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Hitler the Peacemaker
David L. Hoggan’s The Forced War
F. ROGER DEVLIN • DECEMBER 19, 2023
It took another 28 years for Hoggan’s book to appear in English, as Mark Weber explains in his Introduction to this new edition:
As he was finishing work on the manuscript, the author became embroiled in a dispute with Barnes, who pleaded with Hoggan to revise or remove a few troublesome passages that, in his view, were not adequately supported by the evidence. Hoggan, proud and somewhat temperamental, refused to budge. He also quarreled with Devin-Adair, the publisher that was preparing the book for release. Because these disputes were not resolved, Devin-Adair withdrew from the project. Eventually the Institute for Historical Review obtained the rights to the book. But a devastating arson attack on the IHR’s offices in July 1984, which destroyed the book’s layout and proof sheets, art work and other key files, delayed publication several more years.
The first English edition of The Forced War finally appeared in 1989. Despite his disagreements with a few of the author’s formulations, Harry Elmer Barnes said of the book: “it not only constitutes the first thorough study of the responsibility for the causes of the Second World War, but is likely to remain the definitive revisionist work on this subject for many years.” The 1989 edition has long been out of print. This new edition has been completely reset, with a new index, photographs, map, and Introduction, as well as corrections and expansions to the appendix, bibliography, and notes.
An important consequence of the First World War was the reappearance of a sovereign Poland on the map of Europe. The new state was unenviably located between Germany and Russia — two much larger powers with a combined population eight times its own. Under such circumstances, prudence dictated the cultivating of friendly relations with at least one of these two states as insurance against possible threats from the other. Long before independence was recovered in 1918, Polish nationalists had been debating whether a pro-German or pro-Russian policy would be in the country’s best interest. As Hoggan writes, a hostile Polish policy toward both neighbors “would have been like a canary seeking to devour two cats.”
Success in foreign relations requires adaptation to constantly changing circumstances, and the author credits Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the dominant figure in interwar Poland, with the necessary flexibility. In 1933, for example, the Marshal had considered a possible preventive war against a still-weak Germany, yet by the end of that year he had given his approval for a German-Polish non-aggression pact. In March 1935 he came out in opposition to efforts to challenge Hitler’s defiance of the Versailles Treaty, believing the time when Germany might have been dealt with through intimidation had passed.
Piłsudski died in May 1935, and Hoggan characterizes his successors as epigoni: lesser figures who sought to perpetuate the Marshal’s legacy but lacked his breadth of views. Polish foreign policy became the responsibility of Piłsudski’s longtime collaborator, Col. Józef Beck, who failed to display the Marshal’s flexibility in relations with Poland’s two powerful neighbors. Unalterably opposed to any collaboration with the Soviet Union, Beck would consistently reject all overtures from Hitler. This proved to be a luxury Poland could not afford.
Ten months after Piłsudski’s death, Hitler ordered German troops into the Rhineland, which had been demilitarized under the Versailles Treaty. Polish Foreign Minister Beck responded by summoning the French ambassador and offering to attack Germany from the east if France would agree to invade from the west. It was symptomatic of what was to come. As Hoggan explains, Beck
believed that the unpopular Polish regime would acquire tremendous prestige and advantages from a military victory over Germany. His attitude illustrates the deceptiveness of the friendship between Germany and Poland during these years, which on the Polish side was pure treachery, beneath the façade.
Though revealing, the incident proved inconsequential: The French were not interested. Beck covered his tracks by having the Polish news agency issue a pro-German statement the following day.
The Versailles Treaty of 1919 was a disaster for German-speaking Central Europe. It broke up the Austro-Hungarian Empire, leaving seven million Germans in a newly-constituted Austrian rump state none of them desired, and three million more within “Czechoslovakia,” a new multi-ethnic state dominated by the Czechs. Nearly all these people would have preferred to see their lands become part of Germany, but this was forbidden by the victorious powers.
The German state itself also suffered large punitive reductions in territory under Versailles and other post-war treaties, including the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by France, the Eupen district by Belgium, and northern Schleswig by Denmark. By far the greatest amount of territory, however, was lost to the new Polish state, including most of the provinces of Posen and West Prussia, along with the industrial region of East Upper Silesia. These regions amounted to more than 25,000 square miles — about the size of today’s Lithuania — and were home to over five million people, many of them German. The awarding of this land to Poland contravened the November 1918 armistice agreement under which Germany declared it would accept the results of self-determination in the German-Polish borderlands.
The agreement had also stipulated that Poland was to obtain access to the sea, a result which could have been achieved by granting her free harbor facilities in German ports. The Germans living there would have been glad to get the business. Instead, the Versailles Treaty assigned Poland political sovereignty over a corridor to the Baltic that cut the province of East Prussia off from the rest of Germany — without bothering to ask the local inhabitants what they thought.
Danzig, a medium-sized provincial German port city, was subjected to what Hoggan calls “the least defensible territorial provision of the Versailles Treaty.” Against the will of its citizens, it was detached from Germany and placed under the administration of the League of Nations. Geographically, it lay sandwiched between East Prussia and the Polish Corridor, which had the effect of exciting Polish covetousness while also preventing its satisfaction. In short, no one was happy with the arrangement.
In November 1937, Germany and Poland concluded a pact regarding their ethnic minorities in one another’s countries. It prohibited forced assimilation and restrictions on use of the mother tongue, protected peaceful ethnic associations and schools, and forbade policies of economic discrimination. The pact was especially welcome to ethnic Germans in Poland, who had been treated harshly after 1918. Hundreds of thousands had already migrated to the Reich.
It is difficult to get an accurate count of the total number of Germans living in interwar Poland at any given time. The author notes, “A critical study of the 1931 Polish census, which contained startling inaccuracies in several directions, showed that the given figure of 727,000 Germans was short of the real figure by more than 400,000.” It is even more difficult to get an idea of how many Poles lived in Germany; the German census allowed native speakers of Polish to declare themselves ethnically German if they wished, resulting in a count of fewer than 15,000 Poles in the entire country. The German government estimated there ought to have been 260,000 by objective criteria, while the Polish government alleged there were one and a half million! This last claim is certainly fanciful: Hoggan describes the German minority in Poland as “much larger.”
Unfortunately, the 1937 agreement on minorities was ignored by the Polish authorities, and subsequent months saw conditions for the German minority in Poland deteriorate rather than improve. German schools were closed and Poland’s land reform program was carried out in a manner heavily biased against German interests. In 1938, for example, Germans had to supply two-thirds of the land for confiscation and redistribution. The German government forbade newspapers to report on anti-German incidents for fear of damaging diplomatic relations with Poland.
In spite of all this, a leading member of the Polish Parliament publicly declared in April 1938 that conditions were far worse for Poles in Germany. The speech “had a disastrous effect on the attitude of the Polish masses toward the Germans in Poland, and the theme of the speech was constantly reiterated in the Polish popular press.” The German Ministry of the Interior investigated the claim and found no more than a few instances of “discrimination against Polish students and restrictions on the distribution of books by Polish cooperatives.” But this had no effect on ordinary Poles, and anti-German hostility grew.
The year 1938 witnessed two stunning diplomatic victories for Adolf Hitler which temporarily relegated German-Polish relations to the background: the annexation of Austria in March and that of the Sudetenland, or German-speaking periphery of the Czech lands, in October. Without a shot being fired, two of the Versailles Treaty’s punitive anti-German provisions were undone and ten million Germans brought into the German state.
As demonstrated by British historian A. J. P. Taylor in The Origins of the Second World War (1961), and contrary to the picture painted at the Nuremburg Trials, these were not preplanned stages in a program of conquest, but opportunistic responses to events over which Hitler had little control. For example, as late as four days before the Anschluss, or the annexation of Austria on March 12, 1938, Hitler had no plans for such an action and no idea it was going to occur. The previous month he had met with Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg who, in Hoggan’s words,
agreed to cease persecuting Austrian National Socialists, to admit the National Socialist Austrian leader, [Arthur] Seyss-Inquart, to the Cabinet as Minister of the Interior, and to permit Hitler to broadcast a speech to Austria in return for a Schuschnigg speech to Germany.
The Austrian leader later regretted these concessions and began to consider how to repudiate them. On March 9, 1938, he announced a plebiscite on the future of Austria in just four days’ time. Voting would not to be anonymous, and “a vote-of-confidence question in Schuschnigg was to be phrased in terms as confusing and misleading as possible.” The breathtaking speed of the events which followed resulted from Schuschnigg’s insistence on holding his plebiscite within such a short time.
Schuschnigg was informed by Seyss-Inquart on March 11, 1938, at 10:00 a.m., that he must agree within one hour to revoke the fraudulent plebiscite, and agree to a fair and secret-ballot plebiscite within three to four weeks, on the question of whether Austria should remain independent or be reunited with the rest of Germany. Otherwise the German Army would occupy Austria. The failure of a reply within the specified time produced a new ultimatum demanding that Seyss-Inquart succeed Schuschnigg as Chancellor of Austria.
The German army entered Austrian territory to install Seyss-Inquart, and the Austrian public’s ecstatic reaction convinced Hitler to simply annex the country the following day.
The Czech crisis later that year presented important analogies to what had happened in Austria. At Versailles, the Czech leaders had assured the victorious powers that they intended to give their new state of Czechoslovakia a Swiss-style decentralized constitution involving a loose confederation between the various nationalities. What they went on to create was a kind of Czech empire in which their own group wielded power over all the others, Slovaks included. Accordingly, the annexation of Austria produced wild excitement among three million disaffected Sudeten Germans. By the end of March, their leader, Konrad Heinlein, was “pleading for the curtailment of all propaganda efforts to arouse the Sudeten people who were already too much aroused.” Heinlein collaborated with the German leadership to formulate a list of demands which he announced on April 24.
The Czech leadership was placed in an awkward position, and on May 21 they made a tactical blunder not unlike Schuschnigg’s announcement of a fraudulent plebiscite: They ordered partial mobilization based on a false accusation that German troops were concentrating on the Czech border. They hoped that “the resulting emotional confusion would commit the British and the French to the Czech position before a policy favoring concessions to the Sudeten Germans could be implemented.” This did not happen, and British military experts soon determined there were no hostile German troop concentrations. The fiasco led to Hitler’s decision to force the Sudeten issue that same year.
A British fact-finding mission to Czechoslovakia
completed its labors early in September 1938, and reported that the main difficulty in the Sudeten area had been the disinclination of the Czechs to grant reforms. This development was accompanied by the final rupture of negotiations between the Sudeten German and Czech leaders. It was evident that the crisis was close at hand.
The Czech and German leaders traded defiant messages, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made two abortive efforts to intercede with Hitler on September 15 and 23-24. Hitler was determined to resolve the matter militarily on October 1. However, on September 28 Italy launched a last-minute mediation effort to which Hitler agreed.
The British Ambassador was able to telephone London at 3:15 p.m. that Hitler wished to invite Chamberlain, [French Prime Minister] Daladier, and Mussolini to Munich the next day to discuss a peaceful solution of the Czech problem. The British Prime Minister received this news while delivering a tense speech to the House of Commons on the imminent danger of war. When he announced the news of Hitler’s invitation and his intention to accept, he received the greatest ovation in the history of the British Parliament.
The events which followed have been among the most misrepresented and mythologized of the twentieth century. At the Munich Conference, Britain and France declined to go to war over the Sudetenland, and all peripheral districts of the Czech lands with a German population of over 50% were assigned to Germany. Hoggan writes:
Never was an agreement more clearly in the interest of all Powers concerned. Great Britain had won time to continue to gain on the German lead in aerial armament. France extricated herself from the danger of a desperate war after having abandoned her military hegemony in Europe in 1936 [when she permitted Germany’s occupation of the Rhineland]. Italy was spared the danger of involvement in a war when she was woefully unprepared. Germany won a great bloodless victory in her program of peaceful territorial revision. By resisting the temptation to fight merely because she had the momentary military advantage, she increased her stature and prestige.
Contrary to legend, there was never any split within the British leadership, either at the time of the Munich Conference or later, between the advocates of craven “appeasement” and manly resistance to “Nazi aggression.” Britain faced no “Nazi aggression.” As an American embassy official in Berlin noted that same year, “an English-German understanding is Hitler’s first principle of diplomacy in 1938, just as it was in 1934, or in 1924 when he wrote Mein Kampf.”
An anti-German stance predominated within the British Conservative Party at this time, including among those later referred to contemptuously as “appeasers.” The only serious disagreement focused on whether to go to war with Germany immediately or to play for time. Chamberlain once remarked that “one should select a favorable hour to stop Hitler rather than to permit the German leader to pick both the time and the place for the conflict” — hardly the view of a man willing to sacrifice all other considerations to the maintenance of peace.
As Hoggan notes, one reason Britain acquiesced in the Munich settlement was her perceived need to beef up aerial munitions before the final showdown that was already being planned. She did so, in fact, over the next 11 months. Whereas Germany possessed mainly light and medium bombers for tactical operations in support of ground troops, the British armaments program emphasized heavy bombers that were capable of attacking civilian objectives far behind the front. British targeting of Germany’s women and children was planned at least as early as 1936.
The concept of the “balance of power” has its roots in the politics of Renaissance Italy, where the various cities formed alliances to prevent the Duchy of Milan from gaining supremacy; this diplomatic strategy was cast into theoretical form by Machiavelli. But as Hoggan notes, balance-of-power thinking cannot be successfully applied in all situations. In Italy, the strategy became obsolete once large outside powers such as Spain and France intervened in the peninsula’s politics. Moreover, even where best applicable, the balance-of-power principle involves a peculiar and questionable moral vision: Any state that grows in power and prosperity beyond the level of its neighbors is cast into the role of enemy regardless of its domestic institutions or foreign policy. Success is treated as tantamount to aggression. In Hoggan’s words, the balance of power policy
substituted for a healthy pursuit of common interests among states the tortuous attempt to undermine or even destroy any state which obtained a leading position [and] demanded otherwise inexplicable shifts of position when it was evident one state had been overestimated or another underestimated.
The balance-of-power model was introduced to England by Thomas Cromwell in the time of Henry VIII. Hoggan includes a brief historical sketch of subsequent British diplomatic and military history from that period through the early twentieth century, demonstrating that a balance-of-power policy usually — although not uninterruptedly — inspired the foreign policy of British leaders over a period of four centuries. The British opposed France in the Age of Napoleon because she was the largest continental power. When leadership passed to Prussia and Germany later in the century, British policy shifted accordingly. Then, following the First World War, France briefly reemerged as the leading power on the European continent. This was not because she had achieved any new increment to her own power, but simply by default following the collapse of all her potential rivals: Germany lay defeated, Austria-Hungary was dismembered, and Russia was reduced to famine by Bolshevism and civil war. So when France occupied Germany’s Ruhr Valley in 1923 in an attempt to collect war reparations under the Versailles Treaty — to which Britain herself had agreed — the British leadership came out in opposition!
It was thus almost inevitable that Britain would sour on Germany in the 1930s as she gradually regained a position as the dominant power in Europe. Objections to National Socialism or Hitler’s Jewish policy were more pretext that motive; Hoggan notes that, although the world has since forgotten it, Poland had anti-Jewish policies in some respects harsher than Germany’s during these years.
The United States and the Soviet Union played a role in the Europe of the 1930s not unlike that of France and Spain in Renaissance Italy — outside powers whose intervention rendered inherited balance-of-power considerations anachronistic. Yet, Britain was not alone in badly underestimating the threat from Bolshevik Russia. It seemed incredible to most observers that a state with such an irrational economic system, and barely able to feed its own people, could constitute a serious military threat to the entire European continent. In 1935, one leading British politician publicly surmised that the Soviet Union would be unable to wage a war of aggression for 50 years! Moreover, Stalin had just shot himself in the foot by purging 25,000 officers from the Red Army. No one predicted that the Soviet military would soon reveal itself as one of the greatest killing machines in human history. As Hoggan emphasizes, a defensive alliance between Germany and Poland would have represented a powerful bulwark against Communist expansion. But few outside the German leadership perceived the desirability of such an arrangement at the time.
And so the British persisted with their futile and dangerous policy of hostility toward Germany.
Resolution of the Czech crisis led Hitler to believe the time was right for a concrete offer to settle German-Polish differences. On October 24, 1938 his Foreign Minister, Joachim Ribbentrop, conveyed his proposal to the Polish ambassador. It required Poland to acquiesce in Germany’s annexation of Danzig and permit construction of a highway and railway transit route linking East Prussia to the rest of Germany. (Hitler privately indicated to Ribbentrop that, if necessary to arrive at an agreement, he would be prepared to give up the rail link.) In exchange,
Poland would be granted a permanent free port in Danzig and the right to build her own highway and rail road to the port. The entire Danzig area would be a permanent free market for Polish goods on which no German customs duties would be levied. Germany would take the unprecedented step of recognizing and guaranteeing the existing German-Polish frontier.
Hoggan considers this last offer especially generous: Hitler “was prepared to pay a high price for Polish friendship. The renunciation of every piece of German territory lost to Poland since 1918 would have been unthinkable to the leaders of the Weimar Republic.” The British ambassador in Berlin noted that “of all Germans, Hitler is the most moderate so far as Danzig and the Corridor are concerned.”
Nor was this an isolated case: Hitler had already renounced Alsace-Lorraine, and viewed the loss of South Tyrol as the price of his friendship with the Duce. He had long maintained it would be childish to insist on the return of every square inch of territory that had ever been German. What he sought was a compromise between the entirety of German-speaking territory and the punitive losses imposed by the victors at Versailles.
Beck adopted delaying tactics for nearly five months, constantly putting off a definite response to Hitler’s proposals. Particularly successful with his German interlocutors was his pretense that adverse Polish public opinion made a final settlement difficult. The German Chancellor was patient and set no deadline.
Meanwhile, conditions for the German minority in Poland continued to deteriorate. Increasing numbers of Germans were being sentenced to prison for alleged remarks such as “the Führer would have to straighten things out here.” Mass anti-German demonstrations and boycotts of German businesses became common, but the Polish government looked the other way. In February 1939, contrary to previous Polish assurances, Germans were made to supply 71% of the acreage for Poland’s annual land reform measures, virtually completing the expropriation of German holdings.
In the tiny industrial region of Teschen, which Poland had acquired from the Czechs following the Munich Conference, German-language schools were closed and parents threatened with unemployment if they did not send their children to Polish schools. German doctors and lawyers were forbidden to practice unless they learned Polish within three months. Germans’ assets were frozen and their pensions and state salaries reduced. About 20% of the German population fled the district within the first month of Polish occupation, and emergency camps had to be built in Silesia to house refugees.
Reports of these events began appearing in German provincial newspapers, stirring fierce resentment among ordinary Germans. Hitler moved swiftly to impose press controls, declaring that it was his policy “to release nothing unfavorable to Poland; this also applies to incidents involving the German minority.” Representatives of the Teschen Germans travelled to the Foreign Office in Berlin, but their complaints were rejected; the government was unwilling to jeopardize its prospects of an agreement with Poland regarding Danzig and the Corridor.
Due to Beck’s delaying tactics, the winter of 1938-39 passed amid friendly but meaningless diplomatic contacts until a new series of events triggered open Polish rejection and British intervention in March. Perhaps the most interesting episode in Hoggan’s narrative of the intervening months is Prime Minister Chamberlain’s visit to Italy from January 11 through 14. It is less important for its immediate consequences than for what it reveals about the thinking of the British leadership.
Accompanying Chamberlain to Rome was British Foreign Secretary Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax. In Hoggan’s telling, Halifax was the individual most responsible for the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, and he dominates the subsequent narrative. Hoggan describes him as “one of the most self-assured, ruthless, clever and self-righteous diplomats the world has ever seen.” In his maiden speech to the House of Commons in 1910, Halifax “denied that all men are created equal” and “called on the British people to remain true to their calling of a ‘superior race’ within the British Empire.” Despite having been born with a withered left arm, he participated in some battles of the First World War. He had no patience with conscientious objectors. In 1918 he was involved in organizing a letter to the Prime Minister demanding a hard line with the defeated Germans. Between the wars he held many important government posts, including six years as Viceroy of India. By 1935 he had become an important voice in the conduct of British diplomacy. A champion of the balance-of-power policy, he viewed war with Germany as necessary following Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland in 1936. He became Chamberlain’s Foreign Secretary in February 1938. Regarding the motives of his anti-German belligerence, the author has this to say:
It was for the prestige of Great Britain rather for such mundane considerations as national security or immediate British interests that Halifax became a proponent of war. [He] did not propose to tolerate the existence in 1939 of a German Reich more prosperous and more influential than the Hohenzollern Empire which had been destroyed in 1918.
According to Hoggan, Chamberlain took the lead in determining British foreign policy through the Czech crisis, but Halifax subsequently enjoyed a free hand.
The two men arrived in Rome on January 11, 1939, and their first meeting with Mussolini took place the same day. Mussolini stated that a new world war could destroy civilization, and he deplored the failure of the Four Munich Powers to cooperate more closely to preserve peace. He also said he favored arms limitations.
The following day, Chamberlain turned the discussion to Germany:
He claimed to be impressed by rumors of sinister German intentions. He had heard that Germany was planning to establish an independent Ukraine, and to attack Great Britain, France, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Mussolini assured the British leaders that German armaments were defensive, and that Hitler had no plans for an independent Ukraine or for attacks on the various countries which Chamberlain had mentioned. He added that Germany desired peace. Chamberlain disagreed. He declared that German arms were more than sufficient to deal with attacks from countries immediately adjacent to Germany, and that hence the Germans must be harboring aggressive plans. He claimed that Great Britain, on the other hand, was merely concerned with defending herself from the German menace.
Following a dinner at the British Embassy the next day, Chamberlain repeated to the Italian leader
that he distrusted Hitler, and that he remained unconvinced by Mussolini’s arguments that the German armament program was defensive in scope. He hoped to make Mussolini uneasy by referring to a rumor that Germany had launched special military preparations in the region near the Italian frontier [a claim reminiscent of the Czech hoax the previous May]. He assured Mussolini categorically that Great Britain and France, in contrast to 1938, were now prepared to fight Germany. . . . Chamberlain complained of “feverish armament” in Germany, and alleged German offensive plans. Mussolini, in denying such plans existed, placed primary emphasis on the point that German defensive requirements should be considered in relation to the Russian armament campaign. It is significant that there is no mention of this point in the British record.
The Italian leader pointed to the Westwall (or “Siegfried Line”) along Germany’s frontier with France and Belgium as an indication of her armament’s defensive nature. Chamberlain responded that if Hitler was sincere in his desire for peace, he ought to speak of it publicly. An astonished Mussolini asked if Chamberlain had missed Hitler’s recent New Year’s address in which he had done just that. Wanting to allay British suspicions of Germany, Mussolini proposed a general disarmament conference as soon as the Spanish Civil War ended. Chamberlain displayed no interest.
The British goal for these talks, which were agreed to beforehand between Halifax and Chamberlain, was to intimidate Mussolini and discourage him from standing by Germany when war came. They were successful, although this did not become clear for several months. For his part, Mussolini was deeply frustrated and understood that Germany was now in danger of a British attack.
A few days later, Halifax applied similar treatment to American President Franklin Roosevelt, writing to him of “a large number of reports from various reliable sources which throw a most disquieting light on Hitler’s intentions.” He claimed that Hitler intended to destroy the Western powers in a surprise attack before moving on to the East, adding some colorful rhetoric about “Hitler’s mental condition, his insensate rage against Great Britain and his megalomania.” It was impossible to lay such talk on too thickly with the bellicose American President; anyone in his entourage who did not declare Hitler insane was “virtually ostracized.”
During February and early March 1939, a rift developed between the Czechs and Slovaks in what was left of Czechoslovakia. The Czech-dominated Prague government insisted on stationing Czech troops in Slovakia and Slovak troops in the Czech lands, while the Slovaks wanted their boys back home and the Czechs off their territory; financial differences and greater Slovak sympathy for the Germans were also points of contention. A crisis arrived on March 9, when the Prague government dismissed the four principle Slovak ministers from the local government in the Slovak capital of Bratislava. Fighting in the streets ensued, and on March 14 Slovakia declared independence.
Germany quickly extended diplomatic recognition to the new state. Hitler then decided to occupy the remaining Czech lands — in part to prevent war between Czechs and Slovaks, and in part because of the Czechs’ continuing anti-German policies. On the evening of March 14, Czech President Emil Hácha travelled to Berlin. He made a plea for the continuation of Czech independence and offered to reduce the army. Hitler rejected this, ordering German troops into the Czech lands the next morning. Hácha telephoned Prague to advise against resistance.
On March 16, the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia was proclaimed. Formal German military rule lasted just one month, until April 16. Hoggan observes that Hitler “was willing to grant the Czechs the autonomy they had persistently refused to give the Sudeten Germans.” President Hácha appointed a new Czech government on April 27, but the departments of Foreign Affairs and Defense were dissolved.
Contrary to a widespread legend, Britain extended no guarantee to the Czechs, either at the Munich Conference or subsequently, so their failure to intervene in March 1939 did not constitute a “betrayal.” Hitler later explained to the British ambassador that “the protectorate in Bohemia-Moravia had been a necessity ‘for the moment,’ but that, as far as he was concerned, the area in the future could become anything, provided it was not a bastion against Germany.” Hoggan even makes this extraordinary claim: “It was evident within a few weeks after the proclamation of the Protectorate . . . that the new regime enjoyed considerable popularity among the Czechs.”
In the larger context of European politics, the significance of the final Czechoslovak crisis of March 1939 lay in providing the occasion for Britain to proclaim her hostile intentions toward Germany openly. On the evening of March 15, Halifax told the German ambassador that his country’s actions “implied a rejection of good relations with Great Britain. He also insisted that Germany was ‘seeking to establish a position in which they could by force dominate Europe, and, if possible, the world.” As Hoggan notes, the British had previously done everything possible to create the impression that the future of Czechoslovakia was a matter of perfect indifference to them. Now they declared that events there had convinced them Hitler was out to conquer the world.
Halifax then organized “one of the most fantastic intrigues of modern diplomacy.” A German trade delegation happened to be visiting Romania at this time to negotiate a perfectly ordinary commercial treaty. On March 17, at Halifax’s prodding, Romania’s ambassador to Britain declared that this delegation had presented an ultimatum to Romania. Coming on the heels of the occupation of Prague, this sensational claim provoked “bewilderment, anxiety, and outspoken hostility toward Germany” among the British public. Denials quickly arrived from Romania itself, but the British leadership managed to keep the story going for several days. Halifax even made an absurd appeal to the Soviet Union to help defend Romania from “German aggression” — to the consternation of the Romanian government, which was far more anxious about Soviet Russia than about Germany.
Also on March 17, Prime Minister Chamberlain was preparing to give an address on British domestic affairs in Birmingham. Halifax induced him to substitute the text of a belligerent speech on Germany:
The role assigned by Halifax to Prime Minister Chamberlain at Birmingham was one of outraged innocence. Chamberlain agreed to present himself as the victim of German duplicity, who had awakened at last in a great rage to admit he had been duped. [He] solemnly declared that he would never believe Hitler again. Chamberlain warned his listeners that Hitler might be embarking on an attempt to conquer the world.
Three days later, completing Britain’s diplomatic volte face, Halifax “informed Paris, Moscow, and Warsaw that he wished to have an ironclad military pact of Great Britain, France, Russia, and Poland against Germany.” There were many obstacles to the pact Halifax desired, however: France wanted peace, the Poles rejected any agreement with Russia, and the Soviet leaders replied noncommittally.
Meanwhile, Poland had also decided to come out into the open against Germany. On March 23 Beck conferred with military leaders, who instantly issued orders for a partial mobilization. This brought 334,000 new soldiers into the armed forces, more than doubling the strength of the Polish army. The same day Beck had a prominent journalist arrested for advocating a German-Polish agreement.
Three days later, on March 26, Poland’s ambassador in Berlin delivered a note categorically rejecting the proposals that had been pending since the previous October. Germany was warned that Poland would fight to prevent the return of Danzig. The most destructive war in human history was to be triggered by a dispute over a city of 400,000 inhabitants.
War fever began to grip Poland. Military leaders made delusional claims that their ill-equipped forces were superior to those of Germany, and planned for a direct assault on Berlin. An anti-German pressure group drew thousands of participants to a public meeting in Polish West Prussia at which speakers bitterly denounced the Germans. Afterwards, bands of Poles roamed the streets, assaulting any Germans they came across.
By this time, Halifax understood that an anti-German alliance that included both Poland and Russia was an impossibility, at least for the time being. He determined to go ahead with plans for an alliance with Poland as its only Eastern member. As Hoggan wryly notes, it might have been possible to choose Russia over a lesser power such as Poland, but this would not have gotten Halifax the war he sought.
On March 31, Halifax announced in Parliament that Britain was extending a unilateral guarantee to Poland. It was not limited to cases of aggression, but would be valid even if Poland attacked Germany. Observers noted that this was the first time in history Britain had abandoned to an outside power the decision as to whether she would go to war. As Hoggan notes, “it was the most provocative move that Halifax could have made under the circumstances, and it was the step most likely to produce another European war.” A few days later, he privately admitted to the American ambassador that neither Hitler nor Mussolini wanted war. All the breathless public statements about “German aggression” were a hoax meant to deceive the public.
To summarize: In less than three weeks following Czechoslovakia’s final crisis, the entire European continent had been brought into a state of high tension by the actions of Halifax and Beck.
Hitler’s behavior during these critical days was cautious. Even the final rejection of his proposals by the Poles on March 26 did not make him despair of an eventual diplomatic settlement, and his military men were baffled that they still did not have permission to draw up plans for a possible campaign in Poland. Only in April did Hitler finally allow this. Hoggan writes:
Polish provocation of Germany after March 31, 1939, was frequent and extreme, and Hitler soon had more than a sufficient justification to go to war with Poland on the basis of traditional practices among the nations. Hitler, who was usually very prompt and decisive in conducting German policy [cf. the Austrian crisis], showed considerable indecision before he finally decided to act. He did not abandon his hope for a negotiated settlement with Poland until he realized that the outlook was completely hopeless.
We shall skip somewhat lightly over events between this point and the final August crisis, although Hoggan treats them in more detail.
Perhaps the most important landmark was Beck’s chauvinistic speech to the Polish legislature on May 5. Beck claimed that the Versailles Treaty’s arrangements for Germany in the East had been fair and just, and therefore Hitler had no grounds for proposing any changes; that his offer to recognize the existing frontier with Poland was worthless; that Germany had not offered one concession to Poland, but merely presented demands; that Hitler had sought to impose a time limit on negotiations; that he was deliberately seeking to humiliate Poland and exclude her from the Baltic; and that his proposals were an assault on Poland’s fundamental honor and an effort to degrade her into a mere vassal of Germany. Beck even made a stunning claim that the territory of the Corridor “is an ancient Polish land, with an insignificant percentage of German colonists.” In short, the speech was, in Hoggan’s words, “studded with impudent lies from beginning to end.” But ordinary Poles did not know this, and the country erupted in a patriotic frenzy. Congratulatory telegrams poured into Beck’s office, and millions of Poles were now single-mindedly disposed to go to war against Germany.
Predictably, the situation of Germans in Poland became alarming. Men were beaten for speaking German in public, mobs destroyed German-owned buildings, and throughout the country Germans were threatened: “If war comes, you will all be hanged.” Polish authorities either denied such things were happening or blamed Hitler for them.
Poland based its military planning on what Hoggan calls “the disastrous and false assumption that there would be a major French offensive against Germany.” British leaders also privately considered the participation of France as an essential precondition for their launching of hostilities against Germany, although this had not been made clear in their guarantee to Poland. And France had never agreed to any such thing. French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet privately told Prime Minister Édouard Daladier during these months that
an Anglo-French war against Germany was quite unnecessary, and that he would prefer to resign than to have any part in the launching of such a disastrous conflict. Daladier assured Bonnet that he sympathized with his attitude, and urged him to remain at his post and continue the fight for peace.
Meanwhile, neither Britain nor France did anything to remedy the military unpreparedness of the Poles, who suffered a ten-to-one disadvantage in fighter aircraft and a 12-to-one disadvantage in armored vehicles as compared to Germany. The only beneficiary of the situation was Soviet Russia, which hoped for a conflict between Germany and the Western powers that would exhaust these “capitalist powers” and create conditions favorable for the expansion of Communism. Halifax continued to campaign diplomatically for Soviet support during these months, but his efforts were clumsy and ineffectual.
The ”Pact of Steel” between Germany and Italy, announced with great fanfare on May 22, was less significant than it appeared at the time; it did not formally require Italy to go to war at Germany’s side. Hoggan dismisses it as a “fair-weather alliance.”
On August 12, a Soviet chargé d’affaires called at the German Foreign Office to announce that Stalin wished to arrive at an understanding with Germany about Poland and Russo-German relations. Dilatory diplomatic contacts continued for over a week until, on the 21st, Hitler dispatched a personal telegram to Stalin requesting that Foreign Minister Ribbentrop be received in Moscow within two days. Stalin duly invited him for August 23.
Hitler’s coming triumph in obtaining a Soviet agreement was undercut on August 18 by an Italian diplomatic blunder: Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano told the British Ambassador that Italy “has not agreed” to support Germany in the event of war. This is what most observers had taken the May Pact of Steel to imply. When Halifax received word of Ciano’s statement, he hastened to inform British diplomatic missions abroad that Italian defection from the alliance with Germany was a certainty. For extra assurance, he dispatched a message to Rome two days later warning that Britain would attack Italy immediately with most of her armed forces if she joined Germany as an ally in any future war.
The effect of Ciano’s remark on France was more decisive still. Indeed, Hoggan believes “it is reasonably certain that France, and consequently Great Britain, would not have attacked Germany” had it not been for Ciano’s indiscretion. At a French Defense Council meeting the previous March, the Commander-in-Chief of France’s armed forces, Gen. Maurice Gamelin, had confessed that the country was unprepared for a conflict with Germany. At the next such meeting, on August 23, he said France’s military position had improved. According to Hoggan, the only conceivable excuse he could have had for saying this was the new assurance of Italian neutrality.
By mid-August, Polish authorities were proceeding to mass arrests of their German minority. On the 16th, they incarcerated the most prominent German leader in Poland on espionage charges, but he was released following British intervention. He proceeded to Danzig, where he met with German authorities on the 22nd:
[He] spoke of a disaster “of inconceivable magnitude” since the early months of 1939. The last Germans had been dismissed from their jobs without benefit of unemployment relief, and hunger and privation were stamped on [their] faces. German welfare agencies, cooperatives, and trade associations had been destroyed. The mass arrests, deportations, mutilations, and beatings of the past few weeks surpassed anything which had happened before.
By this point, Polish authorities were responding to criticism of their actions with sweeping charges of German mistreatment of their own Polish minority. But such charges remained entirely general, whereas German press reports of anti-German actions in Poland included names, dates, and details. Polish diplomats in Berlin admitted privately that the lack of detail in Polish accusations was due to the difficulty of finding specific incidents.
Despite Britain’s March 31 guarantee to Poland, Hitler had long found it difficult to believe that, when push came to shove, the British leadership would plunge the entire European continent into a war over Danzig. He hoped the approaching conflict might be limited to Germany and Poland. He was strengthened in this hope by reports he received from the German Foreign Office on August 16. One, originating with a friendly French journalist, rested on what Hoggan calls “the obvious fact that Great Britain would not attack Germany without French support,” combined with French Foreign Minister Bonnet’s determination not to allow France to be drawn into a war on behalf of Poland. A second was based on claims of “lively opposition to war with Germany within the British Air Ministry.” This report’s source conceded that both Britain and France might declare war, but would subsequently be willing to conclude peace following the Polish phase of hostilities.
Accordingly, on the evening of August 22, Hitler told German military leaders he was convinced that Britain would not actually attack Germany. Britain, he said, “had no need to wage war and consequently would not wage war.” Hoggan observes that Hitler “attributed a far more rational basis to British policy than the facts warranted.”
At this same conference, Hitler ordered plans for “Operation White,” military action against Poland, to be completed by the 26th. He refrained from issuing the final attack order.
The next day, August 23, the “Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact” was signed in Moscow. Contrary to popular belif, this agreement was not an alliance, but a mere delimitation of German and Russian spheres of interest. In effect, the two powers drew a line through the map of Eastern Europe, agreeing that Germany would not interfere with Russian actions to the east of it, while Russia would not interfere with German actions to the west. Much of Poland lay east of the line, at the mercy of the Bolsheviks.
Hitler hoped the new pact would cause British leaders to realize the impossible situation their Polish ally was in, and seek a compromise to spare her inevitable disaster. They would surely have done so had they given a damn about Poland, but in fact they were sacrificing Poland to reach their true objective of war with Germany. The same day the German-Soviet agreement was signed in Moscow, the British ambassador delivered to Hitler a letter from Prime Minister Chamberlain. It warned that Britain would support Poland with military force regardless of the new pact. Chamberlain conceded that Germany might well subdue Poland, but added that Britain would fight on regardless.
Even this letter did not disabuse Hitler entirely of his hopes of making the British see reason. His reply that same day emphasized the suffering of Germans in Poland, and pleaded with Britain’s leadership to consider the situation from the standpoint of humanity rather than abstract considerations of policy. He blamed Polish intransigence on Britain’s guarantee, and closed with the observation that war would mean the defeat of his lifelong ambition to promote Anglo-German friendship and understanding.
On the night of August 24, on Hitler’s orders, Ribbentrop telephoned Ciano to request a definite statement of Italian intentions. Ciano replied that Germany would receive it the next day.
August 25 was a busy day for Hitler. By early afternoon, he received his answer from Italy. The prospect of a frank repudiation of the German alliance proved unbearable to the Duce, so Ciano instead persuaded him to send the Germans a formal offer of support conditional upon Germany supplying Italy with impossibly large quantities of raw materials within an absurdly short time. Hitler received the telegram by early afternoon and immediately understood that it represented a refusal.
At 1:30 PM the British ambassador arrived to receive formal German proposals for an Anglo-German agreement. Germany wished, he explained, to follow up her treaty with Russia by concluding a treaty of friendship with Britain:
He was prepared to assume the greatest and most complex commitment on behalf of Great Britain that had ever been offered by any foreign leader. This commitment was no less than to place the entire power of the Reich at the disposal of the British for the defense of the British Empire at any point and any time. The British leaders themselves, of course, would be free to decide in any threatening situation when and if they needed this aid. Hitler believed that an arrangement of Anglo-German differences would create conditions of complete security for both Powers, and it was obvious that a drastic reduction of armaments would be immediately feasible. . . . The very last thing he could possibly desire was to turn Germany into nothing better than a military barracks.
The British ambassador relayed this offer to Halifax with the recommendation that Hitler be given an opportunity to demonstrate his good intentions.
Immediately following this meeting, Hitler gave the order to begin full-scale military operations against Poland the next morning at dawn. He hoped to minimize the danger of a wider conflict by settling accounts with the Poles while the impact of his alliance offer was fresh, and before Britain and France learned that Italy would not support him (not realizing they had learned this several days before he did).
Shortly before 3:00 PM, Polish telephone communications through Germany were interrupted by the military authorities. Beck interpreted this as part of a war of nerves rather than an indication that an attack was imminent, and Poland did not order full mobilization. By 3:05 PM, General Wilhelm Keitel had distributed all the necessary orders to the individual German army commanders. The German war machine was in motion.
Hitler anxiously awaited news from Britain. When it arrived at 5:00 PM, it was not what he anticipated. The German News Bureau announced that the British guarantee to Poland was about to be formalized as an Anglo-Polish alliance. Hitler’s optimism that Britain would avoid full-scale war on Poland’s behalf was finally starting to be shaken.
At 5:30 PM, the French ambassador arrived for a previously scheduled meeting. In the ensuing conversation (and possibly unaware Bonnet was opposed to intervention) he gave Hitler his “word of honor as a soldier that he had no doubt whatever that in the event of Poland’s being attacked, France would assist her with all the forces at her command.” Hitler’s confidence in the step he had taken was further shaken.
After this meeting, he summoned Ribbentrop:
Hitler complained that he had received two very bad pieces of news on this one difficult day. One was the defection of Italy, and the other was the conclusion of the Anglo-Polish Pact. Hitler was astonished that these two developments occurred in the wake of his treaty with the Soviet Union. He was sufficiently flexible to agree with Ribbentrop that his analysis of the Anglo-French position was probably wrong.
If so, his assumption that Poland could be fought without plunging the whole of Europe into war was also wrong. Although the attack order had already gone out, it was not yet irrevocable. Such a last-minute reversal was one of the hypothetical scenarios for which the German military had planned. The point of no return would not be reached until 9:30 that evening. Even so, plenty of confusion and failures of communication were possible in the event of a cancellation. As Hoggan observes, “the Bulgarians had stumbled into the Second Balkan War under similar circumstances in 1913, and suffered a crushing defeat.” Hitler faced an agonizing decision.
Mindful that his alliance offer to Britain might still have an effect, he summoned Gen. Keitel, and at 6:30 PM he ordered the attack on Poland suspended. Keitel instantly sent out the command that “the already started ‘Operation White’ will be stopped at 20:30 (8:30 PM) because of changed political conditions.” There were a few serious slips, but the Wehrmacht was more efficient than the Bulgarian army of 1913. Germany was pulled back from the brink.
On the morning of August 25, President Roosevelt had dispatched messages to Germany and Poland proposing a settlement by direct negotiation, arbitration, or mediation. This elicited a response from Polish President Ignacy Mościcki rejecting arbitration, but accepting in principle the prospect of negotiations. His statement remained airily general, however; he not only offered no concrete proposals, but suggested no time or place for talks. Hitler was justifiably suspicious of both Roosevelt and Mościcki’s intentions, putting more faith in the ability of Poland’s British allies to pressure her to come to the table. In fact, on the very day of President Mościcki’s remarks, Beck was telling America’s ambassador in Warsaw that Poland would take the initiative of declaring war on Germany if the Germans did not act soon.
As they waited for a response from London, the Germans worked out a new set of terms for negotiation with the Poles. These became known as the Marienwerder Proposals; they involved a plebiscite in the northern tip of the Corridor. Gdynia, a port 23 miles from Danzig that had been under construction by the Poles since 1920, was recognized by the Germans as indisputably Polish and was not included in the plebiscite area. In the event of a Polish plebiscite loss, she was to be granted a transit route to Gdynia similar to the route previously sought by the Germans. The total extent of the area involved in these new proposals amounted to only one-tenth of the territory Germany had surrendered to Poland and the League of Nations after the First World War:
The German government insisted again and again that these terms were formulated to offer a basis for unimpeded negotiations between equals rather than to constitute a series of demands which the Poles would be required to accept. There was nothing to prevent the Poles from presenting proposals of their own.
Hitler was also in correspondence with French Prime Minister Daladier during these days, who maintained that France “found it necessary to offer her support to Poland,” but insisted on his strong desire for peace. (As previously mentioned, Daladier’s Foreign Minister, Bonnet, opposed any French guarantee to Poland.)
France’s ambassador remarked to Hitler that
[a] war fought with modern arms would above all be a great tragedy for the women and children of Europe. [He] noted that these carefully calculated words produced a great effect on Hitler. There was a long pause, after which the German Chancellor observed pensively: “Yes, I have often thought of the women and children.”
The next day, Hitler extended a pledge to the French that in the event of hostilities, Germany would not take the initiative in the waging of war against enemy civilians. Hoggan remarks, “This pledge was later strictly observed. It was rendered inoperative by the indiscriminate British bombing campaign over Germany.”
A prominent role in these final days of peace was played by a Swedish engineer named Birger Dahlerus, a firm opponent of Anglo-German hostilities with numerous contacts in both Britain and Germany. Since early July he had been working, with Hitler’s knowledge and permission, as a private envoy between the British authorities and Germany’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring. Dahlerus conferred with Halifax in London on August 25 and 26. Halifax presented him with a personal letter to Göring recommending direct German negotiations with the Poles. (It might have been more pertinent to have addressed such a missive to the Poles.)
Dahlerus flew to Berlin on the afternoon of the 26th to deliver Halifax’s letter to Göring and have his first personal audience with Hitler. On the 27th he was back in London, where British leaders assured him that a formal reply to Hitler’s alliance offer would soon be made. The gist was to be that “an agreement for collaboration with Germany was acceptable in principle, but the British would continue to support the position taken by Poland in the Danzig issue.” Back in Berlin the same day, he conveyed this to Hitler, who was extremely pleased:
Hitler assured Dahlerus he would be willing to accept the British commitment to Poland once Germany had settled her own differences with the Poles. He believed the British would recognize that he had made an important concession when he ceased to regard their guarantee to Poland as an obstacle to an Anglo-German understanding. Hitler then raised the crucial point. He insisted it was necessary for the British to persuade the Poles to negotiate. Otherwise nothing would be accomplished, war would be inevitable, and a favorable opportunity for an Anglo-German understanding would be lost.
Hitler said he was prepared to accept an international guarantee of Poland as part of any settlement, and to deny support to any third power — including Italy — that came into conflict with Britain.
Göring instructed Dahlerus to inform the British authorities of three important points: first, of the German army’s military plans, specifically that they would be in their final positions for operations against Poland by the night of Aug 30-31; second, the substance of the Marienwerder Proposals, which had not yet been reduced to numbered articles; and third, a convenient neutral location for negotiations between Germany and Poland: a Swedish-owned yacht in the Baltic. Dahlerus conveyed this information in London on the afternoon of the 28th. Halifax’s reaction was revealing: He transmitted to Warsaw only the first point, about military plans.
Hitler assumed the British were exerting pressure on their Polish allies to negotiate during these critical days, but such was not the case. Halifax merely contacted the British ambassador in Warsaw — not the Poles themselves — on August 28 at 2:00 PM, three days after receiving Hitler’s offer. In Hoggan’s view, he might not have done even this without “constant prodding from Dahlerus.” Halifax referred to President Mościcki’s abstract claim to be open to negotiations in his reply to Roosevelt, adding that “Britain expected Poland to conduct herself accordingly.” The ambassador replied “nonchalantly” that “Beck was prepared to enter into direct negotiations at once.” It is doubtful whether he had even asked Beck, who maintained afterwards that the first direct appeal he received to renew negotiations with Germany only came “much later.” In short, the British brought no pressure whatever to bear on Poland.
Dahlerus returned to Berlin on the 28th to announce Halifax’s rejection of Hitler’s proposal for German defense of the British Empire, apparently regarding it as an insulting insinuation that the British were unable to defend it themselves. (Hoggan notes that the British had accepted the Japanese defense of her East Asian possessions as early as 1902.) Göring was disturbed by this development, but Hitler persisted in his confidence that Britain would bring the Poles to the negotiating table.
At 10:30 PM on the 28th, the British ambassador finally brought Hitler Halifax’s official response. Along with much verbiage about the approaching war being “a calamity without parallel in history,” the note made two points: first, that Britain would insist that any settlement of the controversy with Poland be subject to an international guarantee by a number of powers, including Poland and Germany; and second, that the Polish government had declared its willingness to negotiate directly with Germany. This latter claim was nothing more than an allusion to President Mościcki’s response to Roosevelt, which the Germans already knew about; Poland had made no new assurances to the British. Unaware of this, Hitler was elated at the British note.
On August 29 at 7:00 AM, Dahlerus telephoned the British Foreign Office to report Hitler’s new optimism. Britain’s ambassador in Berlin wired London several times that day to urge British insistence that the Poles negotiate, and to recommend associating France in this demand. He denied Polish allegations that Hitler’s efforts toward a negotiated settlement merely represented an attempt to split the Anglo-Polish front. Halifax ignored these appeals.
Poland ordered full mobilization that same day, something Polish military plans stipulated would only be taken in the event of a decision to go to war. As Hoggan notes, this step is unsurprising in view of Halifax’s relaying of Göring’s information regarding German military plans, combined with suppression of the accompanying peace proposals.
By this time, even in the absence of British pressure, rumors were reaching Beck that Poland might be urged to resume negotiations with Germany. He took the initiative to inform the British ambassador in Warsaw that he was unprepared to grant any concessions to the Germans, and therefore saw no point in negotiations. This was relayed to Halifax, who neither replied nor informed the Germans.
In ignorance of the true situation, Hitler was preparing his response to Britain. He requested that the British authorities advise the Poles to send an emissary to Berlin the following day, August 30, emphasizing the need for haste. The British received Hitler’s response that evening, the 29th. Shortly after midnight, Halifax forwarded it to Britain’s ambassador in Warsaw with the vague comment that it “appeared to be not unpromising.” In informing Beck of Hitler’s request for an emissary, the British ambassador took it upon himself to advise a refusal — not that Beck needed such advice. On the morning of the 30th, Halifax was told it would “be impossible to induce the Polish government to send Col. Beck or any other representative immediately to Berlin to discuss a settlement on the basis proposed by Herr Hitler.” (Bonnet urged Beck to accept Hitler’s offer as soon as he heard about it, but was unable to accomplish anything without British support.)
After dispatching his response to Britain, Hitler even followed up with a clarification that the proposed meeting need not take place in Berlin, and might be held after midnight: in other words, on the 31st rather than the 30th. This made no difference.
General mobilization notices were posted throughout Poland by the afternoon of the 30th. The Polish government released a communiqué to justify the measure. Written by Beck, it insisted to the world that Poland had supported all efforts for peace, but had gotten no response from Germany. These measures were understood by the German Foreign Office as a final Polish rejection, although Hitler, Göring, and Ribbentrop clung to their hopes until the 31st.
At 6:50 PM on August 30, Halifax sent Britain’s ambassador in Berlin the British reply to Hitler’s note of the 29th. He rejected as “wholly unreasonable” the proposal for a Polish emissary to come to Berlin to negotiate. Hitler was informed at midnight of a flat British refusal to advise the Poles to comply.
Dahlerus conveyed the Marienwerder Proposals to the Polish embassy in Berlin at 10:00 the next morning, August 31. The Polish ambassador forwarded them to Beck, who responded shortly before noon with an order not to accept any more German proposals. Göring’s office intercepted and decoded this telegram:
The German response was swift and decisive. Hitler could act with a clear conscience. He had offered to negotiate a moderate settlement with the Poles despite months of Polish provocations and savage persecution of the Germans in Poland. The Polish refusal to discuss a settlement with Germany on any terms was insulting. Hitler had waited as long as possible without jeopardizing the German operational plan. He issued the final attack order at forty minutes past noon, on August 31.
Hitler addressed the Reichstag on the morning of September 1. He emphasized his longstanding attempts to resolve issues with foreign nations through peaceful revision. Poland had rejected proposals more generous than any other German leader had dared to offer. Hundreds of thousands of people in Danzig and the Corridor were suffering from Polish countermeasures since she declared partial mobilization March 23. Unlike Poland, Germany had faithfully carried out the provisions of the minority treaty of November 1937.
Hitler had announced his own position in the dispute on April 28. Since then, he had waited four months in vain for some response from the Polish side. No great power could tolerate such conditions indefinitely.
Germany’s dispute with Poland did not affect the Western powers’ vital interests. Hitler had never asked and never would ask anything from Britain and France, and he ardently desired an understanding with them.
The German Chancellor then announced his war aims. He intended to solve the Danzig and Corridor questions, and to bring about a change in German-Polish relations. He would fight until the existing Polish government agreed to peaceful coexistence or until another Polish government was prepared to accept this. He was pursuing limited objectives and not insisting on the annihilation of the Polish armed forces or the overthrow of the Polish state.
Hitler claimed the German Reich had spent 90 billion Marks for defense purposes during the previous six years. This was an exaggeration: About half of that sum had gone for public works with no direct connection to armament. His juggling of the figures was an effort to discourage Britain and France from declaring war on Germany.
Following Hitler’s speech, a bill was introduced for the annexation of Danzig to the Reich. It passed unanimously.
The indefatigable Birger Dahlerus continued his mediation efforts on September 1, seeking permission from the British Foreign Office to come to London to present the German case. At 1:25 PM he received a definite refusal: The British authorities would not agree to support further negotiations unless German troops withdrew from Poland and Danzig.
That evening, Prime Minister Chamberlain addressed the House of Commons, claiming that “the responsibility for this terrible catastrophe lies on the shoulders of one man, the German Chancellor.” He claimed Hitler’s recent suggestion that a Polish envoy come to Berlin for negotiations was a command for Poland to accept Germany’s terms without discussion. This was patently untrue, but as Hoggan observes, “the Polish case was so weak that it was impossible to defend it with the truth.”
Chamberlain promised to keep British casualties to a minimum by attacking Germany primarily from the air. This was a tacit admission that Britain planned to let the French do most of the bleeding. No wonder the French government was less enthusiastic at the prospect of war!
Halifax delivered a similar speech in the House of Lords. He insisted the English conscience was pure, and proudly added that he would not wish to have changed anything about British policy. As Hoggan notes, Halifax retained this smug complacency even in his post-war memoirs.
Upon the outbreak of hostilities, Britain demanded an immediate Anglo-French ultimatum to Germany. Bonnet hoped there would never be such an ultimatum, but he replied simply that it would be impossible to consider the matter until after the convening of the French Parliament on September 2. In fact, Bonnet was trying to arrange an international peace conference, despite worries about British intransigence. He had the support of Prime Minister Daladier and most Cabinet ministers. This greatly worried Halifax, who wired Britain’s ambassador in Paris that the French attitude was causing grave misgivings in London. He added, “We shall be grateful for anything you can do to infuse courage and determination into M. Bonnet.” To the British Foreign Secretary, anyone who opposed his plans for war could only be a coward.
On the afternoon of September 1, Daladier sent an appeal to the Italians for help in arranging a conference. The message was welcome: Italy was proud of having launched a successful last-minute mediation effort in the Czech crisis the previous year, and hoped to do so again. Most of her efforts on September 1, however, were directed to convincing the world she would not intervene in Germany’s war against Poland. Italy still feared possible British attack, and an angry mob was besieging her embassy in Warsaw in the mistaken belief that she was aiding the Germans.
Ciano and Mussolini decided it would be wise to secure German support before approaching the French and British about a conference. Ciano wired Berlin at 10:00 AM on September 2 about Daladier’s solicitation of a diplomatic conference. Italy was prepared to propose an armistice that provided for the halting of the German and Polish armies at the positions momentarily occupied. Arrangements could then be made for a conference within two or three days. Hitler responded enthusiastically. An Italian diplomat who was present records that Hitler appeared positively eager to terminate German operations in Poland. He knew that with French support, Germany and Italy could prevail over Britain and Poland in any five-power conference. By 4:00 PM, the Italians had received word of German approval. Hitler declared he would be able to stop operations in Poland by noon the next day.
At this same hour, however, Halifax was insisting to Bonnet that Germany would have to complete the withdrawal of her forces from Poland and Danzig before Britain would agree to consider the conference plan. Bonnet knew that “no Great Power would accept such treatment.”
Ciano telephoned Halifax at 5:00 PM and was stunned to learn of his insistence on a full German withdrawal from Poland as a precondition for any conference. He assured Halifax this would destroy every chance for a peaceful settlement; the Italian diplomat still did not grasp that this was Halifax’s purpose. Moreover, as Hoggan notes:
He failed to perceive that British entry into the war was dependent on the consent of France, and that the British would not be able to destroy his peace plan if it was supported by France. The moment of decision for the Italian mediation effort had arrived, but Ciano was so overwhelmed with indignation at British intransigence that he failed to make the proper comments. He should have taunted Halifax with the fact that the French attitude toward the crisis was entirely different.
That very afternoon, Daladier’s promise to continue working for peace had been met with loud applause from all sections of the French Chamber.
One possible reason Ciano failed to play the French card was continued fear of British reprisals; recall Halifax’s August 20 threat that Britain would attack Italy immediately with most of her armed forces if she joined Germany in any war. Thus, Ciano’s conversation with Halifax remained brief and inconclusive, leaving him in a depressed mood.
Also at 5:00 PM, Bonnet was repeating to a British diplomat his refusal to make the withdrawal of German troops from Poland a condition for a conference. Bonnet said he would present this question to the French Cabinet, which would probably not reach a decision before 9:00 PM. Under pressure from Halifax, he promised that the French Cabinet would try to complete deliberations by 8:00 PM.
At 6:00 PM, Halifax learned that Ciano had been complimenting Bonnet on a response to Italian mediation efforts “more forthcoming and willing” than Halifax’s own. Was Ciano beginning to realize it was France and not Britain that held the key to peace? He instructed Britain’s ambassador to France to make a strong protest that “the position of the French government was very embarrassing to His Majesty’s Government.” The ambassador responded that the protest could not be delivered immediately since the French Cabinet was in session. At that very moment Bonnet was making his final, supreme attempt to commit his colleagues to a peaceful settlement, and there was nothing more Halifax could do to influence the outcome.
He then decided on a “desperate gamble,” telephoning Ciano at 6:38 PM to deceive him about the situation:
Halifax told Ciano that the withdrawal of the German troops from Poland was the essential condition for any conference, and he implied that Great Britain and France were in complete agreement on this important question. Ciano received the false impression that Bonnet had accepted this fatal maneuver to obstruct a conference prior to attending the French Cabinet, which was still in session.
Halifax further insisted that Britain would demand the restoration of the government of the League of Nations High Commissioner (then in Lithuania) to Danzig before considering the possibility of a conference. His imagination was endlessly fertile in throwing up obstacles to peace.
The bluff was successful: Ciano never imagined a British Foreign Secretary would deliberately lie about another nation’s views. Both Ciano and Mussolini concluded that the cause of peace was lost. It was a disastrous mistake.
At 7:30 PM Chamberlain presented to the House of Commons a distorted version of the Italian peace plan, asserting that “Britain could not consent to negotiate while Polish towns were being bombarded and the Polish countryside invaded.” Halifax made a similarly misleading address to the House of Lords. In reality, both men knew Hitler had offered to suspend hostilities as a necessary condition for any conference.
At 8:20 PM, Ciano wired instructions to Italy’s ambassador in Berlin announcing that Mussolini had formally withdrawn his offer to mediate among Britain, Germany, Poland, and France. Hitler was advised to abandon plans for an armistice.
At that very moment, the French Cabinet was adjourning its first session in Paris without having reached a decision on the conference plan. A still hopeful Bonnet was then informed of the withdrawal of the Italian mediation effort. At 8:30 PM he put through an urgent telephone call to Ciano:
Bonnet explained that France had not actually accepted the British condition of a German troop withdrawal. Ciano expressed amazement, but did not see how Italy could retrieve her blunder of cancelling her mediation plan. Bonnet no longer had the German assurance for an armistice. Ciano insisted that a new mediation effort would be unpropitious under these circumstances, and the French Foreign Minister reluctantly agreed.
Hoggan comments, “This conversation is a striking example of the manner in which resignation and fatalism can paralyze the will under the enormous pressure of a crisis situation.”
Bonnet had no sooner put down the receiver than another French minister appealed to him with tears in his eyes to get back on the telephone and insist Italy launch a new mediation effort on condition that the German troops halt their advance. Hitler, he said, would very likely agree to these terms. “Bonnet sadly replied that, in his opinion, there was no longer the slightest doubt that such an effort would fail.”
Having concluded his speech to the House of Lords shortly after 8:00 PM, Halifax was waiting impatiently for news from Rome. At 9:30 PM he received a wire that the Italians “do not feel it possible to press the German government to proceed with Signor Mussolini’s suggestion.” The war he sought was finally within his grasp: All that now remained was to obtain an official French declaration.
Chamberlain telephoned Daladier at 9:50 PM, claiming with considerable exaggeration that he had faced an “angry scene” in Parliament when he said he was still consulting with France on the time limit for an ultimatum. He told Daladier he wished to inform the British public before midnight that an ultimatum would be delivered in Berlin by both Britain and France at 8:00 AM the next day, September 3. Daladier’s answer was no: “He asserted in desperation that he still had good reason to believe that Ciano was about to renew his mediation effort [and] advised against any kind of diplomatic step before noon on the following day.”
The British were furious. Halifax decided on another gamble:
He telephoned Bonnet at 10:30 p.m. that the British ultimatum for 8:00 a.m. the next day would be communicated to the British public before midnight, regardless of the attitude of France. He was unable to disguise his basic dependency upon France. He confided that everything would proceed unilaterally up to the expiration of the British ultimatum at noon. Britain at that point would take no action unless the French had previously agreed to follow with their own declaration of war within twenty-four hours.
Hoggan pauses for an instant to consider the “fantastic situation” that might have ensued if the French had persisted in their refusal to deliver an ultimatum and the British had failed to act on theirs.
Halifax’s telephone call with Bonnet lasted a long time, and Halifax did most of the talking. He then
drew up a memorandum on the conversation in which he concluded, after some hesitation, that Bonnet had “finally agreed.” French resistance crumbled rapidly in the face of Halifax’s self-assurance. Bonnet concluded fatalistically that, with the Italians now out of the picture, it would be futile to continue to frustrate British designs.
Bonnet was a sincere friend of peace, but at least twice on the evening of September 2 his will proved weaker than Halifax’s, both during his 8:30 call to Ciano and his 10:30 conversation with Halifax himself. The French ultimatum followed the British in well under 24 hours, and Europe was at war.
Hoggan’s gripping narrative of the last days of peace, especially the brinksmanship of September 2, provides more than enough support for his contention that
there was no justification for the later fatalism which suggested that World War II was inevitable after 1936 or 1938. The British had to work very hard until the evening of September 2, 1939, to achieve the outbreak of World War II. The issue was in no sense decided before that time.
Some readers may be surprised at the absence of Winston Churchill’s name from this narrative. In the period covered by The Forced War, Churchill was the leader of the war party in the House of Commons, and does merit a few mentions, but Hoggan states:
Churchill does not bear direct responsibility for the attack on Germany in September 1939, because he was not admitted to the British Cabinet until the die was cast. The crucial decisions on policy were made without his knowledge, and he was amazed when Halifax suddenly shifted to a war policy in March 1939. Churchill was useful to Halifax in building up British prejudice against Germany, but he was a mere instrument in the conduct of British policy in 1938 and 1939.
The war which began in September 1939 would prove a catastrophe for Poland and a Pyrrhic victory for Britain, which was reduced to the status of an American vassal and was shortly thereafter deprived of her Empire. The true victor would be the Soviet Union, which ended up controlling half of Europe for four and a half decades after the conclusion of hostilities. As noted above, virtually everyone underestimated the Bolshevik colossus in 1938 and 1939.
Yet despite its disastrous outcome, the struggle against Hitler remains the founding myth of the post-war world. Every foreign head of state perceived as a threat is “the new Hitler,” and every attempt to deal with such a man through negotiation is “appeasement” and a failure to learn the “lessons of Munich.” The persistence of this pernicious mental template among the powerful continues to threaten the peace of the world and makes Hoggan’s guided tour of musty diplomatic archives as relevant to the future of our civilization as today’s headlines.
A correction of the record is also a matter of simple justice. Millions of people continue to believe the literal truth of British and Polish propaganda from 1939 — namely, that these nations did everything possible to maintain peace, but were forced to take a heroic stand against monstrous aggression from a madman determined to take over the world. Hoggan, writing at the height of the Cold War, concludes:
The German people, especially, have been laden with an entirely unjustifiable burden of guilt. It may safely be said that this is the inevitable consequence of English wars, which for centuries have been waged for allegedly moral purposes. It is equally evident that the reconciliation which might follow from the removal of this burden would be in the interest of all nations which continue to reject Communism.
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