Posted on 08/11/2009 6:26:47 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
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
For some ten hours on August 11, Ciano conferred with Ribbentrop at the latter’s estate at Fuschl, outside Salzburg, which the Nazi Foreign Minister had taken from an Austrian monarchist who, conveniently, had been put away in a concentration camp. The hot-blooded Italian found the atmosphere, as he later reported, cold and gloomy. During dinner at the White Horse Inn at St. Wolfgang not a word was exchanged between the two. It was scarcely necessary. Ribbentrop had informed his visitor earlier in the day that the decision to attack Poland was implacable.
“Well, Ribbentrop,” Ciano says he asked, “what do you want? The Corridor or Danzig?”
“Not that any more,” Ribbentrop replied, gazing at him with his cold, metallic eyes. “We want war!”
Ciano’s arguments that a Polish conflict could not be localized, that if Poland were attacked the Western democracies would fight, were bluntly rejected. The day before Christmas Eve four years later – 1943 – when Ciano lay in Cell 27 of the Verona jail waiting execution at the instigation of the Germans, he still remembered that chilling day of August 11 at Fuschl and Salzburg. Ribbentrop, he wrote in his very last diary entry on December 23, 1943, had bet him “during one of those gloomy meals at the Oerstereichischer Hof in Salzburg” a collection of old German armor against an Italian painting that France and Britain would remain neutral – a bet, her remarks ruefully, which was never paid. (To be continued.)
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The Duce is anxious for me to prove by documentary evidence that an outbreak of war at this time would be folly. . . . It would be impossible to localize it in Poland, and a general war would be disastrous for everyone. Never has the Duce spoken of the need for peace so unreservedly and with so much warmth. . . . Ribbentrop is evasive. Whenever I ask him for particulars about German policy his conscience troubles him. He has lied too many times about German intentions towards Poland not to feel uneasy now about what he must tell me, and what they are really planning to do. . . . The German decision to fight is implacable. Even if they were given more than they ask they would attack just the same, because they are possessed by the demon of destruction. . . . At times our conversation becomes very tense. I do not hesitate to express my thoughts with brutal frankness. But this does not move him. I am becoming aware how little we are worth in the opinion of the Germans.
Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm
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.
Thank you, excellent posts as always.
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.
Well this was the overall ramifications of the breakup of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. Borders were drawn haphazardly without thought of whether neighbors could co-exist, see Yugoslavia.
But to argue your point, Gdansk was not always a German city. The city was called “Gdansk” before it was given it’s Germanized name, “Danzig.” The city changed hands between Poles and Germans over centuries.
And history has shown over the long-run, while brutal, it was the correct thing to do, as it has granted the longest period of peace in recent European history. In the immortal words of The Offspring, "You gotta keep 'em separated."
We’ll probably have to agree to disagree about Danzig; it was founded by Germans as a Hanseatic League port, While it had a substantial Polish minority and may have had Polish sovereignty from time to time, it was always ethnically and culturally a German city.
As for “keeping the peace” in Europe, the NATO/Warsaw Pact standoff, nuclear weapons and lingering memories of the horrors of WW2 had as much to do with the lasting peace as anything else. The French were once considered a martial people...until Verdun. The Germans were considered a martial people...until Stalingrad.
The 1945 Polish/German resettlement had much more to do with Stalin wanting to punish Germany, and push the Poles west to create more buffer space. He was not so concerned with creating “fair” ethnic boundaries. Not that it was unusual; Stalin’s regime was infamous for re-settlement of entire ethnic populations, such as the Volga Germans, Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, etc....
I should point out, however, that Breslau always had a large Polish minority, that were subject to anti-Polish riots in the 19th and early 20th century.
From Wikipedia:
Throughout its long history Gdansk faced various periods of rule from different states before 1945:
* 997-1308: as part of Poland
* 1308-1454: as part of territory of Teutonic Order
* 1454-1466: Thirteen Years’ War
* 1466-1793: as part of Poland
* 1793-1805: as part of Prussia
* 1807-1814: as a free city
* 1815-1871: as part of Prussia
* 1871-1918: as part of Imperial Germany
* 1918-1939: as a free city
* 1939-1945: as part of Nazi Germany
PS:
Sorry about the long paragraph. For some reason the text would not break into paragraphs as I desired it to do so. I kept getting server errors when trying to post.
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.
“Whereas Britain’s experience of 1917-8 air raids had resulted in 1,500 killed in just over 100 raids “
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/wars_conflict/home_front/the_home_front_08.shtml
“In January 1915, two Zeppelin navel airships 190 metres long, flew over the east coast of England and bombed great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn. The first Zeppelin raid on London took place on 31st May 1915. The raid killed 28 people and injured 60 more.
“Many places suffered from Zeppelin raids included Edinburgh, Gravesend, Sunderland, the Midlands and the Home Counties. By the end of May 1916 at least 550 British civilians had been killed by German Zeppelins.”
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWzeppelinraids.htm
“A further seven people were killed in the first Zeppelin attack on London on 31 May. Costlier raids on the capital took place later in the year. On the night of 13/14 October 1915, for example, five Zeppelins accounted for the lives of 71 Londoners.”
...
“From the spring of 1917, the German military authorities increasingly turned their attention to long-range bombers such as the Glossary - opens new windowGotha aeroplane. The daylight attack on London by 20 Gothas on 13 June 1917 killed 162 civilians, the highest death toll from a single air raid on Britain during the war. Less than a month later, on 7 July, a further raid in which 57 more people were killed raised British anti-German sentiments to fever pitch. “
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/spotlights/airraids.htm
When I watched “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” earlier this year I was surprised at the part set during WWI when Chips showed his moral authority by calmly keeping his classroom in order during an air raid. I did not recall ever learning about such events actually occurring. Now I can rest assured that the film’s producers did not exercise undue artistic license in the story line.
Wow. That was a lot more prolific than I thought it would be. Thanks for the links.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.