114. Burckhardt, 264–70; English text in DBFP, Ser.3, VI, 691–6, No. 659, (quotations, 694–5). See Watt, How War Came, 332, for the description of Ironside. The Ironside suggestion was also advanced by Weizsäcker, and by Henderson, but it was eventually decided in London that he would not be an appropriate person to send (Meehan, 232–3, 235). The British Embassy in Paris had warned the Foreign Office that it might be damaging to good relations between France and Britain were the Ironside proposal to be accepted without consultation with the French (Stauffer, 154).
115. Burckhardt met, in the house of his mother in Basel, Roger Makins from the British Foreign Office and Pierre Arnal of the Quai d’Orsay already on 13 August. Makins’s report on the meeting (DBFP, Ser.3, VI, 691–5, No.659) was largely dictated by Burckhardt, and was translated into German for Meine Danziger Mission, 264ff (Stauffer, 141, 179, 182).
116. DBFP, Ser.3, VI, 696, N0.659; Stauffer, 140–41.
117. The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 195.
118. DBFP, Ser.3, VI, 697–8, No.659; Watt, How War Came, 435. Makins’s report, later reproduced by Burckhardt in his book, did not include remarks by Hitler which the High Commissioner added in his memoirs, written more than twenty years later, claiming, somewhat remarkably, that they had not struck him at the time: ‘Everything that I undertake is directed against Russia. If those in the West are too stupid and too blind to understand this, then I shall be forced to come to an understanding with the Russians to beat the West, and then, after its defeat, turn with all my concerted force against the Soviet Union. I need the Ukraine, so that no one will starve us out as they did in the last war’ (Burckhardt, 272; trans. Klaus Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, London, 1973, 88). Hildebrand and others have taken it for granted that the comments were intended to carry weight in London. There is, however, no indication that they were passed on, even unofficially. Neither Halifax in his memoirs, nor Cadogan in his diaries, refers to the remarks. Despite the passage finding its way into practically every account of Burckhardt’s meeting with Hitler, it is not surprising that many doubts have been raised about its authenticity. It seems on first impression inherently unlikely that Hitler would have made such comments, knowing that Burckhardt was meant to report the content of the conversation to the western powers at a time when discussions for a pact with the Russians were at such a delicate stage and when those between the Soviet Union and the western democracies were still dragging on. An extant copy of Burckhardt’s own sparse notes of Hitler’s comments, undated but allegedly from the day of his meeting with the Nazi leader, does indicate that Hitler, having stated he was not bluffing and would strike hard, did remark that ‘he would only temporarily come to an arrangement with Russia, then after victory [over] the West attack with entire force on account of Ukraine!! Grain, timber!’ (cit. Stauffer, 188). The original is, however, not contained in Burckhardt’s papers (Stauffer, 308 n.33) and, so it seems, has never been seen. Though Stauffer, after careful inquiry (178–201), is prepared to grant the benefit of doubt as regarding the authenticity of the document (189–90), a question-mark must remain until the original — allegedly held in a bank-vault — is produced. Burckhardt produced no compelling reason why he omitted to mention Hitler’s remark to Makins. If the document is taken to be authentic, the best gloss is perhaps that Hitler’s remarks struck Burckhardt as, in essence, uttered in the heat of the moment, nothing different from that which Hitler had written in Mein Kampf, and consequently uninteresting to the western governments. Hitler had spoken earlier in the meeting of the need for land in the east and the need to secure grain and timber, and the near repetition of the point perhaps made little mark on Burckhardt at the time. In any event, his published version of the remarks must be regarded as a later embellishment on Burckhardt’s part — not the only one in his published memoirs.
119. CP, 297–9.
120. CD, 124.
