The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (93 page)

   March 21, 1939, is a day to be remembered in the story of Europe’s march toward war.

There was intense diplomatic activity that day in Berlin, Warsaw and London. The President of the French Republic, accompanied by Foreign Minister Bonnet, arrived in the British capital for a state visit. To the French Chamberlain suggested that their two countries join Poland and the Soviet Union in a formal declaration stating that the four nations would consult immediately about steps to halt further aggression in Europe. Three days before, Litvinov had proposed—as he had just a year before, after the Anschluss—a European conference, this time of France, Britain, Poland, Russia, Rumania and Turkey, which would join together to stop Hitler. But the British Prime Minister had found the idea “premature.” He was highly distrustful of Moscow and thought a “declaration” by the four powers, including the Soviet Union, was as far as he could go.
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His proposal was presented to Beck in Warsaw by the British ambassador on the same day, March 21, and received a somewhat cool reception, as far as including the Russians was concerned. The Polish Foreign Minister was even more distrustful of the Soviet Union than Chamberlain and, moreover, shared the Prime Minister’s views about the worthlessness of Russian military aid. He was to hold these views, unflinchingly, right up to the moment of disaster.

But the most fateful event of this day of March 21 for Poland took place in Berlin. Ribbentrop invited the Polish ambassador to call on him at noon. For the first time, as Lipski noted in a subsequent report, the
Foreign Minister was not only cool toward him but aggressive. The Fuehrer, he warned, “was becoming increasingly amazed at Poland’s attitude.” Germany wanted a satisfactory reply to her demands for Danzig and a highway and railroad through the Corridor. This was a condition for continued friendly Polish–German relations. “Poland must realize,” Ribbentrop laid it down, “that she could not take a middle course between Russia and Germany.” Her only salvation was “a reasonable relationship with Germany and her Fuehrer.” That included a joint “anti-Soviet policy.” Moreover, the Fuehrer desired Beck “to pay an early visit to Berlin.” In the meantime, Ribbentrop strongly advised the Polish ambassador to hurry to Warsaw and explain to his Foreign Minister in person what the situation was. “He advised,” Lipski informed Beck, “that the talk [with Hitler] should not be delayed, lest the Chancellor should come to the conclusion that Poland was rejecting all his offers.”
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Before leaving the Wilhelmstrasse, Lipski had asked Ribbentrop whether he could tell him anything about his conversation with the Foreign Minister of
Lithuania
. The German replied that they had discussed the
Memel
question, “which called for a solution.”

As a matter of fact, Ribbentrop had received the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Juozas Urbays, who was passing through Berlin after a trip to Rome, on the previous day and demanded that Lithuania hand back the Memel district to Germany forthwith. Otherwise “the Fuehrer would act with lightning speed.” The Lithuanians, he warned, must not deceive themselves by expecting “some kind of help from abroad.”
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Actually, some months before, on December 12, 1938, the French ambassador and the British chargé d’affaires had called the attention of the German government to reports that the German population of Memel was planning a revolt and had asked it to use its influence to see that the Memel Statute, guaranteed by both Britain and France, was respected. The Foreign Office reply had expressed “surprise and astonishment” at the Anglo–French
démarche
, and Ribbentrop had ordered that if there were any further such steps the two embassies should be told “that we had really expected that the French and British would finally become tired of meddling in Germany’s affairs.”
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For some time the German government and particularly the party and S.S. leaders had been organizing the Germans of Memel along lines with which we are now familiar from the Austrian and Sudeten affairs. The German armed forces had also been called in to co-operate and, as we have seen,
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three weeks after Munich Hitler had ordered his military chiefs to prepare, along with the liquidation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia, the occupation of Memel. Since the Navy had had no opportunity
for glory in the march-in to landlocked Austria and Sudetenland, Hitler decided that Memel should be taken from the sea. In November, naval plans for the venture were drawn up under the code name “Transport Exercise Stettin.” Hitler and Admiral Raeder were so keen on this little display of naval might that they actually put to sea from Swinemuende aboard the pocket battleship
Deutschland
for Memel on March 22, exactly a week after the Fuehrer’s triumphant entry into Prague, before defenseless Lithuania had time to capitulate to a German ultimatum.

On March 21, Weizsaecker, who much later would proclaim his distaste for the brutality of Nazi methods, notified the Lithuanian government that “there was no time to lose” and that its plenipotentiaries must come to Berlin “by special plane tomorrow” to sign away to Germany the district of Memel. The Lithuanians had obediently arrived late in the afternoon of March 22, but despite German pressure administered in person by Ribbentrop, egged on by a seasick Hitler aboard his battleship at sea, they took their time about capitulating. Twice during the night, the captured German documents reveal, the Fuehrer got off urgent radiograms from the
Deutschland
to Ribbentrop asking whether the Lithuanians had surrendered, as requested. The dictator and his Admiral had to know whether they must shoot their way into the port of Memel. Finally, at 1:30
A.M
. on March 23, Ribbentrop was able to transmit by radio to his master the news that the Lithuanians had signed.
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At 2:30 in the afternoon of the twenty-third, Hitler made another of his triumphant entries into a newly occupied city and at the Stadttheater in Memel again addressed a delirious “liberated” German throng. Another provision of the
Versailles Treaty
had been torn up. Another bloodless conquest had been made. Although the Fuehrer could not know it, it was to be the last.

The German annexation of the Memelland came as “a very unpleasant surprise” to the Polish government, as the German ambassador to Poland, Hans-Adolf von Moltke, reported to Berlin from Warsaw on the following day. “The main reason for this,” he added, “is that it is generally feared that now it will be the turn of Danzig and the Corridor.”
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He also informed the German Foreign Office that Polish reservists were being called up. The next day, March 25, Admiral Canaris, chief of the Abwehr, reported that Poland had mobilized three classes and was concentrating troops around Danzig. General Keitel did not believe this showed “any aggressive intentions on the part of the Poles,” but the Army General Staff, he noted, “took a somewhat more serious view.”
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Hitler returned to Berlin from Memel on March 24 and on the next day had a long talk with General von Brauchitsch, the Commander in Chief of the Army. From the latter’s confidential memorandum of the conversation it appears that the Leader had not yet made up his mind exactly how
to proceed against Poland.
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In fact, his turbulent brain seemed to be full of contradictions. Ambassador Lipski was due back on the next day, March 26, and the Fuehrer did not want to see him.

This is an interesting insight into Hitler’s mind and character at this moment. Three months before, he had personally assured Beck that there would be no German
fait accompli
in Danzig. Yet he remembered that the Polish Foreign Minister had stressed that the Polish people would never stand for turning over Danzig to Germany. If the Germans merely seized it, would not this
fait accompli
make it easier for the Polish government to accept it? Hitherto Hitler had been a genius at sizing up the weaknesses of his foreign opponents and taking advantage of them, but here, for almost the first time, his judgment has begun to falter. The “colonels” who governed Poland were a mediocre and muddling lot, but the last thing they wanted, or would accept, was a
fait accompli
in Danzig.

The Free City was uppermost in Hitler’s mind, but he was also thinking beyond it, just as he had done in regard to Czechoslovakia after Munich had given him the Sudetenland.

Brauchitsch well knew what that border signified. It was Germany’s prewar eastern frontier, which Versailles had destroyed, and which had prevailed as long as there was no Poland.

If Hitler had any doubts as to what the Polish reply would be they were dissipated when Ambassador Lipski returned to Berlin on Sunday, March 26, and presented his country’s answer in the form of a written memorandum.
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Ribbentrop read it at once, rejected it, stormed about Polish mobilization measures and warned the envoy “of possible consequences.”
He also declared that any violation of Danzig territory by Polish troops would be regarded as aggression against the Reich.

Poland’s written response, while couched in conciliatory language, was a firm rejection of the German demands. It expressed willingness to discuss further means of facilitating German rail and road traffic across the Corridor but refused to consider making such communications extraterritorial. As for Danzig, Poland was willing to replace the
League of Nations
status by a Polish–German guarantee but not to see the Free City become a part of Germany.

Nazi Germany by this time was not accustomed to see a smaller nation turning down its demands, and Ribbentrop remarked to Lipski that “it reminded him of certain risky steps taken by another state”—an obvious reference to Czechoslovakia, which Poland had helped Hitler to dismember. It must have been equally obvious to Lipski, when he was summoned again to the Foreign Office the next day by Ribbentrop, that the Third Reich would now resort to the same tactics against Poland which had been used so successfully against Austria and Czechoslovakia. The Nazi Foreign Minister raged at the alleged persecution of the German minority in Poland, which, he said, had created “a disastrous impression in Germany.”

Warsaw was not so easily intimidated as Vienna and Prague. The next day, March 28, Beck sent for the German ambassador and told him, in answer to Ribbentrop’s declaration that a Polish coup against Danzig would signify a
casus belli
, that he in turn was forced to state that any attempt by Germany or the Nazi Danzig Senate to alter the status of the Free City would be regarded by Poland as a
casus belli
.

“You want to negotiate at the point of a bayonet!” exclaimed the ambassador.

“This is your own method,” Beck replied.
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The reawakened Polish Foreign Minister could afford to stand up to Berlin more firmly than Beneš had been able to do, for he knew that the British government, which a year before had been anxious to help Hitler obtain his demands against Czechoslovakia, was now taking precisely the opposite course in regard to Poland. Beck himself had torpedoed the British proposal for a four-power declaration, declaring that Poland refused to associate itself with Russia in any manner. Instead, on March 22, he had suggested to
Sir Howard Kennard
, the British ambassador in Warsaw, the immediate conclusion of a secret Anglo–Polish agreement for consultation in case of a threatened attack by a third power. But, alarmed
by German troop movements adjacent to Danzig and the Corridor and by British intelligence concerning German demands on Poland (which the tricky Beck had denied to the British), Chamberlain and Halifax wanted to go further than mere “consultations.”

On the evening of March 30, Kennard presented to Beck an Anglo–French proposal for mutual-assistance pacts in case of German aggression.
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But even this step was overtaken by events. Fresh reports of the possibility of an imminent German attack on Poland prompted the British government on the same evening to ask Beck whether he had any objection to an interim unilateral British guarantee of Poland’s independence. Chamberlain had to know by the morrow, as he wished to answer a parliamentary question on the subject. Beck—his sense of relief may be imagined—had no objection. In fact, he told Kennard, he “agreed without hesitation.”
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