On 20 March, Ribbentrop subjected the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Joseph Urbsys, to the usual bullying tactics. Kowno would be bombed, he threatened, if Germany’s demand for the immediate return of the Memel were not met.120 Urbsys returned the next day, 21 March, to Kowno. The Lithuanians were in no mood for a fight. They sent in a draft communiqué. It did not suffice and had to be redrafted in Berlin. By then the Lithuanian ministers had gone to bed and had to be awakened by the German ambassador, who had been told, figuratively, to put a pistol to their chest. ‘Either-or,’ remarked Goebbels.121 At 3a.m. everything was finally accepted. The revised communiqué arrived about three hours later. A Lithuanian delegation was sent to Berlin to arrange the details. ‘If you apply a bit of pressure, things happen,’ noted Goebbels, with satisfaction.122
Hitler left Berlin that afternoon, 22 March, for Swinemünde, where, along with Raeder, he boarded the pocket-battleship
According to Goebbels, Hitler repeated what he had said a few days earlier. He now wanted a period of calm in order to win new trust. ‘Then the colonial question will be brought up
His own pressure on Poland forced the issue. Wasting no time, Ribbentrop had pushed Ambassador Lipski on 21 March to arrange a visit to Berlin by Beck. He indicated that Hitler was losing patience, and that the German press was straining at the leash to be turned loose on the Poles — a threat that German feeling could be as easily inflamed against Poland as it had been against Czecho-Slovakia. He repeated the requests about Danzig and the Corridor. In return, Poland might be tempted by the exploitation of Slovakia and the Ukraine.126
But the Poles were not prepared to act according to the script. Beck, noting Chamberlain’s Birmingham speech, secretly put out feelers to London for a bilateral agreement with Britain.127 Meanwhile, the Poles mobilized their troops.128 On 25 March, Hitler still indicated that he did not want to solve the Danzig Question by force to avoid driving the Poles into the arms of the British.129 He had remarked to Goebbels the previous evening that he hoped the Poles would respond to pressure, ‘but we must bite into the sour apple and guarantee Poland’s borders’.130
However, just after noon on 26 March, instead of the desired visit by Beck, Lipski simply presented Ribbentrop with a memorandum representing the Polish Foreign Minister’s views. It flatly rejected the German proposals, reminding Ribbentrop for good measure of Hitler’s verbal assurance in his speech on 20 February 1938 that Poland’s rights and interests would be respected. Ribbentrop lost his temper. Going beyond his mandate from Hitler, he told Lipski that any Polish action against Danzig (of which there was no indication) would be treated as aggression against the Reich. The bullying attempt was lost on Lipski. He replied that any furtherance of German plans directed at the return of Danzig to the Reich meant war with Poland.131 Hitler’s response can be imagined.132 Goebbels recorded in his diary: ‘Poland still makes great difficulties. The Polacks are and remain naturally our enemies, even if from self-interest they have done us some service in the past.’133 Beck confirmed the unbending attitude of the Poles to the German ambassador in Warsaw on the evening of 28 March: if Germany tried to use force to alter the status of Danzig, there would be war.134
