The Poles felt they had been delivered...little did they know.
Interesting article on killing the poisonous London zoo reptiles and spiders. Gives one an idea of Great Britain’s state of mind at the time.
It will be interesting to see how things seem to “return to normal” during the “Phoney War” which lasts until May of 1940.
It was finally agreed, according to the British minute, though Bonnet does not mention this, that the British would deliver their ultimatum at 8 a.m. and the French theirs at noon. Bonnet’s parting shot to the British was similar to Daladier’s a few minutes before. “If the British bombers,” he said, “could be ready at once to reply to bombing attacks the position might be different.”
Chamberlain and Halifax in their telephone conversations with the French had not exaggerated the precarious position of the Tory government in the seething House of Commons. At 2 a.m. that night, Ambassador Corbin rang up Bonnet to warn him that the Chamberlain government risked being overthrown unless it could assure the Commons when it met at 10 a.m that the British ultimatum, with a time limit of a few hours, had already been delivered in Berlin. Corbin added that the British government had finally decided to deliver the ultimatum in Berlin at 9 a.m. with hostilities, so far as Britain was concerned, commencing at 11 a.m.
Corbin also asked if Paris could not “shorten the delay.” Bonnet recounts that he telephoned the Ministry of War to ask it and was answered:
Ask London if it can put the British Bomber Force at our disposition tomorrow morning. In that case the French General Staff can accept a reduction of the delay.
The message, says Bonnet, was relayed by Corbin to the British Foreign Office but the British General Staff Could not make a decision immediately. “Once again,” the Foreign Minister recounts, “we are halted by the insufficiency of our means of action.” One wonders why Daladier and Bonnet insisted on British bombers. Fighters, not bombers, would have been the “means” of halting a German air attack. And the French had enough fighters to turn back any bombers the Germans could spare from Poland.
William Shirer, “The Collapse of the Third Republic” p. 501-502.
This is a passage from the longer chapter about how the British were finally serious about going to war and stopping Hitler, and how the French had to be reluctantly dragged into it. The French military under Gamelin represented to the civilian government that the minute France went to war with Germany, fleets of German bombers would appear over every French city and slaughter civilians. Later in the chapter there is a plaintive plea from French Foreign Minister Bonnet to objecting to calling the diplomatic note to Berlin an “ultimatum” because it sounded to strong. Sheesh.....
ON THIS DAY:
After recieving news of the Declaration of War, HMS Ajax (Capt. C.H.L. Woodhouse, RN) intercepts the German merchant Olinda (4576 GRT) off the coast of Uruguay in position 33º50’S, 53º30’W.
The German ship is sunk by gunfire.
German aircraft attack Polish Navy ships that had moved to Hela, sinking the Destroyer “Wicher”, the Gunboat “General Haller”, 2 minesweepers, and several smaller ships.
The German Navy begins laying the “Westwall” mine barrages in the North Sea. This involves most of the Destroyers and light cruisers of the German Navy.
SS Athenia, a British cruise ship en-route from Glasgow, Scotland to Montreal, Canada is torpedoed by German submarine U-30 250 miles Northwest of Ireland. 112 passengers and crew are killed. The “Battle of the Atlantic” begins. Only a few hours before, at 1256 hours Berlin time, BdU had broadcast an urgent encoded message: “Hostilities with England effective immediately”.
In Poland,Third and Fourth Armies have linked up. The Pomorze Army force assigned to the defense of the Corridor proper had been destroyed, with a loss of 15,000 men in prisoners alone, 90 field pieces, and large stocks of matériel.
The Modlin Army, from which the Germans claimed to have captured 10,000 prisoners, had been forced to withdraw southward from the Mlawa area. The Corridor was cut at base and center. The northern end of the Corridor and the fortress of Westerplatte in Danzig Harbor remained in Polish hands, but under constant attack by German ground, air, and sea forces.
The Podlaska Cavalry Brigade of the Narew Group made several local penetrations into East Prussia in the area held by Corps Brand during this period of operations. These actions received much publicity in the foreign press but affected the campaign very little.
In the south, Czestochowa was taken on the morning of 3 September, and Tenth Army seized several bridgeheads across the Warta despite determined Polish resistance. Fourteenth Army fought its way through the fortifications about Katowice and Mikolow in its zone of advance, and moved east along the Vistula.
The southern Polish armies, bypassed in numerous places by the fast-moving German columns, began a hurried withdrawal. The troops on the front noted a marked decrease in Polish resistance and made extensive gains.
In Air Operations, The Polish Air Force has ceased to exist as an effective fighting force. In three days the Luftwaffe had driven the Polish Air Force from the skies, and destroyed most of its bases on the ground. 1st and 4th Air Forces are ordered to switch thier main effort to ground support of the troops.
A number of German civilians resident in the Bydgoszcz area were shot in an operation directed by the local Polish commander, and the Reich government charged the Polish Government with terrorism. The Polish Government, in turn, used the incident to support its claim of fifth column activities on the part of the German minority resident within Poland’s borders. The “Bloody Sunday” incident was promptly used in the psychological warfare effort of both Germans and Poles.