August 10. – The Duce is more than ever convinced of the necessity of delaying the conflict. He himself has worked out the outline of a report concerning the meeting at Salzburg which ends with an allusion to international negotiations to settle the problems that so dangerously disturb European life.
Before letting me go he recommends that I shall frankly inform the Germans that we must avoid a conflict with Poland since it will be impossible to localize it, and a general war would be disastrous for everybody.
Armed with such commendable but, in the circumstances, naive thoughts and recommendations, the youthful Fascist Foreign Minister set out for Germany, where during the next three days – August 11, 12 and 13 – he received from Ribbentrop and especially from Hitler the shock of his life.
[From Shirer's diary]
“How completely isolated a world the German people live in,” I noted in my diary on August 10, 1939. “A glance at the newspapers yesterday and today reminds you of it.” I had returned to Germany from a brief leave in Washington, New York and Paris, and coming up in the train from my home in Switzerland two days before I had bought a batch of Berlin and Rhineland newspapers. They quickly propelled one back to the cockeyed world of Nazism, which was as unlike the world I had just left as if it had been on another planet. I noted further on August 10, after I had arrived in Berlin:
Whereas all the rest of the world considers that the peace is about to be broken by Germany, that it is Germany that is threatening to attack Poland . . . here in Germany, in the world the local newspapers create, the very reverse is maintained .. . What the Nazi papers are proclaiming is this: that it is Poland which is disturbing the peace of Europe; Poland which is threatening Germany with armed invasion . . .
“POLAND, LOOK OUT!” warns the B.Z. headline, adding: “ANSWER TO POLAND, THE RUNNER-AMOK [AMOKLAUFFER] AGAINST PEACE AND RIGHT IN EUROPE!”
Or the headline in Der Fuehrer, daily paper of Karlsruhe, which I bought on the train: “WARSAW THREATENS BOMBARDMENT OF DANZIG – UNBELIEVABLE AGITATION OF THE POLISH ARCHMADNESS [POLNISCHEN GROESSENWAHSN]!”
You ask: But the German people can’t possibly believe these lies? Then you talk to them. So many do.
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
August 10, 1939
The main defence of England against air raids is the toll which can be extracted from the raiders. One-fifth knocked out each go will soon bring the raids to an end. . . . We must imagine the opening attack as a large affair crossing the sea in relays for many hours. But it is not the first results of the air attack which will govern the future of the air war. It is not child’s-play to come and attack England. A heavy proportion of casualties will lead the enemy to make severe calculations of profit and loss. As daylight raiding will soon become too expensive, we have chiefly to deal with random night-bombing of the built-up areas.
The British Government . . . dispatched Admiral Drax with a mission to Moscow on August 10. These officers possessed no written authority to negotiate. The French Mission was headed by General Doumenc. On the Russian side Marshal Voroshilov officiated. We now know that at this same time the Soviet Government agreed to the journey of a German negotiator to Moscow. The military conference soon foundered upon the refusal of Poland and Roumania to allow the transit of Russian troops. The Polish attitude was, “With the Germans we risk losing our liberty; with the Russians our soul.”
Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm
Just like in this country with the lies the MSM puts out.