that they will continue to react as hitherto to any attempt by the authorities of the Free City to impair the rights and interests which Poland enjoys in Danzig, and will do so by such means and measures as they alone may deem appropriate, and that they will regard any intervention by the Reich Government . . . as an act of aggression.
No small nation which stood in Hitler’s way had ever used such language. When on the following day, August 11, the Fuehrer received Carl Burckhardt, a Swiss, who was League of Nations High Commissioner at Danzig and who had gone more than halfway to meet the German demands there, he was in an ugly mood. He told his visitor that “if the slightest thing was attempted by the Poles, he would fall upon them like lightning with all the powerful arms at his disposal, of which the Poles had not the slightest idea.”
M. Burckhardt said [the High Commissioner later reported] that that would lead to a general conflict. Herr Hitler replied that if he had to make war he would rather do it today than tomorrow, that he would not conduct it like the Germany of Wilhelm II, who had always had scruples about the full use of every weapon, and that he would fight without mercy up to the extreme limit.
Against whom? Against Poland certainly. Against Britain and France, if necessary. Against Russia too? With regard to the Soviet Union, Hitler had finally made up his mind.
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Also on this thread:
[Polish Foreign Minister] Beck Feels Peace is Still Possible – 3-5*
Nazi General [von Brauchitsch] Asks Labor to be Calm – 5-6**
Reich Aim to Get Hungary Now Seen – 7
England Has Greatest Black-Out Since the War, With London Dark – 8
Yugoslav Envoy Back From Holiday – 9
297 Row into Palestine – 9
Gibes at Roosevelt Resumed in Germany – 9
* Colonel Beck said that Poland had a line from which she could not retire, but that the very fact of Poland’s strength and determination to resist would tend to prevent war.
** There is, however, no peace without justice, and in our experience there is no justice without weapons.
Words to live by.
Forster at Berchtesgaden update at reply #2.
Ciano at Salzburg update at reply #3.
Ciano’s diary at reply #4.
Homer
Lots to digest here, but things are clearly heating up to a climax. We don’t even have the bombshell of the Non-Aggression Pact yet. Can’t wait to see the fallout over that.
A couple points on what I managed to read:
First was the speech by Forster where he laid out his “seven points” in the dispute over Danzig. The real problem with the whole situation is that points one through three set out the basis of the Danzig dispute. On those three points, he was exactly correct. Danzig was and always had been a German city. The surrounding province of Pomerania was ethnically German, although in that region there was no clear ethnic demarcation line between German and Pole. Wilson’s insistence on an independent Poland was not in itself a bad idea, but the idea that Poland have access to the sea was. There was no way to accomplish this without incorporating unwilling Germans into Polish territory. It turned out to be the trigger for world war.
The Russians solved this problem neatly in 1945. Today, there are no Germans in Danzig, Pomerania or Silesia. Nor are there any Poles in what used to be Polish territory, but is now western Belarus and Ukraine. The means involved were to create millions of what were known as “displaced persons” although the much of the German populace preemptively aided the Russians by fleeing in terror before the advance of the Red Army.
But I digress.
On the the second point, which I found a bit darkly humorous. The German Commander in Chief gave a pep talk to metal workers in Dusseldorf. There were undertones in the article that the German laborer was getting antsy about war coming, and was weary of “long hours, low wages and food scarcity.” Had Brauchitsch been somewhat more sagacious, his speech should have been: “Hey, these are the salad days. In a few years, add to the misery daily bombings, but we can get you away from all of this by replacing you with foreign workers so you can go serve the Fatherland at wonderful places like Stalingrad, Alamein, Kursk and Normandy.....”
I have a feeling that if it was the same time in 1940 that shoestore on Strands would have had it’s windows busted out and the lights turned off that way.
I did find it interesting that it was the biggest blackout since the “World War”. Despite the fact that there was the possibility of Zeppelin’s bombarding English cities I’d bet that was very unlikely. I would think that black outs during the first World War was more to protect ships from being outlined against cityscapes showing them to attacking submarines than to protect against aerial bombings.
Count Ciano seems to be one of the more interesting figures of the war. There seems to be a feeling that he was an honorable man and patriot, who found himself working for a dishonorable man and regime, and part of a horrendously evil alliance. As would be expected, he got killed, even though he was Mussolini’s son in law.