Germany, not Poland, had ended up nearly isolated. On August 26, 1939, Mussolini conveyed another message to Berlin: he would intervene “immediately”—if Germany supplied Italy with 7 million tons of gasoline, 6 million tons of coal, and 2 million tons of steel, among other greedy, impossible desiderata.219 Hitler could expect nothing from his other formal Anti-Comintern ally, Japan, which remained mired in the war with China and now had allowed itself to become enmeshed in a losing border clash with the USSR, too. With neither Italy nor Japan willing or able to lend support and solidarity, suddenly only Stalin and the “Judeo-Bolsheviks” were on the Führer’s side. Grand strategy, stranger than fiction.
At the Pact’s signing, Stalin had mischievously proposed a toast to “the new Anti-Cominternist—Stalin” (then apparently winked at Molotov). But upon parting, in utmost earnestness, the despot had told Ribbentrop, “The Soviet Government takes the new Pact very seriously. It can give its word of honor that the Soviet Union will never betray its partner.”220
Hitler reinstated his battle orders. His thought processes remain opaque. “In my life,” Hitler told Göring on August 29, “I’ve always gone for broke.”221 That same day, a resolute Poland wanted to move its troops into their forward positions and declare a general mobilization. Belgium and the Netherlands, which lay in the Nazi path toward France, had already announced general mobilizations on August 23 and 28, respectively, and no one had requested they reconsider, but the British and the French urged Warsaw to withhold an announcement in order to allow for a possible last-ditch Nazi climbdown, with “negotiations” to follow if conducted without menace. But Goebbels recorded in his diary that “the Führer views England as still taking an uncompromising stance. We must not blink.”222 On August 31, Hitler ordered a doubling of production of a new long-range “wonder bomber” (the Ju 88) for use against Britain and its empire.
That same evening, a preplanned Nazi provocation created a casus belli against Poland: SS troops dressed in Polish uniforms attacked a German border post and a German radio station, killing seven people (six prisoners brought from Sachsenhausen concentration camp and one pro-Polish German supplied by the Gestapo) and broadcasting briefly in Polish.223 On September 1, after an air bombardment before dawn, 62 Wehrmacht divisions—nearly 1.5 million men—ripped into Poland, in Hitler’s biggest yet roll of what Bismarck had called the “iron dice.”
THE DISTRUST
The Führer arrived at the Kroll Opera House at 10:00 a.m. on September 1 to address the Reichstag (which had only been summoned at 3:00 a.m.). He was treated to standing ovations. British and French diplomatic notes delivered that day in Berlin threatened war—if the German government failed to “agree” to withdraw its forces from Poland and “express readiness” to negotiate. When queried whether their notes of September 1 constituted an ultimatum, the British and the French explicitly stated no.224 Mussolini, partly to save face, had intervened yet again to float the idea of an international conference, which Chamberlain had already suggested to Hitler (London was communicating with Rome).225 While the French were seeking time to evacuate Paris and the frontier zones and to puzzle out their prospective moves, the two Western powers were also trying to coordinate their military mobilizations, and a certain chaos ensued in Britain’s Parliament. Finally, on September 3, after Hitler had continued to obfuscate on the peace feelers while pressing his military invasion, and the House of Commons exploded in revolt at Chamberlain and Halifax, first Britain and then France (Daladier) declared war on Germany. Hitler was said to be “stunned.”226 In fact, he was aware that the British and the French would have to declare war. But he could not back down at this point.227 For Germany and its racial destiny, in any case, he had concluded that a war to vanquish the West was inevitable at some point.228