rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

486 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHthen why not turn to Hitler, who suddenly was knocking at his door?By the end of July 1939, Stalin had become convinced, it is obvious, not onlythat France and Britain did not want a binding alliance but that the objective ofthe Chamberlain government in Britain was to induce Hitler to make his wars inEastern Europe. He seems to have been intensely skeptical that Britain wouldhonor its guarantee to Poland any more than France had kept its obligations toCzechoslovakia. And everything that had happened in the West for the past twoyears tended to increase his suspicions: the rejection by Chamberlain of Sovietproposals, after the Anschluss and after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia,for conferences to draw up plans to halt further Nazi aggression; Chamberlain’sappeasement of Hitler at Munich, from which Russia had been excluded; thedelays and hesitations of Chamberlain in negotiating a defensive alliance againstGermany as the fateful summer days of 1939 ticked by.One thing was certain – to almost everyone but Chamberlain. Thebankruptcy of Anglo-French diplomacy, which had faltered and tottered wheneverHitler made a move, was now complete. ∗ Step by step, the two Westerndemocracies had retreated; when Hitler defied them by declaring conscriptionin 1935, when he occupied the Rhineland in 1936, when he took Austria in 1938and in the same year demanded and got the Sudetenland; and they had sat byweakly when he occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. With theSoviet Union on their side, they still might have dissuaded the German dictatorfrom launching war or, if that failed, have fairly quickly defeated him in anarmed conflict. But they had allowed this last opportunity to slip out of theirhands. †Now, at the worst possible time in the worst possible circumstances, theywere committed to come to the aid of Poland when she was attacked.The recriminations in London and Paris against the double-dealing of Stalinwere loud and bitter. The Soviet despot for years had cried out at the ”fascistbeasts” and called for all peace-loving states to band together to halt Nazi∗ And of Polish diplomacy too. Ambassador Noel reported Foreign Minister Beck’s reactionto the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in a dispatch to Paris: ”Beck is quite unperturbed anddoes not seem in the slightest worried. He believes that, in substance, very little has changed.”† Despite many warnings, as we have seen, that Hitler was courting the Kremlin. On June1, M. Coulondre, the French ambassador in Berlin, had informed Bonnet, the French ForeignMinister, that Russia was looming larger and larger in Hitler’s thoughts. ”Hitler will riskwar,” Coulondre wrote, ”if he does not have to fight Russia. On the other hand, if he knowshe has to fight her too he will draw back rather than expose his country, his party and himselfto ruin.” The ambassador urged the prompt conclusion of the Anglo-French negotiations inMoscow and advised Paris that the British ambassador in Berlin had made a similar appealto his government in London. (French Yellow Book, Fr. ed. pp. 180-81.)On August 15, both Coulondre and Henderson saw Weizsaecker at the Foreign Office. TheBritish ambassador informed London that the State Secretary was confident that the SovietUnion ”would in the end join in sharing the Polish spoils.” (British Blue Book, p. 91.) AndCoulondre, after his talk with Weizsaecker, wired Paris: ”It is necessary at all costs to cometo some solution of the Russian talks as soon as possible.” (French Yellow Book, p. 282.)Throughout June and July, Laurence Steinhardt, the American ambassador in Moscow,had also sent warnings of an impending Soviet-Nazi deal, which President Roosevelt passedon to the British, French and Polish embassies. As early as July 5, when Soviet AmbassadorConstantino Oumansky left for a leave in Russia, he carried with him a message from Rooseveltto Stalin ”that if his government joined up with Hitler, it was as certain as that the nightfollowed day that as soon as Hitler had conquered France he would turn on Russia.” (JosephE. Davies, Mission to Moscow, p. 450.) The President’s warning was cabled to Steinhardtwith instructions to repeat it to Molotov, which the ambassador did on August 16. (U.S.Diplomatic Papers, 1939, I, pp. 296-99.)