The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer William L

Author:Shirer,William L.
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780795317002
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2011-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

As darkness settled over Europe on the evening of August 31, 1939, and a million and a half German troops began moving forward to their final positions on the Polish border for the jump-off at dawn, all that remained for Hitler to do was to perpetrate some propaganda trickery to prepare the German people for the shock of aggressive war.

The people were in need of the treatment which Hitler, abetted by Goebbels and Himmler, had become so expert in applying. I had been about in the streets of Berlin, talking with the ordinary people, and that morning noted in my diary: “Everybody against the war. People talking openly. How can a country go into a major war with a population so dead against it?” Despite all my experience in the Third Reich I asked such a naïve question! Hitler knew the answer very well. Had he not the week before on his Bavarian mountaintop promised the generals that he would “give a propagandist reason for starting the war” and admonished them not to “mind whether it was plausible or not”? “The victor,” he had told them, “will not be asked afterward whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war it is not right that matters, but victory.”

At 9 P.M., as we have seen, all German radio stations broadcast the Fuehrer’s Polish peace proposals which, as they were read over the air, seemed so reasonable to this misled correspondent. The fact that Hitler had never presented them to the Poles nor even, except in a vague and unofficial manner, to the British, and then less than twenty-four hours before, was brushed over. In fact, in a lengthy statement explaining to the German people how their government had exhausted every diplomatic means to preserve the peace the Chancellor, no doubt aided by Goebbels, showed that he had lost none of his touch for masterly deceit. After the British government on August 28, it said, had offered its mediation between Germany and Poland, the German government on the next day had replied that,

in spite of being skeptical of the desire of the Polish Government to come to an understanding, they declared themselves ready in the interests of peace to accept the British mediation or suggestion… They considered it necessary… if the danger of a catastrophe was to be avoided that action must be taken readily and without delay. They declared themselves ready to receive a personage appointed by the Polish Government up to the evening of August 30, with the proviso that the latter was empowered not only to discuss but to conduct and conclude negotiations.

. Instead of a statement regarding the arrival of an authorized personage, the first answer the Government of the Reich received to their readiness for an understanding was the news of the Polish mobilization…

The Reich Government cannot be expected continually not only to emphasize their willingness to start negotiations, but actually to be ready to do so, while being from the Polish side merely put off with empty subterfuges and meaningless declarations.

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