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

576 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHTo me as I sat in the Reichstag beginning at noon on October 6 and listenedto Hitler utter his appeal for peace, it seemeo like an old gramophone recordbeing replayed for the fifth or sixth time. How often before I had heard himfrom this same rostrum, after his latest conquest, and in the same apparent toneof earnestness and sincerity, propose what sounded – if you overlooked his latestvictim – like a decent and reasonable peace. He did so again this crisp, sunnyautumn day, with his usual eloquence and hypocrisy. It was a long speech –one of the most lengthy public utterances he ever made – but toward the end,after more than an hour of typical distortions of history and a boastful accountof the feat of German arms in Poland (”this ridiculous state”) he came to hisproposals for peace and the reasons therefore.My chief endeavor has been to rid our relations with France of alltrace of ill will and render them tolerable for both nations . . . Germanyhas no further claims against France . . . I have refused even tomention the problem of Alsace-Lorraine . . . I have always expressedto France my desire to bury forever our ancient enmity and bringtogether these two nations, both of which have such glorious pasts. . .And Britain?I have devoted no less effort to the achievement of Anglo-Germanunderstanding, nay, more than that, of an Anglo-German friendship.At no time and in no place have I ever acted contrary to Britishinterests . . . I believe even today that there can only be real peacein Europe and throughout the world if Germany and England cometo an understanding.And peace?Why should this war in the West be fought? For restoration ofPoland? Poland of the Versailles Treaty will never rise again . . . Thequestion of re-establishment of the Polish State is a problem whichwill not be solved by war in the West but exclusively by Russia andGermany . . . It would be senseless to annihilate millions of men andto destroy property worth millions in order to reconstruct a Statewhich at its very birth was termed an abortion by all those not ofPolish extraction.What other reason exists? . . .If this war is really to be waged only in order to give Germany a newregime . . . then millions of human lives will be sacrificed in vain . . .No, this war in the West cannot settle any problems . . .There were problems to be solved. Hitler trotted out a whole list of them:”formation of a Polish State” (which he had already agreed with the Russiansshould not exist); ”solution and settlement of the Jewish problem”; colonies forthought the British and French ”would hold firm . . . Why hide it?” Ciano wrote in his diaryOctober 3, ”he [Mussolini] is somewhat bitter about Hitler’s sudden rise to fame.” (CianoDiaries, p. 155.)