296. Sir Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under-Secretary at the British Foreign Office, was brisk in his reply when Dahlerus telephoned him on the early afternoon of 1 September, after his meeting with Hitler (Dahlerus, 127; DBFP, 3rd Ser., VII, 479–80, Nos.651–2). Cadogan had already noted in his diary on 28 August that the ‘masses of messages from Dahlerus…don’t amount to much unless one can infer from them that Hitler has cold feet’ (The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 203). Dahlerus’s frantic last efforts to engineer a visit by Göring to London were no more than whistling in the wind (Dahlerus, 136–7). In an interview on BBC-TV on 14 September 1997, Sir Frank Roberts (then a prominent diplomat in the Foreign Office, later, in the 1960s, British Ambassador to Moscow, then Bonn), who took the call from Dahlerus on the morning of 3 September, after the British ultimatum had been issued, recalled that he had not thought it worth passing on the message to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax.
297. DGFP, VII, 527–8, N0.558; DBFP, 3rd Ser., IX, 539, App.IV; Weinberg, ii.649–50.
298. Henderson, 278–9; Documents, 168–9, No.109–11; DBFP, 3rd Ser., VII, 492, No.682.
299. Documents, 175, No.118; DBFP, 3rd Ser., VII, 521, 535, Nos.732, 757.
300. Schmidt, 472; Henderson, 284.
301. Documents, 175, No.118; DBFP, 3rd Ser., VII, 535, No.757; German reply, DBFP, 3rd Ser., VII, 539–41, N0.766; Domarus, 1336–8.
302. Documents, 179, No.120.
303. Halder KTB, i.58 (3 September 1939); TBJG, I/7, 91 (4 September 1939); DBFP, 3rd Ser., VII, 538, No.764.
304. See IfZ, F34/1, Vormann, Fol.56.
305. Schmidt, 473. Doubts have been expressed about the accuracy of Schmidt’s account (Gerhard L. Weinberg, ‘Hitler and England, 1933–1945: Pretense and Reality’, German Studies Review, 8 (1985), 299–309, here 306). Certainly, Schmidt’s memoirs contain errors. However, Schmidt was present on the occasion, and Hitler’s response was short enough and striking enough for the interpreter to have remembered it correctly, even several years later. What might, perhaps, be justifiably doubted is whether Schmidt grasped Hitler’s meaning; whether Hitler was not simply asking Ribbentrop in practical terms about what the next step would be. The reported response (Schmidt, 473) of the Foreign Minister, ‘I presume that the French will hand us a similar-sounding ultimatum in the next hour,’ points in this direction.
306. Documents, 157, No.105.
307. L.B. Namier, Conflicts. Studies in Contemporary History, London, 1942, 57.
308. Klemperer, 112–29; Watt, How War Came, 390–94; Meehan, especially ch.7; Lamb, 105–8. Some of the clearest warnings of the need for Britain to take a firm stand against Hitler were passed on in the spring and summer by Lieutenant-Colonel von Schwerin, head of the ‘Foreign Armies West’ section of the Army High Command’s Intelligence Department. The Foreign Office was, however, largely dismissive of his information. ‘As usual the German army trusts us to save them from the Nazi regime,’ was the minute of one prominent diplomat, Frank K. Roberts (Klemperer, 119). I am grateful to R. A. C. Parker for referring me to reports on Schwerin in PRO, FO 371/22990 and FO 371/22968.
309. Gisevius, Bis zum bittern Ende, 1946, ii.138. Gisevius did not claim these were Oster’s exact words, but was adamant that they represented his meaning.
310. Gisevius, Bis zum bittern Ende, 1946; ii.140.
311. See Müller, Heer, 414–19.
312. Watt, How War Came, 394–404.
313. See Kube, 319; Martens, 199–200; Irving, Göring, 268, 272.
314. Bloch, 261. Similar thoughts were current in Berlin on the very day of the British declaration (Shirer, 159).
315. According to Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend, 115–16, the photographer found Hitler at the height of the crisis in August 1939 slumped in his chair in the Reich Chancellery, just after a visit by Ribbentrop, bitterly criticizing the Foreign Office. ‘I knew, of course, exactly what he meant,’ Hoffmann wrote. ‘Again and again I had myself heard Ribbentrop, with an aplomb and self-confidence out of all proportion to his knowledge and his faulty powers of judgment, assure Hitler that Britain was degenerate, that Britain would never fight, that Britain would certainly never go to war to pull someone else’s chestnuts out of the fire…’
