Shownotes Transcript
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We're at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. With darkness falling, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of the Third Reich, walks across the runway. There's a frisson of excitement amongst the Nazi officials gathered. Those privileged few with security clearance. The ones who know the purpose of his mission. Ribbentrop mounts the steps of a giant Focke-Wulf Condor. Its engines hum, ready for takeoff. The tail fin is emblazoned with a bright red band.
On it, a huge black-on-white swastika. In his fine tailored suit, Ribbentrop smiles for the authorized newsreel camera. Once aboard, he waves from the cabin window. The plane climbs up into the sky and sets a course for the eastern horizon. The next day, at noon, Russian time, it taxis to a halt in Moscow. Ribbentrop disembarks in a leather trench coat, though summer, it's unseasonably chilly in Russia.
But then everything about this voyage is strained. A step into the unknown. When Ribbentrop is greeted by his opposite number, the two men are unsure at first whether they should even shake hands. It's an unusual sight for everyone. The swastika hanging next to the hammer and sickle. Nazism and communism side by side. These two sworn enemies are suddenly buddying up. Ribbentrop climbs into a car. A driver in a baggy cap stamps out his cigarette.
and whisks him off to the Kremlin. The German aircraft, the Condor, is a big four-engine beast, one of several types of Nazi warplane that have been masquerading in civilian guise. In months to come, Condors will be re-kitted and armed to the teeth. They will range out into the North Atlantic to attack Allied shipping. But before that, right now, Ribbentrop is about to drop his very own bombshell. From Noisa: This
is the Hitler story. And this is Real Dictators. In the year 1938, Hitler has moved at a devastating pace. Within just seven months, he's forced a union with Austria, the Anschluss, and annexed the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. He's also unleashed a wave of domestic terror, the infamous pogrom Kristallnacht, designed to force all Jews out of the Reich.
The West has little illusion now about Hitler's intentions. The Munich conference at the end of September had been Britain and France's final appeal to reason. But now both governments know they're dealing with a madman. Meanwhile, the Reich's armed forces are expanding at a phenomenal rate. The German public continues to hail Hitler's every move, greeting each triumph with an unbridled fanaticism. Professor Nicholas O'Shaughnessy,
His photographer, Hoffman, was more than a photographer. He's actually Hitler's image maker, produced a photo journal, Hitler in his homeland, which was these incredible pictures of a kind of royal and almost actually saintly progression through Austria. These were sold, not just with film and newsreel, but pictures with drawings, recordings, speeches,
It was not just the momentum and dynamism which had all the world in its headlights. It's actually the associated ancillary material which went with it to actually create the imagery. He left the world breathless. Now, as soon as the ink on the Munich Agreement been blotted, then Hitler starts going beyond its remit. In 1939, in his New Year's message to the citizens of the Reich,
He makes clear that control of the Sudetenland will be extended, as he puts it, to the pacification of Czechoslovakia. Privately, he uses another word: liquidation. Professor Thomas Weber,
And this is all within the logic of Hitler's thinking, because ultimately, as far as Hitler is concerned, this wasn't just about bringing all Germans together under one roof. It was about creating a state that was strong enough to be safe for all times. A state that was sufficiently large and that had the kind of natural resources that would allow Germany to survive for all times.
So therefore, Hitler is moving towards a territory that is the lowest hanging fruit. That is Czechoslovakia. Taking Czechoslovakia will require the technicality of a justification. But that can always be arranged. In February, Hitler orders Joseph Goebbels, his propaganda minister, to circulate tales of ethnic Germans being brutalized. There's already tension between the Czechs and the Slovaks.
The Slovaks are uneasy that power lies with Prague, not their city at Bratislava. Slovak nationalists are itching to rise up. All they need is a little encouragement. The Czechoslovak president is Emil Haša. He's an old-school ultra-conservative. On March 9th, he dismisses the regional Slovak government. He orders Czech troops into Slovakia and declares martial law. But he's struggling to maintain order in his own patch.
In Prague, Nazi sympathizers are marching through Wenceslas Square. The Fuhrer licks his lips and summons his generals. Nice Mr. Hitler, kindly neighbor, offers the Czech state his protection and urges most strongly that they consider this generous proposal. Meanwhile, the Nazis back-channel to the Slovak nationalist leader, a man called Joseph Tiso. The chubby priest is soft-soaked,
and prompted to proclaim independence. The helpful Mr Ribbentrop has even drafted the text for him. The Slovak Republic is declared on March 14. That same day, President Hascha is summoned to Berlin, just like Chancellor Schuschnigg of Austria before him. He's walking into the lion's den. Old and ill, the Czech president has been unable to fly to the German capital. He has instead had to travel up by train. It's a detail not lost on his hosts.
there is the standard diplomatic flummery. Then, Hascher is made to walk endlessly through the Chancellery's labyrinth of corridors, along a specially choreographed extended route. When he finally gets to Hitler's office, he's made to sit and wait outside for two whole hours. Hitler, apparently, has gone off to watch a movie. At 1:15 AM, utterly exhausted, Hascher is finally shown in. It's quite the scene.
He enters a darkened room featuring the Fuhrer at his desk, backlit by lamps. His henchmen, Ribbentrop, Goering, Keitel, are all ranged behind him, a tableau of intimidation. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, says the Nazi godfather. Sign over the Czech state right now or at 6 a.m. My boys will go in. Oh, and beautiful Prague, chuckles Goering, will be reduced to rubble.
Hitler actually uses the word "extermination". That is what awaits the Czech people. Faced with this, Hase does what anyone else in this situation would do. He suffers a heart attack. Even the Nazis hadn't meant to push things quite this far. Hitler panics. What if he gets accused of Hase's murder? Fortunately, he has his personal physician on hand, the shady Dr. Theo Morel. Hitler's quack injects the ailing president back to life.
just enough for him at 3:55 a.m. to put his wobbly hand to the document of surrender. At dawn, German troops invade unopposed. A giddy Hitler rushes out into the front office. In a rare euphoric moment, he invites his secretaries to kiss him. "Girls, this is the greatest triumph of my life," he declares. "I shall go down in history as the greatest German
Later that day, March 15th, Wehrmacht jackboots are trampling over Prague's medieval cobbles. This time, it's not a homecoming. There are no flowers. In a grim sleet storm, the citizens look on with silence, with fear. Hitler, the excited puppy dog, wipes the lipstick off his cheeks and travels south to join the invasion party. In Prague's old town, he even has a beer.
In London and Paris, Chamberlain and Deladier cut solemn figures. Hitler's promises and signed declarations were not worth the paper they were written on. The mood shifts. Opinion rapidly changed. But for a very long period, the country was a thousand percent behind Chamberlain.
You can buy Chamberlain iconography from that period, from that very brief period, when he was the most popular man in British history who'd saved us from war. At Munich, he may have made a few unfortunate compromises, but he'd made World War never again possible. And so this view of Chamberlain as a kind of
utter vegetable, the ultimate loser, a tragic man, a weak, rabbit-like civic bureaucrat staring at the headlights of the greater German Reich is terribly unfair.
In Britain, conscription is introduced.
Armaments production has stepped up, of aircraft especially. Old frontline biplanes are being replaced by a new generation of fighters. Hurricanes, Spitfires. If Chamberlain has done anything, it's to buy the country some time. Military overtures are made to Poland, even further afield to Greece, Turkey, Romania, to anyone who can contain German expansion. Britain and France also begin talks with the Soviet Union.
In Prague, the swastika flies from the Hradšín Palace, seat of the old kings of Bohemia. Happy Hitler, through pilsner goggles, declares that this is a Teutonic city, a Germanic one. Any fool can see it. He has liberated Prague from the clutches of the ghastly Slavs. Oh, and better get started on rooting out the Jews. Slovakia becomes a Nazi client state.
Hungary and Poland are soon laying claim to their own ethnic enclaves in the east of the country. Czechoslovakia is no more. The Czech heartland becomes the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Nazi Germany has its first vassal, its first colony. Those eastern neighbors scavenging on the Czechoslovakian carcass should be careful what they wish for, and none more so than Poland.
It too is being sucked into the machinations of Berlin. The chief cause of resentment for Hitler is the existence of the Polish Corridor, another legacy of hated Versailles. This 70-mile-wide strip of land has been carved straight through German territory. It's been done in order to give the Polish state access to the Baltic Sea. The history of this region, Old Pomerania, is complex. Overlordship has been contested through the centuries.
But Germany's misgivings are evident to anyone with access to a map. The Polish corridor has severed East Prussia from the main body of Germany. Its great old port, Danzig, has also been confiscated. It's been turned into a free city under League of Nations rule, linked with Poland in a customs union. Not only is this a humiliation, rages Hitler, but once again ethnic Germans have been cut off from the Reich
and such an injustice cannot stand. A week after his entry into Prague for an encore, Hitler heads to Svinamunde on the Baltic. There, alongside loyal Admiral Ryder, he boards the cruiser Deutschland. Hitler is not a good sailor. He gets violently seasick, but he does his best to keep his lunch down as they sail to the eastern extremity of the German coastline, to the small port of Memel.
Just like Danzig, its rule has been awarded to another party, in this case Lithuania. As per the playbook, Memel is already awash with trumped-up tales of ethnic Germans being brutalized at the hands of their new governors. From ship to shore, a green-looking Hitler coordinates the final twisting of the thumbscrews. Lithuania must give up the town to the Reich or have it obliterated. Memel is duly seeded.
So far Germany has been accommodating towards Poland. A ten-year non-aggression pact was signed in 1934. Poland is no pushover either. It beat the Soviet Union in a short war in 1920.
The invasion of Poland still lies in the future. No one knows yet how easy it ultimately was for Germany to invade Poland. Poland was still seen as a major military power, so the pretence is still going on that Poland and Germany are getting along with each other. But just a month after Munich, Joachim von Ribbentrop is on maneuvers. The Polish ambassador, Józef Lipski, is invited to lunch at the Grand Hotel in Berchtesgaden.
The Nazi foreign minister wants to run a couple of ideas by him. What if Germany were to create its own transport link across the Polish corridor? An autobahn and a railway. Also, how about the return of Danzig to German control, but with Poland maintaining free access and usage? The real threat to their joint security comes in the shape of Bolshevik Russia, he reminds.
None of this cosying up to Moscow, not a good idea. Much better that Germans and Poles stand side by side. In return, Germany is willing to extend its non-aggression pact to 25 years, play its cards right and there could be future spoils for Poland in Ukraine. And he has some handy hints regarding Poland's own Jewish problem.
Little does Ambassador Lipski know, in the Nazis' hunt for living space, Poland is the next designated acquisition. He is telling the Poles, he is telling the world that this is still only about undoing the Versailles settlement.
Of course, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter too much what the Poles think. In a perfect world, you would create a situation where the Polish government will say, all right then, so we happily succeed those territories to you. But that's just not going to happen. And Hitler knows that. Polish Foreign Minister Josef Beck is the next dignitary to be invited to the Berghof. For him, there is no Hitler hairdryer. Far from it. The Fuhrer is the perfect host. This is all smoke and mirrors.
As in the Sudetenland, as in Memel, there are the usual noises off stage. Histrionic outrages about the alleged Polish mistreatment of the 800,000 Germans living in Danzig and the corridor. Beck summons the German ambassador and warns him off intervention. What the hell is Germany playing at? He thought they had a relationship. Any attempt to change the status of Polish territory would be regarded as an act of war. In London,
"Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is now an ill man. His tireless efforts to keep peace have taken a huge toll on his health. He'll be dead in just over 18 months. In his own way, a casualty of the war that Hitler is about to unleash. Having been made to look a fool once, he will not let it happen again. He makes a categorical offer of military assistance should Polish independence come under threat. The French have joined him in these assurances," he says.
It was clear that Munich was dead, that the idea that you could somehow have an amicable solution that included the Germans,
that was just not happening. And what really happens then is that both Britain and France pivot towards a policy of containment and of deterrence. And this is the context in which Britain gives the security assurance to Poland. They're really kind of drawing the line in the sand there. And if you cross that, there will be war. There might be no great love in Paris and London for Poland at that time.
But there is this red line and once you cross it there will be war. But Hitler ultimately sees this as a kind of an empty bluff." Hitler mocks Chamberlain. What right do the British have to interfere in German affairs? And as for their guarantee to Poland, I'll give them a stew they can choke on, he snarls. Hitler decrees that a military solution to the Polish problem is required. In terms of a general war,
He will leave it to the Western powers to make their declarations. Let them be the aggressors. He still doesn't believe they've got the stomach for it, even if they did. How on earth, logistically, can they even come to Poland's aid? And as for the Soviet Union? Well, the Nazis have got wind that Polish Foreign Minister Beck has been in London, lunching with the new king, George VI.
Beck tells the monarch that Poland doesn't trust the communists any more than the Nazis. This will soon turn out to be quite prophetic. How do the Germans know all this? Because British intelligence is woefully lacking. In Berlin, Ambassador Neville Henderson uses an unsecure phone line. They've been tapping it for months. It's no different in Rome.
At the weekends, a professional safecracker breaks into the British embassy and makes copies of all their classified documents. Still, if the Soviets do align themselves with the West, it will cause problems. Hitler is going to have to get creative, and rather quickly. Ideologically, there's nothing more anathema to Hitler's Nazi philosophy than Bolshevism, though some would say they're not much different. Under the totalitarian Stalin,
Governance of the Soviet Union has proven just as murderously ruthless as Hitler's Germany. Perhaps at this point even more so. Stalin's Great Purge of 1937 saw as many as 700,000 killed, including much of the Soviet military leadership. As a consequence, the Red Army in its current condition is not a patch on the modern fighting forces now being trained and equipped by Hitler. They both have something each other wants.
The Russians could use some German military know-how. The Germans covet the Soviet Union's vast supplies of grain and raw materials. Feelers are extended. Soon there is dialogue between Berlin and Moscow. The encirclement of Poland has begun. On April 20, 1939, Adolf Hitler turns 50, an age he thought he might not live beyond. He'll make it just to 56.
The Wehrmacht lays on the biggest military parade that Berlin has ever seen. The arms limitation of Versailles restricted the army to 100,000 men. It's now pushing eight times that number. The march past includes the Waffen-SS, its men clad in black. They used to be merely Hitler's bodyguard. Now, headed by Heinrich Himmler, the SS are ready for the battlefield. An army within an army. The day has been declared a national holiday.
Two million people line the route. The birthday boy is showered with presents. Gunsmith Karl Walter gives him a solid gold PPK pistol. Albert Speer brings a scale model of a futuristic Berlin. Ferdinand Porsche hands Hitler the keys to a brand new convertible Volkswagen Beetle, even though the Führer can't drive. Churches across the fatherland hold special masses to confer blessings upon the Führer. Even the Pope sends his best wishes.
In 1939, the majority of Germans thought, yes, Versailles had been unfair, but there was also a memory of the horrors of war in Germany.
And in a way, the reason why Hitler was maybe the domestically most popular world leader by the time he turned 50 in April of 1939 was because he was seen as kind of general bloodless in Germany. Yes, he was building up the army. He was pursuing a muscular foreign policy. But ultimately, he was achieving all this without a single drop of blood being spilled.
But this open display of militarism sets alarm bells ringing. President Roosevelt reminds Hitler of his professed desire for peace. Hitler replies with a speech broadcast across Europe and the US, in which he mocks Roosevelt amid much background laughter. ...Hungarians, Turks, Iraq, Iranians, Syrians, Palestinians...
The Axis agreement with Italy, the Pact of Friendship, is upgraded into a full-blown military alliance, the more macho Pact of Steel. The Polish Corridor, Danzig, the business of Lehmannsraum, the securing of food supplies, it all points to one thing: Poland must be destroyed. There is just one final piece of the puzzle to fall into place.
Hitler knows that talks between the British, French and Russians have been stalling, so he decides to make his play. The Führer has a nice little proposition. How would Stalin feel if they divvied up Poland between them? The West are not serious in their overtures, Hitler says. In a war against Germany, Britain and France will simply use Russia to take the heat off them. They'll be cannon fodder.
To Stalin, the shiny new armies of Hitler and Mussolini are starting to look the more attractive option. Plus, Poland has spent much of its existence under Russian rule. Russia would very much like it back. In private, Hitler is already preparing to do the dirty on Stalin. He will still invade the USSR eventually, just as he outlined in Mein Kampf. Think of this as a temporary necessity, a pact with Satan, as he puts it.
to drive out the devil. Hitler waits out the summer. He goes walking in his beloved Bavarian Alps. He knows that things have a habit of going his way, and soon they do. With the encouragement of Berlin, Nazi officials in Danzig stop cooperating with Polish customs officers. Order in the Free City begins breaking down. 6,000 feet above the Berghof, at the top of a mountain, is a brand new tea room.
Martin Bormann has had it built for his Führer. It's called the Kehlsteinhaus, nicknamed the Eagle's Nest, another birthday present. Twelve workers died during its hasty construction, but Hitler will never much care for the place. It's a bit too high. Nonetheless, he invites the League of Nations High Commissioner here.
While his guest struggles with his vertigo, Hitler lays it out in his most diplomatic terms that if things don't turn out exactly to his liking, I will smash the Poles so completely that not a single trace of Poland will be found afterwards, he screams. Like a lightning bolt, I will strike with the full power of my mechanized army, the power of which the Poles have no idea. Very well, Monsieur Chancellor, replies the crestfallen commissioner.
It seems almost inevitable there will be a war. It's here that Mussolini steps back into the picture. The Italian leader had been somewhat miffed not to be forewarned of Hitler's Czech land grab. So, just a few days later, he'd begun his own military adventure. On April 7th, Mussolini launched an invasion of Albania, on the somewhat flimsy pretext that it had once been part of the Roman Empire. The military action was distinctly one-sided,
but Italian forces still made a hash of the operation. Il Duce relays an awkward truth to Hitler: Italy won't be up to full military strength until 1943. Plus, Mussolini's getting rather jittery about the prospect of war with Britain and France, Italy's former allies. The Pact of Steel commits not just to a military alliance if attacked, but also when attacking.
It was something at the grand signing ceremony while posturing in his helmet and medals that Mussolini hadn't quite thought through. He wonders whether the European powers mightn't sit around the conference table again. But nobody wants that anymore, especially not the Germans. Professor Helen Roche.
At the beginning, as Nazism was first being conceived, Hitler really saw Mussolini as a fanboy. And even in their first few meetings, Mussolini was very much the one who had the whip hand and was kind of showing off, you know, here's my wonderful dictatorship, what have you got to show me? And it's very interesting how as the 30s progressed,
That balance of power really shifts as Hitler begins to really exert power in Europe in a way that Mussolini hasn't been able or hasn't been that interested in affecting. Dr. John Curatola.
The Germans look upon Italy as an unsinkable aircraft carrier. They're in the Mediterranean, and it geographically commands that area. And so there's that benefit as a fascist power and geographically with regard to Southern Europe. Hitler is willing to accede Southern Europe to Italian power because he's got bigger fish to fry. But the problem is the Italian army ain't the German army.
and their ability to man, train, equip, and conduct tactical action is significantly less than that of the Germans. Italy may be having a wobble, but the Fuhrer is soon warmed by the news just in from the East. Talks between the Soviet Union, Britain, and France have finally hit the buffers. That day, August the 22nd, he sends Ribbentrop on his mission to seal the deal. The next evening, after his flight...
Riventhrop finds himself sitting opposite Joseph Stalin. They are joined by the new Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov. Molotov wears a cheap suit and wire-rimmed glasses. With his clipped moustache, he exudes the demeanour of a math teacher, but appearance is a deceptive. Molotov is deeply implicated in the atrocities of the Great Purge, and is as cutthroat as anyone in the Politburo.
Like many of the Soviet high-ups, he goes under a catchy nickname. Molotov means "sledgehammer". Finnish resistance fighters will call a homemade petrol bomb after him the Molotov cocktail. Ribbentrop, the former sparkling wine salesman, comes out with all the expected platitudes about mutual respect, about Germany and Russia working side by side. Stalin cuts to the quick.
For years, we've poured buckets of manure on one another, he says, in the PG version of his pronouncement. That should not stop us from coming to an understanding. Plus, there's some territories he's interested in himself. He gets out the little notebook he carries around everywhere and reads them off. Finland, the Baltic states, and Bessarabia, modern-day Moldova. Molotov spells it out.
After going Dutch on Poland, the Soviet Union and Germany must draw up a line of demarcation, define their spheres of influence. Ribbentrop explains that he'll have to ask his boss. He leaves to use the telephone. His ambassador advises him that he must take his time, not appear too eager in negotiations. So Ribbentrop stops off for a bite to eat. He returns an hour later. Hitler has agreed.
Officially, this will be a non-aggression pact, but the territorial division will be included as a so-called secret protocol. The paperwork is signed, commemorative photographs are taken, Stalin drinks to Hitler's good health. At that very moment, at the Berghof, Hitler is holding court with his top military commanders. His admirals inform him that the pocket battleship Graf Spee
a surface raider, has successfully slipped out into the Atlantic. Twenty-one U-boats have taken up positions around the British Isles. While talking over coffee, a telegram is passed to Hitler, confirming that Stalin has now signed on the dotted line. He rests back in his armchair, a contented man. "I have them," he says. "I have them." Goering, it is said, dances on the table.
There is the odd military grumbling about lack of supplies and ammunition when it comes to invading Poland, but the Fuhrer just tells them that they will have to wrap things up very quickly. Blitzkrieg, the concept of lightning war, will be unlike anything that's gone before.
The Germans, unlike the other major militaries that were involved in the First World War, do a wholesale review of why they lost the war. And as a result, they come up with these ideas that firepower isn't the way for the future. Maneuver, speed, quickness, combined arms operations. These are the things that the Germans see as the wave of the future. And they're going to innovate. Revelation of the Nazi-Soviet pact sends the world into shock.
The Poles are devastated. In Britain, the Daily Worker newspaper, which has spent much of its time praising Stalin and trashing Hitler, doesn't know which way to turn. Even in Germany there's confusion over the deal. Aren't we supposed to hate the communists?
A lot of people were incredibly shocked and actually felt viscerally betrayed by the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. The idea that after all of this anti-Russian propaganda, there could possibly be a rapprochement was just seen as unimaginable.
To perform this volt fat was, in rhetorical terms, something very difficult to present. But they tried it, for example, through film and through magazines and newspaper articles and so forth. Suddenly, they began to defang the Bolsheviks. They identify commonalities with the Bolsheviks. Stalin becomes their unlikely friend.
And on Stalin's part, he really is their friend. It's curious how such a cynical and evil and demented man could actually be so naive. Hitler heads to Tempelhof airfield, ready to greet the returning hero Ribbentrop. When Heinrich Hoffmann shows Hitler the souvenir photographs, Hitler doesn't like them. Stalin is smoking. Hitler detests the habit. The Fuhrer takes out a magnifying glass and closely examines Stalin's earlobes.
On the plus side, according to his own bizarre pseudoscience, he's satisfied at least that the Russian leader is not Jewish. Strategic thinking towards Germany in the kind of foreign ministries around the world had been that the one thing you could be sure of is that there would be no alliance between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
And in the summer of 1939, he is suddenly doing precisely that. So he's blindsiding almost everyone around the world.
His preferred solution to Germany's security would have been an agreement with Britain, where again Germany would dominate the Eurasian landmass and Britain would rule the seas. But it is increasingly becoming clear to Hitler, and particularly to Ribbentrop, that this is just not happening. In Moscow, a short while after Ribbentrop's departure, an Anglo-French delegation turns up.
They're unaware that the Nazis have beaten them to the punch. They've travelled by ship to Leningrad. It's taken them six days to get there. The efficient Germans were in and out in just a few hours. But it's not just Mussolini who's nervous about war. Hermann Göring suddenly realises it might end his personal supply of luxury goods. So he opens his own back channel to Britain and France via some wealthy Swedes he knows through his late wife. On a deeper level,
There are those high up in the German military command who fear that the Fuhrer is now acting with reckless abandon. Undoing the injustices of Versailles reclaiming German land, that's one thing. There was a logic to it. The willful pursuit of war and conquest? This is not their mission. The Great War was waged at the cost of 7 million German casualties. The new weapons of war, the new technology, aerial strategic bombing. What comes next could be the apocalypse.
Some senior commanders will start, covertly, to work against Hitler. We will visit their resistance in a later episode. On Friday, August 25th, two days after news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact has broken, Hitler secretly confirms the order to invade Poland, although he will defer the date. The French ambassador tells Hitler the same thing that Neville Henderson, the British ambassador, did.
To make the matter quite clear, I give you my word that the French army will fight with the side of Poland, if that country should be attacked. Over the weekend, there is a huge military build-up along Germany's eastern frontier. In the coming days, there is a last-minute flurry of activity. The Swedish associates of Goering shuttle back and forth between London and Berlin, promoting half-baked solutions. Henderson goes to see Ribbentrop,
but the pair nearly end up in a fistfight and have to be separated. French Premier Deladier tries one last appeal, speaking to Hitler as an old frontline soldier, but it's no use. Hitler cancels his annual Nazi rally at Nuremberg. This year's event had been titled, with no sense of irony, the Rally of Peace. He places his armed forces on high alert. Commercial air traffic between Britain and the continent comes to a halt.
Hitler makes his final offer on the morning of Thursday, August 31st. Unless the Poles are prepared to send a delegation and sign over the corridor and Danzig by noon, he will begin his attack the next day, September 1st. Even if they were agreeable, it's an impossible deadline. Reinhard Heydrich is already on the move. He has sent SS detachment disguised as Polish soldiers to create incidents along the border.
At Gleiwitz, they attack and occupy a radio station. From here, they broadcast anti-German slogans. They brought along some props, a truckload of dead bodies from the concentration camps. These they dress in German uniforms, riddle with bullets, and scatter around. It's called, grimly, Operation Canned Goods.
On air, it's reported that Hitler had made a very reasonable proposal to Poland, a 16-point plan, and this is how they repay him.
The invasion can't just begin. There has to be a preamble. There has to be a false flag. It's like they have a textbook which they're following. So the border incident at Gleichschwitz convinces Germans at a certain level that they're being attacked by the Poles. Now you ask, how can they be so naive? How can they not know about false flags incidents? Well, I think the answer is that people become
At 4:45 am on Friday, September 1st, in Danzig harbour, the German cruiser Schleswig-Holstein starts shelling a military depot on the shore. All along the lengthy land border, German artillery units open up.
At the same time, Luftwaffe bombers start hitting Polish airfields. At 9:40 AM, Hitler heads for the Kroll Opera House to address his rubber-stamped Reichstag, costumed in a field-grey uniform, both humble corporal and supreme commander of the armed forces. "Who fights with poison will be fought with poison," he screeches. He says that he now wants nothing more than to be the first soldier of the German Reich
The Poles put up a heroic resistance, but with half a million Wehrmacht troops now rolling in from the west, they don't stand a chance. They're pitting mounted cavalry against the state-of-the-art Panzer tanks. Within 48 hours, the Polish air force is obliterated. Within 48 more, the Polish army will have been routed. That night, the cities of Britain go into blackout. Panes of glass are now crisscrossed with tape to prevent shattering.
and everybody is carrying a standard-issue gas mask. In the cities of Germany, it's exactly the same. In Westminster, at 7:44 pm on Saturday, September 2nd, an ashen Prime Minister Chamberlain goes to the House of Commons to make a statement. With emotion catching at his voice, he says that unless German troops withdraw from Poland immediately, His Majesty's government will be bound to take action. Members push for an ultimatum to be sent,
They will give Germany till noon the next day, 11 am UK time. Berlin, Sunday, September 3rd. It's a beautiful late summer morning. The city seems serene. People are out strolling its avenues, breakfasting at pavement cafes, enjoying its parks and lakes. Riebentrop has a scheduled 9 am meeting with Neville Henderson, but after their last encounter, he doesn't want to go. He asks his interpreter, Paul Schmidt, to step in.
Schmidt oversleeps. When he sees the time, he rushes to the Foreign Office. And he gets there just as Henderson's car is pulling up. They shake hands, but Henderson says he won't sit down. He'll keep it brief. "I regret that on the instruction of my government I have to hand you an ultimatum," he says. "Germany's troops must be withdrawn from Poland by noon." He apologizes. Schmidt has always been helpful. The interpreter likewise has a sneaking admiration for Henderson.
He's proven able to stand up to the Fuhrer. He's yelled in Hitler's face on more than one occasion. They part with a wearied acceptance. Schmidt then rushes straight to Hitler's office. He has to fight his way through the Nazi officials gathering in the ante room. He finds the Fuhrer at his desk. Ribbentrop is standing by the window. Schmidt translates the ultimatum for them. Hitler, in a rare lost moment, asks what they should do. Ribbentrop says the French will be handing them a similar note soon.
They stand around looking glum, even Goebbels. An official telephones Göring, who's heading to Berlin on his private train. Why doesn't Göring fly to London right now? Hitler, surprisingly, agrees. A plane is put on standby, but they must deal with this accursed ultimatum first. At 11.15 German time, Ribbentrop summons Henderson. The Fuhrer, he says, has given a flat refusal to British demands.
They call off the Goering Mercy Mission. At 11:15 British Summer Time, a broken Chamberlain broadcasts live on the BBC Home Service. "This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note
stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany. From Moscow to Poland.
to World War, it's taken just 11 days. Chamberlain's broadcast is followed by a series of public service announcements and on the streets of London, 8 minutes later, an air raid warning, a false alarm it turns out. In Berlin, public loudspeakers relay the news of the declaration of war, but unlike 1914, there are no crowds. On this balmy Sunday, it's all rather surreal.
You don't find that kind of euphoria that you found in 1914 in Germany. People were apprehensive at first. They didn't like the idea of getting into another war. They were thinking, what's Hitler doing? What's he playing at? Surely this was all meant to be avoided.
At 7:40 pm that very day,
200 miles west of the Hebrides, German U-boat U-30 sinks the British liner Athenia. It had been en route from Glasgow to Montreal. 177 passengers and crew are killed, including 28 US citizens. The hostilities have begun. In the next episode, after the invasion of Poland comes a period of relative quiet, the Phony War. Though it won't last long,
Setting his sights on Scandinavia, Hitler will invade Denmark and Norway. A devastating blitzkrieg will roll over Western Europe as the Fuhrer's Panzers arrive in Paris. How on earth will the Allies stop him now? That's next time