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

574 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHFuehrer had personally ordered the broadcast and the article – and also thatthough Raeder, Doenitz and Weizsaecker were highly displeased at such a brazenlie, they dared not do anything about it. 754This spinelessness on the part of the admirals and the self-styled anti-Nazileader in the Foreign Office, which was fully shared by the generals, wheneverthe demonic Nazi warlord cracked down, was to lead to one of the darkest pagesin German history.HITLER PROPOSES PEACE”Tonight the press talks openly of peace,” I noted in my diary September20. ”AH the Germans I’ve talked to today are dead sure we shall have peacewithin a month. They are in high spirits.”The afternoon before at the ornate Guild Hall in Danzig I had heard Hitlermake his first speech since his Reichstag address of September 1 started off thewar. Though he was in a rage because he had been balked from making thisspeech at Warsaw, whose garrison still gallantly held out, and dripped venomevery time he mentioned Great Britain, he made a slight gesture toward peace.”I have no war aims against Britain and France,” he said. ”My sympathiesare with the French poilu. What he is fighting for he does not know.” And hecalled upon the Almighty, ”who now has blessed our arms, to give other peoplescomprehension of how useless this war will be . . . and to cause reflection on theblessings of peace.”On September 26, the day before Warsaw fell, the German press and radiolaunched a big peace offensive. The line, 1 recorded in my diary, was: ”Why doFrance and Britain want to fight now? Nothing to fight about. Germany wantsnothing in the West.”A couple of days later, Russia, fast devouring its share of Poland, joined inthe peace offensive. Along with the signing of the German-Soviet Boundary andFriendship Treaty, with its secret clauses dividing up Eastern Europe, Molotovand Ribbentrop concocted and signed at Moscow on September 28 a ringingdeclaration for peace.The governments of Germany and Russia, it said, after havingdefinitely settled the problems arising from the disintegration of thePolish state and created a firm foundation for a lasting peace in EasternEurope, mutually express their conviction that it would serve thetrue interests of all peoples to put an end to the state of war betweenGermany and England and France, Both governments will thereforedirect their common efforts . . . toward attaining this goal as soonas possible.Should, however, the efforts of the two governments remain fruitless,this would demonstrate the fact that England and France areresponsible for the continuation of the war. . .Did Hitler want peace, or did he want to continue the war and, with Soviethelp, push the responsibility for its continuance on the Western Allies? Perhapshe did not quite know himself, although he was pretty certain.