Overwhelmingly german in history and inclination, the port of Danzig was put under League of Nations mandate by the victors at Versailles . The Poles as protecting power had certain rights, including diplomatic, passport, and military offices . The railway system, about 120 customs officials, and a large post office building were Polish too . If and when Hitler did launch ‘White,’ Danzig would be vulnerable for several days, as General Fedor von Bock — commanding Army Group North — warned . He recommended on May 27, 1939, to the General Staff that a secret brigade should be illicitly raised from the 12,000 Germans with military experience in Danzig and from the city police ; he also suggested that on the actual day of ‘White’ a German naval force might ‘happen to’ be visiting Danzig — it could disembark a battalion of troops to secure the city.
Hitler approved Bock’s outline on June 11 . A major general, Friedrich Georg Eberhardt, was sent in plain clothes to organise a ‘Free Corps’ there . Shiploads of guns and ammunition, ostensibly bound for Königsberg, suffered ‘engine problems’ en route and docked for repairs at Danzig — where Eberhardt’s gear, everything from a shoe-nail to a 150-millimetre gun, was unloaded under cover of darkness . The SS came for a sports display in Danzig, but the SS troops stayed on afterward . By the time of ‘White,’ Eberhardt would command two infantry regiments, an artillery battalion, and SS irregulars too . Bridges were strengthened, barracks built, pontoon sections stockpiled.
Hitler boasted in private, ‘I was owed 100 Reichsmarks ; I’ve already collected 99 and I’m going to get the last coin too !’ He authorised Goebbels to deliver a powerful and provocative speech in Danzig on June 17 . Goebbels confidently briefed Nazi editors : ‘This is to be a trial balloon, to test the international atmosphere on the settlement of the Danzig question.’
Berlin began to swelter . On July 3 Hitler and Göring visited a secret display of new Luftwaffe equipment at Rechlin air station . They showed Hitler an experimental Heinkel rocket-propelled fighter . A Heinkel 111 bomber, heavily overloaded, was lifted seemingly effortlessly into the air by rocket-assisted takeoff units . He saw the latest early-warning radar and pressurised cabins for high-altitude planes ; in the laboratory they demonstrated to him simple methods of starting motor engines in subzero temperatures, and the new 30-millimetre cannon installed in a Messerschmitt 110 fighter in the firing-butts . It was all just a grandiose self-deception and it had fatal consequences . Hitler decided to grab a much bigger bite of Poland, apart from just Danzig and the Corridor . In May 1942, Göring would exclaim : ‘The Führer took the most serious decisions on the basis of that display. It was a miracle that things worked out as well as they did, and that the consequences were not far worse .’
as the sun climbed higher that summer Hitler’s ministers fled Berlin . Over dinner on July 4 he agreed with his propaganda minister that they should now nurture hatred towards Britain, and that the German people must learn to recognise the British as their principal obstacle . On the ninth Ribbentrop left to vacation at Lake Fuschl, near the Berghof . Brauchitsch attended Army Day celebrations at arlshorst that day, then left for several weeks’ furlough . Göring was cruising down the canals in his yacht .
Hitler could afford to wait . He knew that the Reich had most to offer Stalin in return for a pact . In mid-June 1939 the Soviets had again obliquely hinted — this time through the Bulgarian envoy in Berlin — that they would prefer dealing with the Reich, provided that Hitler would sign a non-aggression pact . He told Goebbels on July 8 that it was unlikely that London and Moscow would ever reach agreement . ‘That leaves the way open for us,’ concluded the propaganda minister .
Meanwhile, Hitler took direct control of every phase of the strategic preparations, dealing with Heydrich, Goebbels, and — as he lacked a naval adjutant — the admiralty in person . Albert Forster, gauleiter of Danzig, appeared several times at the Berghof . On July 13 he had what his newspaper Danziger Vorposten called ‘a lengthy discussion’ with Hitler; after another meeting a week later Forster told his own staff ,
The Führer says that ... he was inclined just to tackle Danzig this summer . But common sense has now dictated that the settlement of this matter should be linked to a solution of the German-Polish problem as a whole, at a suitable time.
Forster described the solution now desired as being to regain the Reich’s eastern frontiers as they had been in 1914 . On July 22 Hitler telephoned the admiralty and ordered it to be ready to send the elderly cruiser Nürnberg to Danzig at short notice.
two days later, on July 24, 1939, he drove to Bayreuth for his annual Wagner pilgrimage . Here he wallowed in a Wagner orgy — The Flying Dutchman, Parsifal, and the whole of the Ring . In his youth Hitler had been a chorister at Lambach in Upper Austria . As a romantic, rootless youth of seventeen he had scraped and saved to visit the opera at Linz, and it was seeing Wagner’s early opera Rienzi in 1906 that had first stirred Hitler’s alter ego, the demagogue slumbering within the artist.
In a way Rienzi was almost destined to become Hitler’s own story . He recognized this in 1945, and he recited to Schaub the lines from the opera which he desired to be inscribed on his mausoleum . Rienzi is a true story of the Roman plebes, who are suppressed by the unscrupulous nobili until the young notary Rienzi (1313–1354) rises from their midst, an unknown citizen who rallies and liberates and leads them, until the very nobili themselves proclaim him their master . ‘Rienzi, hail ! Hail to you, the people’s tribune !’ Later the nobili conspire, even the faithful desert Rienzi, and the hand that strikes him down comes from his own ranks .
Hitler had been electrified on first hearing the Rienzi drama in 1906 : he left the theatre long after midnight with his school friend, August Kubizek, and scaled a hill outside Linz . Here Hitler suddenly spoke of a pact that the people would one day make with him — to lead them out of their subjugation, to the pinnacles of freedom . He spent the night in the open air . His friend Kubizek might well have challenged him : ‘Rienzi, hey ! What do you plan ? / I see you mightily before me — tell / Wherefore needst thou this new might ?’ He did not, but he met Hitler again thirty-three years later, in Bayreuth in July 1939, when they dined together at Frau Winifred Wagner’s home ‘Wahnfried’ and here he reminded Hitler of that night on the Austrian hillside . Hitler interrupted, turned to Frau Wagner, and poured out the whole story . ‘That was when it all began,’ he told them .
Hitler patronised the arts as had few of his more recent predecessors . He had heard Die Meistersinger forty times — Schaub believed it was Hitler’s favourite because it was a pæan to German craftsmanship . ‘Wahnfried’ in Bayreuth was like a home away from home to Hitler : Frau Wagner, a matronly Englishwoman, widow of the great composer’s son, was like a second mother to him . From 1925 to 1933 Hitler had kept away from Bayreuth to spare her any embarrassment; then he had re-established the friendship, frequently telephoning her under his private nickname of ‘Bandleader Wolf.’
This remarkable dowager’s admiration for Hitler would not diminish until her death . Sometimes she used their friendship to intercede on behalf of Jews or persecuted musicians . Hitler explained that she would have to write to him through Dr . Karl Brandt . ‘If your letters fall into the hands of Reichsleiter Bormann,’ he said, ‘there’s no guarantee that they’ll reach me.’
while hitler stayed at Bayreuth in July 1939 the foreign clamour mounted . Ambassador Herbert von Dirksen reported from London that the British press had been crying rape ever since the annexation of Austria . What interested Hitler more was that authoritative voices could now be heard from London indicating that Chamberlain was casting around for ways of divesting himself of the awkward guarantee given to Poland .
Hitler had mentioned to Walther Hewel as recently as June — after King George VI had replied warmly to Hitler’s condolences on the loss of the submarine Thetis — that if only he could meet some Englishman of standing with whom he could talk in German, he could soon settle their countries’ remaining differences . By late July the signs were that Chamberlain and his advisers were preparing for a second Munich . On a British initiative, there had been talks between Sir Horace Wilson, one of the main appeasers among Chamberlain’s advisers, and one of Göring’s economics staff, Dr. Helmuth Wohlthat . Wilson had proposed a sweeping political, economic, and military agreement with Hitler, in return for certain assurances . ‘Perhaps I’m too much of an optimist,’ the Englishman said, ‘and perhaps the solution does seem unrealistic to many observers in the present situation . But I have had the opportunity of studying the Führer and I believe that the Führer, acting as a statesman for peace can manage even greater achievements than he has already in his construction of Grossdeutschland.’
The OKW timetable for ‘White’ would soon come into force : admittedly, no military decisions of significance were required until August 12, but the General Staff had determined that the optimum date for attacking Poland would be August 25, and Hitler was required to decide for or against ‘White’ on the fifteenth . This left barely two weeks for him to obtain Stalin’s signature on a pact, and nobody believed that Ribbentrop would manage such a feat in time . ‘I don’t believe the Moscow talks will prove a flop,’ wrote Weizsäcker in his diary on July 30 . ‘But nor do I believe they can be concluded in the next fourteen days, as we are now attempting . My advice is that we should resort to blunter language in Moscow about the partition of Poland ; Ribbentrop suggests talking to Moscow about sharing the Baltic states so that north of the latitude of Riga should be Russia’s Lebensraum and south of it ours, but I advise against this !’
Hitler stayed at Bayreuth, troubled only by the affairs of his Party henchmen . He predicted to Goebbels on July 25 that the democracies would shrink back from war, step by step; and that Warsaw too would crumble, when push came to shove . Goebbels was in a state of high nerves, but for family reasons — his wife Magda had thrown herself into a sorrowing liaison with his young and handsome Staatssekretär at the propaganda ministry, Karl Hanke . Hitler again angrily forced a reconciliation between the couple, and required them to attend the next day’s opera together ; but of all operas that night’s offering was the romantic tragedy Tristan und Isolde, and Frau Goebbels openly blubbered while Hitler and his white-faced propaganda minister affected not to notice .
Robert Ley, the Labour Front leader, tormented Hitler in a different way . In Winifred Wagner’s exquisite drawing room he proposed that at the coming Nuremberg Rally they should dispense with the customary fanfare from Verdi’s Aïda and play instead a little piece which he, Ley, had composed for the occasion . He modestly played a gramophone record of the fanfare . After the last fearsome strains died away, Hitler tersely announced : ‘We’ll stick to Aïda !’
it was here at Bayreuth that Hitler jovially buttonholed Neurath with the words ‘You’re going to be astonished by what I am going to tell you : what do you say we come to an agreement with Russia ?’ Neurath was indeed stunned, but responded favourably . Hitler ventured, ‘It will probably be hard to reconcile my Party stalwarts to the move.’ Neurath flattered him : ‘The Party is like putty in your hands, mein Führer .’
Hitler still feared a snub from the Soviet dictator however, and time was running out . Acting on his instructions, on August 2 Ribbentrop hinted to the Soviet chargé d’affaires that Moscow and Berlin ought to decide Poland’s fate between them — and he added the tempting bait that there was ‘no problem between the Baltic and the Black Sea’ that could not be solved between them . Ribbentrop emphasised that Germany was in no hurry yet — a poker-faced assurance that must have been torture to utter, given the rigid timetable already imposed by the OKW’s planning . The clock was already ticking, but Moscow must not hear it .
Hitler left Bayreuth on August 3, toured the Nuremberg arena — as though nothing would prevent the Party rally from opening here in one month’s time — and drove down the autobahn to Munich on the fourth . At his Munich apartment he changed into a dark-blue suit and received General Keitel in the drawing room . The OKW chief had brought with him the final timetable for ‘White.’ The army still wanted X-day to be on August 25, as mid-September rains might bog down panzer operations in Poland and set the German air force at a disadvantage.
Hitler motioned Keitel and his staff officer Major Bernd von Lossberg into easy chairs, and explained to them once more, in an affable Austrian dialect which rather surprised Lossberg, just why the Polish problem had to be settled now . He blamed Chamberlain’s thoughtless guarantee to Poland for stiffening Warsaw’s opposition . ‘The gentlemen in London and Paris won’t undertake anything against us this time either,’ he assured the officers. Then his Austrian dialect vanished, submerged in a sudden cresting wave of familiar guttural Hitler-German : ‘I will see to that . This Polish conflict will never, never, never result in a European war.’
He drove on that evening to the Berghof, and this was to be the scene of the next three weeks’ momentous events.
from london the signs were again conciliatory . Neville Chamberlain had adjourned Parliament on August 4 for two months . Simultaneously, he risked a strange move that further convinced Hitler that Britain was not yet ready to fight : Sir Horace Wilson invited Ambassador Herbert von Dirksen to call at his private flat in Chelsea — specifying that he should come on foot so as not to attract attention — and outlined an offer for a ‘full-bodied political world partnership’ between Britain and Germany . If Hitler would accept the terms, Wilson indicated, then Britain would put pressure on Poland to agree to Germany’s demands . Thus the awkward British guarantee to Poland would become inoperative . Ribbentrop received Dirksen’s astounding telegram on this talk soon after . Weizsäcker noted on the sixth, ‘Underground feelers from Chamberlain toward a compromise (via Horace Wilson) prove that a dialogue with Britain could be got going if we so desired.’
Hitler was not inclined to bend, however . Secret directives went to the Nazi press on the twelfth and thirteenth, forbidding them even to mention Britain’s apparent change of heart . ‘Britain incited the Poles, now she must pay the price,’ was the official line to be taken . Editors were commanded to observe ‘absolute discipline’ on this posture.
Britain’s talks with Stalin must have reached a deadlock, of this Hitler was convinced . He detailed a Nazi agent to stand by at Croydon airfield, London, as the British chief negotiator, William Strang, flew back from Moscow on August 7 . Strang’s dejected look betrayed that Hitler’s surmise was probably correct.
On the ninth, Halifax himself spoke to Dirksen . This time he promised that Britain was willing to go ‘a long way’ toward meeting Germany’s desires . But Hitler’s central desire now was to have what he called his little war with Poland . After his Intelligence chief Canaris conferred on August 10 with Keitel and Schmundt at Salzburg, and then with Ribbentrop at Fuschl, Lieutenant Colonel Erwin Lahousen wrote in his diary : ‘Intimations of a Non-Aggression Pact with R.,’ meaning Russia.
on august 11, Hitler ordered the anti-Polish propaganda volume turned up to ‘eighty percent’ of its full volume . After months of maintaining a studied silence in the Nazi press about the Polish ‘atrocities,’ on the six-teenth editors were secretly circularised : ‘The time has come for the German press to abandon its reserve.’ Goebbels ordered Polish ‘terrorist incidents’ moved from page two to page one — though still only modestly displayed, and there was to be no mention yet of Germany’s territorial claims .
Hitler needed reliable staged ‘incidents’ at a closely defined place, time, and date — he had a tight OKW schedule to meet . Two diabolical schemes had been drafted by SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, ‘following long-standing patterns set by our western neighbours,’ as he explained to SS commanders on about the eleventh . In one, his agents would masquerade as Polish insurgents, seize the German transmitter station at Gleiwitz, broadcast a proclamation, and then escape . In the other, more complex, incident a company of Polish-speaking idealists would be recruited from the Upper Silesian work-force, dressed in Polish uniforms on the eve of ‘White,’ and ordered to ‘seize’ a German customs post near Hochlinden ; a mock battle would be staged with SS troops, while real Polish troops would be lured into the fray from their garrison at nearby Rybnik by a Polish officer who had recently defected to Germany . The Gestapo chief, Heinrich Müller, also hit on the macabre idea of strewing fresh corpses — condemned convicts from Dachau — on the ‘battlefield,’ equipped with genuine Polish soldiers’ passbooks .
When Hitler talked with Professor Carl Burckhardt, the League of Nations high commissioner in Danzig, on the eleventh he had prepared the way by underlining the point : ‘If there’s the slightest provocation I shall shatter Poland without warning into so many pieces that there will be nothing left to pick up.’ He boasted that whereas in 1938 he had had to whip his generals on, this year he was having to hold them back . Hitler continued (recalled Burckhardt years later) : ‘Everything I’m doing is directed against Russia . If the west is too obtuse to grasp this, then I’ll be forced to come to terms with the Russians and turn against the west first, after which I’ll direct my entire strength against the USSR.’ The next day, Hitler made much the same point to Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s foreign minister — that he proposed one day to tread the old Teutonic road toward the east, as he had told the Duce himself aboard the Conte Cavour in May 1938 .
the italians were still unaware of ‘White,’ the plan to invade Poland .
For the first time [wrote Weizsäcker in his diary] we’re finding the Italian alliance a nuisance . Because over the last week our [i.e., Hitler’s] will to war has become much stronger . Himmler, Ribbentrop, and Gauleiter Forster have each been promoting the idea of war in their own spheres . Ribbentrop is guaranteeing that the British and French will remain neutral provided we can deal annihilating blows to Poland in the first three days . This he thinks is certain .
Count Ciano was received at the Berghof on August 12 . Eva Braun, confined upstairs, later pasted a sequence of snapshots into her album showing the swirl and flourish of arriving limousines, black-shirted Fascist leaders greeting Hitler, and some of them even glancing up to her window (she girlishly captioned the photos : ‘Up there, there’s something forbidden to behold — me !’).
Hitler had little time or liking for Ciano; he told Schaub that the Italian was ‘too brilliantined and dandified’ to inspire trust . Hitler spoke about Germany’s strength and Britain’s overwhelming vulnerability to air attack . (This was all probably meant for English ears . He would say at a conference on May 20, 1943, ‘Every memorandum I wrote to the Duce reached Britain immediately after : so I only wrote him what I wanted the British to know without fail.’) It seems clear that Hitler ‘confidentially’ informed Ciano that ‘White’ would start in two weeks’ time, because the British foreign office learned of this a few days later . Ciano was astounded . Hitler assured Ciano that the west would not intervene, but he did not explain why : the Nazi-Soviet pact .
Even as Ciano was uncomfortably remonstrating with Hitler in the Great Hall, a door was flung open and Walther Hewel hurried in . He whispered to Ribbentrop; Ribbentrop took Hitler aside and whispered to him : Molotov had just agreed in principle to receive a German negotiator in Moscow . Hitler’s mood changed . With a broad grin he invited the Fascist guests to accompany him up to his teahouse eyrie, the Eagle’s Nest .
Curiously, Baron von Weizsäcker also appears to have been left in the dark at first about the news from Moscow . The likely reason was that Weizsäcker was communing treacherously closely with the ambassadors of Britain, France, and Italy . On the thirteenth he wrote, ‘My own formula remains unchanged : if Poland commits a provocation of such effrontery that Paris and London will also recognize it as such, then we can set about her . Otherwise we should keep our hands off . ... I am still not quite clear,’ continued Weizsäcker in some puzzlement on the fourteenth, ‘just what has brought about this somersault at Fuschl [Ribbentrop’s summer home] and the Berghof . A week ago they still inclined to the view that the western powers would not drop Poland, so we could not tackle her.’
Hitler hesitated for several days before responding to Moscow . But the OKW timetable had him in its vice; important decisions were due on the fifteenth . The latest Intelligence reports showed that Britain had offered Poland an eight-million-pound loan, and that Polish mobilisation preparations were far in advance of his own .
On August 14 Hitler called his three Commanders in Chief to the Berghof and explained why ‘White’ was still on, and why he was sure that the western powers would not declare war . General Sir Edmund Ironside had submitted a scathing report on Polish combat readiness — Hitler guessed that Chamberlain would use it as an alibi to ditch the Poles . Were Britain really in earnest, she would have offered Poland more than a measly eight-million-pound loan (‘The British don’t sink money in an unsound business’) and the Poles in turn would be more insolent than FA intercepts of late revealed . Hitler said that his only worry was that the British might yet cheat him of ‘White’ by making some last-minute offer; he told Göring, Brauchitsch, and Raeder on this day that he had hinted to the British that he would approach them again with an offer of his own later — after he had dealt with Poland . Raeder — still in a huff over the Albrecht affair — did not speak, and nor did Brauchitsch : Canaris wrote in his diary, ‘Commander in Chief army didn’t get a word in edgeways.’
Hitler now took a further fateful step . At 10:53 p.m. that evening, August 14, Ribbentrop cabled these dramatic instructions to the embassy in Moscow : Molotov was to be informed that he, Ribbentrop, was willing to come to Moscow in person . His State Secretary Weizsäcker correctly reflected, ‘If Ribbentrop manages to conclude a pact . . . they [the Russians] will thereby be inviting us to attack Poland.’
On the fifteenth Hitler authorised all the timetable steps consistent with an attack on Poland on the twenty-fifth . The armed forces were ordered to assume that ‘"White" will be on.’ The navy ordered the pocket battleships Graf Spee and Deutschland and fourteen submarines to stand by for operations into the Atlantic . The Nuremberg Rally was secretly cancelled, to release railroad capacity for the Wehrmacht ; but foreign diplomats were still fed with the impression that the rally was on .
Less well documented are the murkier operations planned by the Abwehr and SS . They had prepared commando-style operations to secure vital bridges, tunnels, and industrial plants behind the Polish lines on the very eve of ‘White.’ The Abwehr had trained a task force to seize the 300-yard-long railroad tunnel at Jablunka, on the main line from Vienna to Warsaw . If the Poles could detonate the demolition charges in the twin tunnel it would bar the entry into southern Poland of Wilhelm List’s Fourteenth Army, now massing in Slovakia . Hitler piously insisted on a clear distinction between these ‘illegals’ and regular German army units : when Manstein asked permission to operate three assault groups in Polish uniforms during Army Group South’s attack, Hitler turned him down ; Himmler then asked permission for the SS to use Polish uniforms in precisely the same area, and on August 17 Hitler gave him his blessing and ordered the Abwehr to release 150 Polish uniforms from its stocks to Heydrich for the purpose .
At the northern end of the Polish front Hitler personally conceived an adventurous operation to secure the two strategic bridges across the river Vistula at Dirschau . Each bridge had its eastern end on Danzig soil and its western end footed on Polish ground, Pomerania . Obsessed with the Dirschau bridges, Hitler studied air photographs and models, and devised plan after plan . Eventually he agreed with Göring, Himmler, and Brauchitsch on a heavy dive-bomber attack on the Polish bridge garrison, the local power station, and the demolition fuses themselves, followed up immediately by a ground assault : a goods train would arrive from East Prussia in the last minutes before ‘White’ began, laden with concealed sappers and storm troops under Lieutenant Colonel Gerhardt Medem . Hitler briefed him personally . Timing was crucial, since the attack had to coincide exactly with the Luftwaffe strike against the Polish naval base at Gdynia — the first overt act of ‘White.’
The elderly warship Schleswig-Holstein was moved to Danzig . When ‘White’ began, she would immediately bombard the Polish stronghold emplaced (illegally) on the Westerplatte — the sliver of land commanding the entrance to the harbour .
Inevitably, the Russians began to dither however . After Molotov formally proposed — on August 16 — a non-aggression pact, Ribbentrop promptly replied with the suggestion that he visit Moscow in two or three days’ time to sign it . The Russians dragged their feet . On August 18 Ribbentrop telegraphed his ambassador urging speed, and mentioned alluringly that he would be authorised to sign a secret additional protocol codifying aspects too delicate for public consumption.
Even so, Molotov seemed unwilling to receive him in Moscow before August 26 or 27 .
As Ribbentrop well knew, the OKW timetable was geared to launching ‘White’ on or soon after the twenty-fifth . The political effect of the pact would be nil if it were not signed well before then . In fact the A-movement, the initial transfer of 220 train-loads to assemble military equipment and troops in the east, was already beginning .
to hitler it seemed a proper occasion for taking a personal risk . ‘Our opponents still hoped,’ he bragged two days later, ‘that Russia would emerge as our enemy after we had defeated Poland . But our opponents had not taken my power of decision into account . Our opponents are little worms — I saw them all at Munich !’ On August 20 he took the unprecedented and flattering step of writing a personal note to Stalin, asking him to accept Ribbentrop’s presence in Moscow not later than three days from now .
Frightened by his own boldness, Hitler could not contain his nervousness after that . He telephoned Göring in the small hours ; he snarled uneasily at Ribbentrop for having tempted him out onto this trembling limb of high diplomacy . But during the afternoon of August 21 word came from Moscow : his ambassador had been summoned to see Molotov at three p.m. More anguished hours passed .
At last Ribbentrop brought the ambassador’s report . A smile lit up Hitler’s face . A photographer was summoned to capture the moment as he read the telegram : the Kremlin would be happy to receive Herr Ribbentrop in two days’ time, as Hitler had requested .
An air of celebration gripped the Berghof, as though a great victory had been won . And in a sense it had, for when German radio interrupted its programs at 11:15 p.m. to broadcast this chilling news to the world, nobody could doubt that it spelled the end for Poland . ‘Now,’ Hitler said triumphantly to his commanders the next morning, ‘now I have Poland just where I want her !’