Berlin at War (9 page)

national conference to resolve the crisis, if the Germans agreed to

withdraw their forces from Poland. In a ‘short and fierce debate’,38 he

was shouted down, however. And when cabinet met again later that

evening, it was resolved to convince the Prime Minister of its will.

Chamberlain gloomily agreed. The ultimatum would be delivered to

the German capital the following morning.

The population of Berlin, meanwhile, carried on as best they could.

William Shirer, for one, believed that he discerned a slight improve-

ment in morale on the morning of 2 September. People were, he wrote,

‘a little more cheery’ now that the first night of blackout and air raid

was behind them. Berlin ‘had a fairly normal aspect’, he recalled, ‘shops

were open . . . work on the new buildings went on as usual.’39

Other commentators disagreed with this rosy assessment, however.

The British ambassador, Sir Nevile Henderson, was one. ‘In order to

see for myself the mood of the people’, he wrote in his memoirs, ‘I

went for a walk down Unter den Linden, the main street of Berlin.

Few people were about, and everyone seemed completely apathetic.’40

Henderson was heartened to record that Berliners did not vent their

discontent in displays of hostility towards the British. ‘I happened to

want a drug called “Codeine”’, he recalled:

faith in the führer

25

and went into a shop to buy it. The chemist glumly told me that he

could not give it to me without a doctor’s prescription. I mentioned

that I was the British Ambassador. He repeated that he was sorry, but

the regulations on the subject were quite definite. So I said again, ‘I

don’t think you understand, I am the British Ambassador. If you poison

me with your drug, you will get a high decoration from your Doctor

Goebbels.’ The chemist’s lugubrious face lit up with pleasure at this

feeble joke and he at once gave me all the codeine that I wanted.41

Even so, he noted that ‘The whole atmosphere in Berlin was one of

utter gloom and depression.’42

Certainly, considering the fine weather of that weekend, it was

apparent that few Berliners were enjoying the city’s parks or water-

ways. One memoirist, for instance, recalled being told by a friend that

she had been the only pedestrian on Unter den Linden, at 11.30 that

morning.43 Racked with anxiety or confusion, most were busy stocking

up on food supplies, making the necessary alterations to their cellars,

or checking their precautions for the blackout. Some of the city’s chil-

dren found themselves being swiftly dispatched to relatives or friends

in the country, out of harm’s way. They appeared at the capital’s

railway stations, looking pale and anxious, wearing tags around their

necks bearing their names and destinations.

At 9.00 a.m. the next day – Sunday 3 September – Nevile Henderson

entered the Reich Chancellery to deliver London’s ultimatum to the

German government. He was met by Hitler’s interpreter, Paul Schmidt,

who had been asked to officiate by Ribbentrop, as the latter was

unwilling to be the recipient of such bad news. Schmidt, who had

overslept that morning after the feverish activity of the previous week,

recalled that Henderson bore a serious look when he arrived punctu-

ally on the hour. The pair shook hands; they had come to know each

other quite well over the months of Henderson’s residence in Berlin.

Henderson declined the offer of a seat, and stood solemnly in the

middle of the room. As Schmidt recalled, he announced, in a voice

betraying genuine emotion:

I regret that on the instruction of my Government I have to hand you

an ultimatum for the German Government. More than twenty-four

26

berlin at war

hours have elapsed since an immediate reply was requested to the

warning of September 1st, and since then the attacks on Poland have

been intensified. If His Majesty’s Government has not received satis-

factory assurances of the cessation of all aggressive action against Poland,

and the withdrawal of German troops from that country, by 11 o’clock

British Summer Time, from that time a state of war will exist between

Great Britain and Germany.44

When he had finished, Henderson handed the ultimatum to Schmidt.

The two expressed their regrets, shared a few heartfelt words and then

bade each other farewell. As Henderson departed for the British

Embassy, Schmidt took the ultimatum to Hitler.

After negotiating an anteroom packed with most of the German

cabinet and a number of senior Party functionaries, Schmidt entered

Hitler’s office. Both the Führer and Ribbentrop looked up in expec-

tation. He stopped a short distance from Hitler’s desk and slowly

translated the document. When he had finished, there was silence:

Hitler sat immobile, gazing before him. He was not at a loss, as was

afterwards stated, nor did he rage as others allege. He sat completely

silent and unmoving. After an interval which seemed an age, he turned

to Ribbentrop, who had remained standing by the window. ‘What now?’

he asked with a savage look.45

That afternoon, after the ultimatum had expired and war had been

formally declared, the news was broken to the German people. For

those listening on the radio in the capital, the announcement inter-

rupted a broadcast of Liszt’s sombre Hungarian Rhapsody No 1.

Immediately afterwards, in a speech that was relayed via loudspeakers

in the streets of Berlin, Hitler attempted once again to justify his

actions and to put the blame for the conflict on the ‘British warmon-

gers’. He spoke of his ‘peaceful efforts to secure bread and labour for

the German people’, and his difficulties in finding an understanding

with the British, who sought ‘new, hypocritical pretexts’ for limiting

Germany. He concluded by warning that the British ‘shall find out

what it means to wage war against National Socialist Germany’,

and reminded his listeners that ‘Germany will not capitulate ever

again’.46

faith in the führer

27

Although it was altogether rather perfunctory, one might have

expected that Hitler’s speech would at least have stirred patriotic

emotions and mobilised Berliners to leap to the defence of their

country. Yet, as Shirer noted, when news of the declaration of war

was relayed to the German people that day, there was little obvious

reaction. ‘I was standing in the Wilhelmstrasse’, he wrote, ‘when the

loudspeakers there suddenly announced that England had declared a

state of war with Germany. There were I should say about 250 people

standing there in the sun. They listened attentively to the announce-

ment. When it was finished there was not a murmur. They just stood

there like they were before. Stunned.’47

That afternoon, the German newspapers were hurrying to catch up

with events. Many of them produced extras, which were then eagerly

hawked in the city’s streets. One of the headlines blared:

BRITISH ULTIMATUM TURNED DOWN

ENGLAND DECLARES A STATE OF WAR WITH GERMANY

BRITISH NOTE DEMANDS WITHDRAWAL OF

OUR TROOPS IN THE EAST

THE FÜHRER LEAVING TODAY FOR THE FRONT

GERMAN MEMORANDUM PROVES ENGLAND’S GUILT48

Though the extras were distributed free of charge, there were few

takers.

Later that day, as British Embassy staff prepared to leave Berlin, Sir

Nevile Henderson noted that a small crowd of Berliners had gathered

outside the embassy building and was watching as the staff’s luggage was

loaded onto military trucks. ‘It was an absolutely silent crowd’, he wrote

later, ‘and if there was hatred or hostility in their hearts, they gave no

single sign of it.’49 One might dismiss this account as an example of

British wishful thinking, but his observations were confirmed by Helmuth

James von Moltke, a Berlin lawyer who would later become one of the

most prominent members of the German resistance. In a letter to his

wife that week, he described the scene of Henderson’s departure:

This war has a ghostly unreality. The people don’t support it. I happened

to pass when Henderson left the Wilhelmstrasse yesterday. There were

about 300 to 400 people, but no sound of disapproval, no whistling,

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berlin at war

not a word to be heard; you felt that they might applaud at any moment.

Quite incomprehensible. People are apathetic. It’s like a
danse macabre

performed on a stage by persons unknown; nobody seems to feel that

he’ll be the next one crushed by the machine.50

The broad mass of the German people reacted to the outbreak of

the Second World War proper, on 3 September 1939, with horror. As

William Shirer noted: ‘there is no excitement here in Berlin . . . no

hurrahs, no wild cheering, no throwing of flowers – no war fever,

no war hysteria . . . make no mistake, it is a far grimmer German

people that we see here tonight than we saw last night or the day

before.’51 If there had been some who, two days earlier, might have

been excited by the prospect of a limited skirmish against the Poles,

few relished a wider war against the British and the French. For the

vast majority, even those born after 1918, the First World War loomed

very large indeed. Not only had its human cost been enormous, but

its political consequences had racked Germany, leading to revolution,

political unrest and territorial truncation. The desire of Germany to

avenge itself was strong – and had, of course, been one of the primary

wellsprings of Nazi support – but for most this meant stopping short

of war. The prospect of returning to the fray two decades on against

the same enemies was one that seems to have left most Germans in

something approaching a state of shock. As one Berliner wrote that

day, the mood in the capital was profoundly depressed. ‘The atmos-

phere here is terrible’, he said, ‘a mixture of resignation and mourning

. . . It could not be worse.’52

Christabel Bielenberg, as an Englishwoman married to a German

and living in Berlin, perhaps felt the pain of the new war more than

most. She recalled listening to Neville Chamberlain’s Downing Street

radio broadcast on 3 September, which contained the fateful words

‘this country is at war with Germany’.

I sat motionless on the sofa. The voice carried on with its message but

I was no longer listening. . . .

The room seemed very small, much too small, and I got up suddenly

and went out through the French windows into the garden . . . The air

outside was gentle and warm. A pungent smell of pine trees from the

Grunewald hung over the garden and it was very dark.

faith in the führer

29

I sat down on the low brick wall which separated our flower beds

from the lawn, and stared into the darkness. Ahead of me a narrow

shaft of light from the sitting-room window pinpointed my path through

the dew, some dahlias beside me, the rough bark, the shadowy branches

of an apple tree beyond. . . .

An electric blue flash from the S-Bahn lit up the blacked-out sky, our

little house, the billowing curtains of the room upstairs where the chil-

dren were sleeping. An apple slithered through the branches of the tree

behind me and fell with a soft thud on to the flower bed beneath. It

was very peaceful and very still in the garden.53

That peace, it seemed, was soon to be shattered.

After the Polish campaign was completed, in early October 1939, the

German people might still have imagined that the chances for peace

were good. After all, the Poles had been defeated and, with that –

cynics would have argued – the Allied
casus belli
had effectively been

removed. Moreover, as no open conflict had yet erupted on the Western

Front, it was reasonable to assume that a settlement was possible.

This certainly was the logic adopted in Berlin’s government circles,

even by Hitler himself. On 6 October, after returning from Warsaw, where

the last pockets of Polish resistance were being subdued, the Führer

stood before the Reichstag – once again assembled in the Kroll Opera

House – and made what became known as a ‘peace offer’ to Britain and

France. He began with a long, rambling piece of self-justification:

summarising the successful campaign in Poland, pouring scorn on his

opponents and praising Nazi–Soviet cooperation. He summed up his

own thinking by asking:

Why should there be war in the West? To restore Poland? The Poland

of the Treaty of Versailles shall never rise again. This, two of the world’s

greatest states guarantee. The final structure of this area, the question

of the restoration of a Polish state, are problems which cannot be

resolved through war in the West, but rather solely by Russia on the

one hand, and Germany on the other.54

Though he made it abundantly clear that any supposed settlement would

have to be on his terms, Hitler nonetheless proclaimed his readiness for

30

berlin at war

peace. He hinted vaguely at the possibility that an international confer-

ence might settle Europe’s problems and that a new Geneva Convention