23. ‘The Führer’s birthday’: Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, gives Hitler his present — a valuable equestrian portrait of Frederick the Great by Adolf von Menzel — on the Führer’s fiftieth birthday, 20 April 1939, watched by Sepp Dietrich commander of the SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, and Karl Wolff, chief of Himmler’s personal staff.24. Hitler, in evening dress, walks with Winifred Wagner past cheering crowds during the last Bayreuth Festival before the war, in July 1939.25. Molotov signs the Non-Aggression Pact of the Soviet Union with Germany in the early hours of 24 August 1939, watched by Red Army Chief of Staff Marshal Boris S. Shaposhnikov, adjutant to Ribbentrop Richard Schulze, a smug-looking German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Joseph Stalin.26. Hitler in his temporary field-headquarters during the Polish campaign, together with his Wehrmacht adjutants, Captain Nicolaus von Below (Luftwaffe), Captain Gerhard Engel (Army), and Colonel Rudolf Schmundt (chief adjutant). Martin Bormann is on Hitler’s left.27. Hitler reviewing troops in Warsaw on 5 October 1939 at the conclusion of the victory over Poland.28. Hitler during his address to the Party’s ‘Old Guard’ in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich on 8 November 1939. Only minutes after he had left the building, a time-bomb placed by a Swabian joiner, Georg Elser, exploded close to where he had been speaking, killing eight and injuring more than sixty of those present.29. Arthur Greiser, the fanatical Reich Governor and Gauleiter of Reichsgau Wartheland, the annexed part of western Poland, at the celebration for the ‘liberation’ of the area on 2 October 1939.30. Albert Forster, Gauleiter of Danzig-West Prussia, a rival to Greiser in the brutal attempt to ‘germanize’ the annexed parts of Poland.31. An ecstatic Hitler at his headquarters ‘Wolfsschlucht’ (Wolf’s Gorge), near Brûly-de-Pesche in Belgium, on hearing the news on 17 June 1940 that France had requested an armistice. Walther Hewel, Ribbentrop’s liaison at Führer Headquarters, is on Hitler’s right.32. Hitler visiting emplacements on the Maginot Line in Alsace, during his short stay at his headquarters ‘Tannenberg’, near Freudenstadt in the Black Forest, on 30 June 1940.33. Hitler in Freudenstadt on 5 July 1940, the last day he was based at ‘Tannenberg’.
