America’s Second Crusade. William Henry Chamberlin
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pact. Ribbentrop, still smarting from the failure of his diplomatic mission in London, remarked that England was weak and wanted to let others fight for its presumptuous claim to world domination. Stalin eagerly agreed with this sentiment, but offered the reservation that, despite its weakness, “England would wage war craftily and stubbornly.” Stalin proposed the following toast to the Führer:
“I know how much the German nation loves its Führer; I should therefore like to drink his health.”
Molotov raised his glass to Stalin, declaring that it had been Stalin who “through his speech in March of this year, which had been well understood in Germany, had brought about the reversal in political relations.”27
Apart from Stalin’s speech and Merekalov’s overture on April 17, there was another important milestone on the road to the Soviet-Nazi pact. The Bulgarian Minister in Berlin, Dragonov, called at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on June 15 and repeated the contents of some remarks which the Soviet chargé d’affaires, Astakhov, had made to him on the preceding day.
Astakhov, in a burst of highly calculated indiscretion, had informed Draganov that the Soviet Government was vacillating between three policies, the conclusion of a pact with Great Britain and France, a further dilatory treatment of the pact negotiations, and a rapprochement with Germany. It was this last possibility which was closest to the desires of the Soviet Union.28 If Germany would conclude a nonaggression pact, the Soviet Union would probably refrain from concluding a treaty with England. The sincerity of the Soviet Government in inviting military conversations in Moscow later in the summer may be judged from these backdoor assurances, given in Berlin in June.
The published Soviet-German treaty bound each side not to attack the other and not to lend support to any grouping or third power hostile to the other partner. Its specified duration was ten years. But more important than the published treaty was a “strictly secret protocol.” This divided up a large part of Eastern Europe between the two signatories. Germany’s share was to be Poland up to the line of the rivers San, Narew, and Vistula, together with Lithuania. The Soviet Union received a free hand in Finland, Estonia, and Latvia. And Germany declared itself disinterested in Bessarabia, which the Soviet Union claimed, as a former Russian province, from Rumania. The eastern part of Poland was also to be part of the Soviet share of the spoils. Later this division was modified. The Soviet Union took Lithuania, while Germany obtained a larger slice of Poland.
The plebeian dictators, Hitler and Stalin, had revived in more brutal form the partition and annexationist policies of their crowned predecessors, Frederick the Great and Catherine II. The executions and mass deportations of slave labor which characterized both Nazi and Soviet occupations of Poland far exceeded in cruelty and in the number of people affected anything recorded of the eighteenth-century partitions of Poland.
The announcement of the Soviet-Nazi agreement sounded like a crack of doom in London and Paris. To thoughtful observers it was clear that Poland’s chances of survival, dim even when the threat was only from Germany, had almost vanished when its two mighty neighbors were leagued in what was soon to prove a pact of mutual aggression against that unfortunate country.
The British Government, however, had gone too far to back down. The Anglo-Polish Treaty was rushed to final ratification on August 25.
Hitler and Ribbentrop doubted to the end that Britain and France would stand firm. Ribbentrop’s attitude was made clear at a meeting between him and Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, at Salzburg on August 11. Ribbentrop disclosed to the dismayed Ciano that war with Poland was imminent. But he insisted that Britain and France would remain neutral and backed his opinion with a bet of a suit of old armor against an old Italian painting. He never paid the bet.
Ciano, never an enthusiast for the German connection, had reluctantly signed the so-called pact of steel, an alliance between Germany and Italy, in May 1939. But Ciano received the impression from Ribbentrop that Germany did not propose to precipitate war for several years.29
After wavering in a state of agonized uncertainty between such conflicting impulses as desire for loot and martial glory, fear of German wrath and realistic consciousness of Italian military weakness, Mussolini decided to stay out of the war for the time being. He informed Hitler in a letter of August 25 that “it would be better if I did not take the initiative in military activities in view of the present situation of Italian war preparations.” In the spirit of “the cat who gave birth to a tiger” he plaintively reminded Hitler that war had been envisaged for after 1942 and that at that time he would have been ready on land, on sea, and in the air.
The last days of August 1939 resembled the last days of September 1938. There was the same atmosphere of imminent war. Diplomatic activity was on a twenty-four-hour basis. There were appeals for peace from Washington. There were exchanges of letters between Hitler and Chamberlain, between Hitler and Daladier. But this time the end was war, not accommodation.
Hitler, in communications to Chamberlain of August 23 and August 25, repeated his willingness to support the British Empire and repudiated any idea of westward expansion. But he insisted that the problems of Danzig and the Corridor must be solved.
When Sir Nevile Henderson saw von Ribbentrop at midnight on August 30, the latter produced a lengthy document which, according to Henderson, “he read out to me in German or rather gabbled through to me in a tone of the utmost scorn and annoyance.”30
The document was a sixteen-point program for settling the issues of Danzig and the Corridor. Among other things the proposals called for a plebiscite of the inhabitants of the area who had lived there before World War I and for German and Polish rights of communication, regardless of the outcome of the plebiscite.
These proposals in themselves were not unreasonable, but they were presented in a fashion that indicated neither expectation nor desire for discussion on equal terms. Ribbentrop said the proposal was already outdated because Poland had not immediately sent an envoy with plenipotentiary powers, as Hitler had demanded in his last communication to Henderson, on August 29.
Göring apparently made a last-minute attempt to dissuade Hitler from launching the war. Helmuth Wohltat, one of Göring’s economic subordinates, had obtained in London from Sir Horace Wilson and Robert Hudson, two of Chamberlain’s associates, suggestions for a plan of Anglo-German amity. Göring believed this plan was sufficiently hopeful to be worth trying out. But Ribbentrop’s influence was predominant with Hitler; and Ribbentrop was bent on war. Göring was almost driven out of the Führer’s presence when he presented his plea for caution and delay in the last days before the outbreak of war.31
The German offensive against Poland was launched in the early morning of September 1. British and French declarations of war against Germany became effective on September 3. Two sentences in Neville Chamberlain’s announcement of the state of war to the House of Commons are worth recalling:
“This is a sad day for all of us, and to no one is it sadder than to me. Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life has crumbled into ruin.”
The note of melancholy was distinctly appropriate to the occasion. British and French statesmanship had been outmaneuvered by Soviet. What could easily have been a German thrust against the Soviet Union had been deflected against the West. The war would doom the Britain of economic freedom and private property in which Neville Chamberlain believed. And the maintenance of Poland’s freedom and territorial integrity, the ostensible cause of fighting, would not be won, even though Hitler was to perish in the flaming ruins of his wrecked capital.
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