The Day We Went to War Page 8

  31 August, BERLIN

  At 9pm the German home service radio broadcasts the sixteen proposals that von Ribbentrop so rudely read out to Sir Nevile Henderson nine hours ago. But as ‘the Fuehrer and the German government have now waited for two days in vain for the arrival of a Polish plenipotentiary’, they are considered to have now been rejected by Poland. A quarter of an hour after they are broadcast, at the foreign ministry State Secretary Ernst von Weizsacker hands Sir Nevile Henderson a copy of the sixteen proposals. When Sir Nevile asks why they are being given to him only at this late stage, von Weizsacker tells the ambassador that he is only obeying orders.

  31 August, ROME

  At midnight, Count Ciano receives a ’phone call from Berlin. It is his brother-in-law and embassy counsellor Massimo Magistrati on the line. Magistrati tells Ciano that newspapers are now being distributed free in the German capital. Their headlines read, ‘Poland Refuses! Attack About To Begin!’

  31 August, BERLIN

  Sunday Times special correspondent, American Virginia Cowles, is in Berlin on a flying visit. After a hectic day, she dines at Horcher’s, Goering’s favourite restaurant. On the way back to her hotel she passes Hitler’s Chancellery and reflects that, ‘Only twenty years before ten million had died in the most savage conflict the world had ever known. They had died violently: burnt, suffocated, gassed, drowned, bayoneted and blown to atoms. Now once again the German nation was going to unloose the same, and even greater horrors. Any hour now, one man would give the signal.’

  31 August, HUDDERSFIELD

  ‘We think in our hearts that peace will prevail.’ (Marjorie Gothard)

  31 August, GERMANY

  ‘After an uninterrupted journey we reached the frontier at Kreuzburg in the morning and took our position in a wood near the town. In the wood we shaved in coffee, because not even the cooks had water. We wondered how long we should stay there. I couldn’t sleep the whole night long in the wood; for along all the roads and paths the German Army was rattling and clattering its way towards the frontier. We were lying only eight kilometres from the Polish boundary. At 2am we heard the news that the infantry was to cross the border at quarter to five in the morning. After hearing this news, there was no more sleep for us. Everyone was speculating on what the day would bring forth. We all knew now that it was serious, and the guns would soon be rolling forward.’ (Corporal Wilhelm Krey, 13th Artillery Observation Battery, German Army)

  31 August, TAKELEY

  ‘It looks as if we are “for it”! One doesn’t evacuate three million children and then halt, maim and blind just for the fun of it. Heigho! God must be sick of this world of ours.’ (Moyra Charlton)

  31 August, WORTHING

  ‘Wireless news at one o’clock told us that London school children will be evacuated tomorrow. Worthing is to expect 13,000 and me two! Terrible, as it makes war seem nearer. Surely it can’t happen. It’s dreadful to think that the “victors” will be those who use most effectively the most diabolical instruments of death as quickly as possible . . . The papers are very depressing – all the pictures are of soldiers – sandbags – ARP city girls evacuating from their offices – guns, aeroplanes and so on.’ (Joan Strange)

  ‘In spite of the Polish warmongers’ arrogant provocations, supported by the British, the Fuehrer still tries to avoid war. Late at night the English ambassador, Sir Neville[sic] Henderson (second from left), brings the Fuhrer an answer from the English government’ was the original German caption to this photograph, taken on 28 August 1939.

  ‘If only this waiting were over. If only something would happen. One way or the other.’ Men of an SS signals battalion at Knipprode, East Prussia, 31 August 1939.

  31 August, CITY OF LONDON

  ‘We heard yesterday from one of the boys . . . that he had been digging for days, digging trenches for the soldiers and, having finished, they have been put to digging trenches in a nearby park for civilians – I notice as I passed the signals barracks yesterday that the “Terriers” there were stripped to the waist and shovelling sand into the bags as hard as they could go, placing the full bags against their barracks. They all seem to be growing moustaches and are now very “tough!!”’ (Vivienne Hall)

  31 August, TEDDINGTON

  ‘This month has been an unbroken series of incidents to goad Poland to war, culminating in the Russia–German Pact which was ratified last night but which failed in its object of making us give in to German demands. “Demands” has become about the most stinking word in the whole German vocabulary, though many run it close for the honour. Justice! Race! Kultur!’ (Helena Mott)

  CHAPTER 2

  Friday,

  1 September 1939

  Introduction: resumé of 31 August

  Europe now stood on the brink of war. All day long, on 31 August, crowds had gathered in London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw, watching the comings and goings of statesmen and diplomats. Everywhere people hoped against hope that peace might still be preserved.

  In Britain, the general mood on that last day of August was still one of unwarranted optimism. Only 18 per cent of people when polled admitted that they expected war to break out. A large majority, when asked whether they thought Hitler was bluffing or not, answered Yes. But the announcement that the official evacuation of schoolchildren and others was to begin the next day seemed to many an ominous sign: ‘War seems nearer after the evacuation news,’ recorded one thirty-year-old man in the diary he was keeping for Mass Observation. Another diarist, a woman of twenty-four, thought, ‘Every day gained makes one still hope. Strain is very great. Evacuation seems to imply the worst.’

  In Germany, there was still the hope that, having successfully brought off so many bloodless ‘victories’, the Fuehrer would do it again. Other Germans were not so sure, and American correspondent William Shirer recorded in his diary, ‘optimism in official circles [is] melting away this morning’. At the same time many Germans wondered why there was any crisis at all. ‘The Corridor?’ one man remarked to Shirer, ‘Hell, we haven’t heard about that for twenty years. Why bring it up now?’

  In France, the mood of ordinary people was perhaps more pessimistic than in Britain. There was a widespread feeling of resigned acceptance that war would come. Already one could hear the slogan ‘Il faut en finir’ (We’ve got to put a stop to it) among the public and the mobilised soldiers. Some in official circles clung to the hope that Mussolini’s conference plan would yet preserve peace. Minister Anatole de Monzie urged its acceptance on his colleague Georges Bonnet: ‘Georges . . . if the project for a conference fails . . . we will be caught up and pulverised in the wheels of war . . .’

  In Poland, the people faced the prospect of war with a stolidity which amazed every foreigner. One reported, ‘The crowds in Warsaw showed no emotion whatever. I suppose it was fatalism.’ Some Poles still talked of riding in victory into Berlin, but most thought that if war came, it would be a long and arduous conflict. Only a very few realists were doubtful that resistance could last for very long without effective aid from Britain and France. Warsaw newspaper man Wladyslaw Besterman told his American colleague Ed Beattie, ‘Poland is going to fight if she has to. No government could possibly give in to Hitler. But make no mistake, either. We are going to need every last ounce of pressure that Britain and France can bring to bear . . . They must come in at once, and when they do come in, they must hit Germany hard in the west.’

  Beattie had been in Warsaw for a week, staying at the Europejski Hotel. ‘At dinner’, he wrote, ‘someone had the straight tip that war would start the next morning. Everyone at the table laughed. Setting dates for “Hitler’s next move” had been a favourite sport in Europe for years. For once, the date was right.’

  3.17am (4.17am), DANZIG

  German forces, including the locally raised Danzig Heimwehr, have just started firing on Polish-occupied positions in the Free City of Danzig.

  3.45am (4.45am), DANZIG

  The old German battleship Schleswig-Hol
stein, in Danzig on a ‘courtesy visit’, starts bombarding the Polish military garrison on the small peninsula of Westerplatte.

  4.00am (5.00am), DANZIG

  Expectant mother Sybil Bannister, the English wife of a German doctor, wakes up to the sound of gunfire. ‘This is the end,’ Sybil thinks as she dresses quickly. She is trembling so violently that she can scarcely grasp her clothes or stand on her shaking legs. She rushes downstairs and runs into the caretaker. He tells her that Gauleiter Albert Forster has broadcast a proclamation that Danzig has returned to the ‘Greater German Reich’. He also says that the shooting and explosions are coming from the Polish Post Office on the Heveliusplatz in the city and Westerplatte.

  4.00am (5.00am), KATOWICE

  Daily Telegraph string correspondent Clare Hollingworth wakes up suddenly. She hears what sounds like doors slamming and then the roar of aeroplanes. Clare runs to the window and sees the ’planes high in the sky and below them bursts of anti-aircraft fire. She also sees what she thinks are incendiary bombs falling in a nearby park. ‘It’s the beginning of war!’ Clare is told. Without waiting for confirmation, she telephones Daily Telegraph correspondent Hugh Carleton Greene in Warsaw with the news. Clare sets out for the British Consulate. She is now having doubts and is afraid that she has made the gaffe of her life by reporting a nonexisting war. But at the Consulate the news is confirmed. One of the German employees weeps at the news. She tells Clare, ‘This is the end of poor Germany.’

  4.20am (5.20am), WARSAW

  The Times’ correspondent Patrick Maitland is fast asleep when the telephone rings. It is his colleague Hugh Carleton Greene of the Daily Telegraph on the line. Greene tells Maitland that he has just heard from Clare Hollingworth in Katowice. Clare has woken up to the sound of bombing and shelling. It looks as if war has begun. More than half asleep still, Maitland puts the receiver down and totters back to bed and drops off to sleep again.

  4.30am (5.30am), UNITED STATES EMBASSY, BERLIN

  Embassy clerk William Russell is on night duty in the office of the Chargé d’Affaires Alexander Kirk when the telephone rings. Kirk appears and takes the phone from Russell. He listens and then puts the phone down without a word. ‘Russell, will you wake the code clerk?’ he asks quietly. ‘That was the British Embassy calling. The first German bombers left for Poland ten minutes ago.’

  4.35am (5.35am), WARSAW

  Patrick Maitland wakes up with a start. Has he really been phoned up by Greene with news that war has begun? He rings Greene, who confirms the news, as does the British Embassy who have just heard the news from the Consulate in Katowice.

  4.40am (5.40am), ALL GERMAN RADIO STATIONS

  Hitler’s proclamation to the Wehrmacht is read out over the radio:

  The Polish state has refused the peaceful settlement of relations which I desired and has resorted to arms. Germans in Poland are persecuted with bloody terror and driven from their homes. A series of violations of the frontier, intolerable to a great power, prove that Poland is no longer willing to respect the frontier of the Reich. In order to put an end to this lunacy I have no choice than to meet force with force; the German Army will fight for the honour and rights of a new-born Germany . . .

  5.00am (6.00am), KUTNO, EAST OF WARSAW

  A thirty-coach passenger train from the Baltic port of Gdynia to Warsaw is just leaving Kutno station. On board the train, which left Gdynia yesterday, are the wives and children of civil servants, officers and railway officials. A few soldiers and reservists are also passengers on the train. Suddenly six two-engine bombers appear. They fly low over the railway line. The passengers watch the ’planes calmly. They believe that they are Polish bombers on an exercise. Then equally suddenly, they hear an explosion and a shower of machine-gun bullets hits the sides and roofs of the carriages. Many of the passengers are hit, while others in a panic jump through the doors into a ploughed field. The German ’planes fly over, circle and return, sending another shower of machine-gun fire into the crowd before flying off. Near the end of the train in a third-class Pullman, survivors can hear the moans of badly wounded Polish soldiers. They have been literally cut to pieces by bullets and flying glass. Further on, a goods van has been split into two and the bodies of eight soldiers thrown out on the roof by the effects of blast. A stunned woman sits on the ground by the train, staring at the bodies of her two dead daughters and son.

  5.15am (6.15am), WARSAW

  Patrick Maitland has just finished telephoning when the sirens sound the air-raid warning. He and his housemates, some grabbing gas masks, make for the shelter.

  5.30am (6.30am), WARSAW

  British military attaché Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Roland Sword is woken by the telephone ringing. His colleague Robin Hankey is on the line. He tells Sword that the Germans have just started bombing Katowice. The military attaché rings a Polish staff officer who confirms the news.

  6.00am (7.00am), MOABIT, BERLIN

  John ‘Jack’ McCutcheon Raleigh of the Chicago Tribune is called to the telephone in his pension. Because of the crisis, he has had only two hours’ sleep. Picking up the receiver, his boss, Sigrid Schlutz, tells him, ‘The Germans have marched into Poland. Early this morning – 5.45am. It’s really war. Get down to the office quickly.’ Raleigh rushes back to his room to dress. His landlady follows him. She asks the correspondent what’s the latest news. She is very worried as she has two sons in the army. ‘War,’ Raleigh tells her briefly. He gets a taxi and makes for the city centre. Berlin looks the same. Passers-by seem calm enough.

  6.00am (7.00am), ZRARDOW, WARSAW DISTRICT

  Fourteen-year-old Zbigniew Leon wakes up in bed. He is on the country estate of a friend of his father’s. He hears air-raid sirens, but thinks that it is an emergency drill. There have been several in the last few days. But when he gets up and goes outside, Zbigniew sees two large and strange-looking aeroplanes. They do not look like Polish ’planes. Suddenly, two smaller ’planes appear. They are Polish fighters and they start shooting at the larger aircraft. Zbigniew is completely taken by surprise and it dawns on him that something is not right.

  7.28am, FOREIGN OFFICE, WHITEHALL

  The first news of the German invasion of Poland reaches the British Government via a Reuter’s News Agency report.

  8.00am (9.00am), EUROPEJSKI HOTEL, WARSAW

  The sirens sound as United Press correspondent Ed Beattie is on the ’phone to Amsterdam. The morning is hazy and overcast. Beattie cannot see the German raiders, but he hears ‘the bark of anti-aircraft in the distance’ as it moves gradually closer. Then the American sees ‘little puffs from the shell-bursts, showing black against the white cloud layer’. From the suburbs of the city, Beattie hears ‘a sound different from the sharp AA fire, a sort of heavy c-r-r-r-rumph’. He realises that the sounds that he is hearing are the first bombs falling on the Polish capital. Smoke emerges from the west of the city. Beattie’s hotel window overlooks Pilsudski Square, which is rapidly emptying. A peasant, in for Friday market, dutifully turns his horse round in its harness. He dumps some hay in the road for feed and then makes his way to the nearest shelter. After a while the gunfire ceases, and the All Clear sounds. The peasant re-emerges, turns his horse around again and calmly drives off.

  8.30am, HEAD OFFICE, GRANADA THEATRES LTD, GOLDEN SQUARE, LONDON

  Managers of the Granada cinemas in the London area have just received the following announcement to be read out if war is declared:

  Ladies and gentlemen,

  I want you to listen very quietly to what I have to say and I want you to remain in your seats until I have finished. We have just received orders from the authorities that a state of emergency has arisen and that all theatres are to be closed immediately. There is no cause for undue alarm. Will you please leave the theatre quietly. Attendants at the exits will issue readmission tickets to all who care to ask for them. The authorities advise you to go home. Thank you.

  8.30am, FOREIGN OFFICE, WHITEHALL

  A telegram
arrives from the British Embassy in Warsaw, reporting that Poland has been invaded and bombing is taking place.

  8.45am (9.45am), GERMAN-POLISH BORDER

  Twenty-three-year-old Viennese Wilhelm Prueller is with the 10th Rifle Regiment of the 4th Light Division. He just has time to jot in his diary, ‘9.45: We’ve crossed the border. We’re in Poland. Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles!’

  8.50am (9.50am), BRITISH EMBASSY, BERLIN

  Birger Dahlerus, the Swedish businessman and friend of Goering, telephones with an offer to fly to Britain to try to end the fighting. He repeats what Goering has told him earlier: ‘The Poles are sabotaging everything . . . The Poles do not want to negotiate . . .’

  9.00am (10.00am), KROLL OPERA HOUSE, BERLIN

  Hitler arrives to address a special sitting of the Reichstag. Before leaving the Reich Chancellery, his doctor Theodor Morell has injected him with a stimulant. It is very hot and humid in the opera house as Hitler, in a new field-grey tunic, mounts the podium. He tells the deputies that Poland has not only intensified the campaign of atrocities against ethnic Germans, but ‘for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our territory’. Now, Germany is being forced to retaliate: ‘Bombs will be met by bombs. Whoever fights with poison gas will be fought with poison gas. Whoever departs from the rules of humane warfare can only expect that we shall do the same.’ But, the Fuehrer tells the Reichstag: ‘I will not wage war against women and children. I have ordered my air force to restrict itself to attacks on military objectives.’ Hitler goes on to say that if he should fall in battle, then Goering is to be his successor, and if Goering too should fall, then Deputy Fuehrer Rudolf Hess will take over. Referring to his new uniform, Hitler says, ‘I am from now on just the First Soldier of the German Reich. I have once more put on that coat that was most sacred and dear to me. I will not take it off again until victory is secured or I will not survive the outcome . . .’