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Neville Chamberlain and a disingenuous Hitler at Munich
Winston Churchill
"This man is a strange mixture of heroism and cunning.
If he had come to power in 1933, we would not be where we are today."Goebbels on Churchill, 7 May 1941
By 1937 the rule of law in Germany had deteriorated to the point that the courts were unable to interfere with the activities of the Gestapo in any way. Hitler was well enough established and popular that his police occasionally put into prison those who were so unpatriotic as to ridicule Hitler. And recently 150 leaders of a Catholic youth organization had been arrested and accused of treason - for having associated with Marxists.
And the government was making life harder still for Jews. By 1937 the exclusion of Jews from public or private employment left at least half of them without a means of livelihood. In many towns a Jew could not find lodging. Some found it difficult or impossible to buy food, including milk for their children, or to buy medicine. Over some shops were signs that read, "Jews Not Admitted."
On the international front, Germany, in late November 1936, had signed a pact with Italy and Japan: the Anti-Comintern Pact. This was not a formal alliance. Japan signed wishing to give support to Germany without having to join against Germany's enemies should war develop in Europe. Japan was hoping that a strengthened Germany would force Britain's withdrawal from Asia.
Mussolini was grateful for Hitler's support concerning Ethiopia. He agreed to give Hitler a free hand in Austria. Hitler gave Mussolini his blessing for doing whatever he wished in the Mediterranean area. And the Stresa front - between Italy, France and Britain - was shattered.
At the end of 1937 Austria's conservative, authoritarian government found Germany conspiring with National Socialists inside its borders, with Germany aiming to take power in Austria. The planned pretext for Germany's takeover was that Germany was moving to prevent an attempted Habsburg restoration. Then in mid-February, 1938, Hitler presented Austria's chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg (Dollfuss' successor) with demands that National Socialists be left unrestricted and that they be included in Schuschnigg's government, and Hitler threatened to invade if Schuschnigg did not agree in writing at once. Schuschnigg felt abandoned by Italy, and he expected no help from France or Great Britain. So he agreed to Hitler's demands. Then he had second thoughts and decided to stand up to Hitler. He announced that Austria "would never voluntarily surrender its independence." He appealed to Austria's Social Democrats - who according to their voting margins in previous years represented forty-two percent of the public. The Social Democrats agreed to help defend Austria. And in a speech on March 9, Schuschnigg announced a plebiscite for March 13 - a vote by the nation on the question of whether people wanted unity with Germany or independence.
Hitler was enraged. He was afraid that the Austrians would not chose unity with Germany and that the plebiscite would leave him without an excuse to move against Austria. German troops massed on the Austrian border. Schuschnigg resigned. A pro-Hitler lawyer in the pay of Germany, Seyess-Inquart, became Austria's chancellor, and, on March 11, German troops crossed into Austria without resistance. The announced reason for the move was that Seyess-Inquart had invited in the German troops to put down a Communist uprising, and Hitler proclaimed that he was putting Germany at the service of millions of Germans in Austria.
Many Austrians were jubilant, especially Austria's National Socialists. (Between 1948 and 1967 he would teach political science at Saint Louis University, in Saint Louis Missouri.) Supporters of the National Socialists were a minority in Austria, but a minority could make a big showing in the streets. Then, on March 13, Austria was declared a province of Germany. Hitler returned to his native Austria, and to Vienna, with many Austrians welcoming him as conquering hero.
It was Hitler's first move beyond Germany's frontiers, and Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain chose to remain spectators. In April a plebiscite was held in Austria on the unification (the Anschluss) of Austria and Germany, and the recorded results listed ninety-nine percent in favor - strange given the former strength of the Social Democrats in Austria, who were most hostile to fascism.
The persecution of Jews in Austria would now begin. And the same impulse to revenge that had marked the purges of 1934 were applied in Austria against those who were known to be hostile toward the National Socialists. Many people were arrested, including Schuschnigg, who was imprisoned in a small room for seventeen months, tortured with sleeplessness, and in the months that followed he was forced to perform menial tasks, such as cleaning the latrines of his guards. He lost fifty-eight pounds. Then he was sent to a concentration camp.
The Soviet Union, now a member of the League of Nations, suggested a League conference to prepare a deterrence against further aggression by Hitler. Great Britain rejected the idea. There was in Britain's government distrust and dislike for the Soviet regime, and Britain's prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced that he would not agree to any mutual pledge against aggression with the Soviet Union and that he would not make any commitment to the Soviet Union's allies: Czechoslovakia or France. But he announced that British armament must be accelerated.
For the Germans, the spotlight in international affairs had shifted to Czechoslovakia - a country created by the treaty signed at Versailles and consisting of Slovaks, Magyars, Ruthenians, Poles and Germans. The Germans were a majority in that part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, which bordered Germany. The Sudetenland was highly industrialized, and the Sudeten Germans resented living under Czech officials and police, many of whom spoke poor German. They were excited over Austria having been absorbed into a greater Germany. The Sudeten Germans demanded political equality and autonomy. The Czechoslovakian government in Prague rejected their demands. Hitler was displeased with the Prague government. He wished to rescue the Sudeten Germans, and now that he was in control of Austria he had Czechoslovakia surrounded on three sides.
In Germany, many people still remembered the ugliness and hardship of World War I, and the public responded nervously to the prospect of Hitler taking their nation to war over the Sudetenland. Some of Hitler's generals also were opposed to war over the Sudetenland. On August 18, 1938, the commander-in-chief of the German armies resigned in protest against Hitler's aggressive policy, and he was replaced by General Halder, who also wanted no war. Hermann Goering (Göring) and other German ministers and general staff were also opposed to an attack on Czechoslovakia.
Germany was not yet ready for war, but Britain and France's inaction over Hitler's militarization of Rhineland and his taking Austria had left Hitler confident that he could bluff his way into getting what he wanted without war. Hitler made demands on behalf of the Sudeten Germans that Czechoslovakia rejected, and Hitler proclaimed that Germans were being treated "like niggers." Czechoslovakia's president, Eduard Beneš (pronounced Benesh), welcomed the confrontation with Hitler, hoping to demonstrate to France and Britain the need to stand up to Hitler. The Czech government ordered the mobilization of its army and called on its allies to honor their agreements.
Some people in Britain had taken from the Great War the belief that military alliances caused wars. At any rate, there would be no move from Britain regarding treaty commitments. France wished to honor its treaty to defend Czechoslovakia, but without backing from Britain it demurred. And the Soviet Union backed away from helping defend Czechoslovakia because its commitment to defend Czechoslovakia was contingent upon France living up to its agreement.
With war between Germany and Czechoslovakia appearing imminent, Mussolini responded to an appeal to mediate. And on the 29th of September, Mussolini, Hitler, Britain's prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, and France's premier, Daladier, agreed to meet in Munich. President Benes of Czechoslovakia was not invited. Neither was a representative of the Soviet Union.
Chamberlain abhorred the idea of another Great War, and he wished to give Germany what he thought Germany deserved. Hitler indulged in bluff, talking about Germany's great military machine that once in motion could not be stopped. In fact, Hitler's army was too weak at that time to fight against Czechoslovakia and France simultaneously, not to mention the Soviet Union and Britain. But Chamberlain was badly briefed about the strength of Germany's armies, and Hitler's bluff worked. From the participants at the conference Hitler received agreements to all his demands.
Chamberlain and Daladier went home to cheers and praise, their popularity rising as a result of their being perceived as having preserved peace. Daladier was distraught over Britain being unwilling to support France and their abandoning Czechoslovakia. His response to the cheering crowds was to say to the person next to him that the cheering people were crazy.
With the agreements by Italy, Britain and France in his pocket, Hitler sent his troops into the Sudetenland, including what had been Czechoslovakia's mountainous military defense lines. The Germans there were delirious with joy. President Benes had thirty-five well-trained divisions, which were perhaps as formidable a force as Germany's armies, but he chose not to fight the Germans with only the Soviet Union on his side.
War had been averted, but Hitler was encouraged about his strength and the weakness of his allies. Soon he would be seeking more gains undeterred by France and Great Britain, about whom he would say, "Our opponents are poor creatures. I saw them at Munich."
Germany was trying to return the 50,000 or so Polish Jews in Germany to Poland. Poland refused to take them, and in late October, 1938, Germany forced the issue. German police dragged some 3,000 Polish Jews from their homes and put them onto trains destined for the German-Polish border. At the border, the Poles tried to force the expelled Jews back to Germany. The Jews, including the old, the sick and the weak, were left for a couple of days between the borders, in the open and the rain and mud. Then the Poles relented and allowed the Jews entry, to an animal stable, where, on the third day a little bread was dumped on them - their first food in three days.
A young Polish Jew who had grown up in Germany and was illegally in Paris, Herschel Grynszpan, received a letter that his sister had written while she was on the deportation train heading for the German-Polish border, a letter telling Grynszpan that his family had been deported and describing the appalling treatment by the Germans. Outraged, Grynszpan, on November 7, went to the German Embassy and shot and wounded a German diplomat, vom Rath. No evidence exists that Grynszpan knew Vom Rath. Had he known Vom Rath he might have wished to take revenge against some other German. Vom Rath was one of those Germans who was not anti-Semitic, and he had enough contempt for Hitler's policies that he was willing to damage his career as a diplomat.
Two Nazi German doctors arrived in Paris and took charge of Vom Rath's care from the French, who believed that Vom Rath was recovering. Shortly thereafter, under mysterious circumstances, vom Rath died. This made Grynszpan's shooting vom Rath appear more horrendous to the German public than if vom Rath had lived. And to make the crime appear worse, German authorities elevated vom Rath's ranking in the diplomatic corps.
Dr. Goebbels turned the National Socialists loose for an orgy of collective punishment against Jews. National Socialist razed at least 267 synagogues (a number derived from Nazi sources). [note] Jewish stores were attacked, around 7,500 such stores having their windows smashed. Jewish shops were looted. Jewish cemeteries were attacked with sledgehammers. The attackers gutted 177 private homes. They beat and killed Jews. In the middle of the night, attackers pulled old men into the streets and forced them to scrub the street on their hands and knees with toothbrushes. Jews feeling utter despair and humiliation killed themselves. Police rounded up around 30,000 Jewish men and sent them to concentration camps. Some of those rounded up died in the camps. Only four rapes had occurred, and those who committed the rapes were tried, not for rape but for having violated Germany's miscegenation laws.
Dr. Goebbels described the rising against the Jews as spontaneous, but few believed him. British newspapers swung against Germany, editorializing that Germany had returned to the Dark Ages, that Germany had engaged in an "orgy of savagery" that would send a chill of horror throughout the civilized world. In the United States, former president Hoover spoke out against the attacks, as did the former governor of New York, Alfred Smith and New York's District Attorney, Thomas Dewey. Union members agreed to tithe part of their earning for the victims. School children took up collections from their classmates. The journalist Dorothy Thompson began to rally help for Herschel Grynszpan.
Angry senior army generals, among them Stulpnagel, von Hanneken and von Roth, demanded an audience with Hitler. Hitler refused to see them, and the generals complained instead to Goering, stating that the persecutions of the Jews was a dishonor to Germany and that Jews who wanted to leave Germany should be allowed to do so with their capital. Others were angry with Goebbels, blaming him for instigating the rising, and they were angry over the insurance costs involved with all the broken windows. Goering was annoyed, complaining that he had been asking people to save empty toothpaste tubes and bent screws and in only one night millions and millions of marks worth of merchandise had been stupidly destroyed. The economics minister, Walter Funk, declared that it had become a disgrace to be a German.
On November 21, Hitler ordered the release of several hundred Jews from the concentration camps. Goebbels tried to redeem himself. The Jews were required to pay for the damages to storefronts, lamp posts and streets. Insurance money that Jews were to receive was deemed fraudulent.
Kristallnacht, meanwhile, scared a number of Germans into leaving Germany, people who otherwise would have perished in Hitler's concentration camps.
In response to complaints from Britain about Kristallnacht, Hitler declared that Germany would not allow itself "to suffer under British governesses," and Britain received reports through its embassy of Hitler stating that he no longer gave any importance to friendship with Britain. Hitler never had much interest in the amity of nations, and he was not now considering the amity normally involved in bit by bit advances won through patience and peaceful accommodation across years. He was sick of politics. Politics was give and take, and by now he had distanced himself from those he had worked with within the National Socialist movement. He talked business with people but he hardly conversed. He treated his mistress, Eva Braun, as little more than a subordinate to be dismissed as soon as he wanted to be alone, which was most of the time. When he did talk, rather than converse he was inclined to lecture, as he did during a dinner he was having with Mussolini, Hitler haranguing Mussolini for ninety minutes without letting the impatient Mussolini get a word in edge-wise. He was not reading as he had years before. He was confident that he understood everything including his adversaries well enough. He was thinking big. It was the monumental that interested him. Hitler wanted gigantic accomplishments and was frustrated by circumstances. On November 10, 1938, he spoke to insiders about being forced "to talk almost exclusively of peace."
By January 1939, Hitler was complaining about another creation of the treaty signed at Versailles: the free-city status of Danzig. Danzig was a German city. Hitler told the Poles that eventually Danzig would again become a part of Germany, and the Poles responded to Hitler's comment with open contempt. The Poles saw themselves as stronger and harder than the Czechs. They were determined not to give the Germans an inch of territory.
With the rise in tensions, the British began earnest preparations for war, including the British public acquiring and practicing with gas masks. In March, 1939, what was left of Czechoslovakia fell apart. Encouraged by the Germans, Slovakia declared independence. Hitler bullied the government in Prague into making the two Czech provinces, Bohemia and Moravia, a German protectorate. He spoke publicly about Bohemia and Moravia having been living space for Germans for a millennium and having been "torn from them arbitrarily." Hitler sent his army into Prague, without shooting, and the British were amazed. At Munich Hitler had promised to respect what remained of Czechoslovakia. The British now believed that Hitler's word was worthless, and they wondered whether he wanted to dominate the entire continent of Europe.
Within days after German troops had marched into Prague came another crisis - over the city of Memel. This was a predominately German city that had been given to Lithuania by the treaty signed at Versailles. Germans there were encouraged by Germany's gains and they were agitating for inclusion into the German fatherland. Hitler threatened to take Memel by force. Lithuania capitulated, and on March 23 Hitler made a triumphant entry into Memel, where he was greeted by joyous German crowds.
Poland was surprised by Hitler's success against Lithuania, and on March 26, Poland's ambassador to Germany made it clear to Hitler that Poland would agree to none of his proposals for settling differences between their two nations. Hitler remained concerned about Danzig and he spoke of his concern for Germans living within Poland's borders. Hitler broke diplomatic relations with Poland, and Europe was again alarmed by the possibility of war.
In Poland and in Great Britain, people went into the streets to demonstrate against Germany. Chamberlain's government swung momentarily with British public opinion. Chamberlain declared that if France were attacked, Britain would go to its aid, and Britain joined France in offering Poland support against an attack by Germany.
Despite the new military alliances, Hitler still believed that Britain and France were reluctant to enter another great war. And Britain's guarantee to Poland angered Hitler. He saw Chamberlain's move as a bluff, accompanied as it was neither by an effort to get military cooperation from the Soviet Union nor the introduction of conscription. And, responding to this apparent bluff, on April 3 Hitler issued a military directive for Operation White: the invasion of Poland.
Mussolini envied Hitler's recent annexations, and on April 7 he invaded Albania (across the Adriatic Sea from Italy). On April 13, Britain and France guaranteed the independence of Greece and Romania. On April 14, the French offered Moscow an agreement with defined military arrangements. But the Soviet Union wanted Britain to be a part of the agreement, and Chamberlain remained opposed to any alliance with the Russians. He spoke of the Soviet Union's fighting forces being "of little military value for offensive purposes." He remained suspicious of Soviet motives, although Soviet motives were clear enough: the Soviet Union was looking for security.
On April 26 the British re-introduced conscription. In late April a contemptuous Hitler renounced the non-aggression pact that Germany had with Poland, and he renounced Germany's naval agreement with the British. while doing this he continued to speak of himself as a man of peace, and he denounced those in Britain and France who were questioning the settlement at Munich as "warmongers."
On May 23 Hitler had a secret meeting with his military chiefs in which he made it clear that he was intent on going to war against Poland. Danzig, he said was not the question. The question was "expanding our living space in the East" and "securing our food supplies." He accurately predicted that the German army would be able to defeat the Poles within a few days and then take a few weeks to consolidate its victory. He said that if attacking Poland were followed by a war with England and France, they would be finished off at the same time as Poland. Hitler spoke of attacking Poland "at the first suitable opportunity" and that if this were followed by a war with England and France they would be finished off at the same time as Poland. As for the Soviet Union, Hitler was not afraid of it.
In the coming months, Britain's military chiefs of staff annoyed Chamberlain by speaking in favor of an alliance between France, Britain and the Soviet Union. Chamberlain's cabinet had agreed to a formula for an alliance with the French. Under pressure, Chamberlain joined the move toward an agreement with Moscow, but he believed he was in a good bargaining position and that no urgency was required. He sent a mission to Moscow by slow ship rather than by airplane. And he sent no one who would impress the Russians as someone of importance. The Russians, moreover, had received leaked information about a new secret move by Chamberlain to appease Hitler. The talks between Chamberlain's delegation to Moscow and the Russians began on August 2, but the Russians decided that the British were not serious about an alliance with them. They felt more of a sense of urgency than did Chamberlain. Concerned about its security and disappointed over its attempts at an alliance with France and Great Britain, the Soviet Union had been exploring an alternative: better relations with Germany.
Stalin had been worried that some in the West wanted to push Hitler eastward against the Soviet Union. And in the place of a treaty with Great Britain and France, Stalin was interested in an alliance with Germany, hoping that Hitler's belligerence would be directed against Britain, whom Hitler was continuing to denounce.
However practical Stalin was in making an agreement with Hitler, he was like Hitler in that these were two men more tuned to power than to ideals. Germany offered the Soviet Union a free hand to its south, including India, but Stalin was not interested in expansion southward. Stalin was hanging onto the old tsarist empire, but he did not really believe in empire, and he had enough to worry about with his own national minorities and the Japanese rather than engage in a conflict with Indian nationalism.
Germany offered the Soviet Union territory that had been apart of tsarist Russia's empire: Finland and Bessarabia. And Germany offered the Soviet Union territory that Poland had taken during Russia's civil war - territory east of the Curzon Line. In exchange, the Soviet Union agreed to give Germany a free hand in Poland west of the Curzon Line. And on August 24, Germany and the Soviet Union signed their pact.
Evidence does not exist that Hitler considered this agreement necessary to attack Poland. It appears that Hitler was eager to sign the agreement because it helped him rather than a necessity. Hitler had contempt for the Soviet Union as a power, believing, as he would say in 1941, that kicking in its door would lead to its whole "rotten structure" falling down. Back on May 23, 1939, Hitler had spoken of the possibility of the Soviet Union joining an alliance with Britain and France, in which case, Hitler had said, it "would lead me to attack England and France with a few devastating blows." Hitler was not afraid of the Soviet Union militarily, and the pact that Stalin signed with Hitler bought for the Soviet Union only a little less than two years of peace.
Announcement of the Hitler-Stalin pack confused much of Europe. Across Europe many were spectators interested in what appeared to them to be the coming of a showdown between the forces of the left and opponents of the left. Many outside Germany, in Romania for example, saw Communists as a threat to their way of life, including their Christian faith, and they disliked and targeted what they believed were Jewish influences. They saw Germany as Europe's great military power and as the predominant force that would settle Europe's divisions, anxieties and political unrest. And many did not fathom the motives of Hitler in making his agreement with Stalin.
Hitler's general staff had warned him that if war broke out with France the French would be able to pour into Germany. Germany had only 23 divisions along the German-French border. But Hitler was not impressed, and he still believed that Britain and France would not go to war against Germany.
On the night of August 31, Hitler faked an attack against a German radio station near the Polish border, which he planned to blame on the Poles and use as an excuse for his invasion. At 4:30 in the morning, September 1, Hitler's invasion began. It was a mechanized assault, with tanks, aircraft and trucks and only a few horse-drawn wagons. It was called blitzkrieg (lightning war). Poland's army was about as large as that of Germany, but its airforce was one-tenth the size of Germany's, and they had no armored and mechanized divisions. Poland's military leaders still believed in offensive and counter-offensive operations using cavalry. And, confirming Hitler's confidence, Germany's military began to overwhelm the Poles.
Chamberlain continued trying to negotiate with Germany, hoping the German invasion could be halted. Chamberlain's cabinet rebelled, and Chamberlain saw that his position as leader of the Conservative Party was in jeopardy. His cabinet advised Chamberlain that he had to announce an ultimatum to Germany. Chamberlain did so. Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3 and were joined by India and New Zealand.
The British had no way of reaching Poland with an army. The French could have invaded Germany as they had at the start of World War I, but they did now what they should have done then: they sat in their trenches. It was the beginning of what would be called the sit-down war (sitzkrieg). Some British forces landed in France on September 10. And Soviet armies moved to the Curzon line on the 17th, with hardly any opposition from the Poles - occupied as they were with the Germans
Poland surrendered to Germany on September 24, with Hitler hoping that Britain would soon change its mind and give up its intent to wage war against Germany. Having taken Poland, Hitler was once more for peace. But Britain was not. Churchill, now appointed by Chamberlain as the First Lord of the Admiralty, announced that Britain was not in the war over the question of Danzig or merely to fight for Poland. "We are fighting," he said, "to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny, and in defense of all that is most sacred to man." He spoke of the Soviet Union but did not find fault with it for having moved to the Curzon Line, only that he regretted that they were not still friendly with Poland.
The German public, meanwhile, had shown none of the enthusiasm that had erupted at the beginning of World War I. This was especially so in Berlin, where people were still accustomed to saying good morning rather than Heil Hitler! Berlin had a victory parade for troops returning from the Polish campaign, but despite the efforts of National Socialists to whip up an enthusiastic demonstration for the troops, the Berliners remained reserved and silent. Many Berliners feared war, and they remained concerned about everyday matters. Many in Germany's upper-middle and upper classes continued their effort to remain aloof from the influences of Hitler. Some women preferred collecting for private charity and doing volunteer work through the Red Cross rather than work with the National Socialist League of Women.
Across the whole of Germany, meanwhile, were a multitude of young men who loved their country and were willing to fight for it, believing that Hitler was fighting for what was best for Germany. And across the whole of Germany common young people were absorbing popular culture - National Socialist culture. They were as inclined to conform in these cultural tastes as were young people in other industrial societies. They were enjoying new certainties and joining the ranks of parading National Socialists. They were no more turned off by National Socialist stridency than many young people in the 1990s would be turned off by the strident tones of their popular form of music. The aggressive males among them might push around or ridicule a Jew if one happened by. Jews leaving Germany had to dodge young "Aryan" men and teenagers.
In Britain, through the remainder of the century, a few people would believe that Britain would have been better off if it had let Hitler have his way on the continent. The war, they would point out, was costly for Britain, and some would add that the war cost Britain its empire. Contrary to this view favoring not standing up to German aggression was the view that had Britain been willing to stand up to Germany and joined with France before 1939 most likely there would have been no war.
In 1939, Britain's mainstream pacifists were in despair that war had erupted, and they had been in despair since the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Given their understanding of the horror of World War I, they saw the world as going mad and themselves as helpless repositories of sanity. Vera Brittain had been declaring that war was a crime against humanity and that she did not believe that "we shall destroy" fascism by fighting. Some others had sided with fighting to preserve the Spanish republic against the forces under Franco, asking how one could stand by and let people be massacred. By 1939, some of the pacifists had been turning away from the problem of war and peace and looking inward. The champion of this move was Aldous Huxley, who proclaimed the need for long-term research into why barbarism and sadism were still strong within humanity.
After Britain declared war against Germany in September 1939, many pacifists became resigned to war. Some of them joined the turning inward, away from world events. They saw themselves as upholders and examples of morality. The idea arose of setting up small communities as examples of harmonious and egalitarian living - small communities engaged in the rigors of agriculture. When the war ended, they believed, their communities would be models of harmony for those emerging from war.
The Spanish civil war had ended in March, 1939, after killing about one million people. Franco's forces began a bloodbath against targeted opponents, while Franco also began programs to rebuild war-damaged communities. The German and Italian military men in Spain returned home. And in September, when Germany attacked Catholic Poland, Catholic Spain was disconcerted, and Franco declared Spain to be neutral.
In November, Russians and Japanese forces were fighting along the border between the Soviet Union and Manchuria. And on November 30 another war erupted - between the Soviet Union and Finland. Finland had refused a request from the Soviet Union to lease the port of Hanko, and Finland had refused other requests, mainly a strip of land around Leningrad to improve that city's defenses. The Soviet Union decided to take by force what it could not get through agreement, and the Finns fought valiantly, winning support from the French, British and United States. The U.S. Congress voted a million dollars in aid to the Finns. German, Italian, French and British volunteers hurried to join the fight against the Bolsheviks, but Norway and Sweden refused the volunteers permission to cross their territory.
At first the Soviets suffered reverses in Finland, but by March it had turned the war around and was overpowering the Finns. In March, 1940, after the Soviet Union had lost 200,000 men killed in Finland, the Soviet Union and Finland agreed to end the fighting, the Finns ceding twelve percent of their territory to the Soviet Union.
On April 8, the British violated Norwegian neutrality by laying ocean mines in the shipping channel Germans were using to bring iron ore from Sweden. Hitler already had plans to occupy Norway. His admirals had persuaded him to take Norway before the British occupied it or its territorial waters, cutting Germany from its major source of iron ore.
As the British were laying their mines, Hitler's forces were on their way to Norway, and on April 9 his paratroops landed at six of Norway's ports, between Oslo and Narvik. And, that same day, the Germans moved to take control of that land directly between it and Norway:Denmark. On the first day of that invasion, the Danish king, Christian X, ordered his troops to cease-fire, the Germans having conquered Denmark in one day.
On month later, on May 10, the day that Churchill became Britain's prime minister, Hitler sent his troops into Belgium and the Netherlands, without forewarning - although he had promised to respect their neutrality. His excuse was that the Belgians and Dutch had been conducting military talks with the Western powers and that Germany had to take power in these countries to protect their neutral status and to protect Germany's Ruhr region. And the German public bought their government's argument.
The Germans used parachutists and gliders, not used in Poland, leaping over rivers, forts and enemy lines. And after a deadline that Germany had offered for the Netherlands' surrender, the Germans bombed military targets at Rotterdam. The city had already surrendered, and the bombing had been canceled, but the cancellation orders had been too slow in arriving to Germany's airforce. With the bombing came raging fires, and much of Rotterdam burned. News services in the Allied countries described thousands killed. Germany had intended to hit only military targets, but some 900 civilians had been killed, and about 78,000 were left homeless.
Germany conquered the Netherlands after five days of fighting. Belgium capitulated within two weeks, while tens of thousands of British troops in Belgium were pulling back to the channel coast, converging at Dunkirk. Hitler held his troops back from Dunkirk, and from May 29 to June 4 the British moved their troops across the channel and back to England.
The following day, June 5, Hitler invaded France. It was more "lightning" warfare. Germany's forces were not superior in numbers - not even in their number of tanks. But the Germans were superior in operational doctrine. The Germans used infiltration, with the tanks exploiting but not creating breakthroughs, and they used their Stuka dive-bombers against enemy ground forces. German tanks had radios. French tanks did not and were less able to move in coordination.
The Germans advanced rapidly. And, on June 10, Mussolini joined the war, to derision from a proud German nation. On June 12 the British bombed the Italian cities of Genoa and Turin. On June 14, Paris fell. And on the 16th, the French government, now in Bordeaux, voted thirteen to eleven for an armistice. On June 18 the British bombed "military targets" at the German port cities of Hamburg and Bremen. And on the 18th, Charles de Gaulle, in London, announced the creation of the French resistance to Germany's occupation of France.
In Germany, Hitler spoke of France as having a great past. He wanted France as an ally he could trust, unaligned with Britain and of no military threat to Germany. He did not want to drive the French into continued resistance and to the side of de Gaulle. He had Italy reduce its demand on French territory. He offered the French a peace that would give them total sovereignty over two-fifths of the country while Germany was to maintain control over French territory along the English channel, including Paris, to seal the continent from England.
Hitler at this point in the war appeared to have accomplished much for Germany. The German public attributed Hitler's success to what they believed was his genius. Hitler was at the height of his popularity in Germany and with his admirers around the globe. With their apparent military victory the German public had become enthusiastic about the war.
In addition to wanting France as a friendly and obedient ally, Hitler wanted peace with Britain. He wished for Britain to continue maintaining its empire. The disintegration of Britain's empire, he said, would not profit Germany. Crushing Britain, he said, would be spilling blood that would profit only Japan, the United States and others. And to Britain, still officially at war with Germany, Hitler offered peace.
Britain was now alone in its war against Germany. Britain had already lost 78 of its 178 destroyers. And having lost the support of the French navy, Britain's position on the trade route across the Mediterranean Sea was grim. And Britain was fighting to protect its ships in the Atlantic from air and submarine attacks.
Churchill would have none of Hitler's peace - unless Germany withdrew from all the territories it had recently overrun. Churchill spoke of "every man and every woman" having the chance to show the finest qualities of their race." And he said:
We shall prosecute the war with the utmost vigor by all means that are given to us, until the righteous purposes for which we entered upon it have been fulfilled.
On June 10, Germany's airforce attacked the docks in South Wales, which the Germans considered a military target. British civilians killed number 194. On July 19 Hitler made a speech in Berlin outlining his peace offer to Britain - as if he believed a little bombing might soften the British. He said he saw "no reason why the war must go on." Britain continued on course. German submarines attempted to blockade Britain, and, on August 8, Germany began sending an armada of airplanes against Britain - their target radar stations and forward fighter-plane air bases. Britain's pilots, outnumbered, continued to shoot down German aircraft, prompting Churchill's statement that never had so many owed so much to so few.
On August 23 the Germans began attacking aircraft factories and inland fighter-plane bases. The British in two weeks lose 262 fighter planes and the Germans lose 378. British fighter pilots were worn out and extremely stressed, and these two weeks of fighting were described as the blackest days of the "Battle of Britain."
On August 24, a lost formation of German bombers mistakenly dropped their bombs on London, damaging a few buildings. The Germans pilots had been instructed not to bomb London, but in retaliation the British sent bombers against Berlin. Cloud cover limited the bombing, and the damage to buildings was slight. Ten Germans were killed and twenty-nine wounded. But it was the first bombing of Berlin, and the Germans were shocked. Hitler told an audience that when the British declare they will raze "our cities" then we will "raze their cities to the ground."
Hitler began a massive bombing campaign against London. This change of tactics saved the radar system that the Germans had almost destroyed, which British fighter pilots needed to warn them and not be caught on the ground. And attacking London rather than fighter-plane bases gave reprieve to British air defenses. Fighter-pilot morale improved.
Germany's massive bomber attack on London did not wear down the British, nor did it do much damage to British industry. A lot of buildings were destroyed, 6,954 people were killed and 10,615 were wounded in September, but the bombing campaign against London also led to a serious loss of German pilots and aircraft. Having had his retaliation and being disappointed over Germany's losses in the air, Hitler, on September 17, reduced the size and frequency of his assaults against Britain - just in time for the relief that Britain needed. And Hitler postponed an invasion of Britain "until further notice."
In Eastern Europe, meanwhile, sides were being taken, as the Soviet Union was benefiting from its pact with Germany. The Soviet Union announced that the results of plebiscites in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were "unanimous" in favor of these nations rejoining Russia, and the Soviet Union annexed these three nations. And Romania lost territory to claims by the Soviet Union.
Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria remained allied with Germany, partly because they were economically dependent upon Germany, which was buying their agricultural surpluses, and these were nations run by ultra-conservatives who still feared revolution. They saw Germany as a bulwark against Bolshevism, and Germany was the power with whom it was best to be on good terms should more of their conflicts over borders arise. Meanwhile, Germany valued its ties with Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria as a source of food, and from Romania it was buying oil.
Greece was another matter. In late October, Mussolini invaded Greece without warning Hitler, Mussolini retaliating for Hitler not having warned him of the invasion into the west. Britain was allied with Greece and sent a naval force from the Middle East to Greece. The British navy attacked the Italian fleet as it lay at anchor at Taranto, in southern Italy. Italy's offensive against Greece broke down, and by late November the Greeks had pushed Mussolini's army back to Albania. Then, on December 9, the British launched an offensive against Italy in North Africa, British forces entering Libya on December 13.
Five days later, Hitler issued orders for preparations to begin for the invasion of the Soviet Union. He had hoped that his war with Britain would be over, giving him a free hand for what he saw as his most significant endeavor: his fight against Bolshevism. But, with Britain still in the war, he saw conquest of the Soviet Union as removing the possibility of Britain and the Soviet Union ever joining against Germany. Attacking and defeating the Soviet Union, Hitler believed, would destroy whatever hope there was in Britain to win its war against Germany.
Looking toward the east, stories by Karl May that Hitler had read had played on his mind. - stories describing Germanic Americans pushing aside unworthy American Indians. Hitler saw the Polish people as the Indians. They had to make way for an expanded Germany and for an influx of German pioneers. Hitler saw the United States as having conquered living space by exterminating natives and another example of triumph through Darwinian struggle. Too bad, he thought, that the United States had later succumbed to racial and cultural pollution.
With Germany's conquest of Poland, some under Hitler had begun describing German policy in Poland as a "housecleaning." Polish intellectuals were to be wiped out so that the Polish people would have no one to lead them in rebelling against their new masters, the Germans. Little news was getting out of Poland as to what the Germans were doing there, and, by mid-1940, Polish writers, politicians and civil leaders who had been rounded up were being executed by a special German team at a site in the Palmiry forest.
The Germans in Poland had also begun rounding up Jews from rural areas and transporting them to city ghettos - concentrations from which they could more easily be rounded up later for transport to extermination camps. Early in 1940, a site for a prison had been chosen in a marshy area by the town of Auschwitz, thirty miles west of the Polish city of Krakow. The German company, I.G. Farben, led by God fearing Christians, was planning an adjacent synthetic coal and rubber plant, which would use the labor of the camp's inmates. It was another example of business doing what it could within the limits of approval by government.
And it would not be easy to get volunteer Germans to be guards at a faraway prison near desolate Auschwitz. Certainly getting the more charming, well-developed and caring Germans for the job was out of the question. Instead, the Germans began filling the positions of barrack chiefs at Auschwitz with thirty criminals from a Germany prison.
Recommended Books
Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, by Nicholson Baker, 2008. A superb overview from the beginning of the 20th century to World War II, built on snippets of attitude.
The Causes of the Second World War, by Andrew J. Crozier, 1997 (From 1919 to 1940)
Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England, by Lynne Olson, 2007
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Copyright © 1998 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.
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