support of the upper-class Protestants of the north, the conservative Junker agrarians and a number of monarchists, including, at the last minute, the former Crown Prince himself. ... The Nationalists put up Theodor Duesterberg, second-in-command of the Stahlhelm (of which Hindenburg was the honorary commander), a colorless former lieutenant colonel whom the Nazis, to their glee, soon discovered to be the great-grandson of a Jew. The Communists, shouting that the Social Democrats were “betraying the workers” by supporting Hindenburg, ran their own candidate, Ernst Thaelmann, the party’s leader. It was not the first time, nor the last, that the Communists, on orders from Moscow, risked playing into Nazi hands."
Hindenburg got 49.6% while Hitler got 30.1%, necessitating another election; the other two getting small amounts. Hindenburg got 53% the second time.
"Though Hitler had increased his total vote by two million and Hindenburg had gained only one million, the President was in by a clear, absolute majority. More than half the German people had thus given expression to their belief in the democratic Republic; they had decisively rejected the extremists of both Right and Left. Or so they thought."
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"For more than a year the Reich government and various state governments had been coming into possession of documents which showed that a number of high Nazi leaders, especially in the S.A., were preparing to take over Germany by force and institute a reign of terror. On the eve of the first presidential elections the S.A., now 400,000 strong, had been fully mobilized and had thrown a cordon around Berlin. Though Captain Roehm, the S.A. chief, assured General von Schleicher that the measure was merely “precautionary,” the Prussian police had seized documents at Nazi headquarters in Berlin which made it pretty clear that the S.A. meant to carry out a coup d’état on the following evening should Hitler be elected President—such was Roehm’s hurry. Goebbels in a diary notation on the night of March 11 had confirmed that something was afoot. “Talked over instructions with the S.A. and S.S. commanders. Deep uneasiness is rife everywhere. The word Putsch haunts the air.”
"Both the national and the state governments were alarmed. On April 5 representatives of several of the states, led by Prussia and Bavaria, the two largest, had demanded that the central government suppress the S.A. or else they would do it themselves in their respective territories. Chancellor Bruening was away from Berlin electioneering, but Groener, who received the delegates in his capacity of Minister of the Interior and of Defense, promised action as soon as Bruening returned, which was on April 10, the day of the second election. Bruening and Groener thought they had good reasons for stamping out the S.A. It would end the threat of civil war and might be a prelude to the end of Hitler as a major factor in German politics. Certain of Hindenburg’s re-election by an absolute majority, they felt that the voters were giving them a mandate to protect the Republic against the threats of the Nazis to forcibly overthrow it. The time had come to use force against force. Also, unless they acted vigorously, the government would lose the support of the Social Democrats and the trade unions, which were providing most of the votes for Hindenburg and the chief backing for the continuance of Bruening’s government.
"The cabinet met on April 10, in the midst of the polling, and decided to immediately suppress Hitler’s private armies. There was some difficulty in getting Hindenburg to sign the decree—Schleicher, who had first approved it, began to whisper objections in the President’s ear—but he finally did so on April 13 and it was promulgated on April 14."
"Even before the ban on the S.A. was promulgated, Schleicher, who had won over the weak-minded commander of the Reichswehr, General von Hammerstein, confidentially informed the commanders of the seven military districts that the Army opposed the move. Next he persuaded Hindenburg to write a cantankerous letter to Groener, on April 16, asking why the Reichsbanner, the paramilitary organization of the Social Democrats, had not been suppressed along with the S.A. Schleicher took a further step to undermine his chief’s position. He inspired a malicious smear campaign against General Groener, spreading tales that he was too ill to remain in office, that he had become a convert to Marxism and even to pacifism and proclaiming that the Defense Minister had disgraced the Army by having a child born five months after his recent marriage—the baby, he told Hindenburg, had been nicknamed “Nurmi” in Army circles, after the fleet Finnish runner of Olympic fame."
"May 10, two days after his meeting with Hitler and the men around Hindenburg, Schleicher struck. The blow was delivered at the Reichstag. General Groener rose to defend the banning of the S.A. and was violently attacked by Goering. Ill with diabetes and sick at heart at the treachery already wrought by Schleicher, the Defense Minister tried to defend himself as best he could but he was overwhelmed by a torrent of abuse from the Nazi benches. Exhausted and humiliated, he started to leave the chamber, only to run into General von Schleicher, who informed him coldly that he “no longer enjoyed the confidence of the Army and must resign.” Groener appealed to Hindenburg, for whom he had loyally fronted—and taken the blame—when the crucial moment had come, first, in 1918, to tell the Kaiser to go, and then, in 1919, to advise the republican government to sign the Versailles Treaty. But the old Field Marshal, who had never ceased resenting his obligation to the younger officer, replied that he “regretted” he could do nothing in the matter. On May 13, bitter and disillusioned,* Groener resigned."
Breuning proposed that state take over a number of bankrupt Junker estates in East Prussia, with generous compensations, and give them to landless peasants. When Hindenburg went for a vacation to Neudeck on the estate presented to him by Junkers, he got an earful from his aristocrat Junker landlord neighbours of estates around.
"On Sunday, May 29, Hindenburg summoned Bruening to his presence and abruptly asked for his resignation, and on the following day it was given him.
"Schleicher had triumphed. But not only Bruening had fallen; the democratic Republic went down with him, though its death agonies would continue for another eight months before the final coup de grâce was administered. Bruening’s responsibility for its demise was not small. Though democratic at heart, he had allowed himself to be maneuvered into a position where he had perforce to rule much of the time by presidential decree without the consent of Parliament. The provocation to take such a step admittedly had been great; the politicians in their blindness had made it all but inevitable. As recently as May 12, though, he had been able to win a vote of confidence in the Reichstag for his finance bill. But where Parliament could not agree he had relied on the authority of the President to govern. Now that authority had been withdrawn. From now on, from June 1932 to January 1933, it would be granted to two lesser men who, though not Nazis, felt no urge to uphold a democratic Republic, at least as it was presently constituted.
"The political power in Germany no longer resided, as it had since the birth of the Republic, in the people and in the body which expressed the people’s will, the Reichstag. It was now concentrated in the hands of a senile, eighty-five-year-old President and in those of a few shallow ambitious men around him who shaped his weary, wandering mind. Hitler saw this very clearly, and it suited his purposes. It seemed most unlikely that he would ever win a majority in Parliament."
Hindenburg appointed Franz von Papen, who'd been former military attache in Washington and expelled from U.S. during the war for planning to sabotage while U.S. was neutral.
"On his appointment as Chancellor his own Center Party, indignant at the treachery of Papen toward its leader, Bruening, unanimously expelled him from the party."
"On June 4 he dissolved the Reichstag and convoked new elections for July 31, and after some prodding from the suspicious Nazis, he lifted the ban on the S.A. on June 15. A wave of political violence and murder such as even Germany had not previously seen immediately followed. The storm troopers swarmed the streets seeking battle and blood and their challenge was often met, especially by the Communists. In Prussia alone between June 1 and 20 there were 461 pitched battles in the streets which cost eighty-two lives and seriously wounded four hundred men. In July, thirty-eight Nazis and thirty Communists were listed among the eighty-six persons killed in riots. On Sunday, July 10, eighteen persons were done to death in the streets, and on the following Sunday, when the Nazis, under police escort, staged a march through Altona, a working-class suburb of Hamburg, nineteen persons were shot dead and 285 wounded. The civil war which the barons’ cabinet had been called in to halt was growing steadily worse. All the parties save the Nazis and the Communists demanded that the government take action to restore order.
"On July 20 he deposed the Prussian government and appointed himself Reich Commissioner for Prussia. .... When the Socialist ministers refused to be deposed except by force, Papen obligingly supplied it.
"Martial law was proclaimed in Berlin and General von Rundstedt, the local Reichswehr commander, sent a lieutenant and a dozen men to make the necessary arrests."
Nazis increased their numbers to 230 in July 31 polls, still short of majority. Hitler met Schleicher and made his demands.
"Strasser, Frick and Funk arrived at Obersalzberg with news that was not exactly encouraging. Schleicher was turning again, like a worm. He was now insisting that if Hitler got the chancellorship he must rule with the consent of the Reichstag. Funk reported that his business friends were worried about the prospects of a Nazi government. He had a message from Schacht confirming it. Finally, the Wilhelmstrasse, the trio told Hitler, was worried about a Nazi putsch.
"This worry was not without foundation. Next day, August 10, Goebbels learned that in Berlin the S.A. was “in a state of armed readiness… The S.A. is throwing an ever stronger ring around Berlin… The Wilhelmstrasse is very nervous about it."
Otto von Meissner was a witness to the Hindenburg meeting with Hitler where the latter demanded chancellorship.
"Hindenburg replied that because of the tense situation he could not in good conscience risk transferring the power of government to a new party such as the National Socialists, which did not command a majority and which was intolerant, noisy and undisciplined.
"At this point, Hindenburg, with a certain show of excitement, referred to several recent occurrences—clashes between the Nazis and the police, acts of violence committed by Hitler’s followers against those who were of a different opinion, excesses against Jews and other illegal acts. All these incidents had strengthened him in his conviction that there were numerous wild elements in the Party beyond control… After extended discussion Hindenburg proposed to Hitler that he should declare himself ready to co-operate with the other parties, in particular with the Right and Center, and that he should give up the one-sided idea that he must have complete power. In co-operating with other parties, Hindenburg declared, he would be able to show what he could achieve and improve upon. If he could show positive results, he would acquire increasing and even dominating influence even in a coalition government. Hindenburg stated that this also would be the best way to eliminate the widespread fear that a National Socialist government would make ill use of its power and would suppress all other viewpoints and gradually eliminate them. Hindenburg stated that he was ready to accept Hitler and the representatives of his movement in a coalition government, the precise combination to be a matter of negotiation, but that he could not take the responsibility of giving exclusive power to Hitler alone… Hitler was adamant, however, in refusing to put himself in the position of bargaining with the leaders of the other parties and in such manner to form a coalition government."
"In the words of the official communiqué issued immediately afterward, Hindenburg “regretted that Herr Hitler did not see himself in a position to support a national government appointed with the confidence of the Reich President, as he had agreed to do before the Reichstag elections.” In the view of the venerable President, Hitler had broken his word, but let him beware of the future. “The President,” the communiqué stated further, “gravely exhorted Herr Hitler to conduct the opposition on the part of the N.S. Party in a chivalrous manner, and to bear in mind his responsibility to the Fatherland and to the German people.”"
"Hitler decided to swallow the pill of such an unsavory association. He ordered his deputies to vote for the Communist amendment and overthrow Papen before the Chancellor could dissolve the Reichstag. To accomplish this, of course, Goering, as presiding officer, would have to pull some fast and neat tricks of parliamentary procedure."
There was a farcical day in Reichstag where the speaker refused to recognise Papen and motion to dissolve Reichstag passed, with new elections set for November 6; funds for nazis dried up since businesses were wary of their treacherous intrigues and willingness to work with communists. Come elections, nazis and communists lost ground, which was gained by socialists and National party respectively, latter having had backed Papen. But now Schleicher struck, telling Papen to resign, and subsequently Hindenburg sent for Hitler.
"If there was to be a cabinet governing by decree Hindenburg preferred his friend Papen to head it. Hitler, he said in a letter on his behalf dispatched by Meissner, could not be given such a post “because such a cabinet is bound to develop into a party dictatorship…. I cannot take the responsibility for this before my oath and my conscience.”
"The old Field Marshal was more prophetic on the first point than on the second."
Papen and Schleicher went to see Hindenburg, Papen outlined his proposal to do without Reichstag while he amended the constitution towards taking country back to conservative government; Schleicher counterproposal was to have himself rule with help of nazis. Hindenburg was outraged and turned to Papen.
But at the cabinet meeting Schleicher opposed Papen and said that the military and the police could not keep order in face of strike. Papen went to see Hindenburg who was on his side, but unwilling to see a civil war at the age, and on December 2, 1932, Schleicher became chancellor. Nobody expected him to last.
"... Berlin was full of cabals, and of cabals within cabals. Soon the webs of intrigue became so enmeshed that by New Year’s, 1933, none of the cabalists was sure who was double-crossing whom. But it would not take long for them to find out."
Schleicher offered vice-chancellorship to Gregor Strasser who was no. two, in touch with party structure and earned their loyalty with honest leftist stance; the party was in dire straits financially, Thyssen had warned he wouldnt be able to support. Strasser and Frick advised joining Schleicher government. There was a showdown.
"On the seventh, Hitler and Strasser had a conversation at the Kaiserhof that degenerated into a bitter quarrel. Hitler accused his chief lieutenant of trying to stab him in the back, oust him from his leadership of the party and break up the Nazi movement. Strasser heatedly denied this, swore that he had been loyal but accused Hitler of leading the party to destruction. Apparently he left unsaid a number of things that had been swelling within him since 1925. Back at his room in the Excelsior Hotel he put them all in writing in a letter to Hitler which ended with his resignation of all his offices in the party.
"Strasser’s friends were purged and all party leaders convoked to Berlin to sign a new declaration of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, which they did. ... Gregor Strasser, whom so many had thought to be a greater man than Hitler, was quickly destroyed."
Papen met Hitler in secrecy, suggesting Hitler join Schleicher; Hitler said he'd make changes to eliminate socialists, communists and Jews. But newspapers next morning had the story of the meeting, Schleicher having spies one of whom had got a picture.
"Hindenburg had not given Schleicher power to dissolve the Reichstag. This meant that the Nazis, with the help of the Communists, could overthrow the General any time they wished. Secondly, out of the meeting came an understanding that West German business interests would take over the debts of the Nazi Party."
Schleicher gave a talk appealing to nation on radio.
"...he was canceling the last cut in wages and relief which Papen had made. Furthermore, he was ending the agricultural quotas which Papen had established for the benefit of the large landowners and instead was launching a scheme to take 800,000 acres from the bankrupt Junker estates in the East and give them to 25,000 peasant families. Also prices of such essentials as coal and meat would be kept down by rigid control."
But labour didn't trust him, and big landowners and businesses revolted against him. Landbund, the association of large farmers, attacked him, and Hindenburg called him to account.
"Schleicher’s answer was to threaten to publish a secret Reichstag report on the Osthilfe (Eastern Relief) loans—a scandal which, as everyone knew, implicated hundreds of the oldest Junker families, who had waxed fat on unredeemed government “loans,” and which indirectly involved even the President himself, since the East Prussian estate which had been presented to him had been illegally deeded to his son to escape inheritance taxes."
Schleicher asked Strasser to join the government, Strasser accepted, which seemed to be end of Hitler and of nazis danger; but Strasser turned to Hitler and was turned down.
".... State Secretary Meissner and the President’s son, Oskar.
"On the evening of January 22, these two gentlemen stole out of the presidential quarters, grabbed a taxi, as Meissner says, to avoid being noticed and drove to the suburban home of a hitherto unknown Nazi by the name of Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was a friend of Papen—they had served together on the Turkish front during the war. There they met Papen, Hitler, Goering and Frick. According to Meissner, Oskar von Hindenburg had been opposed to any truck with the Nazis up to this fateful evening. Hitler may have known this; at any rate he insisted on having a talk with him “under four eyes,” and to Meissner’s astonishment young Hindenburg assented and withdrew with Hitler to another room, where they were closeted together for an hour. What Hitler said to the President’s son, who was not noted for a brilliant mind or a strong character, has never been revealed. It was generally believed in Nazi circles that Hitler made both offers and threats, the latter consisting of hints to disclose to the public Oskar’s involvement in the Osthilfe scandal and the tax evasion on the Hindenburg estate. One can only judge the offers by the fact that a few months later five thousand tax-free acres were added to the Hindenburg family property at Neudeck and that in August 1934 Oskar was jumped from colonel to major general in the Army."
So on January 23, Schleicher went to Hindenburg asking for dissolving Reichstag and rule by decree; with Papen opposing him and claiming Hitler's support, their roles exactly reversed. He resigned on 28th, and Hindenburg sent for Papen to form a government with Hitler. But Papen now was trying to do so without Hitler, and Schleicher was trying to make Hitler take over.
"The day before, Schleicher had sent the Commander in Chief of the Army, General von Hammerstein, to the President to warn him against selecting Papen. In the maze of intrigues with which Berlin was filled, Schleicher was at the last minute plumping for Hitler to replace him. Hindenburg assured the Army commander he had no intention of appointing “that Austrian corporal.”"
"General Werner von Blomberg had been summoned, not by Hitler, who was not yet in power, but by Hindenburg and Papen from Geneva, where he was representing Germany at the Disarmament Conference, to become the new Minister of Defense in the Hitler-Papen cabinet. He was a man who, as Hitler later said, already enjoyed his confidence and who had come under the spell of his chief of staff in East Prussia, Colonel Walter von Reichenau, an outspoken Nazi sympathizer. When Blomberg arrived in Berlin, early on the morning of January 30, he was met at the station by two Army officers with conflicting orders for him. A Major von Kuntzen, Hammerstein’s adjutant, commanded him to report to the Commander in Chief of the Army. Colonel Oskar von Hindenburg, adjutant to his father, ordered the bewildered Blomberg to report to the President of the Republic. Blomberg went to the President, was immediately sworn in as Defense Minister, and thus was given the authority not only to put down any attempted coup by the Army but to see that the military supported the new government, which a few hours later would be named. Hitler was always grateful to the Army for accepting him at that crucial moment. Not long afterward he told a party rally, “If in the days of our revolution the Army had not stood on our side, then we would not be standing here today.” It was a responsibility which would weigh heavily on the officer corps in the days to come and which, in the end, they would more than regret.
"On this wintry morning of January 30, 1933, the tragedy of the Weimar Republic, of the bungling attempt for fourteen frustrating years of the Germans to make democracy work, had come to an end .... "
"... by way of the back door, by means of a shabby political deal with the old-school reactionaries he privately detested, the former tramp from Vienna, the derelict of the First World War, the violent revolutionary, became Chancellor of the great nation."
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After being in power nazis could go to polls using government machinery and funding, and did. Meanwhile they set fire to Reichstag, implicated and arrested some communists, of whom three were Bulgarians who made fools of the Nazi prosecution with brilliant cross questioning. Using the fire as pretext Hitler got Hindenburg to suspend civil liberties in general and clamp down hard on leftists. Thousands of S.A. were brought into police so the citizens complaing about S.A. couldn't turn to police for protection.
"On March 5, 1933, the day of the last democratic elections they were to know during Hitler’s life, they spoke with their ballots. Despite all the terror and intimidation, the majority of them rejected Hitler. The Nazis led the polling with 17,277,180 votes—an increase of some five and a half million, but it comprised only 44 per cent of the total vote. A clear majority still eluded Hitler. All the persecution and suppression of the previous weeks did not prevent the Center Party from actually increasing its vote from 4,230,600 to 4,424,900; with its ally, the Catholic Bavarian People’s Party, it obtained a total of five and a half million votes. Even the Social Democrats held their position as the second largest party, polling 7,181,629 votes, a drop of only 70,000. The Communists lost a million supporters but still polled 4,848,058 votes. The Nationalists, led by Papen and Hugenberg, were bitterly disappointed with their own showing, a vote of 3,136,760, a mere 8 per cent of the votes cast and a gain of less than 200,000. Still, the Nationalists’ 52 seats, added to the 288 of the Nazis, gave the government a majority of 16 in the Reichstag.
"This was enough, perhaps, to carry on the day-to-day business of government but it was far short of the two-thirds majority which Hitler needed to carry out a new, bold plan to establish his dictatorship by consent of Parliament."
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Leftists were outlawed, arrested and imprisoned. Other parties crumbled and were outlawed.
"To Hitler, as he had publicly declared a thousand times, the Jews were not Germans, and though he did not exterminate them at once (only a relative few—a few thousand, that is—were robbed, beaten or murdered during the first months), he issued laws excluding them from public service, the universities and the professions. And on April 1, 1933, he proclaimed a national boycott of Jewish shops."
"Germany’s position in the world in the spring of 1933 could hardly have been worse. The Third Reich was diplomatically isolated and militarily impotent. The whole world had been revolted by Nazi excesses, especially the persecution of the Jews. Germany’s neighbors, in particular France and Poland, were hostile and suspicious, and as early as March 1933, following a Polish military demonstration in Danzig, Marshal Pilsudski suggested to the French the desirability of a joint preventive war against Germany."
"General von Seeckt, father of the Reichswehr and arbiter of foreign policy during the first years of the Republic, had advised the government as early as 1922, “Poland’s existence is intolerable, incompatible with the essential conditions of Germany’s life. Poland,” he insisted, “must go and will go.” Its obliteration, he added, “must be one of the fundamental drives of German policy… With the disappearance of Poland will fall one of the strongest pillars of the Versailles Peace, the hegemony of France.”"
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"Yet as the second year of his dictatorship got under way clouds gathered on the Nazi horizon."
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"At the end of May Bruening and Schleicher were warned that they were marked for murder. The former slipped quietly out of the country in disguise, the latter went off on a vacation to Bavaria but returned to Berlin toward the end of June.
"At the beginning of June, Hitler had a showdown with Roehm which, according to his own account given to the Reichstag later, lasted for nearly five hours and which “dragged on until midnight.” It was, Hitler said, his “last attempt” to come to an understanding with his closest friend in the movement."
Hindenburg went to Neudeck and asked Papen to do something about the situation in Germany; Papen spoke in Marburg calling for restoration of freedoms, especially that of press.
"The speech, when it became known, was widely heralded in Germany, but it fell like a bombshell on the little group of Nazi leaders gathered at Gera, and Goebbels moved quickly to see that it became known as little as possible. He forbade the broadcast of a recording of the speech scheduled for the same evening as well as any reference to it in the press, and ordered the police to seize copies of the Frankfurter Zeitung which were on the streets with a partial text. But not even the absolute powers of the Propaganda Minister were sufficient to keep the German people and the outside world from learning the contents of the defiant address. The wily Papen had provided the foreign correspondents and diplomats in Berlin with advance texts, and several thousand copies were hastily run off on the presses of Papen’s newspaper, Germania, and secretly distributed."
Papen was furious and resigned, telling Hitler thst he'd inform Hindenburg. Hitler flew to Neudeck and was met by General Blomberg.
"Blomberg instead was now the stern Prussian general and he brusquely informed Hitler that he was authorized by the Field Marshal to tell him that unless the present state of tension in Germany was brought quickly to an end the President would declare martial law and turn over the control of the State to the Army. When Hitler was permitted to see Hindenburg for a few minutes in the presence of Blomberg, the old President confirmed the ultimatum."
Hitler now had to honour his pact with army or be sidelined forever, but hesitated about putting down S.A. thst had brought him to power. Himmler convinced Hitler to suppress the putsch and Hitler gave orders, Himmler was to do it in Bavaria and Göring in Berlin.
The purge began with Hitler dragging Roehm out of bed at 4 a.m. and having his companions shot while he was taken to prison on June 30, and shot dead by SS, amongst hundreds of other S.A., along with others including Schleicher and his wife, and various people who worked with Papen, who was put under house arrest. He accepted a new assignment as German Minister in Vienna after Dollfuss was shot dead. At Munich in 1957 the number shot or otherwise murdered that day was said to be over a thousand. It included a well known music critic Willi Schmid, who'd been murdered by SS due to sharing name with an S.A. leader.
The army was mostly short sighted enough to appreciate this purge of a rival organisation, assuming mistakenly that they'd have no other rivals. Hindenburg died on August 2, and it was announced that according to a law passed the previous day Hitler now had sole authority. Army was required to swear oath of allegiance to not Germany, not constitution, but to Hitler. Hindenburg had wanted a constitutional monarchy after his own death, and this was suppressed.
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"The so-called Nuremberg Laws of September 15, 1935, deprived the Jews of German citizenship, confining them to the status of “subjects.” It also forbade marriage between Jews and Aryans as well as extramarital relations between them, and it prohibited Jews from employing female Aryan servants under thirty-five years of age. In the next few years some thirteen decrees supplementing the Nuremberg Laws would outlaw the Jew completely. But already by the summer of 1936 when the Germany which was host to the Olympic games was enchanting the visitors from the West, the Jews had been excluded either by law or by Nazi terror—the latter often preceded the former—from public and private employment to such an extent that at least one half of them were without means of livelihood. In the first year of the Third Reich, 1933, they had been excluded from public office, the civil service, journalism, radio, farming, teaching, the theater, the films; in 1934 they were kicked out of the stock exchanges, and though the ban on their practicing the professions of law and medicine or engaging in business did not come legally until 1938 they were in practice removed from these fields by the time the first four-year period of Nazi rule had come to an end.
"Moreover, they were denied not only most of the amenities of life but often even the necessities. In many a town the Jew found it difficult if not impossible to purchase food. Over the doors of the grocery and butcher shops, the bakeries and the dairies, were signs, “Jews Not Admitted.” In many communities Jews could not procure milk even for their young children. Pharmacies would not sell them drugs or medicine. Hotels would not give them a night’s lodging. And always, wherever they went, were the taunting signs “Jews Strictly Forbidden in This Town” or “Jews Enter This Place at Their Own Risk.” At a sharp bend in the road near Ludwigshafen was a sign, “Drive Carefully! Sharp Curve! Jews 75 Miles an Hour!”"
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Church was persecuted, too, even though Catholic church signed a concordat, the signatory later to become Pope Pius XII. Protestant churches were divided, free churches such as Baptist and Methodist rare in Germany and Luther having been virulently antisemite as well as opposed to peasant rebellion, most protestant churches were ok with Nazi regime.
"Niemoeller’s group co-operated with the committee, it still maintained that it was the only legitimate Church. When, in May 1936, it addressed a courteous but firm memorandum to Hitler protesting against the anti-Christian tendencies of the regime, denouncing the government’s anti-Semitism and demanding an end to State interference in the churches, Frick, the Nazi Minister of the Interior, responded with ruthless action. Hundreds of “Confessional Church” pastors were arrested, one of the signers of the memorandum, Dr. Weissler, was murdered in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, the funds of the “Confessional Church” were confiscated and it was forbidden to make collections."
Niemoeller was arrested, and caught by Gestapo after set free by law, sent to Sachsenhausen and later to Dachau, until freed by allied troops.
Party program for church was set down by Rosenberg in thirty points.
"1. The National Reich Church of Germany categorically claims the exclusive right and the exclusive power to control all churches within the borders of the Reich: it declares these to be national churches of the German Reich.
"5. The National Church is determined to exterminate irrevocably… the strange and foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800. 7. The National Church has no scribes, pastors, chaplains or priests, but National Reich orators are to speak in them.
"13. The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in Germany…
"14. The National Church declares that to it, and therefore to the German nation, it has been decided that the Fuehrer’s Mein Kampf is the greatest of all documents. It… not only contains the greatest but it embodies the purest and truest ethics for the present and future life of our nation.
"18. The National Church will clear away from its altars all crucifixes, Bibles and pictures of saints.
"19. On the altars there must be nothing but Mein Kampf (to the German nation and therefore to God the most sacred book) and to the left of the altar a sword.
"30. On the day of its foundation, the Christian Cross must be removed from all churches, cathedrals and chapels… and it must be superseded by the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika.
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On May 10, 1933, thousands of books were burnt at midnight by students holding torchloght parades across Germany, twenty thousand in Berlin before university.
"Many of the books tossed into the flames in Berlin that night by the joyous students under the approving eye of Dr. Goebbels had been written by authors of world reputation. They included, among German writers, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Jakob Wassermann, Arnold and Stefan Zweig, Erich Maria Remarque, Walther Rathenau, Albert Einstein, Alfred Kerr and Hugo Preuss, the last named being the scholar who had drafted the Weimar Constitution. But not only the works of dozens of German writers were burned. A good many foreign authors were also included: Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Helen Keller, Margaret Sanger, H. G. Wells, Havelock Ellis, Arthur Schnitzler, Freud, Gide, Zola, Proust. In the words of a student proclamation, any book was condemned to the flames “which acts subversively on our future or strikes at the root of German thought, the German home and the driving forces of our people.”
"Dr. Goebbels, the new Propaganda Minister, who from now on was to put German culture into a Nazi strait jacket, addressed the students as the burning books turned to ashes. “The soul of the German people can again express itself. These flames not only illuminate the final end of an old era; they also light up the new.”"
Under Goebbels on September 22, 1933 was established Chamber of Culture, with several subchambers, one for each sphere of cultural life; everyone engaged in such activity was obliged to join, but could be refused membership if the person's enthusiasm about Nazi doctrine was not warm enough, which amounted to such a person being unable to peruse the said activity, resulting in loss of livelihood.
This continues till date in a slightly changed form in Germany, in that one may not engage in any activity without government permission except perhaps strictly at home and not for consumption outside the family; this includes baking bread, flying in a small plane as a passenger, or calling oneself a doctor even if one has the requisite degree, whether from Germany or U.S. or elsewhere.
"No one who lived in Germany in the Thirties, and who cared about such matters, can ever forget the sickening decline of the cultural standards of a people who had had such high ones for so long a time. This was inevitable, of course, the moment the Nazi leaders decided that the arts, literature, the press, radio and the films must serve exclusively the propaganda purposes of the new regime and its outlandish philosophy."
Several writers including Thomas Mann emigrated.
"Every manuscript of a book or a play had to be submitted to the Propaganda Ministry before it could be approved for publication or production.
"Music fared best, if only because it was the least political of the arts and because the Germans had such a rich store of it from Bach through Beethoven and Mozart to Brahms. But the playing of Mendelssohn was banned because he was a Jew (the works of all Jewish composers were verboten) as was the music of Germany’s leading modern composer, Paul Hindemith. Jews were quickly weeded out of the great symphony orchestras and the opera. Unlike the writers, most of the great figures of the German music world chose to remain in Nazi Germany and indeed lent their names and their talent to the New Order. Wilhelm Furtwaengler, one of the finest conductors of the century, remained. He was out of favor for a year in 1934 because of his defense of Hindemith, but returned to activity for the remaining years of Hitler’s rule. Richard Strauss, perhaps the world’s leading living composer, remained and indeed for a time became president of the Reich Music Chamber, lending his great name to Goebbels’ prostituting of culture. Walter Gieseking, the eminent pianist, spent much of his time making tours in foreign countries which were organized or approved by the Propaganda Minister to promote German “culture” abroad. But because the musicians did not emigrate and because of Germany’s great treasure of classical music, one could hear during the days of the Third Reich symphony music and opera performed magnificently. In this the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Berlin State Opera were pre-eminent. The excellent music fare did much to make people forget the degradation of the other arts and of so much of life under the Nazis."
Theatre retained much of its excellence as long as it stuck to classics, and Goebbels or the theatre chamber official were unable to do much about performances of Goethe, Schiller or Shakespeare.
"Strangely enough, some of Shaw’s plays were permitted to be performed in Nazi Germany—perhaps because he poked fun at Englishmen and lampooned democracy and perhaps too because his wit and left-wing political views escaped the Nazi mind."
Works of Van Gogh, Gauguin and so on were removed from German museums.
"And yet some Germans at least, especially in the art center of Germany which Munich was, preferred to be artistically polluted. In another part of the city in a ramshackle gallery that had to be reached through a narrow stairway was an exhibition of “degenerate art” which Dr. Goebbels had organized to show the people what Hitler was rescuing them from. It contained a splendid selection of modern paintings—Kokoschka, Chagall and expressionist and impressionist works. The day I visited it, after panting through the sprawling House of German Art, it was crammed, with a long line forming down the creaking stairs and out into the street. In fact, the crowds besieging it became so great that Dr. Goebbels, incensed and embarrassed, soon closed it."
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Goebbel's ministry dictated what could, must and couldn't go into newspapers, every day.
"To be an editor in the Third Reich one had to be, in the first place, politically and racially “clean.” The Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933, which made journalism a “public vocation,” regulated by law, stipulated that all editors must possess German citizenship, be of Aryan descent and not married to a Jew. Section 14 of the Press Law ordered editors “to keep out of the newspapers anything which in any manner is misleading to the public, mixes selfish aims with community aims, tends to weaken the strength of the German Reich, outwardly or inwardly, the common will of the German people, the defense of Germany, its culture and economy… or offends the honor and dignity of Germany”—an edict which, if it had been in effect before 1933, would have led to the suppression of every Nazi editor and publication in the country. It now led to the ousting of those journals and journalists who were not Nazi or who declined to become so."
As can be expected, several newspapers closed down, some survived by changing ownership and having Anglophile editors serve the Nazi regime. Readership declined overall. Similar fate was met with by films and radio. Viewers consequently stayed away from Nazi films, hissing during their shows being so common that there was a warning issued, and foreign films were hugely popular. Until war, people could still listen to broadcasts from foreign channels without endangering their life, but overall the radio used as propaganda channel was effective in shaping minds of German population.
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Similar treatment was in effect at educational institutions.
"Hitler’s contempt for “professors” and the intellectual academic life had peppered the pages of Mein Kampf, in which he had set down some of his ideas on education. “The whole education by a national state,” he had written, “must aim primarily not at the stuffing with mere knowledge but at building bodies which are physically healthy to the core.” But, even more important, he had stressed in his book the importance of winning over and then training the youth in the service “of a new national state”—a subject he returned to often after he became the German dictator. “When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’” he said in a speech on November 6, 1933, “I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.’” And on May 1, 1937, he declared, “This new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.” It was not an idle boast; that was precisely what was happening."
"The result of so much Nazification was catastrophic for German education and for German learning. History was so falsified in the new textbooks and by the teachers in their lectures that it became ludicrous. The teaching of the “racial sciences,” exalting the Germans as the master race and the Jews as breeders of almost all the evil there was in the world, was even more so.
"The teaching of the natural sciences, in which Germany had been so pre-eminent for generations, deteriorated rapidly. Great teachers such as Einstein and Franck in physics, Haber, Willstaetter and Warburg in chemistry, were fired or retired. Those who remained, many of them, were bitten by the Nazi aberrations and attempted to apply them to pure science. They began to teach what they called German physics, German chemistry, German mathematics. Indeed, in 1937 there appeared a journal called Deutsche Mathematik, and its first editorial solemnly proclaimed that any idea that mathematics could be judged nonracially carried “within itself the germs of destruction of German science.”
"The hallucinations of these Nazi scientists became unbelievable, even to a layman. “German Physics?” asked Professor Philipp Lenard of Heidelberg University, who was one of the more learned and internationally respected scientists of the Third Reich. “‘But,’ it will be replied, ‘science is and remains international.’ It is false. In reality, science, like every other human product, is racial and conditioned by blood.” Professor Rudolphe Tomaschek, director of the Institute of Physics at Dresden, went further. “Modern Physics,” he wrote, “is an instrument of [world] Jewry for the destruction of Nordic science… True physics is the creation of the German spirit… In fact, all European science is the fruit of Aryan, or, better, German thought.” Professor Johannes Stark, head of the German National Institute of Physical Science, thought so too. It would be found, he said, that the “founders of research in physics, and the great discoverers from Galileo to Newton to the physical pioneers of our time, were almost exclusively Aryan, predominantly of the Nordic race.”
"There was also Professor Wilhelm Mueller, of the Technical College of Aachen, who in a book entitled Jewry and Science saw a world-wide Jewish plot to pollute science and thereby destroy civilization. To him Einstein, with his theory of relativity, was the archvillain. The Einstein theory, on which so much of modern physics is based, was to this singular Nazi professor “directed from beginning to end toward the goal of transforming the living—that is, the non-Jewish—world of living essence, born from a mother earth and bound up with blood, and bewitching it into spectral abstraction in which all individual differences of peoples and nations, and all inner limits of the races, are lost in unreality, and in which only an unsubstantial diversity of geometric dimensions survives which produces all events out of the compulsion of its godless subjection to laws.” The world-wide acclaim given to Einstein on the publication of his theory of relativity, Professor Mueller proclaimed, was really only a rejoicing over “the approach of Jewish world rule which was to force down German manhood irrevocably and eternally to the level of the lifeless slave.”
"To Professor Ludwig Bieberback, of the University of Berlin, Einstein was “an alien mountebank.” Even to Professor Lenard, “the Jew conspicuously lacks understanding for the truth… being in this respect in contrast to the Aryan research scientist with his careful and serious will to truth… Jewish physics is thus a phantom and a phenomenon of degeneration of fundamental German Physics.”7
"And yet from 1905 to 1931 ten German Jews had been awarded Nobel Prizes for their contributions to science."
During the second Reich the education faculties had completely supported the regime and its expansionist aims, and the Weimar Republic's insistence on complete academic freedom resulted in the republic being consistently and completely undermined by them, so by 1933 the studemts were already embracing nazi doctrines. Several members of the faculties were dismissed for race or other reasons, but very few for opposing nazis, and they migrated, to Switzerland, Holland, Britain or U.S..
"Professor Theodor Lessing, who had fled to Czechoslovakia, was tracked down by Nazi thugs and murdered in Marienbad on August 31, 1933."
"After six years of Nazification the number of university students dropped by more than one half—from 127,920 to 58,325. The decline in enrollment at the institutes of technology, from which Germany got its scientists and engineers, was even greater—from 20,474 to 9,554. Academic standards fell dizzily. By 1937 there was not only a shortage of young men in the sciences and engineering but a decline in their qualifications. Long before the outbreak of the war the chemical industry, busily helping to further Nazi rearmament, was complaining through its organ, Die Chemische Industrie, that Germany was losing its leadership in chemistry. Not only the national economy but national defense itself was being jeopardized, it complained, and it blamed the shortage of young scientists and their mediocre caliber on the poor quality of the technical colleges."
"It was one of the ironies of fate that the development of the bomb in the United States owed so much to two men who had been exiled because of race from the Nazi and Fascist dictatorships: Einstein from Germany and Fermi from Italy."
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Youth movements were very strong in Germany, and they were all taken over by nazis beginning 1933, including all youth hostels, to be subject to nazis and united in Hitler Youth, enrollment in them being compulsory with recalcitrant parents being subject to dire consequences.
"At the very top of the pyramid were the so-called Order Castles, the Ordensburgen. In these, with their atmosphere of the castles of the Order of Teutonic Knights of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were trained the elite of the Nazi elite. The knightly order had been based on the principle of absolute obedience to the Master, the Ordensmeister, and devoted to the German conquest of the Slavic lands in the East and the enslavement of the natives. The Nazi Order Castles had similar discipline and purposes. Only the most fanatical young National Socialists were chosen, usually from the top ranks of the graduates of the Adolf Hitler Schools and the Political Institutes. There were four Castles, and a student attended successively all of them. The first of six years was spent in one which specialized in the “racial sciences” and other aspects of Nazi ideology. The emphasis was on mental training and discipline, with physical training subordinated to it. This was reversed the second year at a Castle where athletics and sports, including mountain climbing and parachute jumping, came first. The third Castle, where the students spent the next year and a half, offered political and military instruction. Finally, in the fourth and last stage of his education, the student was sent for a year and a half to the Ordensburg in Marienburg in East Prussia, near the Polish frontier. There, within the walls of the very Order Castle which had been a stronghold of the Teutonic Knights five centuries before, his political and military training was concentrated on the Eastern question and Germany’s need (and right!) of expanding into the Slavic lands in its eternal search for Lebensraum—an excellent preparation, as it turned out and no doubt was meant to turn out, for the events of 1939 and thereafter."
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Economic recovery of Germany from 1933 on impressed most people.
"But the real basis of Germany’s recovery was rearmament, to which the Nazi regime directed the energies of business and labor—as well as of the generals—from 1934 on. The whole German economy came to be known in Nazi parlance as Wehrwirtschaft, or war economy, and it was deliberately designed to function not only in time of war but during the peace that led to war. General Ludendorff, in his book Total War (Der Totale Krieg) whose title was mistranslated into English as The Nation at War, published in Germany in 1935, had stressed the necessity of mobilizing the economy of the nation on the same totalitarian basis as everything else in order to properly prepare for total war. It was not exactly a new idea among the Germans, for in Prussia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries some five sevenths of the government’s revenue, as we have seen, was spent on the Army and that nation’s whole economy was always regarded as primarily an instrument not of the people’s welfare but of military policy."
"In September 1936, with the inauguration of the Four-Year Plan under the iron control of Goering, who replaced Schacht as economic dictator though he was almost as ignorant of business as was Hitler, Germany went over to a total war economy. The purpose of the plan was to make Germany self-sufficient in four years, so that a wartime blockade would not stifle it. Imports were reduced to a bare minimum, severe price and wage controls were introduced, dividends restricted to 6 per cent, great factories set up to make synthetic rubber, textiles, fuel and other products from Germany’s own sources of raw materials, and a giant Hermann Goering Works established to make steel out of the local low-grade ore. In short, the German economy was mobilized for war, and businessmen, though their profits soared, became mere cogs in a war machine, their work circumscribed by so many restrictions, by so many forms to fill out, that Dr. Funk, who succeeded Schacht in 1937 as Minister of Economics and in 1939 as president of the Reichsbank, was forced to admit ruefully that “official communications now make up more than one half of a German manufacturer’s entire correspondence” and that “Germany’s export trade involves 40,000 separate transactions daily; yet for a single transaction as many as forty different forms must be filled out.”
"Buried under mountains of red tape, directed by the State as to what they could produce, how much and at what price, burdened by increasing taxation and milked by steep and never ending “special contributions” to the party, the businessmen, who had welcomed Hitler’s regime so enthusiastically because they expected it to destroy organized labor and allow an entrepreneur to practice untrammeled free enterprise, became greatly disillusioned. One of them was Fritz Thyssen, one of the earliest and biggest contributors to the party. Fleeing Germany at the outbreak of the war, he recognized that the “Nazi regime has ruined German industry.” And to all he met abroad he proclaimed, “What a fool [Dummkopf] I was!”"
Hitler having risen on a plank of promises to small businesses, they were happy to begin with but soon disillusioned. He had no intentions to fullfill the promises, and in fact went opposite.
"The little businessmen, who had been one of the party’s chief supports and who expected great things from Chancellor Hitler, soon found themselves, many of them, being exterminated and forced back into the ranks of wage earners. Laws decreed in October 1937 simply dissolved all corporations with a capital under $40,000 and forbade the establishment of new ones with a capital less than $200,000. This quickly disposed of one fifth of all small business firms. On the other hand the great cartels, which even the Republic had favored, were further strengthened by the Nazis. In fact, under a law of July 15, 1933, they were made compulsory. The Ministry of Economics was empowered to organize new compulsory cartels or order firms to join existing ones."
"All the propagandists in the Third Reich from Hitler on down were accustomed to rant in their public speeches against the bourgeois and the capitalist and proclaim their solidarity with the worker. But a sober study of the official statistics, which perhaps few Germans bothered to make, revealed that the much maligned capitalists, not the workers, benefited most from Nazi policies."
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"The first concentration camps sprang up like mushrooms during Hitler’s first year of power. By the end of 1933 there were some fifty of them, mainly set up by the S.A. to give its victims a good beating and then ransom them to their relatives or friends for as much as the traffic would bear. It was largely a crude form of blackmail. Sometimes, however, the prisoners were murdered, usually out of pure sadism and brutality. At the Nuremberg trial four such cases came to light that took place in the spring of 1933 at the S.S. concentration camp at Dachau, near Munich. In each instance a prisoner was cold-bloodedly murdered, one by whipping, another by strangulation. Even the public prosecutor in Munich protested."
"Shortly after the Roehm purge, Hitler turned the concentration camps over to the control of the S.S., which proceeded to organize them with the efficiency and ruthlessness expected of this elite corps. Guard duty was given exclusively to the Death’s-Head units (Totenkopfverbaende) whose members were recruited from the toughest Nazi elements, served an enlistment of twelve years and wore the familiar skull-and-bones insignia on their black tunics.
"In them, before the end mercifully came, millions of hapless persons were done to death and millions of others subjected to debasement and torture more revolting than all but a few minds could imagine. But at the beginning—in the Thirties—the population of the Nazi concentration camps in Germany probably never numbered more than from twenty to thirty thousand at any one time, and many of the horrors later invented and perpetrated by Himmler’s men were as yet unknown. The extermination camps, the slave labor camps, the camps where the inmates were used as guinea pigs for Nazi “medical research,” had to wait for the war."
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Gestapo under Reinhard Heydrich had spies set on all Germany, and later Europe.
"They not only kept out of the spotlight because of the nature of their work but, in 1934 and 1935 at least, because a number of them who had spied on Roehm and his confederates in the S.A. were bumped off by a secret band that called itself “Roehm’s Avengers” and took care to pin that label on the bodies."
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Book Three
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THE ROAD TO WAR
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Disarmament after WWI as part of Versailles treaty terms had always been flouted by Germany, even while crying over serious and dire economic straits of the people post war, just as reparations were never paid despite Germany hugely funding disruption of French economy by spending gold for propaganda.
"Submarines, the building of which Versailles had prohibited, had been secretly constructed in Finland, Holland and Spain during the German Republic, and recently Raeder had stored the frames and parts of a dozen of them at Kiel."
"Training of military pilots began immediately under the convenient camouflage of the League for Air Sports."
"Although Krupp had been forbidden by the Allies to continue in the armament business after 1919, the company had really not been idle. As Krupp would boast in 1942, when the German armies occupied most of Europe, “the basic principle of armament and turret design for tanks had already been worked out in 1926… Of the guns being used in 1939–41, the most important ones were already fully complete in 1933.” ... Nazi government gave I. G. Farben the go-ahead with orders to raise its synthetic oil production to 300,000 tons a year by 1937. ... By the beginning of 1934, plans were approved by the Working Committee of the Reich Defense Council for the mobilization of some 240,000 plants for war orders. By the end of that year rearmament, in all its phases, had become so massive it was obvious that it could no longer be concealed from the suspicious and uneasy powers of Versailles."
Saturday, March 16, Germany introduced general conscription and declared establishment of a peacetime army of twelve corps and thirty six divisions, half a million. Allies protested and did nothing. Britain asked if Simon could still come for talks.
"The British, the French and the Italians met at Stresa on April 11, condemned Germany’s action and reiterated their support of Austria’s independence and the Locarno Treaty. The Council of the League of Nations at Geneva also expressed its displeasure at Hitler’s precipitate action and duly appointed a committee to suggest steps which might impede him the next time. France, recognizing that Germany would never join an Eastern Locarno, hastily signed a pact of mutual assistance with Russia, and Moscow made a similar treaty with Czechoslovakia."
Hitler gave another speech in Reichstag declaring Germany wanted peace. He specifically declared Germany having no claims, designs or intentions of aggression against any land, whether Alsace, Lorraine, Austria or Poland. Germany was willing to limit her armament to less than 35% of Britain, he said.
Times lapped it up, with much less excuse than others. Until he was expelled on August 16th, 1937, Norman Ebutt was their prime source of information in Berlin, and even though they published much less than he sent, they read it. They knew what went on and how hollow Hitler's promises were.
France and Italy were not pleased with Britain's acceptance of German terms, Italy invaded Abyssinia which delighted Hitler. Britain and France protested the invasion, but did little else, and Stresa front against Germany was finished.
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"On November 21, François-Poncet, the French ambassador, had a talk with Hitler in which the Fuehrer launched “into a long tirade” against the Franco-Soviet Pact. François-Poncet reported to Paris he was convinced that Hitler intended to use the pact as an excuse to occupy the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. “Hitler’s sole hesitancy,” he added, “is now concerned with the appropriate moment to act.”"
Plans for occupation of Rhineland at lightening speed with a surprise attack had already begun the previous spring, with fewest possible officers in the know. French Chamber of Deputies, as the French parliament is called, approved the treaty with Moscow finally on February 27 after delaying it, and Hitler had the excuse; general Blomberg issued orders two days later for "peaceful" occupation of Rhineland. Which amounted to plan of withdrawal in haste, retreating over the Rhine, if the French did anything.
"But the French never made the slightest move. François-Poncet says that after his warning of the previous November, the French High Command had asked the government what it would do in case the ambassador proved right. The answer was, he says, that the government would take the matter up with the League of Nations.22 Actually, when the blow occurred,* it was the French government which wanted to act and the French General Staff which held back. “General Gamelin,” François-Poncet declares, “advised that a war operation, however limited, entailed unpredictable risks and could not be undertaken without decreeing a general mobilization.”23 The most General Gamelin, the Chief of the General Staff, would do—and did—was concentrate thirteen divisions near the German frontier, but merely to reinforce the Maginot Line. Even this was enough to throw a scare into the German High Command. Blomberg, backed by Jodl and most of the officers at the top, wanted to pull back the three battalions that had crossed the Rhine. As Jodl testified at Nuremberg, “Considering the situation we were in, the French covering army could have blown us to pieces.”
"The French Foreign Minister, Pierre Etienne Flandin, flew to London on March 11 and begged the British government to back France in a military counteraction in the Rhineland. His pleas were unavailing. Britain would not risk war even though Allied superiority over the Germans was overwhelming. As Lord Lothian remarked, “The Germans, after all, are only going into their own back garden.” Even before the French arrived in London, Anthony Eden, who had become Foreign Secretary in the previous December, had told the House of Commons, on March 9, “Occupation of the Rhineland by the Reichswehr deals a heavy blow to the principle of the sanctity of treaties. Fortunately,” he added, “we have no reason to suppose that Germany’s present action threatens hostilities.”"
And yet, France was entitled under the Locarno treaty to take military action against the presence of German troops in Rhineland West of the Rhine, and Britain was obliged to support France. They allowed Hitler to get away with the gamble.
"In retrospect, it is easy to see that Hitler’s successful gamble in the Rhineland brought him a victory more staggering and more fatal in its immense consequences than could be comprehended at the time. At home it fortified his popularity* and his power, raising them to heights which no German ruler of the past had ever enjoyed. It assured his ascendancy over his generals, who had hesitated and weakened at a moment of crisis when he had held firm. It taught them that in foreign politics and even in military affairs his judgment was superior to theirs. They had feared that the French would fight; he knew better. And finally, and above all, the Rhineland occupation, small as it was as a military operation, opened the way, as only Hitler (and Churchill, alone, in England) seemed to realize, to vast new opportunities in a Europe which was not only shaken but whose strategic situation was irrevocably changed by the parading of three German battalions across the Rhine bridges.
"Conversely, it is equally easy to see, in retrospect, that France’s failure to repel the Wehrmacht battalions and Britain’s failure to back her in what would have been nothing more than a police action was a disaster for the West from which sprang all the later ones of even greater magnitude. In March 1936 the two Western democracies were given their last chance to halt, without the risk of a serious war, the rise of a militarized, aggressive, totalitarian Germany and, in fact—as we have seen Hitler admitting—bring the Nazi dictator and his regime tumbling down. They let the chance slip by.
"For France, it was the beginning of the end. Her allies in the East, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia, suddenly were faced with the fact that France would not fight against German aggression to preserve the security system which the French government itself had taken the lead in so laboriously building up. But more than that. These Eastern allies began to realize that even if France were not so supine, she would soon not be able to lend them much assistance because of Germany’s feverish construction of a West Wall behind the Franco–German border. The erection of this fortress line, they saw, would quickly change the strategic map of Europe, to their detriment. They could scarcely expect a France which did not dare, with her one hundred divisions, to repel three German battalions, to bleed her young manhood against impregnable German fortifications while the Wehrmacht attacked in the East. But even if the unexpected took place, it would be futile. Henceforth the French could tie down in the West only a small part of the growing German Army. The rest would be free for operations against Germany’s Eastern neighbors."
William C. Bullitt, U.S. ambassador to France, was told by Neurath that German policy was to wait until Rhineland was digested, and then the countries East would feel differently, after German fortifications along Rhineland border were done.
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Schuschnigg had realised as much, and on July 11, 1936, signed a treaty with Germany assuring Austria of her independence in exchange for concessions that were tricky.
"Although Papen had obtained Hitler’s approval of the text of the treaty, making a personal visit to Berlin for the purpose early in July, the Fuehrer was furious with his envoy when the latter telephoned him on July 16 to notify him that the agreement had been signed."
"On May 2, 1936, Italian forces entered the Abyssinian capital, Addis Ababa, and on July 4 the League of Nations formally capitulated and called off its sanctions against Italy. Two weeks later, on July 16, Franco staged a military revolt in Spain and civil war broke out."
"Though German aid to Franco never equaled that given by Italy, which dispatched between sixty and seventy thousand troops as well as vast supplies of arms and planes, it was considerable. The Germans estimated later that they spent half a billion marks on the venture37 besides furnishing planes, tanks, technicians and the Condor Legion, an Air Force unit which distinguished itself by the obliteration of the Spanish town of Guernica and its civilian inhabitants. Relative to Germany’s own massive rearmament it was not much, but it paid handsome dividends to Hitler.
"It gave France a third unfriendly fascist power on its borders. It exacerbated the internal strife in France between Right and Left and thus weakened Germany’s principal rival in the West. Above all it rendered impossible a rapprochement of Britain and France with Italy, which the Paris and London governments had hoped for after the termination of the Abyssinian War, and thus drove Mussolini into the arms of Hitler."
Galeazzo Ciano, son-in-law of Mussolini, visited Berchtesgaden, and was told by Hitler that Italy and Germany together could wipe out Britain, and Germany would be ready in three years, which would be fall of 1939.
Hitler sent Ribbentrop to Britain as ambassador.
"Ribbentrop was the worst possible choice for such a post, as Goering realized. “When I criticized Ribbentrop’s qualifications to handle British problems,” he later declared, “the Fuehrer pointed out to me that Ribbentrop knew ‘Lord So and So’ and ‘Minister So and So.’ To which I replied: ‘Yes, but the difficulty is that they know Ribbentrop.’”"
On November 25 Ribbentrop flew back to Berlin to sign Anti-Comintern treaty with Japan, with specific clauses about Soviet Union. Italy signed next year.
"Everyone knew what Italy and Germany were doing in Spain to assure Franco’s victory. Yet the governments of London and Paris continued for years to engage in empty diplomatic negotiations with Berlin and Rome to assure “nonintervention” in Spain. It was a sport which seems to have amused the German dictator and which certainly increased his contempt for the stumbling political leaders of France and Britain—“little worms,” he would shortly call them on a historic occasion when he again humbled the two Western democracies with the greatest of ease.
"Neither Great Britain and France, their governments and their peoples, nor the majority of the German people seemed to realize as 1937 began that almost all that Hitler had done in his first four years was a preparation for war. This writer can testify from personal observation that right up to September 1, 1939, the German people were convinced that Hitler would get what he wanted—and what they wanted—without recourse to war. But among the elite who were running Germany, or serving it in the key positions, there could have been no doubt what Hitler’s objective was."
Neville Chamberlain replaced Stanley Baldwin, and was determined to reach an understanding with Germany.
"What sort of understanding would be acceptable to Hitler was outlined in a secret memorandum of November 10, written by Baron von Weizsaecker, then head of the Political Department of the German Foreign Office.
"From England we want colonies and freedom of action in the East… The British need for tranquillity is great. It would be profitable to find out what England would be willing to pay for such tranquillity."
Lord Halifax visited Berchtesgaden and had a long talk with Hitler on November 19; Britain was willing to accommodate him on colonies and East Europe, Hitler wasn't interested in an accord with Britain.
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"An indication of things to come and of the preparations that must be made to meet them had been given the commanders in chief of the three armed forces on June 24, 1937, by Field Marshal von Blomberg in a directive marked “Top Secret,” of which only four copies were made.
"The war in the East can begin with a surprise German operation against Czechoslovakia in order to parry the imminent attack of a superior enemy coalition. The necessary conditions to justify such an action politically and in the eyes of international law must be created beforehand. [Emphasis by Blomberg.]
"Czechoslovakia, the directive stressed, must be “eliminated from the very beginning” and occupied. There were also three cases where “special preparations” were to be made: I. Armed intervention against Austria. (Special Case “Otto.”) II. Warlike complications with Red Spain. (Special Case “Richard.”) III. England, Poland, Lithuania take part in a war against us. (Extension of “Red/Green.”)"
Case Otto, named after the heir to Hapsburg throne, was summarised thus:-
"The object of this operation—armed intervention in Austria in the event of her restoring the Monarchy—will be to compel Austria by armed force to give up a restoration."
"“England,” it warns, “will employ all her available economic and military resources against us.” Should she join Poland and Lithuania, the directive acknowledges, “our military position would be worsened to an unbearable, even hopeless, extent. The political leaders will therefore do everything to keep these countries neutral, above all England.”"
A meeting of commanders of armed forces and couple of ministers with Hitler on November 5, 1937, from 4.145 p.m. to 8, have memorandum that survived to be seen at Nürnberg. He spoke to them about what in case of his own death.
"“The aim of German policy,” he said, “was to make secure and to preserve the racial community and to enlarge it. It was therefore a question of space [Lebensraum].” The Germans, he laid it down, had “the right to a greater living space than other peoples… Germany’s future was therefore wholly conditional upon the solving of the need for space.”*"
Very jihadist, as practiced for over a millennium and half across globe, this reproduce and expand strategy coupled with treating women exclusively as objects of use for mostly reproduction and otherwise duty bound to supply relief and entertainment, with no other existence.
"Two “hate-inspired” countries, Hitler declared, stood in Germany’s way: Britain and France. Both countries were opposed “to any further strengthening of Germany’s position.” The Fuehrer did not believe that the British Empire was “unshakable.” In fact, he saw many weaknesses in it, and he proceeded to elaborate them: the troubles with Ireland and India, the rivalry with Japan in the Far East and with Italy in the Mediterranean. France’s position, he thought, “was more favorable than that of Britain… but France was going to be confronted with internal political difficulties.” Nonetheless, Britain, France and Russia must be considered as “power factors in our political calculations.”"
Therefore:
"Germany’s problem could be solved only by means of force ...
"Case I:Period 1943–45
"After this date only a change for the worse, from our point of view, could be expected. The equipment of the Army, Navy and Airforce… was nearly completed. Equipment and armament were modern; in further delay there lay the danger of their obsolescence. In particular, the secrecy of “special weapons” could not be preserved forever… Our relative strength would decrease in relation to the rearmament… by the rest of the world… Besides, the world was expecting our attack and was increasing its countermeasures from year to year. It was while the rest of the world was increasing its defenses that we were obliged to take the offensive.
"Nobody knew today what the situation would be in the years 1943–45. One thing only was certain, that we could not wait longer.
"If the Fuehrer was still living, it was his unalterable resolve to solve Germany’s problem of space at the latest by 1943–45. The necessity for action before 1943–45 would arise in Cases II and III.
"Our first objective… must be to overthrow Czechoslovakia and Austria simultaneously in order to remove the threat to our flank in any possible operation against the West… If the Czechs were overthrown and a common German–Hungarian frontier achieved, a neutral attitude on the part of Poland could be the more certainly counted upon in the event of a Franco–German conflict."
"Hitler then outlined some of the advantages of the “annexation of Czechoslovakia and Austria”: better strategic frontiers for Germany, the freeing of military forces “for other purposes,” acquisition of some twelve million “Germans,” additional foodstuffs for five to six million Germans in the Reich, and manpower for twelve new Army divisions."
Blomberg, Fritsch and Neurath opposed the plan of immediate war on grounds of Germany being not ready, and in three months they were out. There was no more opposition to Hitler from within.
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General Blomberg married his secretary in early 1938, his children from his late first wife being all grown up, but while he was on honeymoon in Capri the officer corps learned thst the new bride was not merely a commoner; Blomberg had to resign, and Hitler's promise to restore him to position wasn't fulfilled even when Germany was at war. He lived quietly until end of war and died in prison in Nürnberg while waiting to testify in the trial.
Shirer compares his loyalty to his wife with the then abdication of Edward VIII who lived loyal to Wallis Simpson, naming neither.
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Fritsch was accused of paying blackmail to a convict for witnessing homosexual act, which he denied, swearing on his honour as an officer, and demanded military court trial; Göring wanted to succeed Blomberg and Himmler had produced the accusations and witness against Fritsch named Schmidt, who was denied the trial and asked by Hitler to go on indefinite leave.
Beck intersected for military trial, and military investigation revealed that Gestapo knew it was a Frisch, not Fritsch, who was involved in the scandal. Army managed to get Frisch and Schmidt in their control and keep them. All through last week of January Berlin was in tension with rumours that the army was going to take over.
"On February 4, 1938, the German cabinet met for what was to prove the last time. Whatever difficulties Hitler had experienced, he now resolved them in a manner which eliminated those who stood in his way, not only in the Army but in the Foreign Office. A decree which he hastily put through the cabinet that day and which was announced to the nation and the world on the radio shortly before midnight began:
"“From now on I take over personally the command of the whole armed forces.”"
Keitel got to keep his post. Fritsch and Blomberg had resigned, it was announced, so Fritsch lost his chance of exoneration by military court, which army generals didn't like. Sixteen of them were relieved of their commands and forty-four others were transferred. Neurath was replaced with Ribbentrop, ambassadors in Tokyo and Rome were replaced, as was Papen in Vienna.
"For five years up to this winter day of February 4, 1938, the Army had possessed the physical power to overthrow Hitler and the Third Reich. When it learned on November 5, 1937, where he was leading it and the nation, why did it not attempt to do so? Fritsch himself gave the answer after his fall. On Sunday, December 18, 1938, he entertained the deposed Ambassador von Hassell at his manor house at Achterberg, near Soltau, which the Army had put at his disposal after his retirement. Hassell noted down in his diary “the substance of his views”:
"“This man—Hitler—is Germany’s destiny for good and for evil. If he now goes over the abyss—which Fritsch believes he will—he will drag us all down with him. There is nothing we can do.”"
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"Throughout 1937, the Austrian Nazis, financed and egged on by Berlin, had stepped up their campaign of terror. Bombings took place nearly every day in some part of the country, and in the mountain provinces massive and often violent Nazi demonstrations weakened the government’s position. Plans were uncovered disclosing that Nazi thugs were preparing to bump off Schuschnigg as they had his predecessor."
To someone just finished reading The Punjab Story, it's eerily familiar; if that's not due to Bhindrawale having been guided by terrorist mentors abroad across the borders having studied the methods of Hitler, it's even more eerie, since the same strategy of terrorist attacks and claiming human rights violations by the relevant government continued from Afghanistan to Kashmir to various places where jihadist terrorist attacks have been taking place across the world. That nazis did not use an established religion as a cover but German race and culture instead, is a difference that's merely about name of the label, religion.
Shirer happened to be in Vienna in his capacity as reporter, shifting from paper to radio, around March 11-12, 1938, when Austria ceased to exist, but knowledge of machinations behind doors was only available after 1945.
Schuschnigg was called to Berchtesgaden for conferring and subjected to hours of tirade with threats, abuses and insults, and an ultimatum to sign over Austria to nazis, until he capitulated. As Shirer says, he only got it all later; but UptonSinclair describes it in volumes of the World's End series published before 1945!
Hitler spoke to Reichstag.
"Over ten million Germans live in two of the states adjoining our frontiers… There must be no doubt about one thing. Political separation from the Reich may not lead to deprivation of rights—that is, the general rights of self-determination."
Again, sounds like various separatists on Sikhs, pakis going on about Kashmir, and general propaganda about "islamophobia" in West.
Schuschnigg declared a plebiscite in Austria; Hitler was furious, and ordered German army March into Austria the day before the plebiscite. Schuschnigg decided not to spill German blood.
President Miklas, however, wouldn't budge from his position that Austria, not Germany, would decide fate of Austria. Hitler was furious, and after several threatening messages when Miklas refused to oblige him with legitimacy, ordered invasion; the said legitimacy was then provided in form of two telegrams asking for help that Austria was ordered but refused to send, and were concocted in Berlin post to be filed in ministry.
Press in Berlin was full of lies about communist mobs in Vienna pillaging and so on; in reality mobs were nazis.
Mussolini, notified, had said he'd not act, so Austria lost that defence, and France was without a government precisely those two days, Chautemps having resigned and Leon Blum coming to power only when Austria was already invaded.
"Chamberlain’s reaction to the dispatches from Vienna was to instruct Ambassador Henderson in Berlin to pen a note to Acting Foreign Minister von Neurath stating that if the report of the German ultimatum to Austria was correct, “His Majesty’s Government feel bound to register a protest in the strongest terms.”35 But a formal diplomatic protest at this late hour was the least of Hitler’s worries. The next day, March 12, while German troops were streaming into Austria, Neurath returned a contemptuous reply,36 declaring that Austro–German relations were the exclusive concern of the German people and not of the British government, and repeating the lies that there had been no German ultimatum to Austria and that troops had been dispatched only in answer to “urgent” appeals from the newly formed Austrian government. He referred the British ambassador to the telegram, “already published in the German press.”"
Austria's name and existence was wiped out.
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Sadistic treatment of Jews began immediately, with Heydrich in charge. Rothschild bought his freedom by turning over all his property to Hermann Göring Werks.
"Perhaps half of the city’s 180,000 Jews managed, by the time the war started, to purchase their freedom to emigrate by handing over what they owned to the Nazis.
"This lucrative trade in human freedom was handled by a special organization set up under the S.S. by Heydrich, the “Office for Jewish Emigration,” which became the sole Nazi agency authorized to issue permits to Jews to leave the country. Administered from the beginning to the end by an Austrian Nazi, a native of Hitler’s home town of Linz by the name of Karl Adolf Eichmann, it was to become eventually an agency not of emigration but of extermination and to organize the slaughter of more than four million persons, mostly Jews. Himmler and Heydrich also took advantage of their stay in Austria during the first weeks of the Anschluss to set up a huge concentration camp at Mauthausen, on the north bank of the Danube near Enns. It was too much trouble to continue to transport thousands of Austrians to the concentration camps of Germany. Austria, Himmler decided, needed one of its own. Before the Third Reich tumbled to its fall the non-Austrian prisoners were to outnumber the local inmates and Mauthausen was to achieve the dubious record as the German concentration camp (the extermination camps in the East were something else) with the largest number of officially listed executions—35,318 in the six and a half years of its existence."
Germans flocked by hundreds of thousands to Austria to avail themselves of holidays with sumptuous meals they hadn't been able to have in Germany for years, and bargain priced vacations amongst beauty of Austria's mountains and lakes. German businessmen saw the opportunities to buy Jews' properties cheaply.
Schuschnigg was arrested and incarcerated, and treated horribly by Gestapo.
"The years of solitary confinement and then of life “among the living dead” in some of the worst of the German concentration camps such as Dachau and Sachsenhausen that followed have been described by Dr. Schuschnigg in his book."
He was allowed to marry Countess Vera Czernin, who was allowed to join him in concentration camp with their child.
"Toward the end they were joined by a number of other distinguished victims of Hitler’s wrath such as Dr. Schacht, Léon Blum, the former French Premier, and Madame Blum, Pastor Niemoeller, a host of high-ranking generals and Prince Philip of Hesse, whose wife, Princess Mafalda, the daughter of the King of Italy, had been done to death by the S.S. at Buchenwald in 1944 as part of the Fuehrer’s revenge for Victor Emmanuel’s desertion to the Allied side."
They were marched to Tyrol in 1945 so they wouldn't be freed by allied forces, and were to be executed, but allied forces arrived there sooner.
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"Without firing a shot and without interference from Great Britain, France and Russia, whose military forces could have overwhelmed him, Hitler had added seven million subjects to the Reich and gained a strategic position of immense value to his future plans. Not only did his armies flank Czechoslovakia on three sides but he now possessed in Vienna the gateway to Southeast Europe. As the capital of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, Vienna had long stood at the center of the communications and the trading systems of Central and Southeast Europe. Now that nerve center was in German hands."
Britain was unwilling to use force, unwilling to join France in defending Czechoslovakia, and Russia was only obliged to do so if France did. So Hitler was all set for his next goals.
"On February 12, 1934, seventeen thousand government troops and fascist militia had turned artillery on the workers’ flats in Vienna, killing a thousand men, women and children and wounding three or four thousand more. Democratic political freedom was stamped out and Austria thereafter was ruled first by Dollfuss and then by Schuschnigg as a clerical-fascist dictatorship. It was certainly milder than the Nazi variety, as those of us who worked in both Berlin and Vienna in those days can testify. Nevertheless it deprived the Austrian people of their political freedom and subjected them to more repression than they had known under the Hapsburgs in the last decades of the monarchy. The author has discussed this more fully in Midcentury Journey."
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"The Republic of Czechoslovakia, which Hitler was now determined to destroy, was the creation of the peace treaties, so hateful to the Germans, after the First World War. It was also the handiwork of two remarkable Czech intellectuals, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, a self-educated son of a coachman, who became a noted savant and the country’s first President; and Eduard Beneš, son of a peasant, who worked his way through the University of Prague and three French institutions of higher learning, and who after serving almost continually as Foreign Minister became the second President on the retirement of Masaryk in 1935. Carved out of the Hapsburg Empire, which in the sixteenth century had acquired the ancient Kingdom of Bohemia, Czechoslovakia developed during the years that followed its founding in 1918 into the most democratic, progressive, enlightened and prosperous state in Central Europe."
"To be sure, compared to minorities in most other countries even in the West, even in America, those in Czechoslovakia were not badly off. They enjoyed not only full democratic and civil rights—including the right to vote—but to a certain extent were given their own schools and allowed to maintain their own cultural institutions. Leaders of the minority political parties often served as ministers in the central government."
Sudeten Germans fared better and prospered, until 1933 when they organised a Nazi party, now after anschluss ready to do Hitler's bidding. They were instructed to make demands which would be unacceptable to the Czech government.
"The German High Command, or at least Keitel and Hitler, were so confident that the French would not fight that only a “minimum strength is to be provided as a rear cover in the west” and it was emphasized that “the whole weight of all forces must be employed in the invasion of Czechoslovakia.” The “task of the bulk of the Army,” aided by the Luftwaffe, was “to smash the Czechoslovak Army and to occupy Bohemia and Moravia as quickly as possible.”"
Propaganda war by Goebbels against Czechoslovakia was stepped up.
"Could it have been that Czech or British intelligence got wind of the telegrams which exchanged this information? And that they learned of the new directive for “Green” which Keitel dispatched for Hitler’s approval on May 20? For on the next day the Czech Chief of Staff, General Krejci, told the German military attaché in Prague, Colonel Toussaint, that he had “irrefutable proof that in Saxony a concentration of from eight to ten [German] divisions had taken place.”10 The figures on the number of divisions were not far from correct, even if the information on the manner of their deployment was somewhat inaccurate. At any rate, on the afternoon of May 20, following an emergency cabinet session at Hradschin Palace in Prague presided over by President Beneš, the Czechs decided on an immediate partial mobilization."
The Czech government did not intend to give up without a fight. There was hectic diplomatic activity in Berlin and London, involving Nevile Henderson, Halifax, Ribbentrop, Weizsäcker and others, on question of German troops on Czech borders.
"The furthest the British would go was to warn, as Dirksen says Halifax did, that “in the event of a European conflict it was impossible to foresee whether Britain would not be drawn into it.”11 As a matter of fact, this was as far as Chamberlain’s government would ever go—until it was too late to stop Hitler."
Hitler was furious about being balked, assured everybody he had no intentions of aggression against Czechoslovakia, and brooded in Berchtesgaden for a while before declaring his intentions in Berlin.
"To his assembled confederates, Goering, Keitel, Brauchitsch, Beck, Admiral Raeder, Ribbentrop and Neurath, he thundered, “It is my unshakable will that Czechoslovakia shall be wiped off the map!"
General Ludwig Beck was against it. It wasn't Austria but the dismissal of General Fritsch with Gestapo frame up that had cleared his mind.
"Beck had got wind of Hitler’s meeting with Keitel on April 21 in which the Wehrmacht was instructed to hasten plans for attacking Czechoslovakia, and on May 5 he wrote out the first of a series of memoranda for General von Brauchitsch, the new Commander in Chief of the Army, strenuously opposing any such action."
"Beck was convinced, he wrote in his May 5 memorandum, that a German attack on Czechoslovakia would provoke a European war in which Britain, France and Russia would oppose Germany and in which the United States would be the arsenal of the Western democracies. Germany simply could not win such a war. Its lack of raw materials alone made victory impossible. In fact, he contended, Germany’s “military-economic situation is worse than it was in 1917–18,” when the collapse of the Kaiser’s armies began."
Beck realised his memoranda were not reaching Hitler, and wrote another, taking it to Brauchitsch personally and arguing; he raised the question of whether they owed allegiance to Hitler excluding all other considerations.
"What was at stake for the German nation, he saw at last, was more than just the thwarting of a hysterical head of state bent, out of pique, on attacking a small neighboring nation at the risk of a big war. The whole folly of the Third Reich, its tyranny, its terror, its corruption, its contempt for the old Christian virtues, suddenly dawned on this once pro-Nazi general. Three days later, on July 19, he went again to Brauchitsch to speak of this revelation.
"Not only, he insisted, must the generals go on strike to prevent Hitler from starting a war, but they must help clean up the Third Reich. The German people and the Fuehrer himself must be freed from the terror of the S.S. and the Nazi party bosses. A state and society ruled by law must be restored. Beck summed up his reform program:
"For the Fuehrer, against war, against boss rule, peace with the Church, free expression of opinion, an end to the Cheka terror, restoration of justice, reduction of contributions to the party by one half, no more building of palaces, housing for the common people and more Prussian probity and simplicity.
"Beck was too naïve politically to realize that Hitler, more than any other single man, was responsible for the very conditions in Germany which now revolted him."
Beck called a meeting of the comnanding Generals and spoke to them. But no action was taken. Brauchitsch showed his memorandum to Hitler, who called a meeting of officers one rank below, and spoke to them for three hours. When pointed out that such an invasion would leave Germany defenceless in West and they couldn't hold against France for three weeks, he shouted that they'd hold for three years.
"With what, he didn't say."
Beck resigned.
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Beck is one of the principal figures in Valkyrie, the plot to assassinate Hitler that involved Colonel Stauffenberg. Here Shirer digresses to speak of what civilian resistance was, and since he's going by what documentations could be available, he concludes there was very little, unlike Upton Sinclair, much of whose World's End series revolves around such resistance by members of left, few appearing as persons in the series and others as contacts , mostly shadowy figures all who managed to survive the Nazi roundups of opposition and work at various jobs to support themselves and lying low while sabotaging the regime and attempting to inform and educate people in Germany and Europe outside Germany about the excesses of the regime.
Shirer here speaks of the few known who opposed the regime, and he mentions their turning only 1937 on.
"Carl Goerdeler, the mayor of Leipzig .... broke with the Nazis in 1936 over their anti-Semitism and their frenzied rearmament and, resigning both his posts, went to work with heart and soul in opposition to Hitler. One of his first acts was to journey to France, England and the United States in 1937 to discreetly warn of the peril of Nazi Germany."
Schacht was capable of "talking one way and acting another", according to Hassell, an opinion shared by Beck and Fritsch.
"Popitz was brilliant but unstable. A fine Greek scholar as well as eminent economist, he, along with General Beck and Hassell, was a member of the Wednesday Club, a group of sixteen intellectuals who gathered once a week to discuss philosophy, history, art, science and literature and who as time went on—or ran out—formed one of the centers of the opposition."
"Ulrich von Hassell became a sort of foreign-affairs adviser to the resistance leaders."
There were others, lesser known and mostly younger, who came together to form various resistance circles.
"One of the leading intellectuals of one group was Ewald von Kleist, a gentleman farmer and a descendant of the great poet. He worked closely with Ernst Niekisch, a former Social Democrat and editor of Widerstand (Resistance), and with Fabian von Schlabrendorff, a young lawyer, who was the great-grandson of Queen Victoria’s private physician and confidential adviser, Baron von Stockmar. There were former trade-union leaders such as Julius Leber, Jakob Kaiser and Wilhelm Leuschner. Two Gestapo officials, Artur Nebe, the head of the criminal police, and Bernd Gisevius, a young career police officer, became valuable aides as the conspiracies developed."
"There were a number of sons of venerable families in Germany: Count Helmuth von Moltke, great-grandnephew of the famous Field Marshal, who later formed a resistance group of young idealists known as the Kreisau Circle; Count Albrecht Bernstorff, nephew of the German ambassador in Washington during the First World War; Freiherr Karl Ludwig von Guttenberg, editor of a fearless Catholic monthly; and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a descendant of eminent Protestant clergymen on both sides of his family, who regarded Hitler as Antichrist and who believed it a Christian duty to “eliminate him.”
"Nearly all of these brave men would persevere until, after being caught and tortured, they were executed by rope or by ax or merely murdered by the S.S."
"Early in the regime Schlabrendorff had got in touch with Colonel Hans Oster, chief assistant to Admiral Canaris in the Abwehr, the Intelligence Bureau of OKW, and found him to be not only a staunch anti-Nazi but willing to try to bridge the gulf between the military and civilians."
Around winter of 1937-38 Army generals, subjected to shake up and some to dismissal, woke up to danger to Germany of the Nazi dictator.
"The resignation of General Beck toward the end of August 1938, as the Czech crisis grew more menacing, provided a further awakening, and though none of his fellow officers followed him into retirement as he had hoped, it immediately became evident that the fallen Chief of the General Staff was the one person around whom both the recalcitrant generals and the civilian resistance leaders could rally. Both groups respected and trusted him."
What was needed was someone with command of troops around Berlin who could act at short notice. Witzleben, Brockdorff-Ahlefeld and Hoepner were discovered and initiated. The plan was to seize Hitler as soon as he ordered attack against Czechoslovakia and haul him into civil court on charge of endangering Germany, and have military keep order until a new civil government was formed. But this depended on convincing the court and the people that attacking Czechoslovakia would invoke European powers to go to war against Germany. In this, Hitler had a better clue than Beck about how Britain, France and Russia would act.
"Runciman had been sent by Chamberlain to pave the way for the handing over of the Sudetenland to Hitler. It was a shabby diplomatic trick."
Hitler entertained Hungarian regent and other Hungarians on boat in sea off Kiel, telling them they should make up their minds about getting their slice of Czechoslovakia. Italy they didn't trust enough to give date of invasion.
"All through the summer Ambassador von Moltke in Warsaw was reporting to Berlin that not only would Poland decline to help Czechoslovakia by allowing Russia to send troops and planes through or over her territory but Colonel Józef Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister, was casting covetous eyes on a slice of Czech territory, the Teschen area. Beck already was exhibiting that fatal shortsightedness, so widely shared in Europe that summer, which in the end would prove more disastrous than he could possibly imagine."
Kleist was received in London by Vansittart and Churchill, both impressed by his sobriety and sincerity. Kleist needed to know if Britain would still appease Hitler when the Generals opposed invasion of Czechoslovakia, which would cut the ground under their feet. Churchill gave a letter to Kleist to take back to Germany.
"I am sure that the crossing of the frontier of Czechoslovakia by German armies or aviation in force will bring about renewal of the World War. I am as certain as I was at the end of July, 1914, that England will march with France… Do not, I pray you, be misled upon this point…"
Vansittart reported to foreign secretary and Chamberlain, the latter called Henderson to convey a warning to Hitler, but Henderson persuaded him to drop it. Warnings further sent by German conspirators to London were similarly discounted by Henderson. Halder, who'd replaced Beck, sent his own emissary to London to talk to war office and military intelligence, and he saw many people, but thought his message wasn't taken seriously. The generals sent a counsellor stationed at London in German embassy, connected to Weizsäcker, with complete information about Hitler's plans. Times published an advice to Czechoslovakia to give up Sudetenland and foreign office denied it was official British position.
On September 5, President Beneš invited Sudetenland leaders and asked them to write down all demands, and accepted them. This wasn't acceptable, so Henlein had to find a new excuse for the German invasion. Göring abused Czechoslovakia on 10th at Nürnberg. Jews in Czechoslovakia were desperately seeking transportation to safer places, Paris was in panic contemplating war and Chamberlain was trying to appease Hitler at cost to Czechoslovakia.
Hitler played the usual game, of abusing Czech government and saying Germany might have to come to a decision if justice was denied to Sudeten Germans. Paris conferred about French obligations to Czechoslovakia, and Chamberlain asked to meet Hitler. Over sixty year old Chamberlain travelled all the way from London to Berchtesgaden, and Hitler received him on top step of Berghof. Hitler went through the usual abuses of those he was to invade and destroy, and Chamberlain thought his demands of Sudeten Germans were reasonable. He came out believing and declaring he'd persuaded Hitler to not act until Chamberlain had conferred with French.
"While the British leader was entertaining these comforting illusions Hitler went ahead with his military and political plans for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. ... It was to be a rough war, at least on the part of the Germans, and Dr. Goebbels’ job was to justify Nazi excesses. The plan for his lies was worked out in great detail."
Henlein was given arms and ordered to maintain clashes with Czechs. Hungary and Poland were pressured to make demands about border regions and minorities, and they moved their armies as per German demand. Runciman, called to London, made recommendations exceeding Hitler's demands by far. The joint French and British recommendations were rejected by Czechoslovakia, reminding them in turn what the consequences of accepting such terms would be. British and French joint response was that they'd disassociate from fate of Czechoslovakia if the recommendations were not accepted. Russia promised to stand by their treaty with Czechoslovakia, but it was conditional on French. Czechoslovakia capitulated to pressure from British and French on September 21st. Chamberlain was to meet Hitler at Godesberg.
"“Teppichfresser!” muttered my German companion, an editor who secretly despised the Nazis. And he explained that Hitler had been in such a maniacal mood over the Czechs the last few days that on more than one occasion he had lost control of himself completely, hurling himself to the floor and chewing the edge of the carpet. Hence the term “carpet eater.” The evening before, while talking with some of the party hacks at the Dreesen, I had heard the expression applied to the Fuehrer—in whispers, of course."
Chamberlain spoke to Hitler, telling him the plan arrived at - giving Sudetenland to Germany and an international guarantee for Czechoslovakia against aggression. Hitler was astounded, but rejected it flatly. He said ''Germany had to occupy Sudetenland by October 1st'', which - he didn't say - had been his plan all along since occupying Austria.
"And so, his mind “full of foreboding,” as he later told the Commons, Chamberlain withdrew across the Rhine “to consider what I was to do.” There seemed so little hope that evening that after he had consulted with his own cabinet colleagues and with members of the French government by telephone it was agreed that London and Paris should inform the Czech government the next day that they could not “continue to take the responsibility of advising them not to mobilize.”"
Hitler couldn't agree because complete destruction of Czechoslovakia and shaming western powers was his aim. They met again, and he demanded German occupation of Sudetenland by 28th. Chamberlain said he saw no point in remaining. Germany claimed Czechoslovakia was mobilising; Chamberlain reminded him Germany had mobilised first, which he denied.
"The German dictator did not want Chamberlain to get off the hook."
He changed the date to October 1st, which had been his plan. Chamberlain was impressed. They parted cordially, Chamberlain saying he had hopes of peace, and Hitler saying he did too.
"As he had already stated several times, the Czech problem was the last territorial demand which he had to make in Europe.
"This renunciation of further land grabs seems to have impressed the departing Prime Minister too, for in his subsequent report to the House of Commons he stressed that Hitler had made it “with great earnestness.”
"When Chamberlain arrived at his hotel toward 2 A.M. he was asked by a journalist, “Is the position hopeless, sir?”
"“I would not like to say that,” the Prime Minister answered. “It is up to the Czechs now.”
"It did not occur to him, it is evident, that it was up to the Germans, with their outrageous demands, too."
British and French governments rejected Godesberg, French partially mobilised. Cornered, Chamberlain agreed reluctantly to inform Hitler that if France became engaged in war with Germany as a result of her treaty with Czechoslovakia, Britain would be obliged to join with France. But first he wrote to him, appealing once again. Hitler was delivered that letter in Berlin.
"It was a painful scene, says the German interpreter. “For the first and only time in my presence, Hitler completely lost his head.” And according to the British present, the Fuehrer, who soon stamped back to his chair, kept further interrupting the reading of the letter by screaming, “The Germans are being treated like niggers… On October first I shall have Czechoslovakia where I want her. If France and England decide to strike, let them… I do not care a pfennig.”"
Hitler abused Czechoslovakia and Beneš in his public address at the rally, and again declared he had no intentions of aggression against Czechoslovakia after occupying Sudetenland. In response next day to British special envoy Horace Wilson bringing message from Chamberlain, he said he wasn't interested, and repeatedly declared he'd destroy Czechoslovakia. He asserted in response to Chamberlain's reluctant notice about joining France that if Britain and France were to be attacking him it was their responsibility. But later he ordered more divisions to join the borders, and wrote another letter to Chamberlain. He'd ordered a parade of troops in Berlin that evening, expecting cheering crowds.
"1914 when the cheering throngs on this same street tossed flowers at the marching soldiers, and the girls ran up and kissed them… But today they ducked into the subways, refused to look on, and the handful that did stood at the curb in utter silence… It has been the most striking demonstration against war I’ve ever seen.
"At the urging of a policeman I walked down the Wilhelmstrasse to the Reichskanzlerplatz, where Hitler stood on a balcony of the Chancellery reviewing the troops.
"…There weren’t two hundred people there. Hitler looked grim, then angry, and soon went inside, leaving his troops to parade by unreviewed. What I’ve seen tonight almost rekindles a little faith in the German people. They are dead set against war.
"There was a dispatch from Budapest saying that Yugoslavia and Rumania had informed the Hungarian government that they would move against Hungary militarily if she attacked Czechoslovakia. That would spread the war to the Balkans, something Hitler did not want."
German military attache sent grave dispatch from Paris, not only to foreign ministry but also to OKW and general staff.
"t France’s partial mobilization was so much like a total one “that I reckon with the completion of the deployment of the first 65 divisions on the German frontier by the sixth day of mobilization.” Against such a force the Germans had, as Hitler knew, barely a dozen divisions, half of them reserve units of doubtful value. .... Italians were doing absolutely nothing to pin down French troops on the Franco–Italian frontier.60 Mussolini, the valiant ally, seemed to be letting Hitler down in a crucial hour."
"... President of the United States and the King of Sweden were butting in. The day before, on the twenty-sixth, Roosevelt had addressed an appeal to Hitler to help keep the peace, and though Hitler had answered it within twenty-four hours, saying that peace depended solely on the Czechs, there came another message from the American President during the course of this day, Wednesday the twenty-seventh, suggesting an immediate conference of all the nations directly interested and implying that if war broke out the world would hold Hitler responsible.
"The King of Sweden, staunch friend of Germany, as he had proved during the 1914–18 war, was more frank. During the afternoon a dispatch arrived in Berlin from the German minister in Stockholm saying that the King had hastily summoned him and told him that unless Hitler extended his time limit of October 1 by ten days world war would inevitably break out, Germany would be solely to blame for it and moreover just as inevitably would lose it “in view of the present combination of the Powers.” In the cool, neutral air of Stockholm, the shrewd King was able to assess at least the military situation more objectively than the heads of government in Berlin, London and Paris."
German ambassador in Washington warned Berlin strongly, not wishing Germany to repeat the mistake of 1914.
"In the evening came a telegram from Colonel Toussaint, the German military attaché, to OKW: “Calm in Prague. Last mobilization measures carried out… Total estimated call-up is 1,000,000; field army 800,000…”62 That was as many trained men as Germany had for two fronts. Together the Czechs and the French outnumbered the Germans by more than two to one."
"Whether Hitler knew that the order was going out that evening for the mobilization of the British fleet cannot be established. Admiral Raeder arranged to see the Fuehrer at 10 P.M., and it is possible that the German Navy learned of the British move, which was made at 8 P.M. and publicly announced at 11:38 P.M., and that Raeder informed Hitler by telephone. At any rate, when the Admiral arrived he appealed to the Fuehrer not to go to war."
Hitler wrote to Chamberlain saying Prague was hoping to start a European war with help of Britain and France! His letter, telegraphed urgently, reached London at 10:30 p.m. on September 27th. Horace Wilson arrived.
"It was decided to mobilize the fleet, call up the Auxiliary Air Force and declare a state of emergency. Already trenches were being dug in the parks and squares for protection against bombing, and the evacuation of London’s school children had begun."
"Prime Minister promptly sent off a message to President Beneš in Prague warning that his information from Berlin “makes it clear that the German Army will receive orders to cross the Czechoslovak frontier immediately if, by tomorrow [September 28] at 2 P.M. the Czechoslovak Government have not accepted the German conditions.”"
But he further added that if Czechoslovakia did not concede to Hitler and war started, Czechoslovakia would bear the moral burden of causing the war, and her borders would change anyway.
"Chamberlain was putting the responsibility for peace or war no longer on Hitler but on Beneš. And he was giving a military opinion which even the German generals, as we have seen, held as irresponsible."
He suggested Czechoslovakia accept immediate occupation of Sudetenland, while an international committee decide about rest of the questions raised.
"Prime Minister broadcast to the nation at 8:30 P.M.:
"How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches… here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing!…"
Chamberlain sent off a message to Hitler proposing he visit Berlin for a four power conference including France and Italy.
"Despite Moscow’s guarantee to Czechoslovakia and the fact that right up to this moment Litvinov was proclaiming that Russia would honor it, Chamberlain had no intention of allowing the Soviets to interfere with his resolve to keep the peace by giving Hitler the Sudetenland."
"Deep gloom hung over Berlin, Prague, London and Paris as “Black Wednesday,” September 28, dawned. War seemed inevitable.
"“A Great War can hardly be avoided any longer,” Jodl quoted Goering as saying that morning. “It may last seven years, and we will win it.”68
"In London the digging of trenches, the evacuation of school children, the emptying of hospitals, continued. In Paris there was a scramble for the choked trains leaving the city, and the motor traffic out of the capital was jammed. There were similar scenes in western Germany. Jodl jotted in his diary that morning reports of German refugees fleeing from the border regions. At 2 P.M. Hitler’s time limit for Czechoslovakia’s acceptance of the Godesberg proposals would run out. There was no sign from Prague that they would be accepted."
"To some of the generals and to General Halder, Chief of the General Staff, above all, the time had come to carry out their plot to remove Hitler and save the Fatherland from plunging into a European war which they felt it was doomed to lose. All through September the conspirators, according to the later accounts of the survivors,* had been busy working out their plans."
They had begged the British to make it clear to Berlin that the intended aggression against Czechoslovakia would bring Britain and France into war against Germany, and begun to suspect that this wasn't going to happen. If there was no risk of a big war, there was no point of carrying out a revolt. They'd been planning the coup on September 14th when they expected Hitler to return to Berlin, but he'd gone to Berchtesgaden, and instead of warning him to not repeat the 1914 mistake of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Chamberlain had come to seek a peaceful solution.
"“The effect on our plans,” says Kordt, “was bound to be disastrous. It would have been absurd to stage a putsch to overthrow Hitler at a moment when the British Prime Minister was coming to Germany to discuss with Hitler ‘the peace of the world.’”"
As events progressed on 27th and 28th, the Generals thought it was time, but on the other hand France, Italy and Britain were busy appeasing; France proposed giving all of Sudetenland to Hitler on October 1st. While Hitler was meeting the French, the Italian ambassador arrived with message from Mussolini, about noon on 28th, and Hitler said he accepted the proposal to postpone mobilising for twenty four hours. The two talked on phone and by 2 p.m. invitations were issued to France, Britain and italy to talk in Munich.
"No invitation was sent to Prague or Moscow. Russia, the co-guarantor of Czechoslovakia’s integrity in case of a German attack, was not to be allowed to interfere. The Czechs were not even asked to be present at their own death sentence."
"Chamberlain, not Mussolini, made Munich possible, and thus preserved the peace for exactly eleven months. The cost of such a feat to his own country and to its allies and friends will be considered later, but it was, by any accounting, as it turned out, almost beyond bearing."
Chamberlain, in middle of his speech to the British parliament, was handed a paper, and informed them of the invitation.
"The ancient chamber, the Mother of Parliaments, reacted with a mass hysteria without precedent in its long history. There was wild shouting and a wild throwing of order papers into the air and many were in tears and one voice was heard above the tumult which seemed to express the deep sentiments of all: “Thank God for the Prime Minister!”
"Jan Masaryk, the Czech minister, the son of the founding father of the Czechoslovak Republic, looked on from the diplomatic gallery, unable to believe his eyes. Later he called on the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary in Downing Street to find out whether his country, which would have to make all the sacrifices, would be invited to Munich. Chamberlain and Halifax answered that it would not, that Hitler would not stand for it. Masaryk gazed at the two God-fearing Englishmen and struggled to keep control of himself.
"“If you have sacrificed my nation to preserve the peace of the world,” he finally said, “I will be the first to applaud you. But if not, gentlemen, God help your souls!”"
The Generals in Germany, on verge of carrying out their coup, learned of the acceptance by Chamberlain and others, avoiding war, which scuttled their plans.
"In the autumn of 1938 it was still possible to count on bringing Hitler to trial before the Supreme Court, but all subsequent efforts to get rid of him necessarily involved attempts on his life…"
"... the troops would never revolt against the victorious Fuehrer… Chamberlain saved Hitler."
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"In the train coming up to Munich Hitler was in a bellicose mood, explaining to the Duce over maps how he intended to “liquidate” Czechoslovakia. Either the talks beginning that day must be immediately successful, he said, or he would resort to arms. “Besides,” Ciano, who was present, quotes the Fuehrer as adding, “the time will come when we shall have to fight side by side against France and England.” Mussolini agreed.
"Chamberlain had come to Munich absolutely determined that no one, certainly not the Czechs and not even the French, should stand in the way of his reaching a quick agreement with Hitler.
"British Prime Minister and the French Premier fairly fell over themselves to agree with Hitler.
"What the Duce now fobbed off as his own compromise plan had been hastily drafted the day before in the German Foreign Office in Berlin by Goering, Neurath and Weizsaecker behind the back of Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, whose judgment the three men did not trust. Goering took it to Hitler, who said it might do, and then it was hurriedly translated into French by Dr. Schmidt and passed along to the Italian ambassador, Attolico, who telephoned the text of it to the Italian dictator in Rome just before he entrained for Munich. Thus it was that the “Italian proposals,” which provided the informal conference not only with its sole agenda but with the basic terms which eventually became the Munich Agreement, were in fact German proposals concocted in Berlin."
Chamberlain asked about compensation, but Hitler wasn't willing even to let Czech farmers take their own cattle, and Chamberlain dropped the matter when Hitler shouted. Chamberlain had insisted on presence of Czech representatives, but Hitler wouldn't tolerate it, so they were waiting in the next room for hours, and finally informed by a British official about what territory they had to give up. When they asked about being heard, he told them they failed to appreciate British efforts.
"“If you do not accept,” he admonished them, as he prepared to go, “you will have to settle your affairs with the Germans absolutely alone."
They met the French and British after Hitler had left, to be told what Czechoslovakia had to do next, and were told off when they asked if Czechoslovakia was expected to answer. Chamberlain met Hitler next morning for a talk, and had him sign a paper he'd brought, about general Anglo-German cooperation about peace.
"Chamberlain returned to London—as did Daladier to Paris—in triumph. Brandishing the declaration which he had signed with Hitler, the jubilant Prime Minister faced a large crowd that pressed into Downing Street. After listening to shouts of “Good old Neville!” and a lusty singing of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” Chamberlain smilingly spoke a few words from a second-story window in Number 10.
"“My good friends,” he said, “this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor.* I believe it is peace in our time.”
"The Times declared that “no conqueror returning from a victory on the battlefield has come adorned with nobler laurels.” There was a spontaneous movement to raise a “National Fund of Thanksgiving” in Chamberlain’s honor, which he graciously turned down. Only Duff Cooper, the First Lord of the Admiralty, resigned from the cabinet, and when in the ensuing Commons debate Winston Churchill, still a voice in the wilderness, began to utter his memorable words, “We have sustained a total, unmitigated defeat,” he was forced to pause, as he later recorded, until the storm of protest against such a remark had subsided."
For President Beneš in Prague there was no recourse but to surrender, which Czechoslovakia did under protest, having been abandoned by friends - as per Munich treaty West would join war with Germany if Czechoslovakia refused.
"Britain and France maintained their pressure on the country they had seduced and betrayed. During the day the British, French and Italian ministers went to see Dr. Krofta to make sure that there was no last-minute revolt of the Czechs against the surrender. The German chargé, Dr. Hencke, in a dispatch to Berlin described the scene.
"The French Minister’s attempt to address words of condolence to Krofta was cut short by the Foreign Minister’s remark: “We have been forced into this situation; now everything is at an end; today it is our turn, tomorrow it will be the turn of others.” The British Minister succeeded with difficulty in saying that Chamberlain had done his utmost; he received the same answer as the French Minister."
..............................................................................
"President Beneš resigned on October 5 on the insistence of Berlin and, when it became evident that his life was in danger, flew to England and exile. He was replaced provisionally by General Sirovy. On November 30, Dr. Emil Hácha, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a well-intentioned but weak and senile man of sixty-six, was selected by the National Assembly to be President of what remained of Czecho-Slovakia, which was now officially spelled with a hyphen."
"The Poles and the Hungarians, after threatening military action against the helpless nation, now swept down, like vultures, to get a slice of Czechoslovak territory. Poland, at the insistence of Foreign Minister Józef Beck, who for the next twelve months will be a leading character in this narrative, took some 650 square miles of territory around Teschen, comprising a population of 228,000 inhabitants, of whom 133,000 were Czechs. Hungary got a larger slice in the award meted out on November 2 by Ribbentrop and Ciano: 7,500 square miles, with a population of 500,000 Magyars and 272,000 Slovaks."
"The final settlement of November 20, 1938, forced Czechoslovakia to cede to Germany 11,000 square miles of territory ... Within this area lay all the vast Czech fortifications which hitherto had formed the most formidable defensive line in Europe, with the possible exception of the Maginot Line in France.
"Czechoslovakia’s entire system of rail, road, telephone and telegraph communications was disrupted. According to German figures, the dismembered country lost 66 per cent of its coal, 80 per cent of its lignite, 86 per cent of its chemicals, 80 per cent of its cement, 80 per cent of its textiles, 70 per cent of its iron and steel, 70 per cent of its electric power and 40 per cent of its timber. A prosperous industrial nation was split up and bankrupted overnight."
"Winston Churchill, in England, alone seemed to understand. No one stated the consequences of Munich more succinctly than he in his speech to the Commons of October 5:
"We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat… We are in the midst of a disaster of the first magnitude. The road down the Danube… the road to the Black Sea has been opened… All the countries of Mittel Europa and the Danube valley, one after another, will be drawn in the vast system of Nazi politics… radiating from Berlin… And do not suppose that this is the end. It is only the beginning…"
..............................................................................
"All the generals close to Hitler who survived the war agree that had it not been for Munich Hitler would have attacked Czechoslovakia on October 1, 1938, and they presume that, whatever momentary hesitations there might have been in London, Paris and Moscow, in the end Britain, France and Russia would have been drawn into the war.
"And—what is most important to this history at this point—the German generals agree unanimously that Germany would have lost the war, and in short order."
At Nürnberg, Keitel said:-
"We were extraordinarily happy that it had not come to a military operation because… we had always been of the opinion that our means of attack against the frontier fortifications of Czechoslovakia were insufficient. From a purely military point of view we lacked the means for an attack which involved the piercing of the frontier fortifications."
And General Manstein said:-
"If a war had broken out, neither our western border nor our Polish frontier could really have been effectively defended by us, and there is no doubt whatsoever that had Czechoslovakia defended herself, we would have been held up by her fortifications, for we did not have the means to break through."
..............................................................................
Gamelin had argued facts, strenuously against letting Germany have Czech fortifications, in particular, and said that Germany couldn't stand against French army. Neither Chamberlain nor Daladier heeded. The fear of German bombing of London and Paris was exaggerated too.
"Weak as the British and French fighter defenses were, the Germans could not have given their bombers fighter protection, if they had had the planes. Their fighter bases were too far away."
And with Czechoslovakia and Russia fighting as well, Germany didn't have a chance, but for Chamberlain and Munich. Germany was in no position to go to war on October 1, 1938, against the three or four powers involved, and by declaring he'd do so, Hitler had put himself out on a limb. Whether by losing or via his generals arresting him, his career would have ended that much sooner.
France, with a smaller population, had built treaties with smaller nations East and South of Germany, but now lost army and fortifications of Czechoslovakia, and also lost trust by reneging on treaty with Czechoslovakia and with Russia. They all now rethought their defense treaties, turning from France to Germany.
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Hitler was disappointed about not destroying Czechoslovakia, which was his intention, and proceeded towards it. His Godesberg memorandum was indicative enough of the vengeful spirit, and Chamberlain had protested at Munich but given in when shouted at by Hitler.
"The memorandum called for the withdrawal of all Czech armed forces, including the police, etc., by October 1 from large areas indicated on a map with red shading. A plebiscite was to determine the future of further areas shaded in green. All military installations in the evacuated territories were to be left intact. All commercial and transport materials, “especially the rolling stock of the railway system,” were to be handed over to the Germans undamaged. “Finally, no foodstuffs, goods, cattle, raw material, etc., are to be removed.”54 The hundreds of thousands of Czechs in the Sudetenland were not to be allowed to take with them even their household goods or the family cow."
This sound a very like the jihadist diktat issued to Kashmir Hindus all night of January 19, 1990, via mosque loudspeakers, when they were ordered to leave without taking any belongings; jihadists definition of property included women, explicitly included in orders to be left behind; the ultimatum mentioned being ready to be murdered as alternative.
After all Hitler mentions being hugely an admirer of the prophet, and jihadists in turn seem to have learned from nazis, following their methodology of combination of lying, whining about their rights and vengeance against the world, and always claming more land while practicing huge reproduction and defining females of humanity as nothing more than vehicles thereof, while claiming they respect women, although women denying any males or refusing to marry is out of the question as far as either ideology goes.
And Hitler dealing with Czechoslovakia is very much the essential structure copied by this jihadist ideology in dealing with India in particular, hoping to use U.N. exactly as Hitler used Britain, France and Italy. U.N. majority vote usually favours such agenda if camouflaged enough, so the Arab block isn't exposed openly as expansionist or jihadist. Chamberlain had fallen for Hitler's lies, and horribly false propaganda against India along usual jihadist lines hopes for the same result of fooling the world. At the very least the world may be fooled enough to weigh the false propaganda on par with the victim thereof, as in case of Munich.
"At 6:45 the evening before, Chamberlain had sent a message to President Beneš informing him officially of the meeting at Munich. “I shall have the interests of Czechoslovakia,” he stated, “fully in mind… I go there [to Munich] with the intention of trying to find accommodation between the positions of the German and Czechoslovak governments.” Beneš had immediately replied, “I beg that nothing may be done at Munich without Czechoslovakia being heard.”" ...............................................................................
"Britain and France declared that “they stand by their offer… relating to an international guarantee of the new boundaries of the Czechoslovak State against unprovoked aggression. When the question of the Polish and Hungarian minorities… has been settled, Germany and Italy, for their part, will give a guarantee to Czechoslovakia.”85
"The pledge of plebiscites was never carried out. Neither Germany nor Italy ever gave the guarantee to Czechoslovakia against aggression, even after the matter of the Polish and Hungarian minorities was settled, and, as we shall see, Britain and France declined to honor their guarantee."
Hitler later told Dr. Carl Burckhardt, League of Nations High Commissioner of Danzig,
"“When after Munich we were in a position to examine Czechoslovak military strength from within, what we saw of it greatly disturbed us; we had run a serious danger. The plan prepared by the Czech generals was formidable. I now understand why my generals urged restraint.”" ...............................................................................
Within ten days of Munich Hitler wrote to Keitel:-
"1. What reinforcements are necessary in the present situation to break all Czech resistance in Bohemia and Moravia?
2. How much time is required for the regrouping or moving up of new forces?
3. How much time will be required for the same purpose if it is executed after the intended demobilization and return measures?
4. How much time would be required to achieve the state of readiness of October 1?"
On receiving his reply, further instructions went:-
" ...the armed forces must be prepared at all times for the following eventualities:
"The securing of the frontiers of Germany.
"The liquidation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia.
"The occupation of the Memel district."
"The object is the swift occupation of Bohemia and Moravia and the cutting off of Slovakia."
Germany urged Hungary to demand her share of Slovakia, but when Hungary demanded all of it, put her foot down. Prague had granted extensive autonomy to Slovakia after Munich, which suited Germany since Slovakia was weak. German policy about it was summed in a foreign office memorandum of October 7.
"“An independent Slovakia,” he wrote, “would be weak constitutionally and would therefore best further the German need for penetration and settlement in the East." ...............................................................................
"On November 7, a seventeen-year-old German Jewish refugee by the name of Herschel Grynszpan shot and mortally wounded the third secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath."
Grynszpan was avenging in treatment of Jews in general, transported in boxers to concentration camps, and his father in particular amongst them, intending to kill the ambassador. But the young official was sent out to see him, and shot instead.
"There was irony in Rath’s death, because he had been shadowed by the Gestapo as a result of his anti-Nazi attitude; for one thing, he had never shared the anti-Semitic aberrations of the rulers of his country."
"On the night of November 9–10, shortly after the party bosses, led by Hitler and Goering, had concluded the annual celebration of the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, the worst pogrom that had yet taken place in the Third Reich occurred. .... after the war, documents came to light which show how “spontaneous” it was.5 They are among the most illuminating—and gruesome—secret papers of the prewar Nazi era." ...............................................................................
"On the evening of November 9, according to a secret report made by the chief party judge, Major Walther Buch, Dr. Goebbels issued instructions that “spontaneous demonstrations” were to be “organized and executed” during the night. But the real organizer was Reinhard Heydrich, the sinister thirty-four-year-old Number Two man, after Himmler, in the S.S., who ran the Security Service (S.D.) and the Gestapo. His teletyped orders during the evening are among the captured German documents."
Thousands of Jews were arrested as per instructions from Heydrich, hundreds of synagogues burnt down, homes and shops belonging to Jews destroyed, and of course, murders. Only rapes were punished due to law forbidding mixing of races, by perpetrators being expelled from party. Murders were not punished, since they were ordered. When brought to attention of Göring by gentle owners of buildings that insurance payments were a problem because state had collected them, and plate glass had to be imported but Germany was low on foreign exchange, Göring shouted at Heydrich that it would have been better to kill Jews rather than breaking glass. Göring decided to make Jews pay one billion marks, collectively. Jews were to be excluded from schools, shops, parks, forests and transport, and employment.
"World opinion was shocked and revolted by such barbarity in a nation which boasted a centuries-old Christian and humanist culture. Hitler, in turn, was enraged by the world reaction and convinced himself that it merely proved the power and scope of “the Jewish world conspiracy.”"
"Individually, as this writer can testify from personal experience, many Germans were as horrified by the November 9 inferno as were Americans and Englishmen and other foreigners. But neither the leaders of the Christian churches nor the generals nor any other representatives of the “good” Germany spoke out at once in open protest. They bowed to what General von Fritsch called “the inevitable,” or “Germany’s destiny.”"
"The American ambassador in Berlin, Hugh Wilson, was recalled by President Roosevelt on November 14, two days after Goering’s meeting, “for consultations,” and never returned to his post. The German ambassador in Washington, Hans Dieckhoff, who on that day reported to Berlin that “a hurricane is raging here” as the result of the German pogrom, was recalled on November 18 and likewise never returned. On November 30, Hans Thomsen, the German chargé d’affaires in Washington, advised Berlin by code that “in view of the strained relations and the lack of security for secret material” in the embassy, the “secret political files” be removed to Berlin. “The files,” he said, “are so bulky that they cannot be destroyed quickly enough should the necessity arise.”"
Seeking to divide France and Britain, Hitler signed a treaty with France, assuring his lack of intentions against Alsace and Lorraine.
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"Hitler also demanded that the Czechoslovak National Bank turn over part of its gold reserve to the Reichsbank. The sum requested was 391.2 million Czech crowns in gold. On February 18 Goering wrote the German Foreign Office: “In view of the increasingly difficult currency position, I must insist most strongly that the 30 to 40 million Reichsmarks in gold [from the Czech National Bank] which are involved come into our possession very shortly; they are urgently required for the execution of important orders of the Fuehrer.”"
Germany encouraged Slovakia to be independent , seeking to destroy Czechoslovakia completely. Czechoslovakia government in Prague were dictated terms to be obeyed that would turn the nation so far independent into a slave imitation - reduction of army, implementation of Nürnberg laws regarding Jews, and joining Anti-Comintern pact, for a few.
Further drama was played out with Prague dealing with Bratislava and Ruthenia firmly, knowing that Hitler was only waiting for an excuse one way or another. Hitler had Tiso brought to him and demanded to know if Slovakia wanted independence. Tiso was dictated the telegram he was instructed to send from Bratislava proclaiming independence.
President of Czechoslovakia visited Berlin, realising that British and French would now renege on their guarantee of safeguarding borders of Czechoslovakia, and Hitler terrorised him, demanding complete submission of the remaining Czech state comprising of Bohemia and Moravia, threatening annihilation by German army. He wanted it to look like Czech state had begged Germany formally to occupying.
President Hacha and Chvalkovsky, the minister accompanying him, refused to surrender, and they were hounded by Göring and Ribbentrop, with promise of destruction of Prague by bombing. Hacha fainted, and was revived with injections only to be hounded to sign. Hitler exulted after he got it around 4 a.m., old man Hacha having been kept up the whole night by meeting beginning only after 11 p.m., and rushed out hugging secretaries at the chancellory, saying he'd be remembered as the greatest German.
"It did not occur to him—how could it?—that the end of Czechoslovakia might be the beginning of the end of Germany. From this dawn of March 15, 1939—the Ides of March—the road to war, to defeat, to disaster, as we now know, stretched just ahead. It would be a short road and as straight as a line could be. And once on it, and hurtling down it, Hitler, like Alexander and Napoleon before him, could not stop.
"At 6 A.M. on March 15 German troops poured into Bohemia and Moravia. They met no resistance, and by evening Hitler was able to make the triumphant entry into Prague which he felt Chamberlain had cheated him of at Munich. Before leaving Berlin he had issued a grandiose proclamation to the German people, repeating the tiresome lies about the “wild excesses” and “terror” of the Czechs which he had been forced to bring an end to, and proudly proclaiming, “Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist!”
"That night he slept in Hradschin Castle, the ancient seat of the kings of Bohemia high above the River Moldau where more recently the despised Masaryk and Beneš had lived and worked for the first democracy Central Europe had ever known. The Fuehrer’s revenge was complete, and that it was sweet he showed in the series of proclamations which he issued. He had paid off all the burning resentments against the Czechs which had obsessed him as an Austrian in his vagabond days in Vienna three decades before and which had flamed anew when Beneš dared to oppose him, the all-powerful German dictator, over the past year."
Hitler issued a proclamation.
" ...German Reich, in keeping with the law of self-preservation, is now resolved to intervene decisively to rebuild the foundations of a reasonable order in Central Europe. For in the thousand years of its history it has already proved that, thanks to the greatness and the qualities of the German people, it alone is called upon to undertake this task."
"A long night of German savagery now settled over Prague and the Czech lands."
Next day, March 16th, Slovakia too was taken under protection as per telegram Tiso sent according to instructions. Ruthenia, renamed Carpatho-Ukraine, was handed over to Hungary. Hungarian troops had marched in on March 15, as arranged with Germany, while German occupation of Czechoslovakia was proceeding in western parts.
"Thus by the end of the day of March 15, which had started in Berlin at 1:15 A.M. when Hácha arrived at the Chancellery, Czechoslovakia, as Hitler said, had ceased to exist.
"Neither Britain nor France made the slightest move to save it, though at Munich they had solemnly guaranteed Czechoslovakia against aggression."
Chamberlain defended British doing nothing about German takeover and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, in the house of commons, by taking precisely the line about independence of Slovakia amounting to non existence of Czechoslovakia and hence any treaty with her, that was the hoodwinking for such purposes created by Hitler.
French ambassador, Robert Coulondre, was strong in protesting, but treated with insolence, Ribbentrop not meeting him and Weizsäcker, who staunchly claimed being anti nazi at Nürnberg, being insolent refusing to accept the note. He further told him off.
"From the legal point of view there existed a Declaration which had come about between the Fuehrer and the President of the Czecho-Slovak State. The Czech President, at his own request, had come to Berlin and had then immediately declared that he wished to place the fate of his country in the Fuehrer’s hands. I could not imagine that the French Government were more Catholic than the Pope and intended meddling in things which had been duly settled between Berlin and Prague."
...............................................................................
British protest did not go so far as French, the latter refusing to accept legality of German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Henderson was still blind not only to the Nazi machinations but was unaware at the moment about events back home.
"British press (even the Times, but not the Daily Mail) and the House of Commons had reacted violently to Hitler’s latest aggression. More serious, many of his own backers in Parliament and half of the cabinet had revolted against any further appeasement of Hitler. Lord Halifax, especially, as the German ambassador informed Berlin, had insisted that the Prime Minister recognize what had happened and abruptly change his course."
Chamberlain changed his pre-written speech for Birmingham and admitted he had been deceived.
".... While I am not prepared to engage this country by new and unspecified commitments operating under conditions which cannot now be foreseen, yet no greater mistake could be made than to suppose that because it believes war to be a senseless and cruel thing, this nation has so lost its fiber that it will not take part to the utmost of its power in resisting such a challenge if it ever were made."
Chamberlain assured the parliament that Britain and France would stand by Poland.
...............................................................................
Less than a month after Munich, Ribbentrop hosted a lunch for Józef Lipski, the Polish ambassador in Berlin, at Berchtesgaden. There was general bonhomie after Poland had demanded and got her share of Czechoslovakia, Teschen, as per German instructions. But Ribbentrop lost no time and proceeded to demand Danzig be handed over, along with territory required to build the high speed road and railway to Danzig that Germany intended. Also, Poland must join Anti-Comintern pact, so Germany would extend the treaty for a decade or two, and guarantee Poland against agression.
Warsaw refused, as Lipski had predicted to Ribbentrop, and Hitler instructed his generals on November 24 about planning to occupy Danish by surprise. This was to be done using local nazis who took orders from Berlin, like Sudetenland nazis.
"The Germans forgot—or perhaps did not wish to remember—that almost all of the German land awarded Poland at Versailles, including the provinces of Posen and Polish Pomerania (Pomorze), which formed the Corridor, had been grabbed by Prussia at the time of the partitions when Prussia, Russia and Austria had destroyed the Polish nation. For more than a millennium it had been inhabited by Poles—and, to a large extent, it still was."
Piludski's signing of a treaty with Germany in 1935 had weakened French system of alliances with East Europe and also collective security of League of Nations.
"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."
This treaty had enabled Germany to occupy Rhineland without worry about East, and subsequently Austria and Sudetenland, while Poland looked on benevolently. Poland woke up on March 15th, 1939, from the stupor brought on by this treaty, when Germany occupied Czechoslovakia completely, German armies thus surrounding Poland.
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Lipski asked if Ribbentrop could tell him about talks with Lithuania, and Ribbentrop said they were discussing Memel. France and Britain had asked Germany on December 12, 1938, about rumours about disturbance by Germans of Memel planning a revolt, and Germany had told them they shouldnt meddle in German affairs.
"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, 1938, Weizsäcker who at Nürnberg professed distaste for brutality had asked Lithuanian government representatives to come by special plane next day to talk, which the plenipotentiaries did, in the afternoon ; they were pressured until they signed about 4:30 a.m., surrendering. Hitler made his triumphal entry to Memel without bloodshed again.
"Although the Fuehrer could not know it, it was to be the last."
...............................................................................
Poland found the Memelland occupation by Germany disturbing enough to mobilise troops around Danzig. Lipski was to return to Berlin from Warsaw on March 25th.
""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?"
"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."
...............................................................................
"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.”"
"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."
Polish government could afford to stand up to Germany because now Britain what women up and there were talks about consultations, but Poland still wanted Russia kept out. On March 30 Kennard presented proposals of an Anglo-French proposal for mutual assistance in case of German aggression, but fresh reports about imminent German attack against Poland had British call and ask if Poland objected to a unilateral British guarantee; Beck, obviously relieved said they had no objection.
"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."
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"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.
"Now overnight, in his understandably bitter reaction to Hitler’s occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain, after having deliberately and recklessly thrown so much away, had undertaken to unilaterally guarantee an Eastern country run by a junta of politically inept “colonels” who up to this moment had closely collaborated with Hitler, who like hyenas had joined the Germans in the carving up of Czechoslovakia and whose country had been rendered militarily indefensible by the very German conquests which Britain and Poland had helped the Reich to achieve.* And he had taken this eleventh-hour risk without bothering to enlist the aid of Russia, whose proposals for joint action against further Nazi aggression he had twice turned down within the year.
"Finally, he had done exactly what for more than a year he had stoutly asserted that Britain would never do: he had left to another nation the decision whether his country would go to war.
"Nevertheless, the Prime Minister’s precipitate step, belated as it was, presented Adolf Hitler with an entirely new situation. From now on, apparently, Britain would stand in the way of his committing further aggression. He could no longer use the technique of taking one nation at a time while the Western democracies stood aside debating what to do. Moreover, Chamberlain’s move appeared to be the first serious step toward forming a coalition of powers against Germany which, unless it were successfully countered, might bring again that very encirclement which had been the nightmare of the Reich since Bismarck."
..............................................................................
Hitler was enraged enough to cancel the direct broadcast and had it done from speech pre-recorded, but the edited version had hints of belligerent threats along with the usual talk of intentions only of peace.
"If they [the Western Allies] expect the Germany of today to sit patiently by until the very last day while they create satellite States and set them against Germany, then they are mistaking the Germany of today for the Germany of before the war.
"He who declares himself ready to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for these powers must realize he burns his fingers….
"When they say in other countries that they will arm and will keep arming still more, I can tell those statesmen only this: “Me you will never tire out!” I am determined to continue on this road."
His real answer was on April 3, in the to secret directive to his military about "case white", of which only five copies were made.
"…The aim will be to destroy Polish military strength and create in the East a situation which satisfies the requirements of national defense. The Free State of Danzig will be proclaimed a part of the Reich territory at the outbreak of hostilities, at the latest.
"The political leaders consider it their task in this case to isolate Poland if possible, that is to say, to limit the war to Poland only."
"The isolation of Poland will be all the more easily maintained, even after the outbreak of hostilities, if we succeed in starting the war with sudden, heavy blows and in gaining rapid successes…"
"The task of the Wehrmacht is to destroy the Polish armed forces. To this end a surprise attack is to be aimed at and prepared."
"Case White is a lengthy document with several “enclosures,” “annexes” and “special orders,” most of which were reissued as a whole on April 11 and of course added to later as the time for hostilities’ approached. But already on April 3, Hitler appended the following directives to Case White:
"1. Preparations must be made in such a way that the operation can be carried out at any time from September 1, 1939, onward.""
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Unlike Austria and Czechoslovakia which had been worn down by tactics and rage tantrums and lies, despite their much better situations, Poland wouldn't roll over, but fight despite heavy odds, of an obsolete military surrounded on three sides by a superior modern one.
"On April 6 Colonel Beck signed an agreement with Great Britain in London transforming the unilateral British guarantee into a temporary pact of mutual assistance. A permanent treaty, it was announced, would be signed as soon as the details had been worked out.
"The next day, April 7, Mussolini sent his troops into Albania and added the conquest of that mountainous little country to that of Ethiopia. It gave him a springboard against Greece and Yugoslavia and in the tense atmosphere of Europe served to make more jittery the small countries which dared to defy the Axis. As the German Foreign Office papers make clear, it was done with the complete approval of Germany, which was informed of the step in advance. On April 13, France and Britain countered with a guarantee to Greece and Rumania."
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President Roosevelt sent a telegram to Mussolini and Hitler asking
"Are you willing to give assurance that your armed forces will not attack or invade the territory of the following independent nations?",
and giving a list of thirty-one nations; he reminded Hitler that the latter always said he'd no intentions of war, which if it were true, there need be no war.
Hitler found it embarrassing enough that he let it be known he'd answer it in his speech to the Reichstag.
"In the meantime, as the captured German Foreign Office papers reveal, the Wilhelmstrasse in a circular telegram of April 17 put two questions of its own to all the states mentioned by Roosevelt except Poland, Russia, Britain and France: Did they feel themselves in any way threatened by Germany? Had they authorized Roosevelt to make his proposal?"
"By April 22 the German Foreign Office was able to draw up a report for the Fuehrer that most of the countries, including Yugoslavia, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Luxembourg “have answered both questions in the negative”—a reply which would soon show what an innocent view their governments took of the Third Reich. From Rumania, however, came a tart answer that the “Reich Government were themselves in a position to know whether a threat might arise.”
Latvia responded saying cabinet would be consulted; Weizsäcker communicated to them that if they didn't answer 'no', Latvia would be added to the list of countries "willing accomplices of Mr. Roosevelt ".
Latvia fell in line.
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Hitler began his speech to Reichstag on April 28, 1939, broadcast throughout the world, with the usual harangue about Versailles, moving on to declare that British treaty with Poland had effect of nullifying German treaties with each.
"Reports that Germany intended to attack Poland, Hitler went on, were “mere inventions of the international press.” (Not one of the tens of millions of persons listening could know that only three weeks before he had given written orders to his armed forces to prepare for the destruction of Poland by September 1, “at the latest.”) The inventions of the press, he continued, had led Poland to make its agreement with Great Britain which, “under certain circumstances, would compel Poland to take military action against Germany.” Therefore, Poland had broken the Polish–German nonaggression pact! “Therefore, I look upon the agreement… as having been unilaterally infringed by Poland and thereby no longer in existence.”"
He'd welcome new treaties with them, he said.
"This was an old trick he had pulled often before when he had broken a treaty, as we have seen, but though he probably did not know it, it would no longer work."
He mentioned U.S. civil war, history of U.S. and more, in his theatrical performance of replying to President Roosevelt.
"I mention all this only in order to show that your view, Mr. Roosevelt, although undoubtedly deserving of all honor, finds no confirmation in the history of your own country or of the rest of the world."
He proceeded to ask how President Roosevelt could know the nations he named felt threatened, did they tell him, and to say they had denied both; he omitted name of Poland. He went on to name Syria, Palestine and Ireland, and to speak about his own rise from heading a small poor nation which he'd done much for, naming the areas of industry, roads and destroying treaties, as well as having acquired a much larger land without shedding blood, while President Roosevelt had only come to power at the same time in a large and wealthy nation. He assured President Roosevelt that he had no aggressive intentions against U.S. territories.
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"In the hoodwinking of the German people, this speech was Hitler’s greatest masterpiece. But as one traveled about Europe in the proceeding days it was easy to see that, unlike a number of Hitler’s previous orations, this one no longer fooled the people or the governments abroad. In contrast to the Germans, they were able to see through the maze of deceptions. And they realized that the German Fuehrer, for all his masterful oratory, though scoring off Roosevelt, had not really answered the President’s fundamental questions: Had he finished with aggression? Would he attack Poland?
"As it turned out, this was the last great peacetime public speech of Hitler’s life. The former Austrian waif had come as far in this world as was possible by the genius of his oratory. From now on he was to try to make his niche in history as a warrior."
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"Hitler did not publicly respond to the Polish answer to him which was given on May 5 in a speech by Colonel Beck to Parliament and in an official government memorandum presented to Germany on that date.
"It is clear [it said] that negotiations, in which one State formulates demands and the other is obliged to accept those demands unaltered, are not negotiations."
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"In his speech to the Reichstag on April 28, Hitler had omitted his customary attack on the Soviet Union. There was not a word about Russia."
The efforts to communicate began four days after Munich, from which Russia had been excluded. Talks stalled, because Germany needed raw materials but couldn't supply her end, manufactured goods. Stalin spoke in Moscow on March 10th, mostly against western powers, their pushing Germany East, and their expecting the two to battle one another.
"…Not to let our country be drawn into conflict by warmongers, whose custom it is to let others pull their chestnuts out of the fire."
"One Western diplomat, Joseph E. Davies, former American ambassador in Moscow, who was now stationed in Brussels, did draw the proper conclusions from Stalin’s speech. “It is a most significant statement,” he noted in his diary on March 11. “It bears the earmarks of a definite warning to the British and French governments that the Soviets are getting tired of ‘nonrealistic’ opposition to the aggressors. This… is really ominous for the negotiations… between the British Foreign Office and the Soviet Union. It certainly is the most significant danger signal that I have yet seen.” On March 21 he wrote to Senator Key Pittman: “…Hitler is making a desperate effort to alienate Stalin from France and Britain. Unless the British and French wake up, I am afraid he will succeed.”"
"Three days after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia on March 15, the Russian government proposed, as we have seen,* a six-power conference to discuss means of preventing further aggression, and Chamberlain turned it down as “premature.”† That was on March 18. Two days later an official communiqué in Moscow, which the German ambassador there hurriedly wired to Berlin, denied that the Soviet Union had offered Poland and Rumania assistance “in the event of their becoming the victims of aggression.” Reason: “Neither Poland nor Rumania had approached the Soviet government for assistance or informed [it] of any danger threatening them.”"
Göring spoke with Mussolini about possible joining arms with Russia, reminding him that neither leader was speaking against the other recently.
"On the very day of this discussion between Goering and Mussolini, April 16, the Soviet Foreign Commissar received the British ambassador in Moscow and made a formal proposal for a triple pact of mutual assistance between Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. It called for a military convention between the three powers to enforce the pact and a guarantee by the signatories, to be joined by Poland, if it desired, of all the nations in Central and Eastern Europe which felt themselves menaced by Nazi Germany. It was Litvinov’s last bid for an alliance against the Third Reich, and the Russian Foreign Minister, who had staked his career on a policy of stopping Hitler by collective action, must have thought that at last he would succeed in uniting the Western democracies with Russia for that purpose. As Churchill said in a speech on May 4, complaining that the Russian offer had not yet been accepted in London, “there is no means of maintaining an Eastern front against Nazi aggression without the active aid of Russia.” No other power in Eastern Europe, certainly not Poland, possessed the military strength to maintain a front in that region. Yet the Russian proposal caused consternation in London and Paris.
"Even before it was rejected, however, Stalin made his first serious move to play the other side of the street."
Merekalov met Weizsäcker in Berlin, and returned to Moscow. On May 3, Litvinov was replaced by Molotov. Litvinov was all for collective security, and Chamberlain's hesitation in accepting his proposals had made Stalin rethink; he didn't want to be drawn into fighting Germany without western powers joining in.
"The fact that Litvinov, a Jew, was replaced by Molotov, who, as the German Embassy had emphasized in its dispatch to Berlin, was not, might be expected to have a certain impact in high Nazi circles."
"The British government did not reply until May 8 to the Soviet proposals of April 16 for a military alliance. The response was a virtual rejection. It strengthened suspicions in Moscow that Chamberlain was not willing to make a military pact with Russia to prevent Hitler from taking Poland."
In less than a week after Litvinov was replaced,
"French ambassador got off another telegram to Paris telling of new rumors in Berlin “that Germany had made, or was going to make, to Russia proposals aimed at a partition of Poland.”"
Italy and Germany signed a military pact later known as "Pact of Steel", on May 22. A clause included was specifically mentioning "lebensraum". The day after, on May 23, Hitler called a meeting of his military chiefs at chancellory in Berlin and told them that further conquests were not possible without war. Fourteen top officers present included Göring, Raeder, Brauchitsch, Halder, Keitel, and it was so top secret that there were no copies made of minutes. Hitler spoke, about need of taking countries East, so there would be land to supply food and populations for slave Labour. Poland was first to be taken. He returned repeatedly to England as the chief enemy.
"England is our enemy, and the conflict with England is a matter of life and death."
"The Dutch and Belgian air bases must be militarily occupied. Declarations of neutrality can be ignored. If England wants to intervene in the Polish war, we must make a lightning attack on Holland. We must aim at establishing a new line of defense on Dutch territory as far as the Zuyder Zee. The war with England and France will be a war of life and death.
"The idea that we can get off cheaply is dangerous; there is no such possibility. We must then burn our boats and it will no longer be a question of right or wrong but of to be or not to be for eighty million people.
"“England,” he emphasized, “is the driving force against Germany.” Whereupon he discussed her strengths and weaknesses."
"Preparations must be made for a long war as well as for a surprise attack, and every possible intervention by England on the Continent must be smashed.
"The Army must occupy the positions important for the fleet and the Luftwaffe. If we succeed in occupying and securing Holland and Belgium, as well as defeating France, the basis for a successful war against England has been created.
"The Luftwaffe can then closely blockade England from western France and the fleet undertake the wider blockade with submarines."
"On May 23, 1939, then, Hitler, as he himself said, burned his boats. There would be war. Germany needed Lebensraum in the East. To get it Poland would be attacked at the first opportunity. Danzig had nothing to do with it. That was merely an excuse. Britain stood in the way; she was the real driving force against Germany. Very well, she would be taken on too, and France. It would be a life-and-death struggle."
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Chamberlain was still vague about joining in a treaty with Russia, but after Churchill spoke bluntly in house of commons, he sent feelers. Molotov meanwhile was blunt, setting out requirements of such a pact. Western democracies must
"1. Conclude a tripartite mutual-assistance pact of a purely defensive character.
"2. Guarantee the states of Central and Eastern Europe, including all European states bordering on the Soviet Union.
"3. Conclude a definite agreement on the form and scope of the immediate and effective aid to be afforded each other and the smaller states threatened by aggression."
Molotov also declared the right of Russia to pursue trade with Germany despite a military pact with West.
Weizsäcker had been told by Molotov that their political bases had to be in order, and he wasn't told what that meant, so he advised waiting, but Hitler had fixed September 1 for his attack against Poland, and asked Ribbentrop to proceed. Ribbentrop instructed the ambassador in Moscow.
"A real opposition of interests in foreign affairs does not exist between Germany and Soviet Russia… The time has come to consider a pacification and normalization of German–Soviet Russian foreign relations… The Italo–German alliance is not directed against the Soviet Union. It is exclusively directed against the Anglo–French combination…
"If against our wishes it should come to hostilities with Poland, we are firmly convinced that even this need not in any way lead to a clash of interests with Soviet Russia. We can even go so far as to say that when settling the German–Polish question—in whatever way this is done—we would take Russian interests into account as far as possible."
The document, which went on to say that a treaty with England would not benefit Russia at all, was not sent to Schulenberg because Hitler thought it went too far, and if British were being friendly, Russia would laugh at Germans. Weizsäcker mailed his letter after a delay, asking Schulenberg to make a modified approach. But Italy wouldn't be ready for war until 1942, Mussolini wrote to Hitler, So once again Germany turned to Moscow.
"The Soviet government was still highly suspicious of Berlin. As Schulenburg reported toward the end of the month (June 27), the Kremlin believed the Germans, in pressing for a trade agreement, wished to torpedo the Russian negotiations with Britain and France. “They are afraid,” he wired Berlin, “that as soon as we have gained this advantage we might let the negotiations peter out.”"
Schulenberg had a friendly talk with Molotov on May 28.
"Nevertheless, when the German ambassador referred assuringly to the nonaggression treaties which Germany had just concluded with the Baltic States,* the Soviet Foreign Commissar tartly replied that “he must doubt the permanence of such treaties after the experiences which Poland had had.”"
Suddenly on June 29 Hitler ordered the talks broken off.
"Russia and the Western Powers were deadlocked over the question of guarantees to Poland, Rumania and the Baltic States. Poland and Rumania were happy to be guaranteed by Britain and France, which could scarcely help them in the event of German aggression except by the indirect means of setting up a Western front. But they refused to accept a Russian guarantee or even to allow for Soviet troops to pass through their territories to meet a German attack. Latvia, Estonia and Finland also stoutly declined to accept any Russian guarantee, an attitude which, as the German Foreign Office papers later revealed, was encouraged by Germany in the form of dire threats should they weaken in their resolve."
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Molotov suggested at the beginning of June that British foreign secretary be sent to Moscow for talks, but Halifax refused to go. Anthony Eden offered to go, but Chamberlain declined his offer, and it was decided William Strang be sent, a capable career official who'd worked in embassy in Moscow and knew Russian. But Moscow saw this sending a junior official to talk with Molotov and Stalin as signal that Chamberlain did not take very seriously the building an alliance with Russia to stop Hitler.
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WHY THE HELL DIDN'T CHAMBERLAIN SEND CHURCHILL?
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Strang arrived but despite his taking part in eleven meetings of tripartite talks had little effect, and Russians weren't convinced they were taken seriously.
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A meeting of the Reich Defense Council was called on June 23, to discuss the forthcoming total war that Hitler was planning, with over thirty top officials in attendance.
"Goering informed the Council that Hitler had decided to draft some seven million men. ... Himmler chimed in to say that “greater use will be made of the concentration camps in wartime.” And Goering added that “hundreds of thousands of workers from the Czech protectorate are to be employed under supervision in Germany, particularly in agriculture, and housed in hutments.” Already, it was obvious, the Nazi program for slave labor was taking shape."
In July two meetings of the council were called to deal with finishing the West wall fortifications, defense against western powers, to be ready by August 25.
Danzig was to be made the excuse, so nazis of the city stepped up. Polish government armed it's officials and decreed that any attempt to hamper them would be considered an act of violence against Poland.
"On the ninth, the Reich government warned Poland that a repetition of its ultimatum to Danzig “would lead to an aggravation of German–Polish relations… for which the German Government must disclaim all responsibility.” The next day the Polish government, replied tartly
"that they will continue to react as hitherto to any attempt by the authorities of the Free City to impair the rights and interests which Poland enjoys in Danzig, and will do so by such means and measures as they alone may deem appropriate, and that they will regard any intervention by the Reich Government… as an act of aggression."
Hitler was furious, Poles were not appeasing him unlike the others hed dealt with so far.
"August 11, the Fuehrer received Carl Burckhardt, a Swiss, who was League of Nations High Commissioner at Danzig and who had gone more than halfway to meet the German demands there, he was in an ugly mood. He told his visitor that “if the slightest thing was attempted by the Poles, he would fall upon them like lightning with all the powerful arms at his disposal, of which the Poles had not the slightest idea.”
"M. Burckhardt said [the High Commissioner later reported] that that would lead to a general conflict. Herr Hitler replied that if he had to make war he would rather do it today than tomorrow, that he would not conduct it like the Germany of Wilhelm II, who had always had scruples about the full use of every weapon, and that he would fight without mercy up to the extreme limit.
"Against whom? Against Poland certainly. Against Britain and France, if necessary. Against Russia too? With regard to the Soviet Union, Hitler had finally made up his mind."
While British pursued the policy of going slow over negotiating with Russia, now Germany hurried and beat them to the accord with Russians.
"In view of what Anglo–French intelligence knew of the meetings of Molotov with the German ambassador, of German efforts to interest Russia in a new partition of Poland—which Coulondre had warned Paris of as early as May 7, of massive German troop concentrations on the Polish border, and of Hitler’s intentions, this British trust in stalling in Moscow is somewhat startling."
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"It was different with Germany’s allies, Italy and Hungary. As the summer progressed, the governments in Budapest and Rome became increasingly fearful that their countries would be drawn into Hitler’s war on Germany’s side."
Hungarian premier wrote to say Hungary could not partake in war against Poland.
".... letter from Budapest threw Hitler into one of his accustomed rages. ... ” Count Teleki’s letter, he added, “was impossible.” And he reminded his Hungarian guest that it was due to Germany’s generosity that Hungary had been able to regain so much territory at the expense of Czechoslovakia. Were Germany to be defeated in war, he said, “Hungary would be automatically smashed too.”"
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"Since early June Mussolini had been pressing for another meeting with Hitler and in July it was fixed for August 4 at the Brenner."
Duce wrote to remind him that a war against Poland could not be localised, and he didn't think time was appropriate yet for axis to start such a war.
"The Fuehrer’s reaction, as Ciano noted in his diary on July 26, was unfavorable, and Mussolini decided it might be best to postpone his meeting with Hitler."
He proposed instead that the two foreign ministers meet instead, and Ciano set forth for Germany, with Duce's advice about timing of the war.
"August 11, 12 and 13—he received from Ribbentrop and especially from Hitler the shock of his life."
They met at Fuschl, near Salzburg, where Ribbentrop had appropriated palace of a monarchist who had been sent to concentration camp.
"Ribbentrop had informed his visitor earlier in the day that the decision to attack Poland was implacable.
"“Well, Ribbentrop,” Ciano says he asked, “what do you want? The Corridor or Danzig?”
"“Not that anymore,” Ribbentrop replied, gazing at him with his cold, metallic eyes. “We want war!”"
Ribbentrop bet him, a suit of armour against an Italian painting, that Britain and France would remain neutral. He never paid. Ciano moved on to Obersalzberg, where Hitler repeated the determination about war and assurance about Britain and France. Ciano stood up to Hitler about war with Poland spreading, and Hitler asserted that British and French would stay out of it.
"Ciano replied (the German minutes add) “that he hoped the Fuehrer would prove right but he did not believe it.”"
Duce wanted to host a World Exhibition in 1942 and meanwhile host a peace conference of nations, or at least diplomatic negotiations. Ciano asked when Hitler intended to war and was told it couldn't be much later than end of August, due to autumn rains rendering the terrain difficult for motorised vehicles. Ciano wasn't taken in by subsequent praise of Mussolini by Hitler, and wrote in his diary that he was disgusted with Germans.
"Typical was a vivid report Attolico sent of a talk he had with Ribbentrop on July 6. If Poland dared to attack Danzig, the Nazi Foreign Minister told him, Germany would settle the Danzig question in forty-eight hours—at Warsaw! If France were to intervene over Danzig, and so precipitate a general war, let her; Germany would like nothing better. France would be “annihilated”; Britain, if she stirred, would be bringing destruction on the British Empire. Russia? There was going to be a Russian-German treaty, and Russia was not going to march. America? One speech of the Fuehrer’s had been enough to rout Roosevelt; and Americans would not stir anyway. Fear of Japan would keep America quiet."
Though the German minutes explicitly state that Ciano agreed with Hitler "that no communique should be issued at the end of the conversation, Germans issued one stating the two nations were in accord. Attolico, furious, tipped off Henderson, and told Rome to invoke the mutual consultation clause of the Pact of Steel.
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Germany now stepped up pressure on Russia to make the deal already, with foreign minister requesting urgent meeting in Moscow. There was explicit communique wired to German ambassador in Moscow and he was instructed to read it personally to Stalin.
"Germany was ready to divide up Eastern Europe, including Poland, with the Soviet Union. This was a bid which Britain and France could not—and, obviously, if they could, would not—match. And having made it, Hitler, apparently confident that it would not be turned down, once more—on the same day, August 14—called in the commanders in chief of his armed forces to listen to him lecture on the plans and prospects for war."
Hitler talked to his generals about the need to finish Poland within two weeks, convinced that Britain and France wouldn't go to war.
"In all of Halder’s voluminous shorthand notes on the meeting there is no mention that he, the Chief of the Army’s General Staff, or General von Brauchitsch, its Commander in Chief, or Goering questioned the Fuehrer’s course in leading Germany into a European conflict—for despite Hitler’s confidence it was by no means certain that France and Britain would not fight nor that Russia would stay out. In fact, exactly a week before, Goering had received a direct warning that the British would certainly fight if Germany attacked Poland."
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Shirer writes about a Swedish businessman, Birger Dahlerus, who seems to have had access to high-ups in Britain and Germany, and tried to play a peacemaker.
"He had access to Downing Street, where on July 20 he had been received by Lord Halifax, with whom he discussed the coming meeting of British businessmen with Goering; and soon he would be called in by Hitler and Chamberlain themselves. But, though well-meaning in his quest to save the peace, he was naïve and, as a diplomat, dreadfully amateurish. Years later at Nuremberg, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, in a devastating cross-examination, led the Swedish diplomatic interloper to admit sadly that he had been badly misled by Goering and Hitler."
Wonder if Upton Sinclair knew about him, and if so, assimilated him in the character of Lanny Budd, who was written as as firm anti-fascist anti-nazi turned secret agent for FDR, with access to various persona in Europe due to various circumstances, and naive only in his persistent love for Kurt Meissner, the German boyhood friend turned German spy and later Nazi. On cross-examination at Nürnberg, as per a set-up by U.S. government, Lanny Budd discloses his having been an agent, and testifies against Göring's contention of lack of personal involvement in torture of Jews leading to their death, all conducted for huge sums of money Göring robbed them of.
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Only General Thomas, apart from Hassell who got word to army chief that Britain and France won't take it lying down, had the courage to say anything against the war; but both were of no use. Hassell thought army chief either lacked courage or was blinded by Hitler. Thomas wrote and read out a memorandum to Keitel.
"A quick war and a quick peace were a complete illusion, he argued. An attack on Poland would unleash a world war and Germany lacked the raw materials and the food supplies to fight it. But Keitel, whose only ideas were those he absorbed from Hitler, scoffed at the very idea of a big war. Britain was too decadent, France too degenerate, America too uninterested, to fight for Poland, he said."
So the machine was set in motion. One and half million men mobilised, railways ordered, preparations for defense if West did not abstain. Battleships and submarines were ready to set forth for Atlantic.
"On August 17 General Halder made a strange entry in his diary: “Canaris checked with Section I [Operations]. Himmler, Heydrich, Obersalzberg: 150 Polish uniforms with accessories for Upper Silesia.”"
A plot to use condemned inmates of a camp wearing those uniforms attacking a German post to create an incident was involved. Canaris was ordered to provide them, and asked Keitel who said nothing could be done, it was Hitler's order; Canaris was revolted, but did it.
"On August 19—another fateful day—orders to sail were issued to the German Navy. Twenty-one submarines were directed to put out for positions north and northwest of the British Isles, the pocket battleship Graf Spee to depart for waters off the Brazilian coast and her sister ship, the Deutschland, to take a position athwart the British sea lanes in the North Atlantic.
"The date of the order to dispatch the warships for possible action against Britain is significant. For on August 19, after a hectic week of frantic appeals from Berlin, the Soviet government finally gave Hitler the answer he wanted."
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Russians had been delaying talks with Germany, now that Germany was in a hurry.
"According to Churchill, the Soviet intention to sign a pact with Germany was announced to the Politburo by Stalin on the evening of August 19.
"Exactly three years later, in August 1942, “in the early hours of the morning,” as Churchill later reported, the Soviet dictator gave to the British Prime Minister, then on a mission to Moscow, some of the reasons for his brazen move.
"We formed the impression [said Stalin] that the British and French Governments were not resolved to go to war if Poland were attacked, but that they hoped the diplomatic line-up of Britain, France and Russia would deter Hitler. We were sure it would not. “How many divisions,” Stalin had asked, “will France send against Germany on mobilization?” The answer was: “About a hundred.” He then asked: “How many will England send?” The answer was: “Two, and two more later.” “Ah, two, and two more later,” Stalin had repeated. “Do you know,” he asked, “how many divisions we shall have to put on the Russian front if we go to war with Germany?” There was a pause. “More than three hundred.”"
Russians were in no hurry to sign the treaty with Germany.
"Adolf Hitler himself intervened with Stalin. Swallowing his pride, he personally begged the Soviet dictator, whom he had so often and for so long maligned, to receive his Foreign Minister in Moscow at once."
"Stalin’s reply was transmitted to the Fuehrer at the Berghof at 10:30 P.M. A few minutes later, this writer remembers—shortly after 11 P.M.—a musical program on the German radio was suddenly interrupted and a voice came on to announce, “The Reich government and the Soviet government have agreed to conclude a pact of nonaggression with each other. The Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs will arrive in Moscow on Wednesday, August 23, for the conclusion of the negotiations.”
"The next day, August 22, 1939, Hitler, having been assured by Stalin himself that Russia would be a friendly neutral, once more convoked his top military commanders to the Obersalzberg, lectured them on his own greatness and on the need for them to wage war brutally and without pity and apprised them that he probably would order the attack on Poland to begin four days hence, on Saturday, August 26—six days ahead of schedule. Stalin, the Fuehrer’s mortal enemy, had made this possible."
Hitler spoke telling them about his estimation of himself and more.
"Essentially, all depends on me, on my existence, because of my political talents. Furthermore, the fact that probably no one will ever again have the confidence of the whole German people as I have. There will probably never again in the future be a man with more authority than I have. My existence is therefore a factor of great value. But I can be eliminated at any time by a criminal or a lunatic.
"For us it is easy to make the decision. We have nothing to lose; we can only gain. Our economic situation is such that we cannot hold out more than a few years. Goering can confirm this. We have no other choice, we must act…
"Besides the personal factor, the political situation is favorable to us; in the Mediterranean, rivalry among Italy, France and England; in the Orient, tension…
"England is in great danger. France’s position has also deteriorated. Decline in birth rate… Yugoslavia carries the germ of collapse… Rumania is weaker than before… Since Kemal’s death, Turkey has been ruled by small minds, unsteady, weak men.
"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."
He said it hadn't helped Germans approaching England about Czechoslovakia .
"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."
"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."
"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. .... 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 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."
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The Anglo-French talks with Russia had failed due to Polish intransigence, after the Anglo-Frenchteam had arrived by slow boat to Leningrad after August 11, a week after Strang left frustrated, and discovered that Russians wanted precise details, not generalities of principles of treaty.
"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.”"
Russians had specific questions about possible acts of various nations, and military details.
"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."
"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.
" ... 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."
The team was instructed to say it was in the interest of those countries to have Soviets help them, and said they expected them to do so, else they'd be overrun and be German provinces. Russians definitely did not want Nazi armies at Soviet border. Russians wanted Britain and France to make Poles see reason. They tried.
"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."
"On the morning of August 20 the Polish Chief of Staff informed the British military attaché in Warsaw that “in no case would the admission of Soviet troops into Poland be agreed to.”"
Which, coupled with the anxious and eager haste germany was in towards getting Russia to sign a treaty, so Hitler personally communicated appealing to Stalin and authorising Ribbentrop who was sent to Moscow to sign Russian terms, brought the result that Britain and France had tried to avoid, but not tried all the way.
" .... in Southeastern Europe, the Russians emphasized their interest in Bessarabia, which the Soviet Union had lost to Rumania in 1919, and the Germans declared their disinterest in this territory—a concession Ribbentrop later was to regret."
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"Throughout June and July, Laurence Steinhardt, the American ambassador in Moscow, had also sent warnings of an impending Soviet–Nazi deal, which President Roosevelt passed on to the British, French and Polish embassies. As early as July 5, when Soviet Ambassador Constantine Oumansky left for a leave in Russia, he carried with him a message from Roosevelt to Stalin “that if his government joined up with Hitler, it was as certain as that the night followed day that as soon as Hitler had conquered France he would turn on Russia.” (Joseph E. Davies, Mission to Moscow, p. 450.) The President’s warning was cabled to Steinhardt with instructions to repeat it to Molotov, which the ambassador did on August 16."
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"Years before, Hitler had written prophetically in Mein Kampf: “The very fact of the conclusion of an alliance with Russia embodies a plan for the next war. Its outcome would be the end of Germany.”"
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Shirer presents both sides of arguments, for and against Stalin signing treaty with nazis. Stalin justified it later saying it gave Russia time to prepare, knowing Hitler will attack. He obviously had to look after his own. And his fear was being left alone to fight Hitler, without help from Britain and France. Obviously Poland did not help.
"“We secured peace for our country for one and a half years,” he boasted in a broadcast to the Russian people on July 3, 1941, “as well as an opportunity of preparing our forces for defense if fascist Germany risked attacking our country in defiance of the pact. This was a definite gain for our country and a loss for fascist Germany.”
"That the sordid, secret deal gave Stalin the same breathing space—peredyshka—which Czar Alexander I had secured from Napoleon at Tilsit in 1807 and Lenin from the Germans at Brest Litovsk in 1917 was obvious."
Also,
"Soviet History of Diplomacy later emphasized, it assured the Kremlin that if Russia were later attacked by Germany the Western Powers would already be irrevocably committed against the Third Reich and the Soviet Union would not stand alone against the German might as Stalin had feared throughout the summer of 1939."
But, Shirer point out, equally obvious is the fact that if Hitler had a fear of two fronts, he may not have attacked Poland, and if he'd done so, Britain and france opening the western front simultaneously would have stretched German resources before Germany had acquired Poland.
"By the time Hitler got around to attacking Russia, the armies of Poland and France and the British Expeditionary Force on the Continent had been destroyed and Germany had the resources of all of Europe to draw upon and no Western front to tie her hands. All through 1941, 1942 and 1943 Stalin was to complain bitterly that there was no second front in Europe against Germany and that Russia was forced to bear the brunt of containing almost the entire German Army. In 1939–40, there was a Western front to draw off the German forces. And Poland could not have been overrun in a fortnight if the Russians had backed her instead of stabbing her in the back. Moreover, there might not have been any war at all if Hitler had known he must take on Russia as well as Poland, England and France. Even the politically timid German generals, if one can judge from their later testimony at Nuremberg, might have put their foot down against embarking on war against such a formidable coalition. Toward the end of May, according to the French ambassador in Berlin, both Keitel and Brauchitsch had warned Hitler that Germany had little chance of winning a war in which Russia participated on the enemy side.
"It is arguable, as Churchill has argued, that cold-blooded as Stalin’s move was in making a deal with Hitler, it was also “at the moment realistic in a high degree.”37 Stalin’s first and primary consideration, as was that of any other head of government, was his nation’s security. He was convinced in the summer of 1939, as he later told Churchill, that Hitler was going to war. He was determined that Russia should not be maneuvered into the disastrous position of having to face the German Army alone.
"By the end of July 1939, Stalin had become convinced, it is obvious, not only that France and Britain did not want a binding alliance but that the objective of the Chamberlain government in Britain was to induce Hitler to make his wars in Eastern Europe. He seems to have been intensely skeptical that Britain would honor its guarantee to Poland any more than France had kept its obligations to Czechoslovakia. And everything that had happened in the West for the past two years tended to increase his suspicions: the rejection by Chamberlain of Soviet proposals, after the Anschluss and after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, for conferences to draw up plans to halt further Nazi aggression; Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler at Munich, from which Russia had been excluded; the delays and hesitations of Chamberlain in negotiating a defensive alliance against Germany as the fateful summer days of 1939 ticked by.
"One thing was certain—to almost everyone but Chamberlain. The bankruptcy of Anglo–French diplomacy, which had faltered and tottered whenever Hitler made a move, was now complete.* Step by step, the two Western democracies had retreated: when Hitler defied them by declaring conscription in 1935, when he occupied the Rhineland in 1936, when he took Austria in 1938 and in the same year demanded and got the Sudetenland; and they had sat by weakly when he occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. With the Soviet Union on their side, they still might have dissuaded the German dictator from launching war or, if that failed, have fairly quickly defeated him in an armed conflict. But they had allowed this last opportunity to slip out of their hands.† Now, at the worst possible time in the worst possible circumstances, they were committed to come to the aid of Poland when she was attacked.
"The recriminations in London and Paris against the double-dealing of Stalin were loud and bitter. The Soviet despot for years had cried out at the “fascist beasts” and called for all peace-loving states to band together to halt Nazi aggression. Now he had made himself an accessory to it. The Kremlin could argue, as it did, that the Soviet Union had only done what Britain and France had done the year before at Munich: bought peace and the time to rearm against Germany at the expense of a small state. If Chamberlain was right and honorable in appeasing Hitler in September 1938 by sacrificing Czechoslovakia, was Stalin wrong and dishonorable in appeasing the Fuehrer a year later at the expense of Poland, which had shunned Soviet help anyway?
"Stalin’s cynical and secret deal with Hitler to divide up Poland and to obtain a free hand to gobble up Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia was not known outside Berlin and Moscow, but it would soon become evident from Soviet acts, and it would shock most of the world even at this late date. The Russians might say, as they did, that they were only repossessing territories which had been taken away from them at the end of the First World War. But the peoples of these lands were not Russian and had shown no desire to return to Russia. Only force, which the Soviets had eschewed in the heyday of Litvinov, could make them return.
"Since joining the League of Nations the Soviet Union had built up a certain moral force as the champion of peace and the leading opponent of fascist aggression. Now that moral capital had been utterly dissipated.
"Above all, by assenting to a shoddy deal with Nazi Germany, Stalin had given the signal for the commencement of a war that almost certainly would develop into a world conflict. This he certainly knew.* As things turned out, it was the greatest blunder of his life."
The last part, though, is worth rethinking. Fascism and nazis were allowed tacitly by West to grow, and capture three European nations including Spain. Obviously it was because people who weren't exactly poor were frightened of leftist thought and movements. If Russia hadn't made a deal with Hitler, he might have stopped short of war, and consolidated his gains instead. Very likely the extermination camps might never have been discovered, or worse, very likely fascism and nazism might have survived the century, to then keep flowering for millennia alongside democracies and constitutional monarchies, as merely another alternative with equal validity and well established rich nations to prove it.
Czechoslovakia was the turning point in the whole story - without it, Germany wouldn't be strong enough to take the further step, and be another European nation only slightly larger than before, since Austria was happy to unite with Germany anyway according to Shirer. But that would still leave other, different nations strong enough to check Germany short of growing further.
One can't help concluding that France should have acted when Rhineland was taken, by taking it back and fortifying West bank of Rhine; and Chamberlain should have done exactly opposite about Czechoslovakia instead of what he did.
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British weren't waiting idly for formal signing of nazi-Soviet pact. As Ribbentrop flying to Moscow to sign it was announced, British cabinet met next day and stated that Britain stood by Poland firmly. Chamberlain wrote to Hitler to say this, but also that Britain would strive to help keep peace.
"The letter, which Ambassador Henderson, flying down from Berlin, delivered to Hitler shortly after 1 P.M. on August 23 at Berchtesgaden, threw the Nazi dictator into a violent rage. “Hitler was excitable and uncompromising,” Henderson wired Lord Halifax. “His language was violent and exaggerated both as regards England and Poland.” Henderson’s report of the meeting and the German Foreign Office memorandum on it—the latter among the captured Nazi papers—agree on the nature of Hitler’s tirade. England, he stormed, was responsible for Poland’s intransigence just as it had been responsible for Czechoslovakia’s unreasonable attitude the year before. Tens of thousands of Volksdeutsche in Poland were being persecuted. There were even, he claimed, six cases of castration—a subject that obsessed him. He could stand it no more. Any further persecution of Germans by the Poles would bring immediate action.
"I contested every point [Henderson wired Halifax] and kept calling his statements inaccurate but the only effect was to launch him on some fresh tirade."
Henderson finally got his assent to respond to the letter, and had a few hours of respite at Salzburg.
"“Hardly had the door shut on the Ambassador,” Weizsaecker, who was present, later noted, “than Hitler slapped himself on the thigh, laughed and said: ‘Chamberlain won’t survive that conversation; his Cabinet will fall this evening.’” (Weizsaecker, Memoirs, p. 203.)"
Next meeting Hitler behaved.
"He was, he said [Henderson reported], fifty years old; he preferred war now to when he would be fifty-five or sixty.
"The megalomania of the German dictator, declaiming on his mountain-top, comes out even more forcibly in the German minutes of the meeting. After quoting him as preferring to make war at fifty rather than later, they add:
"England [Hitler said] would do well to realize that as a front-line soldier he knew what war was and would utilize every means available. It was surely quite clear to everyone that the World War [i.e., 1914–1918] would not have been lost if he had been Chancellor at the time.
"Hitler’s reply to Chamberlain was a mixture of all the stale lies and exaggerations which he had been bellowing to foreigners and his own people since the Poles dared to stand up to him. Germany, he said, did not seek a conflict with Great Britain. It had been prepared all along to discuss the questions of Danzig and the Corridor with the Poles “on the basis of a proposal of truly unparalleled magnanimity.” But the unconditional guarantee of Poland by Britain had only encouraged the Poles “to unloosen a wave of appalling terrorism against the one and a half million German inhabitants living in Poland.” Such “atrocities” he declared, “are terrible for the victims but intolerable for a Great Power such as the German Reich.” Germany would no longer tolerate them.
"Finally he took note of the Prime Minister’s assurance that Great Britain would honor its commitments to Poland and assured him “that it can make no change in the determination of the Reich Government to safeguard the interests of the Reich… Germany, if attacked by England, will be found prepared and determined.”"
"According to Erich Kordt (Wahn und Wirklichkeit, p. 192) Hitler was so excited by his triumph in Moscow that on the morning of August 25 he asked his press bureau for news of the cabinet crises in Paris and London. He thought both governments must fall. He was brought down to earth by being told of the firm speeches of Chamberlain and Halifax in Parliament the day before."
Hitler attempted In his letter to seek a British dropping of Poland, but there was no buying Britain - he said he'd guarantee British empire - as he'd bought Soviets, and no more Munich.
"Could he not buy Britain’s nonintervention by assuring the Prime Minister that the Third Reich would never, like the Hohenzollern Germany, become a threat to the British Empire? What Hitler did not realize, nor Stalin—to the latter’s awful cost—was that to Chamberlain, his eyes open at long last, Germany’s domination of the European continent would be the greatest of all threats to the British Empire—as indeed it would be to the Soviet Russian Empire. For centuries, as Hitler had noted in Mein Kampf, the first imperative of British foreign policy had been to prevent any single nation from dominating the Continent."
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"It was now 6 P.M. of August 25 in Berlin. Tension in the capital had been building up all day. Since early afternoon all radio, telegraph and telephone communication with the outside world had been cut off on orders from the Wilhelmstrasse. The night before, the last of the British and French correspondents and nonofficial civilians had hurriedly left for the nearest frontier. During the day of the twenty-fifth, a Friday, it became known that the German Foreign Office had wired the embassies and consulates in Poland, France and Britain requesting that German citizens be asked to leave by the quickest route. My own diary notes for August 24–25 recall the feverish atmosphere in Berlin. The weather was warm and sultry and everyone seemed to be on edge. All through the sprawling city antiaircraft guns were being set up, and bombers flew continually overhead in the direction of Poland. “It looks like war,” I scribbled on the evening of the twenty-fourth; “War is imminent,” I repeated the next day, and on both nights, I remember, the Germans we saw in the Wilhelmstrasse whispered that Hitler had ordered the soldiers to march into Poland at dawn."
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Ciano, having returned from his meetings in Fuschl and Obersalzberg, talked to Mussolini for hours, that Germany was starting a major war without consulting Italy, and this being against their pact, Italy was not bound to join. Mussolini went back and forth, about honour. Ciano asked to meet Ribbentrop at Brenner, but after hours of waiting for phone was told by Ribbentrop to come to Innsbruck since he was flying to Moscow later to sign a treaty. Italians hadnt been informed of this.
Italian envoy Magistrati met Weizsäcker.
"Germany had not adhered to the terms of the alliance, which called for close contact and consultation on major questions, and had treated its conflict with Poland as an exclusively German problem, “Germany was thus forgoing Italy’s armed assistance.” And if contrary to the German view the Polish conflict developed into a big war, Italy did not consider that the “prerequisites” of the alliance existed. In brief, Italy was seeking an out."
German ambassador in Rome reported.
"The Italian position, following a series of meetings between Mussolini, Ciano and Attolico, was, Mackensen reported, that if Germany invaded Poland she would violate the Pact of Steel, which was based on an agreement to refrain from war until 1942. Furthermore, contrary to the German view, Mussolini was sure that if Germany attacked Poland both Britain and France would intervene—“and the United States too after a few months.” While Germany remained on the defensive in the west the French and British, in the Duce’s opinion, would descend on Italy with all the forces at their disposal. In this situation Italy would have to bear the whole brunt of the war in order to give the Reich the opportunity of liquidating the affair in the East…"
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"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."
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Hitler, having received Mussolini's letter on August 25 about lack of readiness of Italy to participate in Germany's war, wrote asking Mussolini for a list of which materials and what quantities he needed. This was conveyed via phone to German ambassador in Rome and reached Mussolini at 9:30 p.m..
"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.” 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 caused added resentment in Berlin and some confusion in Rome which Ciano had to straighten out. Attolico told Ciano later he had deliberately insisted on complete deliveries before hostilities “in order to discourage the Germans from meeting our requests.” To deliver thirteen million tons of supplies in a few days was, of course, utterly impossible, and Mussolini apologized to Ambassador von Mackensen for the “misunderstanding,” remarking that “even the Almighty Himself could not transport such quantities here in a few days. It had never occurred to him to make such an absurd request.”"
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British efforts of peace, and Hitler's wiles to fool them or buy them off, met via anxious and eager personal mediation by Birger Dahlerus, whò flew back and forth with their messages in the informal capacity of preparing the ground during last days of August. August 28 dispatch from Forbes mentions Dahlerus calling from Göring's office with suggestions.
"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."
That might easily be misconstrued, in hindsight.
"Dahlerus, it must be pointed out in all fairness, was not so pro-German as some of his messages seem to imply. On the night of this same Monday, after two hours with Goering at Luftwaffe headquarters at Oranienburg, he rang up Forbes to tell him, “German Army will be in final position of attack on Poland during night of Wednesday–Thursday, August 30–31.” Forbes got this intelligence off to London as quickly as possible."
"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.”"
"They [the British government] have already received a definite assurance from the Polish Government that they are prepared to enter into discussions on this basis, and H. M. Government hope the German Government would also be willing to agree to this course. …
"A just settlement… between Germany and Poland may open the way to world peace. Failure to reach it would ruin the hopes of an understanding between Germany and Great Britain, would bring the two countries into conflict and might well plunge the whole world into war. Such an outcome would be a calamity without parallel in history."
"When Hitler had finished reading the communication, Henderson began to elaborate on it from notes, he told the Fuehrer, which he had made during his conversations with Chamberlain and Halifax. It was the only meeting with Hitler, he said later, in which he, the ambassador, did most of the talking. The gist of his remarks was that Britain wanted Germany’s friendship, it wanted peace, but it would fight if Hitler attacked Poland. The Fuehrer, who was by no means silent, replied by expatiating on the crimes of Poland and on his own “generous” offers for a peaceful settlement with her, which would not be repeated. In fact today “nothing less than the return of Danzig and the whole of the Corridor would satisfy him, together with a rectification in Silesia, where ninety per cent of the population voted for Germany at the postwar plebiscite.” This was not true nor was Hitler’s rejoinder a moment later that a million Germans had been driven out of the Corridor after 1918. There had been only 385,000 Germans there, according to the German census of 1910, but by this time, of course, the Nazi dictator expected everyone to swallow his lies. For the last time in his crumbling mission to Berlin, the British ambassador swallowed a good deal, for, as he declared in his Final Report, “Herr Hitler on this occasion was again friendly and reasonable and appeared to be not dissatisfied with the answer which I had brought to him.”
"“In the end I asked him two straight questions,” Henderson wired London at 2:35 A.M. in a long dispatch describing the interview.
"“Was he willing to negotiate direct with the Poles, and was he ready to discuss the question of an exchange of populations? He replied in the affirmative as regards the latter (though I have no doubt that he was thinking at the same time of a rectification of frontiers).”"
"“Conversation was conducted,” Henderson emphasized to Halifax, “in quite a friendly atmosphere in spite of absolute firmness on both sides.” Probably Henderson, despite all of his personal experience with his host, did not quite appreciate why Hitler had made the atmosphere so friendly. The Fuehrer was still resolved to go to war that very weekend against Poland; he was still hopeful, despite all the British government and Henderson had said, of keeping Britain out of it.
"Apparently, Hitler, encouraged by the obsequious and ignorant Ribbentrop, simply could not believe that the British meant what they said, though he said he did."
Henderson wrote back to say that Hitler said he wasn't bluffing; Henderson had replied that the British realised that, and neither were they. Hitler said he realised that.
"He said so, but did he realize it? For in his reply on August 29 he deliberately tried to trick the British government in a way which he must have thought would enable him to eat his cake and have it too."
"At 10:50 A.M. Dahlerus saw Goering, who greeted him effusively, pumped his hand warmly and exclaimed, “There will be peace! Peace is secured!”"
Dahlerus rushed to see Henderson, who wasn't as sure, having experienced being lied to by nazis. Dahlerus communicated his own positive impression to foreign office in London at 7:10 p.m., adding a note to advise the Poles to behave properly. Five minutes later Henderson arrived at the chancellory to receive the formal reply from Hitler, the session stormy this time.
"The formal, written German note itself reiterated the Reich’s desire for friendship with Great Britain but emphasized that “it could not be bought at the price of a renunciation of vital German interests.” After a long and familiar rehearsal of Polish misdeeds, provocations and “barbaric actions of maltreatment which cry to heaven,” the note presented Hitler’s demands officially and in writing for the first time: return of Danzig and the Corridor, and the safeguarding of Germans in Poland. To eliminate “present conditions,” it added, “there no longer remain days, still less weeks, but perhaps only hours.”
"Germany, the communication continued, could no longer share the British view that a solution could be reached by direct negotiations with Poland. However, “solely” to please the British government and in the interests of Anglo–German friendship, Germany was ready “to accept the British proposal and enter into direct negotiations” with Poland. “In the event of a territorial rearrangement in Poland,” the German government could not give guarantees without the agreement of the Soviet Union. (The British government, of course, did not know of the secret protocol of the Nazi–Soviet Pact dividing up Poland.) “For the rest, in making these proposals,” the note declared, “the German Government never had any intention of touching Poland’s vital interests or questioning the existence of an independent Polish State.”"
The trap at the end was Germany asking for Polish representative with powers to arrive on next day, August 30, in Berlin.
This was bound to be difficult and humiliating for Poland, as evident from what Austria, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania had been put through, and their acquiescence had only made it easier for German occupation to happen without shedding German blood.
Henderson pointed out that it looked like an ultimatum, and Hitler argued. Henderson asked if a Polish plenipotentiary would be treated with propriety, on equal footing, Hitler said of course. There followed an acrimonious discussion, Hitler accusing Henderson of not caring a row of pins how many Germans were slaughtered by Poland.
"“I proceeded to outshout Hitler,” Henderson wired Halifax the next day. “…I added a good deal more shouting at the top of my voice.” This temperamental display was not mentioned in earlier British documents."
"“I left the Reich Chancellery that evening filled with the gloomiest forebodings,” Henderson recounted later in his memoirs, though he does not seem to have mentioned this in his dispatches which he got off to London that night. “My soldiers,” Hitler had told him, “are asking me, ‘Yes or no?’” They had already lost a week and they could not afford to lose another “lest the rainy season in Poland be added to their enemies.”
"Nevertheless it is evident from the ambassador’s official reports and from his book that he did not quite comprehend the nature of Hitler’s trap until the next day, when another trap was sprung and the Fuehrer’s trickery became clear. The dictator’s game seems quite obvious from the text of his formal note. He demanded on the evening of August 29 that an emissary with full powers to negotiate show up in Berlin the next day. There can be no doubt that he had in mind inflicting on him the treatment he had accorded the Austrian Chancellor and the Czechoslovak President under what he thought were similar circumstances. If the Poles, as he was quite sure, did not rush the emissary to Berlin, or even if they did and the negotiator declined to accept Hitler’s terms, then Poland could be blamed for refusing a “peaceful settlement” and Britain and France might be induced not to come to its aid when attacked. Primitive, but simple and clear.
"In the London Foreign Office, heads were cooler. At 2 A.M. on August 29, Halifax, after pondering the German reply and Henderson’s account of the meeting with Hitler, wired the ambassador that while careful consideration would be given the German note, it was “of course unreasonable to expect that we can produce a Polish representative in Berlin today, and German Government must not expect this.”"
"By this time even Henderson had no more stomach for another Munich. The Poles had never considered one—for themselves. At 10 A.M. that morning of August 30, the British ambassador in Warsaw had wired Halifax that he felt sure “that it would be impossible to induce the Polish Government to send M. Beck or any other representative immediately to Berlin to discuss a settlement on the basis proposed by Hitler. They would sooner fight and perish rather than submit to such humiliation, especially after the examples of Czechoslovakia, Lithuania and Austria.” He suggested that if negotiations were to be “between equals” they must take place in some neutral country.
"His own stiffening attitude thus reinforced from his ambassadors in Berlin and Warsaw, Halifax wired Henderson that the British government could not “advise” the Poles to comply with Hitler’s demand that an emissary with full powers come to Berlin. It was, said the Foreign Secretary, “wholly unreasonable.”
"Could you not suggest [Halifax added] to German Government that they adopt the normal procedure, when their proposals are ready, of inviting the Polish Ambassador to call and handing proposals to him for transmission to Warsaw and inviting suggestions as to conduct of negotiations."
Henderson delivered the British reply to German foreign office At midnight of August 30-31, and it was as hostile a reception as any according to Dr Schmidt , who was usually transcribing. Henderson asked for the German terms, and was told it was no use since deadline for Polish representative's arrival was past. Ribbentrop read them in German at high speed, and refused to hand the document over.
"It may have been out of date, since the Germans chose to make it so, but what is important is that these German “proposals” were never meant to be taken seriously or indeed to be taken at all. In fact they were a hoax. They were a sham to fool the German people and, if possible, world opinion into believing that Hitler had attempted at the last minute to reach a reasonable settlement of his claims against Poland. The Fuehrer admitted as much. Dr. Schmidt later heard him say, “I needed an alibi, especially with the German people, to show them that I had done everything to maintain peace. This explains my generous offer about the settlement of the Danzig and Corridor questions.”
"They were broadcast to the German people at 9 P.M. on August 31, eight and one half hours after Hitler had issued the final orders for the attack on Poland, and, so far as I could judge in Berlin, they succeeded in their aim of fooling the German people. They certainly fooled this writer, who was deeply impressed by their reasonableness when he heard them over the radio, and who said so in his broadcast to America on that last night of the peace."
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Dahlerus meanwhile had been sent by Göring to London on August 29 night, and he met Chamberlain, Wilson, Halifax and Cadogan, who said Hitler couldn't be trusted.
"Moreover, the British government, it was made plain to the Swedish mediator, had not fallen for Hitler’s trickery in demanding that a Polish plenipotentiary show up in Berlin within twenty-four hours.
"But Dahlerus, like Henderson in Berlin, kept on trying. He telephoned Goering in Berlin, suggested that the Polish–German delegates meet “outside Germany” and received the summary answer that “Hitler was in Berlin” and the meeting would have to take place there."
Dahlerus returned to Berlin to find Göring happy.
"The Fuehrer, said Goering, had just handed Henderson through Ribbentrop a “democratic, fair and workable offer” to Poland. Dahlerus, who seems to have been sobered by his meeting in Downing Street, called up Forbes at the British Embassy to check and learned that Ribbentrop had “gabbled” the terms so fast that Henderson had not been able to fully grasp them and that the ambassador had been refused a copy of the text. Dahlerus says he told Goering that this was no way “to treat the ambassador of an empire like Great Britain” and suggested that the Field Marshal, who had a copy of the sixteen points, permit him to telephone the text to the British Embassy. After some hesitation Goering acquiesced.
"To make doubly sure that Henderson got it correctly, Goering dispatched Dahlerus to the British Embassy at 10 A.M. of Thursday, August 31, with a typed copy of the sixteen points."
Henderson, who was still trying to retain peace, saw the terms were reasonable, and sent Dahlerus with the document to see Lipski, who was exhausted, and had no idea who this Swede was, while Dahlerus urged him to immediately meet Göring and accept the terms.
"The harassed Polish ambassador must have been depressed too at the pressure which Henderson was bringing on him and his government to negotiate immediately on the basis of an offer which he had just received quite unofficially and surreptitiously, but which the British envoy, as he had told Lipski the night before, thought was not “on the whole too unreasonable.”* He did not know that Henderson’s view was not endorsed by Downing Street. What he did know was that he had no intention of taking the advice of an unknown Swede, even though he had been sent to him by the British ambassador, and of going to Goering to accept Hitler’s “offer,” even if he had been empowered to do so, which he was not."
Dahlerus returned to see Henderson after this, and called Wilson in London at foreign office, from embassy phone in Berlin, to urge them to make Poles accept the very reasonable terms; Wilson heard a noise, and suspected Germans were listening. He told Dahlerus to stop talking, but Dahlerus didn't understand, and went on; Wilson cut the call.
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That phones in Germany were tapped, and Gestapo was listening in, was so much common knowledge, that it's the one thing Upton Sinclair mentions repeatedly, in the World's End series, along with mail, and personal effects of visitors from abroad in German hotels being equally subject to Gestapo search. So much so, he speaks of German wealthy aristocracy being afraid of servants spying, and his German non Nazi aristocracy have practice of covering telephones with teacozy before whispering to visitors.
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British and French were still trying, and Halifax urged Josef Beck to declare their willingness to negotiate.
"We regard it as most important [Halifax telegraphed] from the point of view of the internal situation in Germany and of world opinion that, so long as the German Government profess themselves ready to negotiate, no opportunity should be given them for placing the blame for a conflict on Poland."
" ... that they should now make known to the German Government, preferably direct, but if not, through us, that they have been made aware of our last reply to German Government and that they confirm their acceptance of the principle of direct discussions.
"French Government fear that German Government might take advantage of silence on part of Polish Government."
Halifax wired Kennard in Warsaw to ask the Polish ambassador in Berlin to immediately communicate their readiness to negotiate.
"But shortly before this telegram was dispatched, Beck, in response to the démarche of the midnight before, had already informed the British ambassador in a written note that the Polish government “confirm their readiness… for a direct exchange of views with the German Government” and had orally assured him that he was instructing Lipski to seek an interview with Ribbentrop to say that “Poland had accepted the British proposals.” When Kennard asked Beck what Lipski would do if Ribbentrop handed over the German proposals, the Foreign Minister replied that his ambassador in Berlin would not be authorized to accept them as, “in view of past experience, it might be accompanied by some sort of an ultimatum.” The important thing, said Beck, was to re-establish contact “and then details should be discussed as to where, with whom and on what basis negotiations should be commenced.” In the light of the “past experience” which the once pro-Nazi Polish Foreign Minister mentioned, this was not an unreasonable view. Beck added, Kennard wired London, that “if invited to go to Berlin he would of course not go, as he had no intention of being treated like President Hácha.”"
"There was more to Beck’s instructions to Lipski than that and the Germans, having solved the Polish ciphers, knew it."
Lipski asked to see Ribbentrop, and after a couple of hours was called and asked if he had full powers to negotiate. When he said he was to present a declaration, he was made to wait hours again. Meanwhile Attolico called to communicate the urgent desire of Duce that Hitler receive Lipski. Lipski was finally received at 6:15 p.m., and having comminicated Poland's willingness to negotiate, dismissed. He was unable to call Warsaw from embassy when he returned, his telephone had been cut.
"In fact, all these scrambling eleventh-hour moves of the weary and exhausted diplomats, and of the overwrought men who directed them on the afternoon and evening of that last day of August 1939, were but a flailing of the air, completely futile, and, in the case of the Germans, entirely and purposely deceptive.
"For at half after noon on August 31, before Lord Halifax had urged the Poles to be more accommodating and before Lipski had called on Ribbentrop and before the Germans had made publicly known their “generous” proposals to Poland and before Mussolini had tried to intervene, Adolf Hitler had taken his final decision and issued the decisive order that was to throw the planet into its bloodiest war."
Orders had already been dispatched to commence war against Poland at 4:45 a.m. on September 1st, and hold West border but not proceed with attack, rather let Britain and France take initiative.
"In conducting the war against England, preparations are to be made for the use of the Luftwaffe in disrupting British supplies by sea, the armaments industry, and the transport of troops to France. A favorable opportunity is to be taken for an effective attack on massed British naval units, especially against battleships and aircraft carriers. Attacks against London are reserved for my decision.
"Preparations are to be made for attacks against the British mainland, bearing in mind that partial success with insufficient forces is in all circumstances to be avoided."
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Shirer writes
"There was, I remember, an eerie atmosphere that day in Berlin; everyone seemed to be going around in a daze."
Weizsäcker had called Hassell asking him to talk to Henderson, with whom Hassell argued that Poles were being unreasonable.
"If an educated, cultivated and experienced diplomat such as Hassell could be so woolly in his thinking is it any wonder that it was easy for Hitler to take in the mass of the German people?"
Dahlerus took Göring to lunch at Hotel Esplanade, Göring carried back two bottles of cognac; Dahlerus persuaded him to talk to Henderson, who was invited with Forbes, with Hitler's permission, to tea.
"Goering “talked for two hours of the iniquities of the Poles and about Herr Hitler’s and his own desire for friendship with England. It was a conversation which led to nowhere… My general impression was that it constituted a final but forlorn effort on his part to detach Britain from the Poles… I augured the worst from the fact that he was in a position at such a moment to give me so much of his time… He could scarcely have afforded at such a moment to spare time in conversation if it did not mean that everything down to the last detail was now ready for action.”"
"As darkness settled over Europe on the evening of August 31, 1939, and a million and a half German troops began moving forward to their final positions on the Polish border for the jump-off at dawn, all that remained for Hitler to do was to perpetrate some propaganda trickery to prepare the German people for the shock of aggressive war."
Shirer writes of talking to people, and noting that everyone was dead set against war. At 9 p.m. all German radio stations broadcast Hitler's Polish proposals, neglecting to mention that they hadn't been communicated to Britain, much less to Poland; further, the broadcast told people, Poland had mobilised instead. That Germany had been preparing for invasion of Poland since the day of occupying Czechoslovakia, with next morning as the date and hour set, was of course not said.
What was reported was fraud of Gleiwitz radio station being attacked, with SS using Polish uniforms and concentration camp inmates in Polish uniforms shot dead, as per instructions by Heydrich to Alfred Neujocks.
"The “Polish attack” at Gleiwitz was used by Hitler in his speech to the Reichstag the next day and was cited as justification for the Nazi aggression by Ribbentrop, Weizsaecker and other members of the Foreign Office in their propaganda. The New York Times and other newspapers reported it, as well as similar incidents, in their issues of September 1, 1939. It remains only to be added that according to the testimony at Nuremberg of General Lahousen, of the Abwehr, all the S.S. men who wore Polish uniforms in the simulated attacks that evening were, as the General put it, “put out of the way.”"
"During the day Hitler found time to send a telegram to the Duke of Windsor at Antibes, France.
"Berlin, August 31, 1939
"I thank you for your telegram of August 27. You may rest assured that my attitude toward Britain and my desire to avoid another war between our peoples remain unchanged. It depends on Britain, however,’ whether my wishes for the future development of German-British relations can be realized.
"ADOLF HITLER
"This is the first mention of the former King of England, but by no means the last, in the captured German documents. Subsequently, for a time, as will be recorded further on, the Duke of Windsor loomed large in certain calculations of Hitler and Ribbentrop."
"Berlin that evening was largely shut off from the outside world, except for outgoing press dispatches and broadcasts which reported the Fuehrer’s “offer” to Poland and the German allegations of Polish “attacks” on German territory. I tried to get through on the telephone to Warsaw, London and Paris but was told that communications with these capitals were cut. Berlin itself was quite normal in appearance. There had been no evacuation of women and children, as there had been in Paris and London, nor any sandbagging of storefront windows, as was reported from the other capitals. Toward 4 A.M. on September 1, after my last broadcast, I drove back from Broadcasting House to the Adlon Hotel. There was no traffic. The houses were dark. The people were asleep and perhaps—for all I knew—had gone to bed hoping for the best, for peace.
"Later in the afternoon Gisevius had been summoned to OKW headquarters by Colonel Oster. This nerve center of Germany’s military might was humming with activity. Canaris drew Gisevius down a dimly lit corridor. In a voice choked with emotion he said:
"“This means the end of Germany.”"
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"AT DAYBREAK on September 1, 1939, the very date which Hitler had set in his first directive for “Case White” back on April 3, the German armies poured across the Polish frontier and converged on Warsaw from the north, south and west.
"Overhead German warplanes roared toward their targets: Polish troop columns and ammunition dumps, bridges, railroads and open cities. Within a few minutes they were giving the Poles, soldiers and civilians alike, the first taste of sudden death and destruction from the skies ever experienced on any great scale on the earth and thereby inaugurating a terror which would become dreadfully familiar to hundreds of millions of men, women and children in Europe and Asia during the next six years, and whose shadow, after the nuclear bombs came, would haunt all mankind with the threat of utter extinction."
Unlike 1914, Germans were not cheering, as Shirer looked. Streets were deserted, people going to work apathetic. So too Reichstag, Shirer saw, as Hitler spoke to Reichstag, repeating lies about Poland.
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Hitler lied even to German military, who knew better.
"It was now past noon, German armored columns were already several miles inside Poland and advancing rapidly and most of Poland’s cities, including Warsaw, had been bombed with considerable civilian casualties. But there was not a word from London or Paris that Britain and France were in any hurry to honor their word to Poland."
Henderson, believing the lies, contacted Halifax, talking about German attempts attempts peace. Dahlerus, personally having heard German lies from Göring, repeatedly called London, insisting Cadogan take his information higher, asking to come to London with Forbes. Cadogan had had enough, and when Dahlerus called next, he was given British response.
"Any idea of mediation [Cadogan said] while German troops are invading Poland is quite out of the question. The only way in which a world war can be stopped is (one) that hostilities be suspended, and (two) that German troops be immediately withdrawn from Polish territory."
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"At 10 A.M. the Polish ambassador in London, Count Raczyński, had called on Lord Halifax and officially communicated to him the news of the German aggression, adding that “it was a plain case as provided for by the treaty.” The Foreign Secretary answered that he had no doubt of the facts."
At 10:50 a.m. the Foreign Secretary in London summoned the German chargé d’affaires, Theodor Kordt, who denied any knowledge of events.
"At 7:15 P.M. a member of the British Embassy in Berlin telephoned the German Foreign Office and requested Ribbentrop to receive Henderson and Coulondre “on a matter of urgency as soon as possible.” The French Embassy made a similar request a few minutes later. Ribbentrop, having declined to meet the two ambassadors together, received Henderson at 9 P.M. and Coulondre an hour later. From the British ambassador he was handed a formal note from the British government.
"…Unless the German Government are prepared [it said] to give His Majesty’s Government satisfactory assurances that the German Government have suspended all aggressive action against Poland and are prepared promptly to withdraw their forces from Polish territory, His Majesty’s Government will without hesitation fulfill their obligation to Poland."
"The French communication was in identical words."
Ribbentrop repeated the lies about Poland, but was polite.
"As the ambassador prepared to take his leave an argument arose as to whether the German Foreign Minister had gabbled the text of the German “proposals” to Poland at their stormy meeting two evenings before. Henderson said he had; Ribbentrop said he had read them “slowly and clearly and even given oral explanations of the main points so that he could suppose Henderson had understood everything.”"
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Mussolini asked Hitler to be excused from joining hostilities, which was granted, and further attempted to host a conference of four nations now at war; France responded favourably, so Mussolini communicated to Germany the conference proposal, with conditions of including nations whose future were to be decided, and immediate stopping of armies where they were.
Attolico saw Ribbentrop who agreed to reply next day, September 3; Ciano in Rome received the British and French ambassadors and called the respective foreign secretaries. Bonnet was happy, Halifax was stern and insisted withdrawal of German armies was the precondition. British cabinet's decision, conveyed later, was precisely that.
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"Sunday, September 3, 1939, in Berlin was a lovely, end-of-the-summer day. The sun was shining, the air was balmy—“the sort of day,” I noted in my diary, “the Berliner loves to spend in the woods or on the lakes nearby.”
"As it dawned a telegram arrived at the British Embassy from Lord Halifax for Sir Nevile Henderson, instructing him to seek an interview with the German Foreign Minister at 9 A.M. and convey a communication the text of which was then given.
"The Chamberlain government had reached the end of the road. Some thirty-two hours before, it had informed Hitler that unless Germany withdrew its troops from Poland, Britain would go to war. There had been no answer, and now the British government was determined to make good its word. On the previous day it had feared, as Charles Corbin, the French ambassador in London, had informed the hesitant Bonnet at 2:30 P.M., that Hitler was deliberately delaying his reply in order to grab as much Polish territory as possible, after which, having secured Danzig, the Corridor and other areas, he might make a “magnanimous” peace proposal based on his sixteen points of August 31.
"To avoid that trap Halifax had proposed to the French that unless the German government gave a favorable reply within a few hours to the Anglo–French communications of September 1, the two Western nations should declare themselves at war with Germany. Following a British cabinet meeting on the afternoon of September 2, when a definite decision was made, Halifax suggested specifically that the two allies present an ultimatum to Berlin that very midnight which would expire at 6 A.M. on September 3. Bonnet would not hear of any such precipitate action."
French cabinet and military chiefs had discussed and arrived at joining the British British decision on August 31, but wanted another two days for mobilisation on September 2. Chamberlain faced the house of commons.
"“I wonder how long we are prepared to vacillate,” said Greenwood, “at a time when Britain and all that Britain stands for, and human civilization, are in peril… We must march with the French…”
"That was the trouble. It was proving difficult at this moment to get the French to march."
Chamberlain placated, promising neither government was recanting.
"The inexorable approach of the greatest ordeal in British history was announced, as Namier later wrote, “in a singularly halting manner.”"
Chamberlain called Daladier, Halifax called Bonnet, and Henderson handed over the British ultimatum to Germany at foreign office on September 3 at 9 a.m., expiring at 11 a.m.. He'd been calling since predawn hours and told Ribbentrop wouldn't be available, and it was Schmidt who took it and hurried over to the chancellory.
"When I entered the next room [Schmidt later recounted] Hitler was sitting at his desk and Ribbentrop stood by the window. Both looked up expectantly as I came in. I stopped at some distance from Hitler’s desk, and then slowly translated the British ultimatum. When I finished there was complete silence.
"Hitler sat immobile, gazing before him… After an interval which seemed an age, he turned to Ribbentrop, who had remained standing by the window. “What now?” asked Hitler with a savage look, as though implying that his Foreign Minister had misled him about England’s probable reaction.
"Ribbentrop answered quietly: “I assume that the French will hand in a similar ultimatum within the hour.”"
Schmidt left the room, stopping in the outer room to apprise others.
"Goering turned to me and said: “If we lose this war, then God have mercy on us!”
"Goebbels stood in a corner by himself, downcast and self-absorbed. Everywhere in the room I saw looks of grave concern."
Dahlerus made one one more attempt and persuaded Göring to fly to Britain , and Hitler assented; but Halifax told Dahlerus when he called that time for discussion was up, and they needed the answer to the question.
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"Shortly after 11 A.M., when the time limit in the British ultimatum had run out, Ribbentrop, who had declined to see the British ambassador two hours before, sent for him in order to hand him Germany’s reply. The German government, it said, refused “to receive or accept, let alone to fulfill” the British ultimatum. There followed a lengthy and shabby propaganda statement obviously hastily concocted by Hitler and Ribbentrop during the intervening two hours. Designed to fool the easily fooled German people, it rehearsed all the lies with which we are now familiar, including the one about the Polish “attacks” on German territory, blamed Britain for all that had happened, and rejected attempts “to force Germany to recall their forces which are lined up for the defense of the Reich.” It declared, falsely, that Germany had accepted Mussolini’s eleventh-hour proposals for peace and pointed out that Britain had rejected them. And after all of Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler it accused the British government of “preaching the destruction and extermination of the German people.”
"Henderson read the document (“this completely false representation of events,” as he later called it) and remarked “It would be left to history to judge where the blame really lay.” Ribbentrop retorted that “history had already proved the facts.”
"I was standing in the Wilhelmstrasse before the Chancellery about noon when the loudspeakers suddenly announced that Great Britain had declared herself at war with Germany.† Some 250 people—no more—were standing there in the sun. They listened attentively to the announcement. When it was finished, there was not a murmur. They just stood there. Stunned. It was difficult for them to comprehend that Hitler had led them into a world war.
"Soon, though it was the Sabbath, the newsboys were crying their extras. In fact, I noticed, they were giving the papers away. I took one. It was the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, its headlines marching in large type across the page:
"BRITISH ULTIMATUM TURNED DOWN
"ENGLAND DECLARES A STATE OF WAR WITH GERMANY
"BRITISH NOTE DEMANDS WITHDRAWAL OF OUR TROOPS IN THE EAST
"THE FUEHRER LEAVING TODAY FOR THE FRONT
"The headline over the official account read as though it had been dictated by Ribbentrop.
"GERMAN MEMORANDUM PROVES ENGLAND’S GUILT
"“Proved” though it may have been to a people as easily swindled as the Germans, it aroused no ill feelings toward the British during the day. When I passed the British Embassy, from whose premises Henderson and his staff were moving to the Hotel Adlon around the corner, a lone Schupo paced up and down before the building. He had nothing to do but saunter back and forth."
French tried To hold out, despite pressure by chamber on September 2, but finally at midnight Bonnet called Coulondre and informed him he'd be sent a new demarche to be made at noon to Wilhelmstrasse.
"This he did, at 10:20 A.M. on Sunday, September 3—forty minutes before the British ultimatum ran out. The French ultimatum was similarly worded except that in case of a negative reply France declared that she would fulfill her obligations to Poland “which are known to the German government”—even at this final juncture Bonnet held out against a formal declaration of war."
French deadline was at 5 p.m., compromise between British insistence on noon and French military's need for time. Coulondre was made to wait and then treated by Ribbentrop to nazi lies, but Coulondre pinned Ribbentrop to respond on replying to the French communication of September 1, and Ribbentrop said it was negative. Coulondre handed over the French ultimatum, Ribbentrop said France was the aggressor, and Coulondre responded saying history would be the judge.
Hitler issued a proclamation filled with accusations against British, with no word about France. Hitler’s proclamation to the Army announcing the opening of hostilities was broadcast over me German radio at 5:40 A.M., and the newspaper extras were on the street shortly after. See below, p. 599.
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Chamberlain addressed the house of commons.
"This is a sad day for all of us, and to none is it sadder than to me. Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have believed in during my public life, has crashed into ruins. There is only one thing left for me to do: that is, to devote what strength and powers I have to forwarding the victory of the cause for which we have to sacrifice so much… I trust I may live to see the day when Hitlerism has been destroyed and a liberated Europe has been re-established."
He died on November 9th, 1940, years before the day arrived; Churchill, who succeeded him, said in his eulogy -
"…It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart—the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril and certainly in utter disdain of popularity or clamor."
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Admiral Raedar wasn't happy, it was too soon for German navy. He wrote
"As far as the Navy is concerned, obviously it is in no way very adequately equipped for the great struggle with Great Britain… the submarine arm is still much too weak to have any decisive effect on the war. The surface forces, moreover, are so inferior in number and strength to those of the British Fleet that, even at full strength, they can do no more than show that they know how to die gallantly… "
"Nevertheless at 9 P.M. on September 3, 1939, at the moment Hitler was departing Berlin, the German Navy struck. Without warning, the submarine U-30 torpedoed and sank the British liner Athenia some two hundred miles west of the Hebrides as it was en route from Liverpool to Montreal with 1,400 passengers, of whom 112, including twenty-eight Americans, lost their lives. World War II had begun."
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BOOK FOUR
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WAR: EARLY VICTORIES AND THE TURNING POINT
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A million and a half German men on motorised wheels, whole divisions of tanks and self propelled rapid-firing heavy guns racing at forty miles an hourwhile Stukas diving and bombing civilians, left a carnage.
"Cracow, the second city of Poland, fell on September 6. That night the Polish government fled from Warsaw to Lublin. The next day Halder busied himself with plans to begin transferring troops to the Western front, though he could detect no activity there. On the afternoon of September 8 the 4th Panzer Division reached the outskirts of the Polish capital, while directly south of the city, rolling up from Silesia and Slovakia, Reichenau’s Tenth Army captured Kielce and List’s Fourteenth Army arrived at Sandomierz, at the junction of the Vistula and San rivers."
"September 17. All Polish forces, except for a handful on the Russian border, were surrounded. Pockets of Polish troops in the Warsaw triangle and farther west near Posen held out valiantly, but they were doomed. The Polish government, or what was left of it, after being unceasingly bombed and strafed by the Luftwaffe reached a village on the Rumanian frontier on the fifteenth. For it and the proud nation all was over, except the dying in the ranks of the units which still, with incredible fortitude, held out."
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Description above evokes descriptions of the same from various memoirs written by those that survived the invasion and published since, most very recent comparatively - publishers were unwilling till recently, even when survivors wrote, which was traumatic for most until recently - and their descriptions are vivid about German planes diving to strafe and bomb refugees fleeing in long lines, babies and children and mothers and old people, even as they could see the pilot targeting them.
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Russians were surprised by the speed of German occupation and communicated their worry about whether Germany would abide by the border specified in the treaty between the German and the Russian "sphere of influence". Germany asked about the "military intentions of the Soviet government ".
"On September 10, Molotov and Ambassador von der Schulenburg got into a fine snafu. After declaring that the Soviet government had been taken “completely by surprise by the unexpectedly rapid German military successes” and that the Soviet Union was consequently in “a difficult situation,” the Foreign Commissar touched on the excuse which the Kremlin would have to give for its own aggression in Poland. This was, as Schulenburg wired Berlin “most urgent” and “top secret,”
"that Poland was falling apart and that it was necessary for the Soviet Union, in consequence, to come to the aid of the Ukrainians and the White Russians “threatened” by Germany. This argument [said Molotov] was necessary to make the intervention of the Soviet Union plausible to the masses and at the same time avoid giving the Soviet Union the appearance of an aggressor."
Molotov complained about Brauchitsch saying military action was no longer necessary on German eastern border. He wanted to know when Warsaw would fall.
"On the evening of September 15 Ribbentrop dispatched a “most urgent,” a “top secret” message to Molotov through the German ambassador, answering them. Warsaw, he said, would be occupied “in the next few days.” Germany would “welcome the Soviet military operation now.” As to the Russian excuse blaming Germany for it, this “was out of the question… contrary to the true German intentions… would be in contradiction to the arrangements made in Moscow and finally… would make the two States appear as enemies before the whole world.” He ended by asking the Soviet government to set “the day and the hour” for their attack on Poland."
Schulenberg wired his dispatch next evening -
"Molotov added that… the Soviet Government intended to justify its procedure as follows: The Polish State had disintegrated and no longer existed; therefore, all agreements concluded with Poland were void: third powers might try to profit by the chaos which had arisen; the Soviet Government considered itself obligated to intervene to protect its Ukrainian and White Russian brothers and make it possible for these unfortunate people to work in peace. .... The Soviet Government unfortunately saw no possibility of any other motivation, since the Soviet Union had heretofore not bothered about the plight of its minorities in Poland and had to justify abroad, in some way or other, its present intervention."
Red army marched into Poland on September 17th.
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Shirer disapproves of Soviet occupation of Poland, but even his account, in this work, of how the Soviet pact with Germany happened, includes the outright refusal of Poland to allow Russian army on Polish land even for defending Poland against Germany; the only option left, German forces at Soviet borders, was naturally unacceptable to Soviets. Treaty with Germany merely amounted to the two armies occupying Poland not fighting.
Moreover, the accounts of the occupation in various memoirs are mostly clear on the Russian occupation, until German war on USSR, being comparatively benevolent, so much so many locals were invited to escape East with Red Army in military vehicles and many did, and many joined.
Subsequent occupation by German military, with SS and Gestapo and ghettos, concentration camps and so on, was hell.
Some regions had three or four waves of alternate occupation by Germans and Russians, and German occupation was always worse than the subsequent Russian.
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"At first both dictators seem to have considered setting up a rump Polish state on the order of Napoleon’s Grand Duchy of Warsaw in order to mollify world public opinion. But on September 19 Molotov disclosed that the Bolsheviks were having second thoughts on that. After angrily protesting to Schulenburg that the German generals were disregarding the Moscow agreement by trying to grab territory that should go to Russia, he came to the main point.
"Molotov hinted [Schulenburg wired Berlin] that the original inclination entertained by the Soviet Government and Stalin personally to permit the existence of a residual Poland had given way to the inclination to partition Poland along the Pissa–Narew–Vistula–San Line. The Soviet Government wishes to commence negotiations on this matter at once."
"Germans did not need much urging to agree. On September 23 Ribbentrop wired Schulenburg instructing him to tell Molotov that the “Russian idea of a border line along the well-known four-rivers line coincides with the view of the Reich Government.”"
Stalin summoned Schulenberg to Kremlin at 8 p.m. on September 25 and set terms.
"Stalin stated… he considered it wrong to leave an independent residual Poland. He proposed that from the territory to the east of the demarcation line, all the Province of Warsaw which extends to the Bug should be added to our share. In return we should waive our claim to Lithuania.
"Stalin… added that if we consented, the Soviet Union would immediately take up the solution of the problem of the Baltic countries in accordance with the [secret] Protocol of August 23, and expected in this matter the unstinting support of the German Government. Stalin expressly indicated Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, but did not mention Finland."
Ribbentrop arrived on September 28th in Moscow.
"Later that night, after a long conference with Stalin and Molotov, Ribbentrop wired Hitler that “this very night” a pact was being concluded which would put two Red Army divisions and an Air Force brigade “on Estonian territory, without, however, abolishing the Estonian system of government at this time.” But the Fuehrer, an experienced hand at this sort of thing, knew how fleeting Estonia’s time would be. The very next day Ribbentrop was informed that Hitler had ordered the evacuation of the 86,000 Volksdeutsche in Estonia and Latvia."
"The Soviet Union got nearly half of Poland and a stranglehold on the Baltic States. It blocked Germany more solidly than ever from two of its main long-term objectives: Ukrainian wheat and Rumanian oil, both badly needed if Germany was to survive the British blockade. Even Poland’s oil region of Borislav–Drogobycz, which Hitler desired, was claimed successfully by Stalin, who graciously agreed to sell the Germans the equivalent of the area’s annual production."
"German casualties in Poland were officially given as 10,572 killed, 30,322 wounded and 3,400 missing."
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Western front meanwhile was quiet, despite a hundred French divisions and much less than forty of German; but despite specific clauses in Polish-French treaty about specific actions by French at specific times, France did not strike. According to German generals at Nürnberg, French army could have taken Ruhr and disabled Germany easily.
"The success against Poland was only possible [said General Halder] by almost completely baring our Western border. If the French had seen the logic of the situation and had used the engagement of the German forces in Poland, they would have been able to cross the Rhine without our being able to prevent it and would have threatened the Ruhr area, which was the most decisive factor of the German conduct of the war.
"…. If we did not collapse in 1939 [said General Jodl] that was due only to the fact that during the Polish campaign the approximately 110 French and British divisions in the West were held completely inactive against the 23 German divisions."
French had memories from the first war and were not eager to repeat.
"French government had insisted from the start that the British Air Force should not bomb targets in Germany for fear of reprisal on French factories, though an all-out bombing of the Ruhr, the industrial heart of the Reich, might well have been disastrous to the Germans. It was the one great worry of the German generals in September, as many of them later admitted.
"Fundamentally the answer to the question of why France did not attack Germany in September was probably best stated by Churchill. “This battle,” he wrote, “had been lost some years before.”7 At Munich in 1938; at the time of the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936; the year before when Hitler proclaimed a conscript army in defiance of Versailles. The price of those sorry Allied failures to act had now to be paid, though it seems to have been thought in Paris and London that payment might somehow be evaded by inaction."
Germans called it sitzkrieg.
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Germany attacked Britain on seas from day one.
"The German Navy was not put under such wraps as the Army in the west, and during the first week of hostilities it sank eleven British ships with a total tonnage of 64,595 tons, which was nearly half the weekly tonnage sunk at the peak of German submarine warfare in April 1917 when Great Britain had been brought to the brink of disaster. British losses tapered off thereafter: 53,561 tons the second week, 12,750 the third week and only 4,646 the fourth week—for a total during September of twenty-six ships of 135,552 tons sunk by U-boats and three ships of 16,488 tons by mines.
Athenia, a British passenger liner, had been torpedoed and sunk off Hebrides, on September 3; 112 passengers including 28 U.S. citizens had died. Germans went on denying this was done by a German U-boat, and claiming that British had done it, until at Nürnberg trials where they finally admitted it was done by U-30 under the impression they were targeting a merchant ship. Admiral Karl Doenitz had met the U-boat as it docked, and although he did inform his superiors, he also ordered the log changed, all mention of Athenia stricken from records, and secrecy imposed.
"On the evening of Sunday, October 22, Propaganda Minister Goebbels personally took to the air—this writer well remembers the broadcast—and accused Churchill of having sunk the Athenia. The next day the official Nazi newspaper, the Voelkischer Beobachter, ran a frontpage story under the headline CHURCHILL SANK THE “ATHENIA” and stating that the First Lord of the Admiralty had planted a time bomb in the ship’s hold. At Nuremberg it was established that the Fuehrer had personally ordered the broadcast and the article—and also that though Raeder, Doenitz and Weizsaecker were highly displeased at such a brazen lie, they dared not do anything about it."
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Having destroyed Poland, Hitler proceeded with the fraudulent arguments to the effect that since Poland no longer existed, if Britain and France were to persist, and not make treaties with Germany suitable to Hitler, they were the aggressive ones, and would be fought despite his own self being friendly and desirous of peace.
"On September 26, the day before Warsaw fell, the German press and radio launched a big peace offensive. The line, I recorded in my diary, was: “Why do France and Britain want to fight now? Nothing to fight about. Germany wants nothing in the West.”"
Ciano, despite his being disgusted with nazis, was called on to proceed to arrange a conference to suit Hitler's agenda, and Dahlerus was asked to negotiate with the British.
"“The British can have peace if they want it,” Hitler told Dahlerus as he left, “but they will have to hurry.”
"That was one trend in the Fuehrer’s thinking. He expressed another to his generals. The day before, on September 25, an entry in Halder’s diary mentions receipt of “word on Fuehrer’s plan to attack in the West.” On September 27, the day after he had assured Dahlerus that he was ready to make peace with Britain, Hitler convoked the commanders in chief of the Wehrmacht to the Chancellery and informed them of his decision to “attack in the West as soon as possible, since the Franco–British army is not yet prepared.” According to Brauchitsch he even set a date for the attack: November 12."
Reality though was the need of time for German military to be ready. Hitler planned to sweep through low countries to occupy France, and the English channel coast of Europe from Brittany to Denmark, to wage war against England. So while he spoke his lies in Reichstag and broadcast them to Germany, and sent feelers, war plans of German military were proceeding as per his directions.
"On October 7, Daladier answered Hitler. He declared that France would not lay down her arms until guarantees for a “real peace and general security” were obtained.
"Chamberlain’s reply came on October 12. .... Addressing the House of Commons, the Prime Minister termed Hitler’s proposals “vague and uncertain” and noted that “they contain no suggestions for righting the wrongs done to Czechoslovakia and Poland.” No reliance, he said, could be put on the promises “of the present German Government.” If it wanted peace, “acts—not words alone—must be forthcoming.” He called for “convincing proof” from Hitler that he really wanted peace.
"The man of Munich could no longer be fooled by Hitler’s promises. The next day, October 13, an official German statement declared that Chamberlain, by turning down Hitler’s offer of peace, had deliberately chosen war. Now the Nazi dictator had his excuse.
"Actually, as we now know from the captured German documents, Hitler had not waited for the Prime Minister’s reply before ordering preparations for an immediate assault in the West. On October 10 he called in his military chiefs, read them a long memorandum on the state of the war and the world and threw at them Directive No. 6 for the Conduct of the War."
"The Fuehrer’s insistence toward the end of September that an attack be mounted in the West as soon as possible had thrown the Army High Command into a fit. Brauchitsch and Halder, aided by several other generals, had consorted to prove to the Leader that an immediate offensive was out of the question. It would take several months, they said, to refit the tanks used in Poland. General Thomas furnished figures to show that Germany had a monthly steel deficit of 600,000 tons. General von Stuelpnagel, the Quartermaster General, reported there was ammunition on hand only “for about one third of our divisions for fourteen combat days”—certainly not long enough to win a battle against the French. But the Fuehrer would not listen to his Army Commander in Chief and his Chief of the General Staff when they presented a formal report to him on Army deficiencies on October 7. General Jodl, the leading yes man on OKW, next to Keitel, warned Halder “that a very severe crisis is in the making” because of the Army’s opposition to an offensive in the West and that the Fuehrer was “bitter because the soldiers do not obey him.”"
"Hitler convoked the generals at 11 A.M. on October 10. They were not asked for their advice. Directive No. 6, dated the day before, told them what to do:
"TOP SECRET
"If it should become apparent in the near future that England, and under England’s leadership, also France, are not willing to make an end of the war, I am determined to act vigorously and aggressively without great delay…
"Therefore I give the following orders:
"a. Preparations are to be made for an attacking operation… through the areas of Luxembourg, Belgium and Holland. This attack must be carried out… at as early a date as possible.
"b. The purpose will be to defeat as strong a part of the French operational army as possible, as well as allies fighting by its side, and at the same time to gain as large an area as possible in Holland, Belgium and northern France as a base for conducting a promising air and sea war against England…"
"The German war aim is the final military dispatch of the West, that is, the destruction of the power and ability of the Western Powers ever again to be able to oppose the state consolidation and further development of the German people in Europe.
"As far as the outside world is concerned, this eternal aim will have to undergo various propaganda adjustments… This does not alter the war aim. It is and remains the destruction of our Western enemies."
Time was not on side of Germany, he told his generals.
"There were great dangers to Germany, Hitler admitted, in a long war, and he enumerated several of them. Friendly and unfriendly neutrals (he seems to have been thinking mainly of Russia, Italy and the U.S.A.) might be drawn to the opposite side, as they were in the First World War. Also, he said, Germany’s “limited food and raw-material basis” would make it difficult to find “the means for carrying on the war.” The greatest danger, he said, was the vulnerability of the Ruhr. If this heart of German industrial production were hit, it would “lead to the collapse of the German war economy and thus of the capacity to resist.”
"It must be admitted that in this memorandum the former corporal showed an astonishing grasp of military strategy and tactics, accompanied though it was by a typical lack of morals. There are several pages about the new tactics developed by the tanks and planes in Poland, and a detailed analysis of how these tactics can work in the West and just where. The chief thing, he said, was to avoid the positional warfare of 1914–18.
"The armored divisions must be used for the crucial breakthrough. They are not to be lost among the maze of endless rows of houses in Belgian towns. It is not necessary for them to attack towns at all, but… to maintain the flow of the army’s advance, to prevent fronts from becoming stable by massed drives through identified weakly held positions.
"This was a deadly accurate forecast of how the war in the West would be fought, and when one reads it one wonders why no one on the Allied side had similar insights.
"This goes too for Hitler’s strategy. “The only possible area of attack,” he said, was through Luxembourg, Belgium and Holland. There must be two military objectives first in mind: to destroy the Dutch, Belgian, French and British armies and thereby to gain positions on the Channel and the North Sea from which the Luftwaffe could be “brutally employed” against Britain."
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Raedar pleaded and got the go ahead to proceed with attacking England.
"On September 17 a German U-boat torpedoed the British aircraft carrier Courageous off southwest Ireland. On September 27 Raeder ordered the pocket battleships Deutschland and Graf Spee to leave their waiting areas and start attacking British shipping. By the middle of October they had accounted for seven British merchantmen and taken in prize the American ship City of Flint.
"On October 14, the German U-boat U-47, commanded by Oberleutnant Guenther Prien, penetrated the seemingly impenetrable defenses of Scapa Flow, the great British naval base, and torpedoed and sank the battleship Royal Oak as it lay at anchor, with a loss of 786 officers and men. It was a notable achievement, exploited to the full by Dr. Goebbels in his propaganda, and it enhanced the Navy in the mind of Hitler."
Generals were not happy to proceed, but also thought this wasn't time to remove Hitler. They thought it was better for now working with him.
"Brauchitsch saw the Fuehrer again on October 17, but his arguments, he told Halder, were without effect. The situation was “hopeless.” Hitler informed him curtly, as Halder wrote in his diary that day, that “the British will be ready to talk only after a beating. We must get at them as quickly as possible. Date between November 15 and 20 at the latest.”"
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The generals had tried on eve of invasion of Poland; Hammerstein had invited Hitler to inspect West command, and Schlabendorff had tipped off Forbes in Hotel Adlon; but Hitler didn't go, and sacked Hammerstein. Now, ordered to proceed with war in West, they preferred to remove Hitler. They needed to make sure Britain and France wouldn't take advantage of the confusion to invade. They had two contacts, Dr Josef Mueller in Rome and Theodor Kordt in Berne.
“Our only hope of salvation,” Weizsaecker told Hassell on October 17, “lies in a military coup d’état. But how?”
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The Zossen Conspiracy came to nothing mostly due to lack of nerve - the Generals passed buck, Brauchitsch talked to Hitler and got screamed at and was dazed, and Hitler fixed date of invasion West at November 7, but postponed it, and this postponing continued to spring.
"Hitler may have got wind that his attack on the neutral little country of Belgium would not have the benefit of surprise, on which he had counted. At the end of October, Goerdeler had journeyed to Brussels with a secret message from Weizsaecker urging the German ambassador, Buelow-Schwante, to privately warn the King of the “extreme gravity of the situation.” This the ambassador did and shortly thereafter King Leopold rushed to The Hague to consult with the Queen and draw up their declaration. But the Belgians had more specific information. Some of it came from Oster, as we have seen. On November 8, Buelow-Schwante wired Berlin a warning that King Leopold had told the Dutch Queen that he had “exact information” of a German military build-up on the Belgian frontier which pointed toward a German offensive through Belgium “in two or three days.”
"Then on the evening of November 8 and the afternoon of the following day there occurred two strange events—a bomb explosion that just missed killing Hitler and the kidnapping by the S.S. of two British agents in Holland near the German border—which at first distracted the Nazi warlord from his plans for attacking the West and yet in the end bolstered his prestige in Germany while frightening the Zossen conspirators, who actually had nothing to do with either happening."
Gestapo had arranged the bomb, the timing, and the kidnapping of the two British agents to blame the whole thing on.
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Hitler spoke to his generals, about his own irreplaceable stature, need of Germany to acquire more land, his decisions and plans to acquire all of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and war with West, the enemy.
"In many ways November 23, 1939, was a milestone. It marked Hitler’s final, decisive triumph over the Army, which in the First World War had shunted Emperor Wilhelm II aside and assumed supreme political as well as military authority in Germany. From that day on the onetime Austrian corporal considered not only his political but his military judgment superior to that of his generals and therefore refused to listen to their advice or permit their criticism—with results ultimately disastrous to all."
"Moreover, Hitler’s harangue to the generals that autumn day put a complete damper on any ideas Halder and Brauchitsch might have had, however tepidly, to overthrow the Nazi dictator. He had warned them that he would “annihilate” anyone who stood in his way, and Halder says Hitler had specifically added that he would suppress any opposition to him on the General Staff “with brutal force.” Halder, for the moment at least, was not the man to stand up to such terrible threats. When four days later, on November 27, General Thomas went to see him, at the prompting of Schacht and Popitz, and urged him to keep after Brauchitsch to take action against the Fuehrer (“Hitler has to be removed!” Halder later remembered Thomas as saying), the General Staff Chief reminded him of all the “difficulties.” He was not yet sure, he said, that Brauchitsch “would take part actively in a coup d’état.”"
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NAZI TERROR IN POLAND: FIRST PHASE
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Halder noted Hitler's instructions in conference with Wagner who told him,
"We have no intention of rebuilding Poland… Not to be a model state by German standards. Polish intelligentsia must be prevented from establishing itself as a governing class. Low standard of living must be conserved. Cheap slaves…
"Total disorganization must be created! The Reich will give the Governor General the means to carry out this devilish plan."
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Shirer writes:
"A brief account of the beginning of Nazi terror in Poland, as disclosed by the captured German documents and the evidence at the various Nuremberg trials, may now be given. It was but a forerunner to dark and terrible deeds that would eventually be inflicted by the Germans on all the conquered peoples. But from first to last it was worse in Poland than anyplace else. Here Nazi barbarism reached an incredible depth.
"Just before the attack on Poland was launched, Hitler had told his generals at the conference on the Obersalzberg on August 22 that things would happen “which would not be to the taste of German generals” and he warned them that they “should not interfere in such matters but restrict themselves to their military duties.”
"Both in Berlin and in Poland this writer soon was being overwhelmed with reports of Nazi massacres. So were the generals."
Fifty Jews, after slave labour, were massacred in a synagogue by some troughs of an SS artillery regiment; Brauchitsch canceled their light one year sentence under "general amnesty".
"The German generals, upright Christians that they considered themselves to be, found the situation embarrassing."
Keitel met Canaris on September 12th.
"I pointed out to General Keitel [Canaris wrote in his diary, which was produced at Nuremberg] that I knew that extensive executions were planned in Poland and that particularly the nobility and the clergy were to be exterminated. Eventually the world would hold the Wehrmacht responsible for these deeds."
On September 19 Heydrich visited army command to tell Wagner of SS plans of
"“housecleaning of [Polish] Jews, intelligentsia, clergy and the nobility.”"
Halder noted in his diary that army insisted on having this deferred to after army had left.
"Nothing must occur which would afford foreign countries an opportunity to launch any sort of atrocity propaganda based on such incidents."
"The next day, September 21, Heydrich forwarded to the Army High Command a copy of his initial “housecleaning” plans. As a first step the Jews were to be herded into the cities (where it would be easy to round them up for liquidation). “The final solution,” he declared, would take some time to achieve and must be kept “strictly secret,” but no general who read the confidential memorandum could have doubted that the “final solution” was extermination. Within two years, when it came time to carry it out, it would become one of the most sinister code names bandied about by high German officials to cover one of the most hideous Nazi crimes of the war."
Hans Frank was appointed as governor general for Poland under Nazi occupation, a man with education in law anď literature, and devoted to arts, especially music.
"But behind the civilized veneer of the man lay the cold killer. The forty-two-volume journal he kept of his life and works, which showed up at Nuremberg,* was one of the most terrifying documents to come out of the dark Nazi world, portraying the author as an icy, efficient, ruthless, bloodthirsty man. Apparently it omitted none of his barbaric utterances.
"“The Poles,” he declared the day after he took his new job, “shall be the slaves of the German Reich.” When once he heard that Neurath, the “Protector” of Bohemia, had put up posters announcing the execution of seven Czech university students, Frank exclaimed to a Nazi journalist, “If I wished to order that one should hang up posters about every seven Poles shot, there would not be enough forests in Poland with which to make the paper for these posters.”
"Himmler and Heydrich were assigned by Hitler to liquidate the Jews. Frank’s job, besides squeezing food and supplies and forced labor out of Poland, was to liquidate the intelligentsia. The Nazis had a beautiful code name for this operation: “Extraordinary Pacification Action” (Ausserordentliche Befriedigungsaktion, or “AB Action,” as it came to be known)."
It took him time to get it going; it wasn't until following spring, when war on western front was under way, he began to achieve results.
"By May 30, as his own journal shows, he could boast in a pep talk to his police aides of good progress—the lives of “some thousands” of Polish intellectuals taken, or about to be taken."
He told these were Hitler's orders, who'd said
"“The men capable of leadership in Poland must be liquidated. Those following them… must be eliminated in their turn. There is no need to burden the Reich with this… no need to send these elements to Reich concentration camps.”
"They would be put out of the way, he said, right there in Poland."
At the meeting, Frank's noting in diary shows, chief of Security Police said 2,000 had been already exterminated, and 3,500 more were on the way, rounded up. He was determined genocide of Jews; a fortnight before Xmas, in 1941,
"It was difficult, he admitted, to “shoot or poison the three and a half million Jews in the General Government, but we shall be able to take measures which will lead, somehow, to their annihilation.” This was an accurate prediction."
"On October 9, two days after assuming the latest of his posts, Himmler decreed that 550,000 of the 650,000 Jews living in the annexed Polish provinces, together with all Poles not fit for “assimilation,” should be moved into the territory of the General Government, east of the Vistula River. Within a year 1,200,000 Poles and 300,000 Jews had been uprooted and driven to the east. But only 497,000 Volksdeutsche had been settled in their place. This was a little better than Halder’s ratio: three Poles and Jews expelled to one German settled in their stead."
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Funny, does anyone else realise British creation of "a new nation" by dividing India did exactly that, except the dirty work of massacres and terrorising Hindus and Sikhs, and other non muslims, was left to muslim mobs indoctrinated with the separate nation theory?
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"It was an unusually severe winter, that of 1939–40, as this writer remembers, with heavy snows, and the “resettlement,” carried out in zero weather and often during blizzards, actually cost more Jewish and Polish lives than had been lost to Nazi firing squads and gallows."
Himmler talked to SS in West about it being harder to deport hundreds of thousands, and to shoot thousands, as they'd done in Poland, made harder by crying women.
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Gluecks reported on February 21, 1940, about a suitable site at Auschwitz, and work was commenced immediately; camp was functioning June 14 on as place for harsh treatment, for political prisoners to begin with.
"In the meantime the directors of I. G. Farben, the great German chemical trust, had discovered Auschwitz as a “suitable” site for a new synthetic coal-oil and rubber plant. There not only the construction of new buildings but the operation of the new plant would have the benefit of cheap slave labor.
"To superintend the new camp and the supply of slave labor for I. G. Farben there arrived at Auschwitz in the spring of 1940 a gang of the most choice ruffians in the S.S., among them Josef Kramer, who would later become known to the British public as the “Beast of Belsen,” and Rudolf Franz Hoess, a convicted murderer who had served five years in prison—he spent most of his adult life as first a convict and then a jailer—and who in 1946, at the age of forty-six, would boast at Nuremberg that at Auschwitz he had superintended the extermination of two and a half million persons, not counting another half million who had been allowed to “succumb to starvation.”
"Auschwitz was soon destined to become the most famous of the extermination camps—Vernichtungslager—which must be distinguished from the concentration camps, where a few did survive. It is not without significance for an understanding of the Germans, even the most respectable Germans, under Hitler, that such a distinguished, internationally known firm as I. G. Farben, whose directors were honored as being among the leading businessmen of Germany, God-fearing men all, should deliberately choose this death camp as a suitable place for profitable operations."
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The Rome-Berlin axis became squeaky that winter, writes Shirer.
"Sharp exchanges at various levels took place over several differences: the failure of the Germans to carry out the evacuation of the Volksdeutsche from Italian South Tyrol, which had been agreed upon the previous June; failure of the Germans to supply Italy with a million tons of coal a month; failure of the Italians to ignore the British blockade and supply Germany with raw materials brought through it; Italy’s thriving trade with Britain and France, including the sale to them of war materials; Ciano’s increasingly anti-German sentiments."
"The chief cause of friction between the two Axis Powers was Germany’s pro-Russian policy. On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Red Army had attacked Finland and Hitler had been placed in a most humiliating position. Driven out of the Baltic as the price of his pact with Stalin, forced to hurriedly evacuate the German families who had lived there for centuries, he now had to officially condone Russia’s unprovoked attack on a little country which had close ties with Germany and whose very independence as a non-Communist nation had been won from the Soviet Union largely by the intervention of regular German troops in 1918.* It was a bitter pill to swallow, but he swallowed it. Strict instructions were given to German diplomatic missions abroad and to the German press and radio to support Russia’s aggression and avoid expressing any sympathy with the Finns.
"This may have been the last straw with Mussolini, who had to cope with anti-German demonstrations throughout Italy."
Shortly after New Year 1940, on January 3, Mussolini wrote to Hitler, expressing himself most frankly ever.
"He was “profoundly convinced,” he said, that Germany, even if assisted by Italy, could never bring Britain and France “to their knees or even divide them. To believe that is to delude oneself. The United States would not permit a total defeat of the democracies.” Therefore, now that Hitler had secured his eastern frontier, was it necessary “to risk all—including the regime—and sacrifice the flower of German generations” in order to try to defeat them? Peace could be had, Mussolini suggested, if Germany would allow the existence of “a modest, disarmed Poland, which is exclusively Polish. Unless you are irrevocably resolved to prosecute the war to a finish,” he added, “I believe that the creation of a Polish state… would be an element that would resolve the war and constitute a condition sufficient for the peace.”"
But what bothered Mussolini most was Hitler's deal with Russia.
"Mussolini’s letter not only was a warning to Hitler of the degeneration of Italo–German relations but it hit a vulnerable target: the Fuehrer’s honeymoon with Soviet Russia, which was beginning to get on the nerves of both parties. It had enabled him to launch his war and destroy Poland. It had even given him other benefits. The captured German papers reveal, for instance, one of the best-kept secrets of the war: the Soviet Union’s help in providing ports on the Arctic, the Black Sea and the Pacific through which Germany could import badly needed raw materials otherwise shut off by the British blockade.
"On November 10, 1939, Molotov even agreed to the Soviet government’s paying the freight charges on all such goods carried over the Russian railways.46 Refueling and repair facilities were provided German ships, including submarines, at the Arctic port of Teriberka, east of Murmansk—Molotov thought the latter port “was not isolated enough,” whereas Teriberka was “more suited because it was more remote and not visited by foreign ships.”
"All through the autumn and early winter of 1939 Moscow and Berlin negotiated for increased trade between the two countries. By the end of October Russian deliveries of raw stuffs, especially grain and oil, to Germany were considerable, but the Germans wanted more. However, they were learning that in economics, as well as politics, the Soviets were shrewd and hard bargainers. On November 1, Field Marshal Goering, Grand Admiral Raeder and Colonel General Keitel, “independently of each other,” as Weizsaecker noted, protested to the German Foreign Office that the Russians were demanding too much German war material. A month later Keitel was again complaining to Weizsaecker that Russian requirements for German products, especially machine tools for manufacturing munitions, were “growing more and more voluminous and unreasonable.”
"But if Germany wanted food and oil from Russia, it would have to pay for them in the goods Moscow needed and wanted. So desperate was the blockaded Reich for these necessities from Russia that later, on March 30, 1940, at a crucial moment, Hitler ordered that delivery of war material to the Russians should have priority even over that to the German armed forces. At one point the Germans threw in the unfinished heavy cruiser Luetzow as part of current payments to Moscow. Earlier, on December 15, Admiral Raeder proposed selling the plans and drawings for the Bismarck, the world’s biggest battleship (45,000 tons), then building, to the Russians if they paid “a very high price.”"
At one point Stalin took over, and Germans found him a hard trader with a grasp of details that stunned them. Stalin, they found, could not be bluffed or cheated, but could be very demanding. He reminded that Soviet Union had rendered great service to them and made enemies in the process. He told them their prices for planes were several fold, and they shouldn't take advantage of Soviet Union's good nature. A new trade agreement was signed in February.
Hitler told his generals Germany needed Russia until war was won in West.
"After the conquest of France and the lowlands, Goering informed General Thomas, the economic chief of OKW, “that the Fuehrer desired punctual delivery to the Russians only until the spring of 1941. Later on,” he added, “we would have no further interest in completely satisfying the Russian demands.”"
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"U-boats continued to take their toll of British and sometimes neutral shipping in the cruel, icy northern Atlantic.
"In the South Atlantic the Graf Spee, one of Germany’s three pocket battleships, had emerged from its waiting area and in three months had sunk nine British cargo vessels totaling 50,000 tons. Then, a fortnight before the first Christmas of the war, on December 14, 1939, the German public was electrified by the news, splashed in flaming headlines and in bulletins flashed over the radio, of a great victory at sea. The Graf Spee, it was said, had engaged three British cruisers on the previous day four hundred miles off Montevideo and put them out of action. But elation soon turned to puzzlement. Three days later the press announced that the pocket battleship had scuttled herself in the Plate estuary just outside the Uruguayan capital. What kind of a victory was that? On December 21, the High Command of the Navy announced that the Graf Spee’s commander, Captain Hans Langsdorff, had “followed his ship” and thus “fulfilled like a fighter and hero the expectations of his Fuehrer, the German people and the Navy.”"
German people were never told the facts, that the Graf Spee was badly damaged by the three cruisers and had put in at Montevideo for repairs; Uruguay had given them seventy two hours according to international law, but the ship would have been destroyed by the British cruisers, and the captain had preferred scuttling it and killing himself with a shot. Hitler was furious.
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On December 12 Hitler postponed the war to January, 1st at the earliest, and allowed Xmas leaves to be granted.
"Christmas, the high point of the year for Germans, was a bleak one in Berlin that winter, with few presents exchanged, Spartan food, the menfolk away, the streets blacked out, the shutters and curtains drawn tight, and everyone grumbling about the war, the food and the cold."
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"On the very day, January 10, that Hitler had ordered the attack through Belgium and Holland to begin on the seventeenth, a German military plane flying from Muenster to Cologne became lost in the clouds over Belgium and was forced to land near Mechelen-sur-Meuse. In it was Major Helmut Reinberger, an important Luftwaffe staff officer, and in his briefcase were the German plans, complete with maps, for the attack in the West. As Belgian soldiers closed in, the major made for some nearby bushes and lit a fire to the contents of his briefcase. Attracted by this interesting phenomenon the Belgian soldiers stamped out the flames and retrieved what was left. Taken to military quarters nearby, Reinberger, in a desperate gesture, grabbed the partly burned papers, which a Belgian officer had placed on a table, and threw them into a lighted stove. The Belgian officer quickly snatched them out."
"January 17 the Belgian Foreign Minister, Paul-Henri Spaak, sent for the German ambassador and told him flatly, as the latter promptly reported to Berlin, that
"the plane which made an emergency landing on January 10 had put into Belgian hands a document of the most extraordinary and serious nature, which contained clear proof of an intention to attack. It was not just an operations plan, but an attack order worked out in every detail, in which only the time remained to be inserted.
"The Germans were never quite sure whether Spaak was not bluffing. On the Allied side—the British and French general staffs were given copies of the German plan—there was a tendency to view the German papers as a “plant.” Churchill says he vigorously opposed this interpretation and laments that nothing was done about this grave warning. What is certain is that on January 13, the day after Hitler was informed of the affair, he postponed the attack and that by the time it again came up for decision in the spring the whole strategic plan had been fundamentally changed."
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Admiral Rolf Carls talked to Raeder who spoke to Hitler, about Norway.
British navy, with mines and patrol boats, had kept Germany from high sea in WWI, and could do so unless Germany got and kept ports of Norway. Also, Germany needed iron which in winter couldn't come on Baltic.
Churchill attempted to persuade the cabinet to let him lay mines in Norwegian territorial waters, but Chamberlain and Halifax were reluctant to violate Norway's neutrality. Germany found Quisling.
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"An auxiliary supply ship of the Graf Spee, the Altmark, had managed to slip back through the British blockade and on February 14 was discovered by a British scouting plane proceeding southward in Norwegian territorial waters toward Germany. The British government knew that aboard it were three hundred captured British seamen from the ships sunk by the Graf Spee. They were being taken to Germany as prisoners of war. Norwegian naval officers had made a cursory inspection of the Altmark, found that it had no prisoners aboard and was unarmed, and given it clearance to proceed on to Germany. Now Churchill, who knew otherwise, personally ordered a British destroyer flotilla to go into Norwegian waters, board the German vessel and liberate the prisoners.
"The British destroyer Cossack, commanded by Captain Philip Vian, carried out the mission on the night of February 16–17 in Jösing Fjord, where the Altmark had sought safety. After a scuffle in which four Germans were killed and five wounded, the British boarding party liberated 299 seamen, who had been locked in storerooms and in an empty oil tank to avoid their detection by the Norwegians.
"The Norwegian government made a vehement protest to Britain about this violation of its territorial waters, but Chamberlain replied in the Commons that Norway itself had violated international law by allowing its waters to be used by the Germans to convey British prisoners to a German prison."
Hitler gave orders for taking Denmark and Norway, simultaneously, with surprise to West being key. German navy sent the warships flying British flags, with elaborate instructions to speak English if accosted.
"And so on April 9, 1940, at 5:20 A.M. precisely (4:20 A.M. in Denmark), an hour before dawn, the German envoys at Copenhagen and Oslo, having routed the respective foreign ministers out of bed exactly twenty minutes before (Ribbentrop had insisted on a strict timetable in co-ordination with the arrival at that hour of the German troops), presented to the Danish and Norwegian governments a German ultimatum demanding that they accept on the instant, and without resistance, the “protection of the Reich.”"
The document, pretending Germany had no interest In their lands, and only intended to defend against Britain and France, stated
"The Reich Government therefore expects that the Norwegian Government and the Norwegian people will… offer no resistance to it. Any resistance would have to be, and would be, broken by all possible means… and would therefore lead only to absolutely useless bloodshed…."
"The German envoy in Copenhagen wired Ribbentrop at 8:34 A.M. that the Danes had “accepted all our demands [though] registering a protest.” Minister Curt Bräuer in Oslo had a quite different report to make. At 5:52 A.M., just thirty-two minutes after he had delivered the German ultimatum, he wired Berlin the quick response of the Norwegian government: “We will not submit voluntarily: the struggle is already under way.”"
Ribbentrop wired the German envoy in Oslo that he must convince them that resistance was useless.
"The Norwegian King, government and members of Parliament had by this time fled the capital for the mountains in the north. However hopeless the odds, they were determined to resist. In fact, resistance had already begun in some places, though not in all, with the arrival of German ships out of the night."
Denmark didn't have an easy defence, panzers could roll through, and Germans sent bombers to Copenhagen when the acceptance wasn't immediate.
"For nearly four years, until the tide of war had changed, the Danish King and his people, a good-natured, civilized and happy-go-lucky race, offered very little trouble to the Germans. Denmark became known as the “model protectorate.” The monarch, the government, the courts, even the Parliament and the press, were at first allowed a surprising amount of freedom by their conquerors. Not even Denmark’s seven thousand Jews were molested—for a time. But the Danes, later than most of the other conquered peoples, finally came to the realization that further “loyal co-operation,” as they called it, with their Teutonic tyrants, whose brutality increased with the years and with the worsening fortunes of war, was impossible—if they were to retain any shred of self-respect and honor. They also began to see that Germany might not win the war after all and that little Denmark was not inexorably condemned, as so many had feared at first, to be a vassal state in Hitler’s unspeakable New Order. Then resistance began."
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Reading the story of nazi military bulldozing through Denmark, Norway, and the low countries, one is inescapably reminded, over and over, of Mongol hordes in an earlier era - or two, counting Attila - invading through Asia to central, even to western, Europe, with the only difference being that of modern instruments, in vehicles and weaponry and communication. The aim of world conquest, of enslaving all others, is identical, as is the ruthless brutality of extermination of opposition, and the whole ideology, the megalomania of a tribe and a leader holding themselves above the world and born destined to conquer and rule.
One wonders if there was a whole bunch reborn across the old world after centuries, attempting to finish what they had achieved then spectacularly but the descendents lost over centuries.
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"Manstein’s proposal was that the main German assault should be launched in the center through the Ardennes with a massive armored force which would then cross the Meuse just north of Sedan and break out into the open country and race to the Channel at Abbeville."
"because of the aberration of the Dutch and Belgians for neutrality there had been no staff consultations by which the defenders could pool their plans and resources to the best advantage. The Germans had a unified command, the initiative of the attacker, no moral scruples against aggression, a contagious confidence in themselves and a daring plan. They had had experience in battle in Poland. There they had tested their new tactics and their new weapons in combat. They knew the value of the dive bomber and the mass use of tanks. And they knew, as Hitler had never ceased to point out, that the French, though they would be defending their own soil, had no heart in what lay ahead."
"Along a front of 175 miles, from the North Sea to the Maginot Line, Nazi troops broke across the borders of three small neutral states, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, in brutal violation of the German word, solemnly and repeatedly given."
"Churchill refused to believe it. The great French Army vanquished in a week? It was impossible. “I did not comprehend,” he wrote later, “the violence of the revolution effected since the last war by the incursion of a mass of fast-moving armor.”"
"To the bewildered Dutch was reserved the experience of being subjected to the first large-scale airborne attack in the history of warfare. Considering their unpreparedness for such an ordeal and the complete surprise by which they were taken they did better than was realized at the time.
"On the morning of May 14 a German staff officer from the XXXIXth Corps had crossed the bridge at Rotterdam under a white flag and demanded the surrender of the city. He warned that unless it capitulated it would be bombed. While surrender negotiations were under way—a Dutch officer had come to German headquarters near the bridge to discuss the details and was returning with the German terms—bombers appeared and wiped out the heart of the great city. Some eight hundred persons, almost entirely civilians, were massacred, several thousand wounded and 78,000 made homeless."
Belgium's King Leopold surrendered, against advice by his government, although Belgium's army fought. He believed Axis had won. Hitler thought British surrender was imminent.
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"Ever since May 20, when Guderian’s tanks broke through to Abbeville on the sea, the British Admiralty, on the personal orders of Churchill, had been rounding up shipping for a possible evacuation of the B.E.F. and other Allied forces from the Channel ports. Noncombatant personnel and other “useless mouths” began to be ferried across the narrow sea to England at once. By May 24, as we have seen, the Belgian front to the north was near collapse, and to the south the German armor, striking up the coast from Abbeville, after taking Boulogne and enveloping Calais, had reached the Aa Canal only twenty miles from Dunkirk.
"Suddenly on the evening of May 24 came the peremptory order from the High Command, issued at the insistence of Hitler with the prompting of Rundstedt and Goering but over the violent objections of Brauchitsch and Halder, that the tank forces should halt on the canal line and attempt no further advance. This furnished Lord Gort an unexpected and vital reprieve which he and the British Navy and Air Force made the most of and which, as Rundstedt later perceived and said, led “to one of the great turning points of the war.”
"Churchill notes that the B.E.F. intercepted a German radio message giving orders to that effect at 11:42 that morning.17 Hitler and Rundstedt were at that moment in conference.
"At three minutes before seven on the evening of May 26, shortly after Hitler’s stop order had been canceled, the British Admiralty signaled the beginning of “Operation Dynamo,” as the Dunkirk evacuation was called. That night the German armor resumed its attack on the port from the west and south, but now the panzers found it hard going. Lord Gort had had time to deploy against them three infantry divisions with heavy artillery support. The tanks made little progress. In the meantime the evacuation began. An armada of 850 vessels of all sizes, shapes and methods of propulsion, from cruisers and destroyers to small sailboats and Dutch skoots, many of them manned by civilian volunteers from the English coastal towns, converged on Dunkirk. The first day, May 27, they took off 7,669 troops; the next day, 17,804; the following day, 47,310; and on May 30, 53,823, for a total of 126,606 during the first four days. This was far more than the Admiralty had hoped to get out. When the operation began it counted on evacuating only about 45,000 men in the two days’ time it then thought it would have.
"The next day, May 31, was the biggest day of all. Some 68,000 men were embarked for England, a third of them from the beaches, the rest from the Dunkirk harbor. A total of 194,620 men had now been taken out, more than four times the number originally hoped for.
"The Luftwaffe at that time did not operate after dark and during the nights of June 2 and 3 the remainder of the B.E.F. and 60,000 French troops were successfully brought out. Dunkirk, still defended stubbornly by 40,000 French soldiers, held out until the morning of June 4. By that day 338,226 British and French soldiers had escaped the German clutches. They were no longer an army; most of them, understandably, were for the moment in a pitiful shape. But they were battle-tried; they knew that if properly armed and adequately covered from the air they could stand up to the Germans. Most of them, when the balance in armament was achieved, would prove it—and on beaches not far down the Channel coast from where they had been rescued.
"A deliverance Dunkirk was to the British. But Churchill reminded them in the House on June 4 that “wars are not won by evacuations.”
" .... Winston Churchill when he rose in the House of Commons on June 4, 1940, while the last transports from Dunkirk were being unloaded, determined, as he wrote later, to show not only his own people but the world—and especially the U.S.A.—“that our resolve to fight on was based on serious grounds.”
"Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight in the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old."
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French politics was divided and army chiefs taken over by defeatism,
"Nevertheless some French units fought with great bravery and tenacity, temporarily stopping even the German armor here and there, and standing up resolutely to the incessant pounding of the Luftwaffe."
Pétain asked for armistice, and Hitler had the French sign it in Compiègne on the spot, in the precise wagon, where Germany had surrendered last time.
"No more now than in all the years before did he comprehend the character of the British nation or the kind of world its leaders and its people were determined to fight for—to the end."
"All that stood between him and the establishment of German hegemony in Europe under his dictatorship was one indomitable Englishman, Winston Churchill, and the determined people Churchill led, who did not recognize defeat when it stared them in the face and who now stood alone, virtually unarmed, their island home besieged by the mightiest military machine the world had ever seen."
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To the peace proposal through King of Sweden, Churchill replied -
"…Before any such requests or proposals could even be considered, it would be necessary that effective guarantees by deeds, not words, should be forthcoming from Germany which would ensure the restoration of the free and independent life of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and above all, France…"
Hitler made a speech blaming British government for war against Germany:-
"Mr. Churchill… no doubt will already be in Canada, where the money and children of those principally interested in the war have already been sent. For millions of other people, however, great suffering will begin. Mr. Churchill ought perhaps, for once, to believe me when I prophesy that a great Empire will be destroyed—an Empire which it was never my intention to destroy or even to harm…"
Shirer saw German officials certain of success.
"I drove directly to the Rundfunk to make a broadcast report of the speech to the United States. I had hardly arrived at Broadcasting House when I picked up a BBC broadcast in German from London. It was giving the British answer to Hitler already—within the hour. It was a determined No!"
"“As a maneuver calculated to rally the German people for the fight against Britain,” I wrote in my diary that night, “Hitler’s speech was a masterpiece. For the German people will now say: ‘Hitler offers England peace, and no strings attached. He says he sees no reason why this war should go on. If it does, it’s England’s fault.’”
"And was that not the principal reason for giving it, three days after he had issued Directive No. 16 to prepare the invasion of Britain? He admitted as much—beforehand—to two Italian confidants, Alfieri and Ciano. On July 1 he had told the ambassador:
"…It was always a good tactic to make the enemy responsible in the eyes of public opinion in Germany and abroad for the future course of events. This strengthened one’s own morale and weakened that of the enemy. An operation such as the one Germany was planning would be very bloody… Therefore one must convince public opinion that everything had first been done to avoid this horror…"
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Battle of Britain commenced, with London bombed mercilessly. RAF fought back defending Britain, and bombed Berlin.
"The British also dropped a few leaflets saying that “the war which Hitler started will go on, and it will last as long as Hitler does.” This was good propaganda, but the thud of exploding bombs was better.
"The R.A.F. came over in greater force on the night of August 28–29 and, as I noted in my diary, “for the first time killed Germans in the capital of the Reich.” The official count was ten killed and twenty-nine wounded. The Nazi bigwigs were outraged. Goebbels, who had ordered the press to publish only a few lines on the first attack, now gave instructions to cry out at the “brutality” of the British flyers in attacking the defenseless women and children of Berlin. Most of the capital’s dailies carried the same headline: COWARDLY BRITISH ATTACK. Two nights later, after the third raid, the headlines read: BRITISH AIR PIRATES OVER BERLIN!
"The main effect of a week of constant British night bombings [I wrote in my diary on September 1] has been to spread great disillusionment among the people and sow doubt in their minds… Actually the bombings have not been very deadly."
"Churchill told the Commons in another memorable peroration on August 20, when the battle in the skies still raged and its outcome was in doubt, “never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”"
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Plans of nazi occupation after invasion included terror, of course.
"“the able-bodied male population between the ages of seventeen and forty-five [in Britain] will, unless the local situation calls for an exceptional ruling, be interned and dispatched to the Continent.”
"Heydrich had organized six Einsatzkommando for Britain which were to operate from headquarters in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh—or in Glasgow, if the Forth Bridge was found blown up. They were to carry out Nazi terror; to begin with, they were to arrest all those on the “Special Search List, G.B. [Great Britain],” which in May had been hurriedly and carelessly compiled by Walter Schellenberg, another one of Himmler’s bright young university graduates, who was then chief of Amt (Bureau) IV E—Counterespionage—of R.S.H.A. Or so Schellenberg later claimed, though at this time he was mainly occupied in Lisbon, Portugal, on a bizarre mission to kidnap the Duke of Windsor."
"Had the invasion been attempted the Germans would not have been received gently by the British. Churchill later confessed that he had often wondered what would have happened. Of this much he was certain:
"The massacre would have been on both sides grim and great. There would have been neither mercy nor quarter. They would have used terror, and we were prepared to go all lengths."
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OPERATION BARBAROSSA
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Relations between Germany and Russia were of suspicion from latter about intentions of former. Molotov was invited to visit Berlin.
"Berlin on November 12, 1940. ... Ribbentrop was in one of his most vapid and arrogant moods but Molotov quickly saw through him and sized up what the German game was."
Ribbentrop declared England was defeated.
"Ribbentrop said he “wondered” if Russia would also not “turn to the south for the natural outlet to the open sea which was so important for her.”
"“Which sea?” Molotov interjected icily."
"The interruption floored Ribbentrop for a moment and he could not think of an answer."
Molotov met Hitler next day, and wasn't fooled by either.
"That night Molotov gave a gala banquet to his hosts at the Russian Embassy on Unter den Linden. Hitler, apparently exhausted and still irritated by the afternoon’s ordeal, did not put in an appearance.
"The British did. I had wondered why their bombers had not appeared over Berlin, as they had almost every recent night, to remind the Soviet Commissar on his first evening in the capital that, whatever the Germans told him, Britain was still in the war, and kicking. Some of us, I confess, had waited hopefully for the planes, but they had not come. Officials in the Wilhelmstrasse, who had feared the worst, were visibly relieved. But not for long.
"On the evening of November 13, the British came over early. ... Molotov had just proposed a friendly toast and Ribbentrop had risen to his feet to reply when the air-raid warning was sounded and the guests scattered to shelter. I remember the hurrying and scurrying down the Linden and around the corner at the Wilhelmstrasse as Germans and Russians made for the underground shelter of the Foreign Ministry."
Ribbentrop continued at Molotov in the shelter.
"In his reply Molotov stated that the Germans were assuming that the war against England had already actually been won. If therefore [as Hitler had maintained] Germany was waging a life-and-death struggle against England, he could only construe this as meaning that Germany was fighting “for life” and England “for death.”
"This sarcasm may have gone over the head of Ribbentrop, a man of monumental denseness, but Molotov took no chances. To the German’s constant reiteration that Britain was finished, the Commissar finally replied, “If that is so, why are we in this shelter, and whose are these bombs which fall?”"
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"Before Barbarossa could get under way in the spring the southern flank, which lay in the Balkans, had to be secured and built up. By the third week in February 1941, the Germans had massed a formidable army of 680,000 troops in Rumania, which bordered the Ukraine for three hundred miles between the Polish border and the Black Sea.
"But to the south, Greece still held the Italians at bay and Berlin had reason to believe that British troops from Libya would soon be landed there.
"Bulgaria, whose wrong guess as to the victors in the first war had cost her dearly, now made a similar miscalculation.
"The hardier Yugoslavs were not quite so accommodating. But their stubbornness only spurred on the Germans to bring them into camp too. On March 4–5, the Regent, Prince Paul, was summoned in great secrecy to the Berghof by the Fuehrer, given the usual threats and, in addition, offered the bribe of Salonika. On March 25, the Yugoslav Premier, Dragisha Cvetković, and Foreign Minister Aleksander Cincar-Marković, having slipped surreptitiously out of Belgrade the night before to avoid hostile demonstrations or even kidnapping, arrived at Vienna, where in the presence of Hitler and Ribbentrop they signed up Yugoslavia to the Tripartite Pact.
"The Yugoslav ministers had no sooner returned to Belgrade than they, the government and the Prince Regent were overthrown on the night of March 26–27, by a popular uprising led by a number of top Air Force officers and supported by most of the Army. The youthful heir to the throne, Peter, who had escaped from the surveillance of regency officials by sliding down a rain pipe, was declared King, and though the new regime of General Dušan Simović immediately offered to sign a nonaggression pact with Germany, it was obvious in Berlin that it would not accept the puppet status for Yugoslavia which the Fuehrer had assigned. During the delirious celebrations in Belgrade, in which a crowd spat on the German minister’s car, the Serbs had shown where their sympathies lay."
"The coup in Belgrade threw Adolf Hitler into one of the wildest rages of his entire life. He took it as a personal affront and in his fury made sudden decisions which would prove utterly disastrous to the fortunes of the Third Reich.
"“The beginning of the Barbarossa operation” he told his generals, “will have to be postponed up to four weeks.”
Which went a long way towards why and how Germany, too, lost to Russia, despite the historical example not too long before, of another conqueror from West having lost there. General winter, of course, was on Russian side, as was home turf advantage. But Hitler's winning streak, so far, comprised of factors - bombers, panzer divisions, and tactics of terrorising civilians - that did not help in Russia as much, rather backfired on the contrary.
"At dawn on April 6, his armies in overwhelming strength fell on Yugoslavia and Greece, smashing across the frontiers of Bulgaria, Hungary and Germany itself with all their armor and advancing rapidly against poorly armed defenders dazed by the usual preliminary bombing from the Luftwaffe. Belgrade itself, as Hitler ordered, was razed to the ground. For three successive days and nights Goering’s bombers ranged over the little capital at rooftop level—for the city had no antiaircraft guns—killing 17,000 civilians, wounding many more and reducing the place to a mass of smoldering rubble."
"On April 12, 1941, six days after the launching of his attack, Hitler issued a secret directive dividing up Yugoslavia among Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. Croatia was created as an autonomous puppet state. The Fuehrer helped himself liberally, Germany taking territory contiguous to the old Austria and keeping under its occupation all of old Serbia as well as the copper- and coal-mining districts. Italy’s grab was left somewhat vague, but it did not amount to much."
" ... April 30, when his armies had completed their conquest of Yugoslavia and Greece, Hitler set the new date for Barbarossa. It was to begin on June 22, 1941."
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"The war against Russia [Hitler said] will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. All officers will have to rid themselves of obsolete ideologies. I know that the necessity for such means of waging war is beyond the comprehension of you generals but… I insist absolutely that my orders be executed without contradiction. The commissars are the bearers of ideologies directly opposed to National Socialism. Therefore the commissars will be liquidated. German soldiers guilty of breaking international law… will be excused. Russia has not participated in the Hague Convention and therefore has no rights under it."
"European Russia was to be divided up into so-called Reich Commissariats. Russian Poland would become a German protectorate called Ostland, the Ukraine “an independent state in alliance with Germany,” Caucasia, with its rich oil fields, would be ruled by a German “plenipotentiary,” and the three Baltic States and White Russia would form a German protectorate preparatory to being annexed outright to the Greater German Reich. ... Germanizing the racially assimilable Balts and “banishing the undesirable elements.” In Latvia and Estonia, he cautioned, “banishment on a large scale will have to be envisaged.” Those driven out would be replaced by Germans, preferably war veterans. “The Baltic Sea,” he ordained, “must become a Germanic inland sea.”
"The job of feeding the German people [he said] stands at the top of the list of Germany’s claims on the East. The southern [Russian] territories will have to serve… for the feeding of the German people.
"We see absolutely no reason for any obligation on our part to feed also the Russian people with the products of that surplus territory. We know that this is a harsh necessity, bare of any feelings… The future will hold very hard years in store for the Russians."
"Goering, who had been placed in charge of the economic exploitation of the Soviet Union, made this even clearer than Rosenberg did. In a long directive of May 23, 1941, his Economic Staff, East, laid it down that the surplus food from Russia’s black-earth belt in the south must not be diverted to the people in the industrial areas, where, in any case, the industries would be destroyed. The workers and their families in these regions would simply be left to starve—or, if they could, to emigrate to Siberia. Russia’s great food production must go to the Germans.
"The German Administration in these territories [the directive declared] may well attempt to mitigate the consequences of the famine which undoubtedly will take place and to accelerate the return to primitive agricultural conditions. However, these measures will not avert famine. Any attempt to save the population there from death by starvation by importing surpluses from the black-soil zone would be at the expense of supplies to Europe. It would reduce Germany’s staying power in the war, and would undermine Germany’s and Europe’s power to resist the blockade. This must be clearly and absolutely understood.
"A meeting of state secretaries on May 2 had already given a general answer. “There is no doubt,” a secret memorandum of the conference declared, “that as a result, many millions of persons will be starved to death if we take out of the country the things necessary for us.”82 And Goering had said, and Rosenberg, that they would be taken out—that much had to be “clearly and absolutely understood.”
"On Sunday morning, June 22, the day Napoleon had crossed the Niemen in 1812 on his way to Moscow, and exactly a year after Napoleon’s country, France, had capitulated at Compiègne, Adolf Hitler’s armored, mechanized and hitherto invincible armies poured across the Niemen and various other rivers and penetrated swiftly into Russia.
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"The Fuehrer has decided to have St. Petersburg [Leningrad] wiped off the face of the earth* The further existence of this large city is of no interest once Soviet Russia is overthrown…
"The intention is to close in on the city and raze it to the ground by artillery and by continuous air attack…
"Requests that the city be taken over will be turned down, for the problem of the survival of the population and of supplying it with food is one which cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for existence we have no interest in keeping even part of this great city’s population."
"That same week, on October 3, Hitler returned to Berlin and in an address to the German people proclaimed the collapse of the Soviet Union. “I declare today, and I declare it without any reservation,” he said, “that the enemy in the East has been struck down and will never rise again… Behind our troops there already lies a territory twice the size of the German Reich when I came to power in 1933.”"
"In reality the Russians, despite the surprise with which they were taken on June 22, their subsequent heavy losses in men and equipment, their rapid withdrawal and the entrapment of some of their best armies, had begun in July to put up a mounting resistance such as the Wehrmacht had never encountered before."
" ... Russian T-34 tank, of which they had not previously heard and which was so heavily armored that the shells from the German antitank guns bounced harmlessly off it. The appearance of this panzer, Blumentritt said later, marked the beginning of what came to be called the “tank terror.”"
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Halder wrote suggesting concentrating on taking Moscow.
"August 18. “The effect,” says Halder, “was explosive.” Hitler had his hungry eyes on the food belt and industrial areas of the Ukraine and on the Russian oil fields just beyond in the Caucasus. Besides, he thought he saw a golden opportunity to entrap Budënny’s armies east of the Dnieper beyond Kiev, which still held out. He also wanted to capture Leningrad and join up with the Finns in the north. To accomplish these twin aims, several infantry and panzer divisions from Army Group Center would have to be detached and sent north and especially south. Moscow could wait."
"The most important objective to attain before the onset of winter is not the capture of Moscow but the taking of the Crimea, the industrial and coal-mining areas of the Donets basin and the cutting off of Russian oil supplies from the Caucasus. In the north it is the locking up of Leningrad and the union with the Finns."
"But here again the Nazi dictator became a victim of his megalomania. Taking the Russian capital before winter came was not enough. He gave orders that Field Marshal von Leeb in the north was at the same time to capture Leningrad, make contact with the Finns beyond the city and drive on and cut the Murmansk railway. Also, at the same time, Rundstedt was to clear the Black Sea coast, take Rostov, seize the Maikop oil fields and push forward to Stalingrad on the Volga, thus severing Stalin’s last link with the Caucasus. When Rundstedt tried to explain to Hitler that this meant an advance of more than four hundred miles beyond the Dnieper, with his left flank dangerously exposed, the Supreme Commander told him that the Russians in the south were now incapable of offering serious resistance. Rundstedt, who says that he “laughed aloud” at such ridiculous orders, was soon to find the contrary.
"Hitler now became obsessed with the idea of capturing both Leningrad and Stalingrad, for he persuaded himself that if these two “holy cities of Communism” were to fall, Russia would collapse."
"The fall rains, however, had commenced. Rasputitza, the period of mud, set in. The great army, moving on wheels, was slowed down and often forced to halt. Tanks had to be withdrawn from battle to pull guns and ammunition trucks out of the mire. Chains and couplings for this job were lacking and bundles of rope had to be dropped by Luftwaffe transport planes which were badly needed for lifting other military supplies. The rains began in mid-October and, as Guderian later remembered, “the next few weeks were dominated by the mud.” General Blumentritt, chief of staff of Field Marshal von Kluge’s Fourth Army, which was in the thick of the battle for Moscow, has vividly described the predicament.
"The infantryman slithers in the mud, while many teams of horses are needed to drag each gun forward. All wheeled vehicles sink up to their axles in the slime. Even tractors can only move with great difficulty. A large portion of our heavy artillery was soon stuck fast… The strain that all this caused our already exhausted troops can perhaps be imagined."
"Heavy snows and subzero temperatures came early that winter in Russia. Guderian noted the first snow on the night of October 6–7, just as the drive on Moscow was being resumed. It reminded him to ask headquarters again for winter clothing, especially for heavy boots and heavy wool socks. On October 12 he recorded the snow as still falling. On November 3 came the first cold wave, the thermometer dropping below the freezing point and continuing to fall. By the seventh Guderian was reporting the first “severe cases of frostbite” in his ranks and on the thirteenth that the temperature had fallen to 8 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, and that the lack of winter clothing “was becoming increasingly felt.” The bitter cold affected guns and machines as well as men.
"Ice was causing a lot of trouble [Guderian wrote] since the calks for the tank tracks had not yet arrived. The cold made the telescopic sights useless. In order to start the engines of the tanks fires had to be lit beneath them. Fuel was freezing on occasions and the oil became viscous… Each regiment [of the 112th Infantry Division] had already lost some 500 men from frostbite. As a result of the cold the machine guns were no longer able to fire and our 37-mm. antitank guns had proved ineffective against the [Russian] T-34 tank."
" ... terrible as the Russian winter was and granted that the Soviet troops were naturally better prepared for it than the German, the main factor in what is now to be set down was not the weather but the fierce fighting of the Red Army troops and their indomitable will not to give up."
" ... thermometer had fallen to 31 degrees below zero. The next day it dropped another five degrees. His tanks, he said, were “almost immobilized” and he was threatened on his flanks and in the rear north of Tula.
"December 5 was the critical day. Everywhere along the 200-mile semicircular front around Moscow the Germans had been stopped. By evening Guderian was notifying Bock that he was not only stopped but must pull back, and Bock was telephoning Halder that “his strength was at an end,” and Brauchitsch was telling his Chief of the General Staff in despair that he was quitting as Commander in Chief of the Army. It was a dark and bitter day for the German generals.
"The next day, December 6, General Georgi Zhukov, who had replaced Marshal Timoshenko as commander of the central front but six weeks before, struck. On the 200-mile front before Moscow he unleashed seven armies and two cavalry corps—100 divisions in all—consisting of troops that were either fresh or battle-tried and were equipped and trained to fight in the bitter cold and the deep snow. The blow which this relatively unknown general now delivered with such a formidable force of infantry, artillery, tanks, cavalry and planes, which Hitler had not faintly suspected existed, was so sudden and so shattering that the German Army and the Third Reich never fully recovered from it."
"For the first time in more than two years of unbroken military victories the armies of Hitler were retreating before a superior force.
"That was not all. The failure was greater than that. Halder realized this, at least later. “The myth of the invincibility of the German Army,” he wrote, “was broken.” There would be more German victories in Russia when another summer came around, but they could never restore the myth. December 6, 1941, then, is another turning point in the short history of the Third Reich and one of the most fateful ones. Hitler’s power had reached its zenith; from now on it was to decline, sapped by the growing counterblows of the nations against which he had chosen to make aggressive war."
Hitler fired several generals and declared himself chief, he ran the army personally now on.
"Actually the megalomaniacal dictator soon would make himself something even greater, legalizing a power never before held by any man—emperor, king or president—in the experience of the German Reichs. On April 26, 1942, he had his rubber-stamp Reichstag pass a law which gave him absolute power of life and death over every German and simply suspended any laws which might stand in the way of this. The words of the law have to be read to be believed.
"…In the present war, in which the German people are faced with a struggle for their existence or their annihilation, the Fuehrer must have all the rights postulated by him which serve to further or achieve victory. Therefore—without being bound by existing legal regulations—in his capacity as Leader of the nation, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Head of Government and supreme executive chief, as Supreme Justice and Leader of the Party—the Fuehrer must be in a position to force with all means at his disposal every German, if necessary, whether he be common soldier or officer, low or high official or judge, leading or subordinate official of the party, worker or employer—to fulfill his duties. In case of violation of these duties, the Fuehrer is entitled after conscientious examination, regardless of so-called well-deserved rights, to mete out due punishment and to remove the offender from his post, rank and position without introducing prescribed procedures."
"Ruthlessly he moved that bitter winter to stem the retreat of his beaten armies and to save them from the fate of Napoleon’s troops along the same frozen, snowbound roads back from Moscow. He forbade any further withdrawals. ... As it was, whole divisions were frequently overrun or surrounded and cut to pieces when a timely withdrawal would have saved them."
"Not the Fuehrer but the Russian Army was by now deciding such matters. Hitler could force the German troops to stand fast and die, but he could no more stop the Soviet advance than King Canute could prevent the tides from coming in."
"Step by step and sometimes more rapidly throughout that grim winter the German armies, which had planned to celebrate Christmas in Moscow, were driven back or forced by Russian encirclements and breakthroughs to retreat. By the end of February they found themselves from 75 to 200 miles from the capital. By the end of that freezing month Halder was noting in his diary the cost in men of the misfired Russian adventure. Total losses up to February 28, he wrote down, were 1,005,636, or 31 per cent of his entire force. Of these 202,251 had been killed, 725,642 wounded and 46,511 were missing. (Casualties from frostbite were 112,627.) This did not include the heavy losses among the Hungarians, Rumanians and Italians in Russia."
Hitler talked about building an East Wall.
"No East Wall would be necessary if the Soviet Union were to be destroyed."
"His plans had been wrecked, his hopes doomed. They were further dashed a fortnight later, on December 6, when his troops began to be beaten back from the suburbs of Moscow."
Next day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and he hurried back to Berlin from Wolfsschanze.
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"That the United States, as long as it was led by President Roosevelt, stood in the way of Hitler’s grandiose plans for world conquest and the dividing up of the planet among the Tripartite powers the Nazi dictator fully understood, as his various private utterances make clear. The American Republic, he saw, would have to be dealt with eventually and, as he said, “severely.” But one nation at a time. That had been the secret of his successful strategy thus far. The turn of America would come, but only after Great Britain and the Soviet Union had been struck down. Then, with the aid of Japan and Italy, he would deal with the upstart Americans, who, isolated and alone, would easily succumb to the power of the victorious Axis."
He'd been trying to get Japan to attack Singapore, so British would be busy fearing losing India, and have less force to deal with Europe. He hadn't counted on them playing their own game, for Japan. When Russia no longer seemed as easy, he'd tried to get them to drop their treaty with Russia, which had been made with his knowledge.
"This was one treaty—it was signed on April 13—which Japan honored to the very last despite subsequent German exhortations that she disregard it. For before the summer of 1941 was out the Nazis would be begging the Japanese to attack not Singapore or Manila but Vladivostok!"
"Six days after the Nazi armies were flung into Russia, on June 28, 1941, Ribbentrop was cabling the German ambassador in Tokyo, General Eugen Ott, to do everything he could to get the Japanese to promptly attack Soviet Russia in the rear."
Instead, having secured Russia, Japan turned East.
"Once more Hitler had been bested at his own game by a wily ally."
Germany was bound by the pact with Japan to declare war on U.S.. But U-boats had been attacking U.S. vessels in Atlantic for a while.
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"Hitler, who was expecting an American declaration of war, wanted to get his declaration in first.” The Nazi warlord confirmed this in his speech to the Reichstag on December 11.
"“We will always strike first,” he told the cheering deputies. “We will always deal the first blow!”"
"Adolf Hitler, who a bare six months before had faced only a beleaguered Britain in a war which seemed to him as good as won, now, by deliberate choice, had arrayed against him the three greatest industrial powers in the world in a struggle in which military might depended largely, in the long run, on economic strength. Those three enemy countries together also had a great preponderance of manpower over the three Axis nations. Neither Hitler nor his generals nor his admirals seem to have weighed those sobering facts on that eventful December day as the year 1941 drew toward a close."
"December 10, Japanese planes had sunk two British battleships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, off the coast of Malaya. Coupled with the crippling American losses in battleships at Pearl Harbor on December 7, this blow gave the Japanese fleet complete supremacy in the Pacific, the China Sea and the Indian Ocean. “In all the war,” Churchill wrote later of the loss of the two great ships, “I never received a more direct shock.”"
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The conspirators, meanwhile, had been conferring, especially with the severe losses army had undergone.
"Most of the resistance leaders, being conservative and well on in years, wanted, for one thing, a restoration of the Hohenzollern monarchy. But for a long time they could not agree on which Hohenzollern prince to hoist on the throne.
"By the summer of 1941, however, there was more or less agreement that the most suitable candidate for the throne was Louis-Ferdinand, the second and oldest surviving son of the Crown Prince.* Then just thirty-three, a veteran of five years in the Ford factory at Dearborn, a working employee of the Lufthansa airlines and in contact and in sympathy with the plotters, this personable young man had finally emerged as the most desirable of the Hohenzollerns. He understood the twentieth century, was democratic and intelligent. Moreover, he had an attractive, sensible and courageous wife in Princess Kira, a former Russian Grand Duchess, and—an important point for the conspirators at this stage—he was a personal friend of President Roosevelt, who had invited the couple to stay in the White House during their American honeymoon in 1938."
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"By February 20 the Russian offensive from the Baltic to the Black Sea had run out of steam and at the end of March the season of deep mud set in, bringing a relative quiet to the long and bloody front. Both sides were exhausted. A German Army report of March 30, 1942, revealed what a terrible toll had been paid in the winter fighting. Of a total of 162 combat divisions in the East, only eight were ready for offensive missions. The sixteen armored divisions had between them only 140 serviceable tanks—less than the normal number for one division."
"Total casualties at the end of the winter fighting were 1,167,835, exclusive of the sick, and there were not enough replacements available to make up for such losses."
Battle of Stalingrad was lost, brutally for Germany, because Hitler wouldn't permit withdrawal or surrender, after his fanatical determination to take both Caucasus and Stalingrad simultaneously had German forces surrounded in the city without supplies. Twice Russia offered honourable terms, rejected by Hitler.
"91,000 German soldiers, including twenty-four generals, half-starved, frostbitten, many of them wounded, all of them dazed and broken, were hobbling over the ice and snow, clutching their blood-caked blankets over their heads against the 24-degrees-below-zero cold toward the dreary, frozen prisoner-of-war camps of Siberia."
Only 5,000 saw home again.
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"NO COMPREHENSIVE BLUEPRINT for the New Order was ever drawn up, but it is clear from the captured documents and from what took place that Hitler knew very well what he wanted it to be: a Nazi-ruled Europe whose resources would be exploited for the profit of Germany, whose people would be made the slaves of the German master race and whose “undesirable elements”—above all, the Jews, but also many Slavs in the East, especially the intelligentsia among them—would be exterminated.
"The Jews and the Slavic peoples were the Untermenschen—subhumans. To Hitler they had no right to live, except as some of them, among the Slavs, might be needed to toil in the fields and the mines as slaves of their German masters. Not only were the great cities of the East, Moscow, Leningrad and Warsaw, to be permanently erased* but the culture of the Russians and Poles and other Slavs was to be stamped out and formal education denied them. Their thriving industries were to be dismantled and shipped to Germany and the people themselves confined to the pursuits of agriculture so that they could grow food for Germans, being allowed to keep for themselves just enough to subsist on. Europe itself, as the Nazi leaders put it, must be made “Jew-free.”"
"What the nations [Himmler continued] can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death like cattle interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves to our Kultur; otherwise it is of no interest to me.
"Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an antitank ditch interests me only in so far as the antitank ditch for Germany is finished…"
"By October 15, 1940, Hitler had decided on the future of the Czechs, the first Slavic people he had conquered. One half of them were to be “assimilated,” mostly by shipping them as slave labor to Germany. The other half, “particularly” the intellectuals, were simply to be, in the words of a secret report on the subject, “eliminated.”
"A fortnight before, on October 2, the Fuehrer had clarified his thoughts about the fate of the Poles, the second of the Slavic peoples to be conquered. His faithful secretary, Martin Bormann, has left a long memorandum on the Nazi plans, which Hitler outlined to Hans Frank, the Governor General of rump Poland, and to other officials.
"The Poles [Hitler “emphasized”] are especially born for low labor… There can be no question of improvement for them. It is necessary to keep the standard of life low in Poland and it must not be permitted to rise… The Poles are lazy and it is necessary to use compulsion to make them work… The Government General [of Poland] should be used by us merely as a source of unskilled labor… Every year the laborers needed by the Reich could be procured from there.
"As for the Polish priests,
"they will preach what we want them to preach. If any priest acts differently, we shall make short work of him. The task of the priest is to keep the Poles quiet, stupid and dull-witted."
"It is indispensable to bear in mind that the Polish gentry must cease to exist; however cruel this may sound, they must be exterminated wherever they are…
"There should be one master only for the Poles, the German. Two masters, side by side, cannot and must not exist. Therefore, all representatives of the Polish intelligentsia are to be exterminated. This sounds cruel, but such is the law of life."
"This obsession of the Germans with the idea that they were the master race and that the Slavic peoples must be their slaves was especially virulent in regard to Russia. Erich Koch, the roughneck Reich Commissar for the Ukraine, expressed it in a speech at Kiev on March 5, 1943.
"We are the Master Race and must govern hard but just… I will draw the very last out of this country. I did not come to spread bliss… The population must work, work, and work again… We definitely did not come here to give out manna. We have come here to create the basis for victory.
"We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here."
"July 23, 1942, when the German armies in Russia were nearing the Volga and the oil fields of the Caucasus, Martin Bormann, Hitler’s party secretary and, by now, right-hand man, wrote a long letter to Rosenberg reiterating the Fuehrer’s views on the subject. The letter was summed up by an official in Rosenberg’s ministry:
"The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we don’t need them, they may die. Therefore compulsory vaccination and German health services are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable. They may use contraceptives or practice abortion—the more the better. Education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up to 100…. Every educated person is a future enemy. Religion we leave to them as a means of diversion. As for food they won’t get any more than is absolutely necessary. We are the masters. We come first."
"October 25, 1942, Bräutigam dared to pinpoint the Nazi mistakes in Russia.
"With the inherent instinct of the Eastern peoples [Bräutigam continued], the primitive man soon found out that for Germany the slogan “Liberation from Bolshevism” was only a pretext to enslave the Eastern peoples according to her own methods… The worker and peasant soon perceived that Germany did not regard them as partners of equal rights but considered them only as the objective of her political and economic aims… With unequaled presumption, we put aside all political knowledge and… treat the peoples of the occupied Eastern territories as “Second-Class Whites” to whom Providence has merely assigned the task of serving as slaves for Germany…"
"It is no longer a secret from friend or foe that hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners of war have died of hunger or cold in our camps… We now experience the grotesque picture of having to recruit millions of laborers from the occupied Eastern territories after prisoners of war have died of hunger like flies…
"In the prevailing limitless abuse of the Slavic humanity, “recruiting” methods were used which probably have their origin only in the blackest periods of the slave traffic. A regular man hunt was inaugurated. Without consideration of health or age the people were shipped to Germany…"
"Our policy has forced both Bolshevists and Russian nationalists into a common front against us. The Russian fights today with exceptional bravery and self-sacrifice for nothing more or less than recognition of his human dignity."
The policy was set long before invasion, as in case of Poland and Czechoslovakia.
"The entire Baltic country will have to be incorporated into Germany… The Crimea has to be evacuated by all foreigners and settled by Germans only, [becoming] Reich territory… The Kola Peninsula will be taken by Germany because of the large nickel mines there. The annexation of Finland as a federated state should be prepared with caution… The Fuehrer will raze Leningrad to the ground and then hand it over to the Finns.
"The Baku oil fields, Hitler ordered, would become a “German concession” and the German colonies on the Volga would be annexed outright. When it came to a discussion as to which Nazi leaders would administer the new territory a violent quarrel broke out."
"There was also an argument on the best methods of policing the conquered Russian people. Hitler suggested the German police be equipped with armored cars. Goering doubted that they would be necessary. His planes could “drop bombs in case of riots,” he said."
"... Goering made clear in a speech to the Nazi commissioners for the occupied territories on August 6, 1942. “It used to be called plundering,” he said. “But today things have become more humane. In spite of that, I intend to plunder and to do it thoroughly.” On this, at least, he was as good as his word, not only in Russia but throughout Nazi-conquered Europe. It was all part of the New Order."
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THE NAZI PLUNDER OF EUROPE
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"Whenever you come across anything that may be needed by the German people, you must be after it like a bloodhound. It must be taken out… and brought to Germany."
"A great deal was taken out, not only in goods and services but in banknotes and gold. Whenever Hitler occupied a country, his financial agents seized the gold and foreign holdings of its national bank. That was a mere beginning. Staggering “occupation costs” were immediately assessed. By the end of February 1944, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, the Nazi Minister of Finance, put the total take from such payments at some 48 billion marks (roughly $12,000,000,000), of which France, which was milked heavier than any other conquered country, furnished more than half. By the end of the war, receipts from occupation assessments amounted to an estimated 60 billion marks ($15,000,000,000).
"France was forced to pay 31.5 billions of this total, its annual contributions of more than 7 billions coming to over four times the yearly sums which Germany had paid in reparations under the Dawes and Young plans after the first war—a tribute which had seemed such a heinous crime to Hitler. In addition the Bank of France was forced to grant “credits” to Germany totaling 4.5 billion marks and the French government to pay a further half billion in “fines.” At Nuremberg it was estimated that the Germans extracted in occupation costs and “credits” two thirds of Belgium’s national income and a similar percentage from the Netherlands. Altogether, according to a study by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Germany extracted in tribute from the conquered nations a total of 104 billion marks ($26,000,000,000).
"But the goods seized and transported to the Reich without even the formality of payment can never possibly be estimated. Figures kept pouring in at Nuremberg until they overwhelmed one; but no expert, so far as I know, was ever able to straighten them out and compute totals. In France, for example, it was estimated that the Germans carted off (as “levies in kind”) 9 million tons of cereals, 75 per cent of the total production of oats, 80 per cent of oil, 74 per cent of steel, and so on, for a grand total of 184.5 billion francs.
"Russia, devastated by warfare and German savagery, proved harder to milk. Nazi documents are full of reports of Soviet “deliveries.” In 1943, for example, 9 million tons of cereals, 2 million tons of fodder, 3 million tons of potatoes, 662,000 tons of meat were listed by the Germans among the “deliveries,” to which the Soviet Committee of Investigation added—for the duration of the occupation—9 million cattle, 12 million pigs, 13 million sheep, to mention a few items. But Russian “deliveries” proved much less than expected; the Germans calculated them as worth a net of only some 4 billion marks ($1,000,000,000).
"Everything possible was squeezed out of Poland by the greedy Nazi conquerors. “I shall endeavor,” said Dr. Frank, the Governor General, “to squeeze out of this province everything that is still possible to squeeze out.” This was at the end of 1942, and in the three years since the occupation he had already squeezed out, as he continually boasted, a great deal, especially in foodstuffs for hungry Germans in the Reich. He warned, however, that “if the new food scheme is carried out in 1943 a half-million people in Warsaw and its suburbs alone will be deprived of food.”"
Orders from Hitler -
"Poland can only be administered by utilizing the country through means of ruthless exploitation, deportation of all supplies, raw materials, machines, factory installations, etc., which are important for the German war economy, availability of all workers for work within Germany, reduction of the entire Polish economy to absolute minimum necessary for bare existence of the population, closing of all educational institutions, especially technical schools and colleges in order to prevent the growth of the new Polish intelligentsia. Poland shall be treated as a colony. The Poles shall be the slaves of the Greater German Reich.
"Rudolf Hess, the Nazi deputy Fuehrer, added that Hitler had decided that “Warsaw shall not be rebuilt, nor is it the intention of the Fuehrer to rebuild or reconstruct any industry in the Government General.”
"By decree of Dr. Frank, all property in Poland belonging not only to Jews but to Poles was subject to confiscation without compensation. Hundreds of thousands of Polish-owned farms were simply grabbed and handed over to German settlers. By May 31, 1943, in the four Polish districts annexed to Germany (West Prussia, Posen, Zichenau, Silesia) some 700,000 estates comprising 15 million acres were “seized” and 9,500 estates totaling 6.5 million acres “confiscated.” The difference between “seizure” and “confiscation” is not explained in the elaborate table prepared by the German “Central Estate Office,”13 and to the dispossessed Poles it must not have mattered.
"Even the art treasures in the occupied lands were looted, and, as the captured Nazi documents later revealed, on the express orders of Hitler and Goering, who thereby greatly augmented their “private” collections. The corpulent Reich Marshal, according to his own estimate, brought his own collection up to a value of 50 million Reichsmarks. Indeed, Goering was the driving force in this particular field of looting. Immediately upon the conquest of Poland he issued orders for the seizure of art treasures there and within six months the special commissioner appointed to carry out his command could report that he had taken over “almost the entire art treasury of the country.”
"But it was in France where the bulk of the great art treasures of Europe lay, and no sooner was this country added to the Nazi conquests than Hitler and Goering decreed their seizure. To carry out this particular plunder Hitler appointed Rosenberg, who set up an organization called Einsatzstab Rosenberg, and who was assisted not only by Goering but by General Keitel. Indeed one order by Keitel to the Army in France stated that Rosenberg “is entitled to transport to Germany cultural goods which appear valuable to him and to safeguard them there. The Fuehrer has reserved for himself the decision as to their use.”
"An idea of Hitler’s decision “as to their use” is revealed in a secret order issued by Goering on November 5, 1940, specifying the distribution of art objects being collected at the Louvre in Paris. They were “to be disposed of in the following way”:
"1. Those art objects about which the Fuehrer has reserved for himself the decision as to their use.
"2. Those… which serve the completion of the Reich Marshal’s [i.e., Goering’s] collection…
"4. Those… that are suited to be sent to German museums…"
"those art objects collected at the Jeu de Paume which are to go into the Fuehrer’s possession and those which the Reich Marshal claims for himself will be loaded into two railroad cars which will be attached to the Reich Marshal’s special train… to Berlin."
"Many more carloads followed. According to a secret official German report some 137 freight cars loaded with 4,174 cases of art works comprising 21,903 objects, including 10,890 paintings, made the journey from the West to Germany up to July 1944.18 They included works of, among others, Rembrandt, Rubens, Hals, Vermeer, Velazquez, Murillo, Goya, Vecchio, Watteau, Fragonard, Reynolds and Gainsborough. As early as January 1941, Rosenberg estimated the art loot from France alone as worth a billion marks.
"The plunder of raw materials, manufactured goods and food, though it reduced the occupied peoples to impoverishment, hunger and sometimes starvation and violated the Hague Convention on the conduct of war, might have been excused, if not justified, by the Germans as necessitated by the harsh exigencies of total war. But the stealing of art treasures did not help Hitler’s war machine. It was a case merely of avarice, of the personal greed of Hitler and Goering."
"It was in the plunder not of material goods but of human lives that the mercifully short-lived New Order will be longest remembered. Here Nazi degradation sank to a level seldom experienced by man in all his time on earth. Millions of decent, innocent men and women were driven into forced labor, millions more tortured and tormented in the concentration camps and millions more still, of whom there were four and a half million Jews alone, were massacred in cold blood or deliberately starved to death and their remains—in order to remove the traces—burned."
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Quoted from the last page of Afterword by the author, which he wrote for the thirtieth anniversary edition, dated May 1990:-
"People ask now: Have the Germans changed? Many in the West appear to believe so. I myself am not so sure, my view no doubt clouded by the personal experience of having lived and worked in Germany in the Nazi time. The truth is that no one really knows the answer to that crucial question. And quite understandably the nations that were former victims of German conquest do not want to take any chances again.
"Perhaps it will help too if the erring governments and the wondering people of this world will remember the dark night of Nazi terror and genocide that almost engulfed our world and that is the subject of this book. Remembrance of the past helps us to understand the present."
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October 13, 2017 - October 25, 2019. ..................................................................................................
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Relations between Germany and Russia were of suspicion from latter about intentions of former. Molotov was invited to visit Berlin.
"Berlin on November 12, 1940. ... Ribbentrop was in one of his most vapid and arrogant moods but Molotov quickly saw through him and sized up what the German game was."
Ribbentrop declared England was defeated.
"Ribbentrop said he “wondered” if Russia would also not “turn to the south for the natural outlet to the open sea which was so important for her.”
"“Which sea?” Molotov interjected icily."
"The interruption floored Ribbentrop for a moment and he could not think of an answer."
Molotov met Hitler next day, and wasn't fooled by either.
"That night Molotov gave a gala banquet to his hosts at the Russian Embassy on Unter den Linden. Hitler, apparently exhausted and still irritated by the afternoon’s ordeal, did not put in an appearance.
"The British did. I had wondered why their bombers had not appeared over Berlin, as they had almost every recent night, to remind the Soviet Commissar on his first evening in the capital that, whatever the Germans told him, Britain was still in the war, and kicking. Some of us, I confess, had waited hopefully for the planes, but they had not come. Officials in the Wilhelmstrasse, who had feared the worst, were visibly relieved. But not for long.
"On the evening of November 13, the British came over early. ... Molotov had just proposed a friendly toast and Ribbentrop had risen to his feet to reply when the air-raid warning was sounded and the guests scattered to shelter. I remember the hurrying and scurrying down the Linden and around the corner at the Wilhelmstrasse as Germans and Russians made for the underground shelter of the Foreign Ministry."
Ribbentrop continued at Molotov in the shelter.
"In his reply Molotov stated that the Germans were assuming that the war against England had already actually been won. If therefore [as Hitler had maintained] Germany was waging a life-and-death struggle against England, he could only construe this as meaning that Germany was fighting “for life” and England “for death.”
"This sarcasm may have gone over the head of Ribbentrop, a man of monumental denseness, but Molotov took no chances. To the German’s constant reiteration that Britain was finished, the Commissar finally replied, “If that is so, why are we in this shelter, and whose are these bombs which fall?”"
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"Before Barbarossa could get under way in the spring the southern flank, which lay in the Balkans, had to be secured and built up. By the third week in February 1941, the Germans had massed a formidable army of 680,000 troops in Rumania, which bordered the Ukraine for three hundred miles between the Polish border and the Black Sea.
"But to the south, Greece still held the Italians at bay and Berlin had reason to believe that British troops from Libya would soon be landed there.
"Bulgaria, whose wrong guess as to the victors in the first war had cost her dearly, now made a similar miscalculation.
"The hardier Yugoslavs were not quite so accommodating. But their stubbornness only spurred on the Germans to bring them into camp too. On March 4–5, the Regent, Prince Paul, was summoned in great secrecy to the Berghof by the Fuehrer, given the usual threats and, in addition, offered the bribe of Salonika. On March 25, the Yugoslav Premier, Dragisha Cvetković, and Foreign Minister Aleksander Cincar-Marković, having slipped surreptitiously out of Belgrade the night before to avoid hostile demonstrations or even kidnapping, arrived at Vienna, where in the presence of Hitler and Ribbentrop they signed up Yugoslavia to the Tripartite Pact.
"The Yugoslav ministers had no sooner returned to Belgrade than they, the government and the Prince Regent were overthrown on the night of March 26–27, by a popular uprising led by a number of top Air Force officers and supported by most of the Army. The youthful heir to the throne, Peter, who had escaped from the surveillance of regency officials by sliding down a rain pipe, was declared King, and though the new regime of General Dušan Simović immediately offered to sign a nonaggression pact with Germany, it was obvious in Berlin that it would not accept the puppet status for Yugoslavia which the Fuehrer had assigned. During the delirious celebrations in Belgrade, in which a crowd spat on the German minister’s car, the Serbs had shown where their sympathies lay."
"The coup in Belgrade threw Adolf Hitler into one of the wildest rages of his entire life. He took it as a personal affront and in his fury made sudden decisions which would prove utterly disastrous to the fortunes of the Third Reich.
"“The beginning of the Barbarossa operation” he told his generals, “will have to be postponed up to four weeks.”
Which went a long way towards why and how Germany, too, lost to Russia, despite the historical example not too long before, of another conqueror from West having lost there. General winter, of course, was on Russian side, as was home turf advantage. But Hitler's winning streak, so far, comprised of factors - bombers, panzer divisions, and tactics of terrorising civilians - that did not help in Russia as much, rather backfired on the contrary.
"At dawn on April 6, his armies in overwhelming strength fell on Yugoslavia and Greece, smashing across the frontiers of Bulgaria, Hungary and Germany itself with all their armor and advancing rapidly against poorly armed defenders dazed by the usual preliminary bombing from the Luftwaffe. Belgrade itself, as Hitler ordered, was razed to the ground. For three successive days and nights Goering’s bombers ranged over the little capital at rooftop level—for the city had no antiaircraft guns—killing 17,000 civilians, wounding many more and reducing the place to a mass of smoldering rubble."
"On April 12, 1941, six days after the launching of his attack, Hitler issued a secret directive dividing up Yugoslavia among Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. Croatia was created as an autonomous puppet state. The Fuehrer helped himself liberally, Germany taking territory contiguous to the old Austria and keeping under its occupation all of old Serbia as well as the copper- and coal-mining districts. Italy’s grab was left somewhat vague, but it did not amount to much."
" ... April 30, when his armies had completed their conquest of Yugoslavia and Greece, Hitler set the new date for Barbarossa. It was to begin on June 22, 1941."
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"The war against Russia [Hitler said] will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. All officers will have to rid themselves of obsolete ideologies. I know that the necessity for such means of waging war is beyond the comprehension of you generals but… I insist absolutely that my orders be executed without contradiction. The commissars are the bearers of ideologies directly opposed to National Socialism. Therefore the commissars will be liquidated. German soldiers guilty of breaking international law… will be excused. Russia has not participated in the Hague Convention and therefore has no rights under it."
"European Russia was to be divided up into so-called Reich Commissariats. Russian Poland would become a German protectorate called Ostland, the Ukraine “an independent state in alliance with Germany,” Caucasia, with its rich oil fields, would be ruled by a German “plenipotentiary,” and the three Baltic States and White Russia would form a German protectorate preparatory to being annexed outright to the Greater German Reich. ... Germanizing the racially assimilable Balts and “banishing the undesirable elements.” In Latvia and Estonia, he cautioned, “banishment on a large scale will have to be envisaged.” Those driven out would be replaced by Germans, preferably war veterans. “The Baltic Sea,” he ordained, “must become a Germanic inland sea.”
"The job of feeding the German people [he said] stands at the top of the list of Germany’s claims on the East. The southern [Russian] territories will have to serve… for the feeding of the German people.
"We see absolutely no reason for any obligation on our part to feed also the Russian people with the products of that surplus territory. We know that this is a harsh necessity, bare of any feelings… The future will hold very hard years in store for the Russians."
"Goering, who had been placed in charge of the economic exploitation of the Soviet Union, made this even clearer than Rosenberg did. In a long directive of May 23, 1941, his Economic Staff, East, laid it down that the surplus food from Russia’s black-earth belt in the south must not be diverted to the people in the industrial areas, where, in any case, the industries would be destroyed. The workers and their families in these regions would simply be left to starve—or, if they could, to emigrate to Siberia. Russia’s great food production must go to the Germans.
"The German Administration in these territories [the directive declared] may well attempt to mitigate the consequences of the famine which undoubtedly will take place and to accelerate the return to primitive agricultural conditions. However, these measures will not avert famine. Any attempt to save the population there from death by starvation by importing surpluses from the black-soil zone would be at the expense of supplies to Europe. It would reduce Germany’s staying power in the war, and would undermine Germany’s and Europe’s power to resist the blockade. This must be clearly and absolutely understood.
"A meeting of state secretaries on May 2 had already given a general answer. “There is no doubt,” a secret memorandum of the conference declared, “that as a result, many millions of persons will be starved to death if we take out of the country the things necessary for us.”82 And Goering had said, and Rosenberg, that they would be taken out—that much had to be “clearly and absolutely understood.”
"On Sunday morning, June 22, the day Napoleon had crossed the Niemen in 1812 on his way to Moscow, and exactly a year after Napoleon’s country, France, had capitulated at Compiègne, Adolf Hitler’s armored, mechanized and hitherto invincible armies poured across the Niemen and various other rivers and penetrated swiftly into Russia.
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"The Fuehrer has decided to have St. Petersburg [Leningrad] wiped off the face of the earth* The further existence of this large city is of no interest once Soviet Russia is overthrown…
"The intention is to close in on the city and raze it to the ground by artillery and by continuous air attack…
"Requests that the city be taken over will be turned down, for the problem of the survival of the population and of supplying it with food is one which cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for existence we have no interest in keeping even part of this great city’s population."
"That same week, on October 3, Hitler returned to Berlin and in an address to the German people proclaimed the collapse of the Soviet Union. “I declare today, and I declare it without any reservation,” he said, “that the enemy in the East has been struck down and will never rise again… Behind our troops there already lies a territory twice the size of the German Reich when I came to power in 1933.”"
"In reality the Russians, despite the surprise with which they were taken on June 22, their subsequent heavy losses in men and equipment, their rapid withdrawal and the entrapment of some of their best armies, had begun in July to put up a mounting resistance such as the Wehrmacht had never encountered before."
" ... Russian T-34 tank, of which they had not previously heard and which was so heavily armored that the shells from the German antitank guns bounced harmlessly off it. The appearance of this panzer, Blumentritt said later, marked the beginning of what came to be called the “tank terror.”"
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Halder wrote suggesting concentrating on taking Moscow.
"August 18. “The effect,” says Halder, “was explosive.” Hitler had his hungry eyes on the food belt and industrial areas of the Ukraine and on the Russian oil fields just beyond in the Caucasus. Besides, he thought he saw a golden opportunity to entrap Budënny’s armies east of the Dnieper beyond Kiev, which still held out. He also wanted to capture Leningrad and join up with the Finns in the north. To accomplish these twin aims, several infantry and panzer divisions from Army Group Center would have to be detached and sent north and especially south. Moscow could wait."
"The most important objective to attain before the onset of winter is not the capture of Moscow but the taking of the Crimea, the industrial and coal-mining areas of the Donets basin and the cutting off of Russian oil supplies from the Caucasus. In the north it is the locking up of Leningrad and the union with the Finns."
"But here again the Nazi dictator became a victim of his megalomania. Taking the Russian capital before winter came was not enough. He gave orders that Field Marshal von Leeb in the north was at the same time to capture Leningrad, make contact with the Finns beyond the city and drive on and cut the Murmansk railway. Also, at the same time, Rundstedt was to clear the Black Sea coast, take Rostov, seize the Maikop oil fields and push forward to Stalingrad on the Volga, thus severing Stalin’s last link with the Caucasus. When Rundstedt tried to explain to Hitler that this meant an advance of more than four hundred miles beyond the Dnieper, with his left flank dangerously exposed, the Supreme Commander told him that the Russians in the south were now incapable of offering serious resistance. Rundstedt, who says that he “laughed aloud” at such ridiculous orders, was soon to find the contrary.
"Hitler now became obsessed with the idea of capturing both Leningrad and Stalingrad, for he persuaded himself that if these two “holy cities of Communism” were to fall, Russia would collapse."
"The fall rains, however, had commenced. Rasputitza, the period of mud, set in. The great army, moving on wheels, was slowed down and often forced to halt. Tanks had to be withdrawn from battle to pull guns and ammunition trucks out of the mire. Chains and couplings for this job were lacking and bundles of rope had to be dropped by Luftwaffe transport planes which were badly needed for lifting other military supplies. The rains began in mid-October and, as Guderian later remembered, “the next few weeks were dominated by the mud.” General Blumentritt, chief of staff of Field Marshal von Kluge’s Fourth Army, which was in the thick of the battle for Moscow, has vividly described the predicament.
"The infantryman slithers in the mud, while many teams of horses are needed to drag each gun forward. All wheeled vehicles sink up to their axles in the slime. Even tractors can only move with great difficulty. A large portion of our heavy artillery was soon stuck fast… The strain that all this caused our already exhausted troops can perhaps be imagined."
"Heavy snows and subzero temperatures came early that winter in Russia. Guderian noted the first snow on the night of October 6–7, just as the drive on Moscow was being resumed. It reminded him to ask headquarters again for winter clothing, especially for heavy boots and heavy wool socks. On October 12 he recorded the snow as still falling. On November 3 came the first cold wave, the thermometer dropping below the freezing point and continuing to fall. By the seventh Guderian was reporting the first “severe cases of frostbite” in his ranks and on the thirteenth that the temperature had fallen to 8 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, and that the lack of winter clothing “was becoming increasingly felt.” The bitter cold affected guns and machines as well as men.
"Ice was causing a lot of trouble [Guderian wrote] since the calks for the tank tracks had not yet arrived. The cold made the telescopic sights useless. In order to start the engines of the tanks fires had to be lit beneath them. Fuel was freezing on occasions and the oil became viscous… Each regiment [of the 112th Infantry Division] had already lost some 500 men from frostbite. As a result of the cold the machine guns were no longer able to fire and our 37-mm. antitank guns had proved ineffective against the [Russian] T-34 tank."
" ... terrible as the Russian winter was and granted that the Soviet troops were naturally better prepared for it than the German, the main factor in what is now to be set down was not the weather but the fierce fighting of the Red Army troops and their indomitable will not to give up."
" ... thermometer had fallen to 31 degrees below zero. The next day it dropped another five degrees. His tanks, he said, were “almost immobilized” and he was threatened on his flanks and in the rear north of Tula.
"December 5 was the critical day. Everywhere along the 200-mile semicircular front around Moscow the Germans had been stopped. By evening Guderian was notifying Bock that he was not only stopped but must pull back, and Bock was telephoning Halder that “his strength was at an end,” and Brauchitsch was telling his Chief of the General Staff in despair that he was quitting as Commander in Chief of the Army. It was a dark and bitter day for the German generals.
"The next day, December 6, General Georgi Zhukov, who had replaced Marshal Timoshenko as commander of the central front but six weeks before, struck. On the 200-mile front before Moscow he unleashed seven armies and two cavalry corps—100 divisions in all—consisting of troops that were either fresh or battle-tried and were equipped and trained to fight in the bitter cold and the deep snow. The blow which this relatively unknown general now delivered with such a formidable force of infantry, artillery, tanks, cavalry and planes, which Hitler had not faintly suspected existed, was so sudden and so shattering that the German Army and the Third Reich never fully recovered from it."
"For the first time in more than two years of unbroken military victories the armies of Hitler were retreating before a superior force.
"That was not all. The failure was greater than that. Halder realized this, at least later. “The myth of the invincibility of the German Army,” he wrote, “was broken.” There would be more German victories in Russia when another summer came around, but they could never restore the myth. December 6, 1941, then, is another turning point in the short history of the Third Reich and one of the most fateful ones. Hitler’s power had reached its zenith; from now on it was to decline, sapped by the growing counterblows of the nations against which he had chosen to make aggressive war."
Hitler fired several generals and declared himself chief, he ran the army personally now on.
"Actually the megalomaniacal dictator soon would make himself something even greater, legalizing a power never before held by any man—emperor, king or president—in the experience of the German Reichs. On April 26, 1942, he had his rubber-stamp Reichstag pass a law which gave him absolute power of life and death over every German and simply suspended any laws which might stand in the way of this. The words of the law have to be read to be believed.
"…In the present war, in which the German people are faced with a struggle for their existence or their annihilation, the Fuehrer must have all the rights postulated by him which serve to further or achieve victory. Therefore—without being bound by existing legal regulations—in his capacity as Leader of the nation, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Head of Government and supreme executive chief, as Supreme Justice and Leader of the Party—the Fuehrer must be in a position to force with all means at his disposal every German, if necessary, whether he be common soldier or officer, low or high official or judge, leading or subordinate official of the party, worker or employer—to fulfill his duties. In case of violation of these duties, the Fuehrer is entitled after conscientious examination, regardless of so-called well-deserved rights, to mete out due punishment and to remove the offender from his post, rank and position without introducing prescribed procedures."
"Ruthlessly he moved that bitter winter to stem the retreat of his beaten armies and to save them from the fate of Napoleon’s troops along the same frozen, snowbound roads back from Moscow. He forbade any further withdrawals. ... As it was, whole divisions were frequently overrun or surrounded and cut to pieces when a timely withdrawal would have saved them."
"Not the Fuehrer but the Russian Army was by now deciding such matters. Hitler could force the German troops to stand fast and die, but he could no more stop the Soviet advance than King Canute could prevent the tides from coming in."
"Step by step and sometimes more rapidly throughout that grim winter the German armies, which had planned to celebrate Christmas in Moscow, were driven back or forced by Russian encirclements and breakthroughs to retreat. By the end of February they found themselves from 75 to 200 miles from the capital. By the end of that freezing month Halder was noting in his diary the cost in men of the misfired Russian adventure. Total losses up to February 28, he wrote down, were 1,005,636, or 31 per cent of his entire force. Of these 202,251 had been killed, 725,642 wounded and 46,511 were missing. (Casualties from frostbite were 112,627.) This did not include the heavy losses among the Hungarians, Rumanians and Italians in Russia."
Hitler talked about building an East Wall.
"No East Wall would be necessary if the Soviet Union were to be destroyed."
"His plans had been wrecked, his hopes doomed. They were further dashed a fortnight later, on December 6, when his troops began to be beaten back from the suburbs of Moscow."
Next day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and he hurried back to Berlin from Wolfsschanze.
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"That the United States, as long as it was led by President Roosevelt, stood in the way of Hitler’s grandiose plans for world conquest and the dividing up of the planet among the Tripartite powers the Nazi dictator fully understood, as his various private utterances make clear. The American Republic, he saw, would have to be dealt with eventually and, as he said, “severely.” But one nation at a time. That had been the secret of his successful strategy thus far. The turn of America would come, but only after Great Britain and the Soviet Union had been struck down. Then, with the aid of Japan and Italy, he would deal with the upstart Americans, who, isolated and alone, would easily succumb to the power of the victorious Axis."
He'd been trying to get Japan to attack Singapore, so British would be busy fearing losing India, and have less force to deal with Europe. He hadn't counted on them playing their own game, for Japan. When Russia no longer seemed as easy, he'd tried to get them to drop their treaty with Russia, which had been made with his knowledge.
"This was one treaty—it was signed on April 13—which Japan honored to the very last despite subsequent German exhortations that she disregard it. For before the summer of 1941 was out the Nazis would be begging the Japanese to attack not Singapore or Manila but Vladivostok!"
"Six days after the Nazi armies were flung into Russia, on June 28, 1941, Ribbentrop was cabling the German ambassador in Tokyo, General Eugen Ott, to do everything he could to get the Japanese to promptly attack Soviet Russia in the rear."
Instead, having secured Russia, Japan turned East.
"Once more Hitler had been bested at his own game by a wily ally."
Germany was bound by the pact with Japan to declare war on U.S.. But U-boats had been attacking U.S. vessels in Atlantic for a while.
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"Hitler, who was expecting an American declaration of war, wanted to get his declaration in first.” The Nazi warlord confirmed this in his speech to the Reichstag on December 11.
"“We will always strike first,” he told the cheering deputies. “We will always deal the first blow!”"
"Adolf Hitler, who a bare six months before had faced only a beleaguered Britain in a war which seemed to him as good as won, now, by deliberate choice, had arrayed against him the three greatest industrial powers in the world in a struggle in which military might depended largely, in the long run, on economic strength. Those three enemy countries together also had a great preponderance of manpower over the three Axis nations. Neither Hitler nor his generals nor his admirals seem to have weighed those sobering facts on that eventful December day as the year 1941 drew toward a close."
"December 10, Japanese planes had sunk two British battleships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, off the coast of Malaya. Coupled with the crippling American losses in battleships at Pearl Harbor on December 7, this blow gave the Japanese fleet complete supremacy in the Pacific, the China Sea and the Indian Ocean. “In all the war,” Churchill wrote later of the loss of the two great ships, “I never received a more direct shock.”"
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The conspirators, meanwhile, had been conferring, especially with the severe losses army had undergone.
"Most of the resistance leaders, being conservative and well on in years, wanted, for one thing, a restoration of the Hohenzollern monarchy. But for a long time they could not agree on which Hohenzollern prince to hoist on the throne.
"By the summer of 1941, however, there was more or less agreement that the most suitable candidate for the throne was Louis-Ferdinand, the second and oldest surviving son of the Crown Prince.* Then just thirty-three, a veteran of five years in the Ford factory at Dearborn, a working employee of the Lufthansa airlines and in contact and in sympathy with the plotters, this personable young man had finally emerged as the most desirable of the Hohenzollerns. He understood the twentieth century, was democratic and intelligent. Moreover, he had an attractive, sensible and courageous wife in Princess Kira, a former Russian Grand Duchess, and—an important point for the conspirators at this stage—he was a personal friend of President Roosevelt, who had invited the couple to stay in the White House during their American honeymoon in 1938."
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"By February 20 the Russian offensive from the Baltic to the Black Sea had run out of steam and at the end of March the season of deep mud set in, bringing a relative quiet to the long and bloody front. Both sides were exhausted. A German Army report of March 30, 1942, revealed what a terrible toll had been paid in the winter fighting. Of a total of 162 combat divisions in the East, only eight were ready for offensive missions. The sixteen armored divisions had between them only 140 serviceable tanks—less than the normal number for one division."
"Total casualties at the end of the winter fighting were 1,167,835, exclusive of the sick, and there were not enough replacements available to make up for such losses."
Battle of Stalingrad was lost, brutally for Germany, because Hitler wouldn't permit withdrawal or surrender, after his fanatical determination to take both Caucasus and Stalingrad simultaneously had German forces surrounded in the city without supplies. Twice Russia offered honourable terms, rejected by Hitler.
"91,000 German soldiers, including twenty-four generals, half-starved, frostbitten, many of them wounded, all of them dazed and broken, were hobbling over the ice and snow, clutching their blood-caked blankets over their heads against the 24-degrees-below-zero cold toward the dreary, frozen prisoner-of-war camps of Siberia."
Only 5,000 saw home again.
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"NO COMPREHENSIVE BLUEPRINT for the New Order was ever drawn up, but it is clear from the captured documents and from what took place that Hitler knew very well what he wanted it to be: a Nazi-ruled Europe whose resources would be exploited for the profit of Germany, whose people would be made the slaves of the German master race and whose “undesirable elements”—above all, the Jews, but also many Slavs in the East, especially the intelligentsia among them—would be exterminated.
"The Jews and the Slavic peoples were the Untermenschen—subhumans. To Hitler they had no right to live, except as some of them, among the Slavs, might be needed to toil in the fields and the mines as slaves of their German masters. Not only were the great cities of the East, Moscow, Leningrad and Warsaw, to be permanently erased* but the culture of the Russians and Poles and other Slavs was to be stamped out and formal education denied them. Their thriving industries were to be dismantled and shipped to Germany and the people themselves confined to the pursuits of agriculture so that they could grow food for Germans, being allowed to keep for themselves just enough to subsist on. Europe itself, as the Nazi leaders put it, must be made “Jew-free.”"
"What the nations [Himmler continued] can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death like cattle interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves to our Kultur; otherwise it is of no interest to me.
"Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an antitank ditch interests me only in so far as the antitank ditch for Germany is finished…"
"By October 15, 1940, Hitler had decided on the future of the Czechs, the first Slavic people he had conquered. One half of them were to be “assimilated,” mostly by shipping them as slave labor to Germany. The other half, “particularly” the intellectuals, were simply to be, in the words of a secret report on the subject, “eliminated.”
"A fortnight before, on October 2, the Fuehrer had clarified his thoughts about the fate of the Poles, the second of the Slavic peoples to be conquered. His faithful secretary, Martin Bormann, has left a long memorandum on the Nazi plans, which Hitler outlined to Hans Frank, the Governor General of rump Poland, and to other officials.
"The Poles [Hitler “emphasized”] are especially born for low labor… There can be no question of improvement for them. It is necessary to keep the standard of life low in Poland and it must not be permitted to rise… The Poles are lazy and it is necessary to use compulsion to make them work… The Government General [of Poland] should be used by us merely as a source of unskilled labor… Every year the laborers needed by the Reich could be procured from there.
"As for the Polish priests,
"they will preach what we want them to preach. If any priest acts differently, we shall make short work of him. The task of the priest is to keep the Poles quiet, stupid and dull-witted."
"It is indispensable to bear in mind that the Polish gentry must cease to exist; however cruel this may sound, they must be exterminated wherever they are…
"There should be one master only for the Poles, the German. Two masters, side by side, cannot and must not exist. Therefore, all representatives of the Polish intelligentsia are to be exterminated. This sounds cruel, but such is the law of life."
"This obsession of the Germans with the idea that they were the master race and that the Slavic peoples must be their slaves was especially virulent in regard to Russia. Erich Koch, the roughneck Reich Commissar for the Ukraine, expressed it in a speech at Kiev on March 5, 1943.
"We are the Master Race and must govern hard but just… I will draw the very last out of this country. I did not come to spread bliss… The population must work, work, and work again… We definitely did not come here to give out manna. We have come here to create the basis for victory.
"We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here."
"July 23, 1942, when the German armies in Russia were nearing the Volga and the oil fields of the Caucasus, Martin Bormann, Hitler’s party secretary and, by now, right-hand man, wrote a long letter to Rosenberg reiterating the Fuehrer’s views on the subject. The letter was summed up by an official in Rosenberg’s ministry:
"The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we don’t need them, they may die. Therefore compulsory vaccination and German health services are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable. They may use contraceptives or practice abortion—the more the better. Education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up to 100…. Every educated person is a future enemy. Religion we leave to them as a means of diversion. As for food they won’t get any more than is absolutely necessary. We are the masters. We come first."
"October 25, 1942, Bräutigam dared to pinpoint the Nazi mistakes in Russia.
"With the inherent instinct of the Eastern peoples [Bräutigam continued], the primitive man soon found out that for Germany the slogan “Liberation from Bolshevism” was only a pretext to enslave the Eastern peoples according to her own methods… The worker and peasant soon perceived that Germany did not regard them as partners of equal rights but considered them only as the objective of her political and economic aims… With unequaled presumption, we put aside all political knowledge and… treat the peoples of the occupied Eastern territories as “Second-Class Whites” to whom Providence has merely assigned the task of serving as slaves for Germany…"
"It is no longer a secret from friend or foe that hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners of war have died of hunger or cold in our camps… We now experience the grotesque picture of having to recruit millions of laborers from the occupied Eastern territories after prisoners of war have died of hunger like flies…
"In the prevailing limitless abuse of the Slavic humanity, “recruiting” methods were used which probably have their origin only in the blackest periods of the slave traffic. A regular man hunt was inaugurated. Without consideration of health or age the people were shipped to Germany…"
"Our policy has forced both Bolshevists and Russian nationalists into a common front against us. The Russian fights today with exceptional bravery and self-sacrifice for nothing more or less than recognition of his human dignity."
The policy was set long before invasion, as in case of Poland and Czechoslovakia.
"The entire Baltic country will have to be incorporated into Germany… The Crimea has to be evacuated by all foreigners and settled by Germans only, [becoming] Reich territory… The Kola Peninsula will be taken by Germany because of the large nickel mines there. The annexation of Finland as a federated state should be prepared with caution… The Fuehrer will raze Leningrad to the ground and then hand it over to the Finns.
"The Baku oil fields, Hitler ordered, would become a “German concession” and the German colonies on the Volga would be annexed outright. When it came to a discussion as to which Nazi leaders would administer the new territory a violent quarrel broke out."
"There was also an argument on the best methods of policing the conquered Russian people. Hitler suggested the German police be equipped with armored cars. Goering doubted that they would be necessary. His planes could “drop bombs in case of riots,” he said."
"... Goering made clear in a speech to the Nazi commissioners for the occupied territories on August 6, 1942. “It used to be called plundering,” he said. “But today things have become more humane. In spite of that, I intend to plunder and to do it thoroughly.” On this, at least, he was as good as his word, not only in Russia but throughout Nazi-conquered Europe. It was all part of the New Order."
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THE NAZI PLUNDER OF EUROPE
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"Whenever you come across anything that may be needed by the German people, you must be after it like a bloodhound. It must be taken out… and brought to Germany."
"A great deal was taken out, not only in goods and services but in banknotes and gold. Whenever Hitler occupied a country, his financial agents seized the gold and foreign holdings of its national bank. That was a mere beginning. Staggering “occupation costs” were immediately assessed. By the end of February 1944, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, the Nazi Minister of Finance, put the total take from such payments at some 48 billion marks (roughly $12,000,000,000), of which France, which was milked heavier than any other conquered country, furnished more than half. By the end of the war, receipts from occupation assessments amounted to an estimated 60 billion marks ($15,000,000,000).
"France was forced to pay 31.5 billions of this total, its annual contributions of more than 7 billions coming to over four times the yearly sums which Germany had paid in reparations under the Dawes and Young plans after the first war—a tribute which had seemed such a heinous crime to Hitler. In addition the Bank of France was forced to grant “credits” to Germany totaling 4.5 billion marks and the French government to pay a further half billion in “fines.” At Nuremberg it was estimated that the Germans extracted in occupation costs and “credits” two thirds of Belgium’s national income and a similar percentage from the Netherlands. Altogether, according to a study by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Germany extracted in tribute from the conquered nations a total of 104 billion marks ($26,000,000,000).
"But the goods seized and transported to the Reich without even the formality of payment can never possibly be estimated. Figures kept pouring in at Nuremberg until they overwhelmed one; but no expert, so far as I know, was ever able to straighten them out and compute totals. In France, for example, it was estimated that the Germans carted off (as “levies in kind”) 9 million tons of cereals, 75 per cent of the total production of oats, 80 per cent of oil, 74 per cent of steel, and so on, for a grand total of 184.5 billion francs.
"Russia, devastated by warfare and German savagery, proved harder to milk. Nazi documents are full of reports of Soviet “deliveries.” In 1943, for example, 9 million tons of cereals, 2 million tons of fodder, 3 million tons of potatoes, 662,000 tons of meat were listed by the Germans among the “deliveries,” to which the Soviet Committee of Investigation added—for the duration of the occupation—9 million cattle, 12 million pigs, 13 million sheep, to mention a few items. But Russian “deliveries” proved much less than expected; the Germans calculated them as worth a net of only some 4 billion marks ($1,000,000,000).
"Everything possible was squeezed out of Poland by the greedy Nazi conquerors. “I shall endeavor,” said Dr. Frank, the Governor General, “to squeeze out of this province everything that is still possible to squeeze out.” This was at the end of 1942, and in the three years since the occupation he had already squeezed out, as he continually boasted, a great deal, especially in foodstuffs for hungry Germans in the Reich. He warned, however, that “if the new food scheme is carried out in 1943 a half-million people in Warsaw and its suburbs alone will be deprived of food.”"
Orders from Hitler -
"Poland can only be administered by utilizing the country through means of ruthless exploitation, deportation of all supplies, raw materials, machines, factory installations, etc., which are important for the German war economy, availability of all workers for work within Germany, reduction of the entire Polish economy to absolute minimum necessary for bare existence of the population, closing of all educational institutions, especially technical schools and colleges in order to prevent the growth of the new Polish intelligentsia. Poland shall be treated as a colony. The Poles shall be the slaves of the Greater German Reich.
"Rudolf Hess, the Nazi deputy Fuehrer, added that Hitler had decided that “Warsaw shall not be rebuilt, nor is it the intention of the Fuehrer to rebuild or reconstruct any industry in the Government General.”
"By decree of Dr. Frank, all property in Poland belonging not only to Jews but to Poles was subject to confiscation without compensation. Hundreds of thousands of Polish-owned farms were simply grabbed and handed over to German settlers. By May 31, 1943, in the four Polish districts annexed to Germany (West Prussia, Posen, Zichenau, Silesia) some 700,000 estates comprising 15 million acres were “seized” and 9,500 estates totaling 6.5 million acres “confiscated.” The difference between “seizure” and “confiscation” is not explained in the elaborate table prepared by the German “Central Estate Office,”13 and to the dispossessed Poles it must not have mattered.
"Even the art treasures in the occupied lands were looted, and, as the captured Nazi documents later revealed, on the express orders of Hitler and Goering, who thereby greatly augmented their “private” collections. The corpulent Reich Marshal, according to his own estimate, brought his own collection up to a value of 50 million Reichsmarks. Indeed, Goering was the driving force in this particular field of looting. Immediately upon the conquest of Poland he issued orders for the seizure of art treasures there and within six months the special commissioner appointed to carry out his command could report that he had taken over “almost the entire art treasury of the country.”
"But it was in France where the bulk of the great art treasures of Europe lay, and no sooner was this country added to the Nazi conquests than Hitler and Goering decreed their seizure. To carry out this particular plunder Hitler appointed Rosenberg, who set up an organization called Einsatzstab Rosenberg, and who was assisted not only by Goering but by General Keitel. Indeed one order by Keitel to the Army in France stated that Rosenberg “is entitled to transport to Germany cultural goods which appear valuable to him and to safeguard them there. The Fuehrer has reserved for himself the decision as to their use.”
"An idea of Hitler’s decision “as to their use” is revealed in a secret order issued by Goering on November 5, 1940, specifying the distribution of art objects being collected at the Louvre in Paris. They were “to be disposed of in the following way”:
"1. Those art objects about which the Fuehrer has reserved for himself the decision as to their use.
"2. Those… which serve the completion of the Reich Marshal’s [i.e., Goering’s] collection…
"4. Those… that are suited to be sent to German museums…"
"those art objects collected at the Jeu de Paume which are to go into the Fuehrer’s possession and those which the Reich Marshal claims for himself will be loaded into two railroad cars which will be attached to the Reich Marshal’s special train… to Berlin."
"Many more carloads followed. According to a secret official German report some 137 freight cars loaded with 4,174 cases of art works comprising 21,903 objects, including 10,890 paintings, made the journey from the West to Germany up to July 1944.18 They included works of, among others, Rembrandt, Rubens, Hals, Vermeer, Velazquez, Murillo, Goya, Vecchio, Watteau, Fragonard, Reynolds and Gainsborough. As early as January 1941, Rosenberg estimated the art loot from France alone as worth a billion marks.
"The plunder of raw materials, manufactured goods and food, though it reduced the occupied peoples to impoverishment, hunger and sometimes starvation and violated the Hague Convention on the conduct of war, might have been excused, if not justified, by the Germans as necessitated by the harsh exigencies of total war. But the stealing of art treasures did not help Hitler’s war machine. It was a case merely of avarice, of the personal greed of Hitler and Goering."
"It was in the plunder not of material goods but of human lives that the mercifully short-lived New Order will be longest remembered. Here Nazi degradation sank to a level seldom experienced by man in all his time on earth. Millions of decent, innocent men and women were driven into forced labor, millions more tortured and tormented in the concentration camps and millions more still, of whom there were four and a half million Jews alone, were massacred in cold blood or deliberately starved to death and their remains—in order to remove the traces—burned."
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Quoted from the last page of Afterword by the author, which he wrote for the thirtieth anniversary edition, dated May 1990:-
"People ask now: Have the Germans changed? Many in the West appear to believe so. I myself am not so sure, my view no doubt clouded by the personal experience of having lived and worked in Germany in the Nazi time. The truth is that no one really knows the answer to that crucial question. And quite understandably the nations that were former victims of German conquest do not want to take any chances again.
"Perhaps it will help too if the erring governments and the wondering people of this world will remember the dark night of Nazi terror and genocide that almost engulfed our world and that is the subject of this book. Remembrance of the past helps us to understand the present."
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October 13, 2017 - October 25, 2019. ..................................................................................................
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