Transcript of 530. Hitler’s War on Poland: Countdown to Armageddon (Part 1)

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My Fuhrer, your comrades of the first hour are seated before you, willing to follow your need direly as 1 united whole, to stride force at your side in the future also, suffused by the single desire to follow you blindly to avoid the attainment of the greatest of victories, the victory of our great German Volk. You have led us onward to victories unfathomable. You have restored to us a life worth living, a life splendid. It was you who created Greater Germany. How feeble are our expressions of gratitude.

Words to express our gratitude to you simply defies us. The cries with which we jubilantly hail you presently, these shrouds of hail, sum up everything we feel within ourselves in respect to inspiration, dedication, love, and loyalty. Comrades, to our dearly, beloved Fuhrer, the creator of Geitel Germany,

So that Dominic was, Hermann Goering, who you've put down in your note, you've described as a sinister man mountain.

And I hope

I hope that I adequately conveyed your your kind of instructions there. He's a gentleman of size, isn't he? And I hope that that came across. This is going out, early in January, and that was actually his New Year address to the Reichstag Yeah. On the 1st January 1939.

That was how Goring welcomed the New Year, Tom. And, of course, we always like to welcome the New Year with with in the company of Nazis. The terrible people. Yes. So, New Year 1939.

And Goring there, I think it's fair to say, is speaking for tens of millions of ordinary Germans.

They all love their Fuhrer.

Well, Hitler is very popular, and, of course, there are people who have issues with the regime of various kinds. There are things that are wrong with the regime. But a lot of ordinary Germans, I think, at the beginning of 1939, would say that Hitler's 6 years in power have brought a series of great achievements. They were rearmed. The worst hardships of the Depression are over.

They've reoccupied the Rhineland. They've unified with Austria. And now most recently, they have annexed the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, and they've done all of that without provoking the 1 thing that most of them fear, which is a a European war. However Yeah. Against that Yeah.

It's not all good news, is it?

Well, as we all know, and this is very well chronicled at the time in the newspapers of the world, there is the dark side to the Nazi regime, the concentration camps, the murders, the repression, the persecution above all of the Jews symbolized by the Nuremberg Laws, and the the pogrom, the crystal act at the end of 1938. All of that is very well known. However, Hitler is genuinely popular at this point. It's a police state, of course, so it's hard to be certain. But all the evidence we have from journalists, from reports by the Social Democratic Party that went sort of smuggled to their leadership in exile are that people are delighted at Hitler's foreign policy achievements.

And had he stopped, if the 1st January 1939, he dropped dead or he'd stopped right then and said, what we have, we hold, we consolidate. I think Goring's verdict, ludicrously delivered as it was, would have resonated with millions of ordinary Germans.

So can I ask you, the previous episode, we talked about how the German economy was on the brink? It was staring down the barrel of bankruptcy, and this was a huge inspiration for conquering Czechoslovakia because it was a very rich country. Has this simulation of of the Czech economy enabled the German economy to be stabilized?

And the short answer is no. Now first of all, it's because, of course, they haven't assimilated the whole of the Czech economy. They've only taken the Sudeten land, which is what about a 5th of Czechoslovakia's industrial capacity. But, actually, after they've done that, November 1938, Goring says to the rest of the Nazi high command, do you know what? We're actually in a terrible mess.

So exactly as you say, Tom, Goring's 4 year plan, as it was called, was predicated on constant conquest, on the constant acquisition of new resources, new labor, all of this. And, actually, the wheels are about to come off, and they're only keeping inflation at bay. So the inflation generated by their massive arms spending, they're only keeping it at bay with price controls. And as, you know, lots of people listen to this podcast will know, once you get into that world of kind of price controls to stop inflation, you're often in a bit of a death spiral, a kind of economic death spiral. And actually, Goebbels writes in his diary in December 1938, the financial situation of the Reich is catastrophic.

We must look for new ways. It cannot go on like this. And the obvious answer is, well, we just acquire new territory. We acquire new resources. Just take stuff from if we haven't got enough workers, if we don't have enough currency, enough tungsten, or whatever it might be.

Or factories. We just collect the factories. Everything.

Take it from somebody else. And of course, the other thing that is propelling Hitler onwards, Hitler cannot stop. I mean, this is the thing. He is not an ordinary dictator. He's not even an ordinary German nationalist.

AJ p Taylor, very famously and controversially, in his book on the origins of the 2nd World War published, I think, in 19 sixties, said, well, Hitler was just a, you know, common or garden German nationalist. His goals were those of German nationalists down the decades and the centuries. That obviously is wrong, completely wrong. Hitler had said all this stuff in Mein Kampf and all his speeches in the 19 twenties, all of this stuff about nature, the law of struggle. We talked last time that quotation about, you know, people have to fight.

Well, racist, more specifically, isn't it? That there's a racial logic at play in Hitler's mind. Yeah. That if the Germans don't continue fighting, then stasis is not a possibility. They will lose.

They will be defeated. They will be destroyed.

So there's a thing that clearly separates him from another dictator of the same period like a Franco or Salazar or somebody like that in Spain and Portugal.

But I guess not not necessarily Stalin though, interestingly. Because Stalin also, as a communist, dreams of the whole world going communist.

Yes. He does. There's a rev like a revolutionary dynamo inside Stalin. But Stalin is clearly much more pragmatic than Hitler is. Stalin doesn't have Hitler's Wagnerian urgency, I suppose, which we know that that Hitler has.

And this, of course, is 1 reason that Hitler is so disappointed when Munich doesn't give him a war, and he's particularly disappointed. We we ended last time. He's so disappointed with the German people. They've let themselves down because they were against war, and they cheered Chamberlain because they thought he was a peacemaker.

And for Hitler, that suggests that they're on the road to degeneracy.

Yes. So the longer you leave it, of course, the more degenerate they might well become. Of course, the longer you leave it, the more likely it is that Britain and France will rearm and it'll make also, the Germany's economy will fall to pieces. So he really feels like that window is kinda closing all the time, and he must move now.

I mean, just to ask you on this thing about the economy, do British and French observers I mean, do they have analysts who are pointing this out that if we just leave it another year, the whole regime will implode economically? Because I've never actually read that in any account

No.

The preparations for war. Whereas that today, you know, in a in a similar situation, people talk about in terms of, you know, Russia

Yeah.

Against Ukraine or Iran or whatever, the sense that economic warfare can be as effective as, you know, tanks and planes.

No. I don't think they do have that sense, Tom. I've never read anything that suggests that they do. Foreign visitors, when they go to Hitler's Germany, are struck by what they think of as his economic miracle, I would say. They're like, oh, gosh.

He's found the magic trick. He's put all these people back to work, and Germany is humming again, and everybody is happy, and the streets are clear, and all of that kind of thing.

Spring time for Hitler in general.

Spring time for Hitler. Exactly. I think there's much more of a sense of that actually and a sense of great self doubt in the democracies that maybe democracy doesn't really work. Maybe dictatorship is the future. So no, I don't there's anything like that sort of sense.

So beginning in 1939, I think it's fair to say that Hitler is determined to get his war sooner or later. The accent burned firmly on sooner. And the most obvious unfinished business is in what he would call, what everyone calls at the time, Czechoslovakia. It has been renamed after Munich, so it to emphasize the fact that it has become a bit unglued and that the Czech and Slovak parts have become unglued. So if you remember from last week, Hitler didn't just want the Sudetenland.

He wanted the lot, and he feels cheated. That that fellow chamberlain has spoiled my entry into Prague, he said.

Is it not passing brave to be a dictator and ride in triumph through Prague?

Exactly. Yeah. That's part of his kind of Wagnerian fantasy in a life, isn't it? He sees himself riding up to the castle as a conqueror. So just 3 weeks after Munich, Hitler says to the Wehrmacht, to the German army, please draw up plans now for the liquidation of the remainder of the Czech state.

Now the thing about this, of course, which reminds us how unusual Hitler is is, anybody else would say that this was completely unnecessary. Czechoslovakia is now no threat to you. You can really turn it into your puppet eventually. You don't need to risk everything by swallowing the rest of it. It's just supine at your feet, but he wants to have his conquest as a matter of pride.

Secondly, I think, as we talked about last time, he really, really hates the Czechs. He's hated them ever since his days in Vienna before the First World War. And there is that economic thing that you talked about, Tom. So that they have the big Skoda works. They have all this foreign currency.

Yeah. They've got loads of gold, and they've got this massive military arsenal. They have enough weapons in Czechoslovakia for 20 divisions. So that is about if you think there's about 15,000 men in a division, I mean, that's a hell of a lot of guns. It is.

And the Czechs have them. And their guns are better than anybody's. They've been made in this in Pilsen, in this massive factory, and they're brilliant. And Hitler for Hitler, there was no question in his mind. He's gonna come back and get that a lot.

So straightaway in the New Year, as soon as the Goring's, splendid oration is kind of the last echoes are dying away Yeah. Hitler starts to lay the groundwork with the army. He does 3 big speeches, 18th January, 25th January, 10th February, where he meets groups of officers starting with the younger ones and then moving up to the senior commanders. And he says to them you know, he's completely explicit at this point. He says, I wanna make the German right the dominant power in Europe.

I want to ditch the democratic pacifist defeatist mentality that I associate with Weimar. At 1 point, he says to these guys, the German heroes of the past embraced brutality, meaning the sword, if other methods fail. It is time for Germany, and I quote, to stake its claim to the domination of Europe. So this isn't the talk of revising the Treaty of Versailles. No.

It's not the kind of thing you could discuss with Neville Chamberlain.

Yeah. A sympathetic journalist from the from the Daily Telegraph. Yeah. He couldn't lay out these plans and hope to get a warm reception in the drawing rooms of Britain. And then the final 1 is at the Kroll Opera House, the senior commanders, and he says to them, look, I am determined to get this living space in the east.

And he says, as long as I live, this thought will dominate my entire being. I will never draw back from the most extreme measures, and I will need you to put your fervent trust in me. So, yeah, there's no doubt about where all this is leading. This sort of slightly apocalyptic, you know, teenage boy planning and conquering the world, sort of Alexander the Great style vision, It's not hidden.

No. Well, this is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Mein Kampf, and it had been evident all these years. Yeah. I mean, you only had to read it to know what his plans were.

I mean, this is the amazing thing, by the way, about Chamberlain's self delusion. There's that phrase that people say, isn't it? Or if they say it on social media when they're trying to be nasty to somebody. They say, when somebody shows you who they are, believe them. I mean, Hitler showed people who he was for 20 years, and people continued to underestimate him and and to not believe him, but it's pretty open.

Anyway, 13th February, he tells his aids, right, we're gonna do this. Let's start with Czechoslovakia and let us finish the job. Now it's gonna be easy. The Czechs, we talked about a lot last time. You were very agitated about this, Thomas Arendt.

Very agitated. I mean, they've got all these guns, and they've got all their defenses. And they've all been about terrible.

But they've abandoned their fortified border positions in the Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia has federalized itself so he can basically use the Slovaks. He's gonna use them as his pawn to kind of pull the whole thing apart. So the Slovak leader is a guy called Monsignor Jozef Tiso, and Tissot is a kind of Catholic priest. He's ultra conservative. He's anti Semitic.

He's been the prime minister of the autonomous Slovak region since Munich. And he has terrible relations with the government in Prague, and they're always falling out. And on the 9th March, they have a big row, and the Prague government says, we've had enough of you, mate. And they send their police into Bratislava to dissolve Tiso's cabinet. And Hitler's, like, watching this, and he says, oh, this is absolutely brilliant.

This is the pretext we need. And he says to his inner circle, well, we'll strike on the Ides of March. Hitler loves a bit of a classical

It's just deliberate. He deliberately phrases that

like that. Exactly. He does. He he references the Ides of March himself. Isn't that nice?

So stabbing the Czechs in the back? Stabbing the Czechs in the back. On 13th March, Tissot is flown to Berlin, this Slovak priest. Hitler says to him, right, I want you to declare independence, and I want you to put Slovakia under German protection. And Tiso actually says, really German protection?

And Hitler says, well, if you don't, I'll give Slovakia to Hungary. The Hungarians can't wait to get Slovakia back, so make up your mind. Tiso goes back to Bratislava and slightly sort of, you know, under duress, he proclaims Slovakian independence. But he doesn't follow through with the next part of it, which is calling for German protection. Hitler thinks this is very poor.

So he sends German warships down the Danube. They train their guns on Bratislava

And that's it.

And basically, they say to Tiso, like, we'll we'll fire on you unless you ask for our protection. Tiso asks for their protection. So the Czechs have been watching all this. Now the Czechs, Denys, he was left after Munich. So they have a new president, and he's called doctor Emile Hager.

And he is not the ideal person to take on Hitler. He's a lawyer, very experienced. He's in his late sixties. He's a very clever and gentle and kinda cerebral man.

Well, I'm amazed to read

Yeah.

In your notes that he translated Jerome k Jerome's 3 men in a boat into Czech. He did. And a less Nazi text. Yeah. I find hard to think of.

That stuff with the dog and the cheese. Yeah. Brilliant.

And the picnic hamper.

Yeah. Amazing. And I heartily recommend 3 men in a boat to our listeners. But, I mean, it's not you don't want an expert on 3 men in a boat.

Doesn't prepare you for confronting the 3rd Reich. No.

It does not. Although you could say, yeah, all of Britain had read 3 men in a boat, and we defeated the 3rd Reich, Tom.

That's true.

So maybe it does. Who knows? Maybe if more Czechs have read 3 men in a boat, the the story would have ended very differently. Right? We shouldn't laugh about this because it's a very tragic story.

Hager, his daughter, and the foreign minister travel by train to Berlin. He's asked for a meeting with Hitler. Takes them 5 hours, and they arrive in the evening of 14th March. Hitler behaves he's a very poor host, I think it's fair to say. Hitler keeps this guy, Hager, waiting.

This is his standard approach, isn't it? When browbeating foreign leaders whose countries he's about to take over. Exactly. Same with Austria.

Yeah. Exactly the same. He keeps him waiting in this hotel. Always hotels with Hitler. What is it with Hitler in hotels?

Keeps this bloke waiting in a hotel for ages while he is finishing watching a film, a comedy, I think, called, which means a hopeless case. An ominous ominous title there for the Czechs. Finally, midnight, Hitler says, right. I finished the film. Get this bloke over to the right chancery.

So Hager is bought to the right chancery, and there, they make him inspect the guard of honor.

Have all their guns and stuff and their steel helmets and

A sort of humiliation for him.

Do they have the skulls at this point?

Yeah. There's probably a lot of skulls. To be fair, the Kaiser had all sorts of uniforms with skulls on, didn't he? So even great associates, the rest is history, have kind of got a bit of skull decoration. At 1 AM, Hager is shown into Hitler's massive study.

The Reich Chancellor has absolutely rammed the people. So all the bad guys are there. Ribbentrop's there. Goering is there. Wilhelm Keitel, the general, is there.

And Harker, this guy is very, very nervous.

Is he polishing his glasses as they steam up?

He undoubtedly isn't thinking about Jerome k Jerome. Thinking wistfully about comic songs. Exactly. Hitler launches into this massive rant against the Czechs. He says, I've had enough of you.

You know, you're terrible people. And to protect our security, I'm gonna impose a protectorate over Czechoslovakia. I'm gonna absorb it into the Reich, and it'll become a protectorate of Germany. My troops, he says, are on their way. Too late.

They can't be recalled. They're gonna cross your border at 6 o'clock in the morning. I want you to ring Prague, tell your people to offer no resistance, and if they offer any resistance, we'll kill you and we'll crush them. And Goring, he chimes in for good measure. He says, oh, my air force, the Luftwaffe, will be over Prague by dawn.

And, it's up to you whether they bomb your city into dust or not.

It's your call. Presumably though, Hitler doesn't want Prague bombed into the dust because he wants the castle and

No. I don't think he does. It's not exactly an empty threat, but it's a it's pure blackmail. And at that, I mean, incredibly well, although not incredibly, you might say, Harker collapses. He just collapses.

He falls to the ground in a dead faint. Some sources say he he may well have had a heart attack at that point. And he drops to the ground. And the Nazis, they're actually quite thrown by this because they're terrified that everybody will say they've murdered him, which is very bad PR for them to murder the resident of yeah. It's a very bad look.

Of course, Hitler's doctor, doctor Morel, who's the guy who's always giving him cocktails of amphetamines. Amphetamines.

So he's he gives him some speed. Yeah.

He's on hand with an injection. They managed to bring Hager back to life, get him back up. He says, oh, fine. I'll ring Prague. He goes to ring Prague.

It's very like the Munich conference.

Telephones don't work.

The phones aren't working.

And the Luftwaffe are heading towards Prague.

At this point, Ribbentrop has a massive strop at this point, a massive meltdown. He says, oh my god. The phones never work here. It's like Britain in the 19 seventies. The phones aren't working.

Nothing works there. Everything is rubbish. You know, he's kind of ranting and raving. Actually, he's being a bit harsh on his own phone system. It turns out the problem is actually with the exchange in Prague, not with Berlin.

So Ribbentrop is being, too harsh towards German telephone engineering.

He's talking Germany down.

Why does Ribbentrop hate Germany? It's sad. Shocking. Anyway, finally, Hager does get through to Prague, and he says, okay, don't fight. Don't fight.

Don't resist. And at 4 o'clock in the morning, under tremendous pressure, I mean, it is a really, really tragic scene, he signs a declaration that he is putting his people under the protection of the German Reich. So Harker kind of collapses again. Hitler is absolutely overjoyed.

And this is the first proper annexation that has no kind of pretense that we're irredentism. No. These are German. You know, we're taking them back. This is out and out kind of colonial conquest.

Pure colonial conquest. And Hitler is probably as excited and happy about this as he's been about anything because he goes in to see his secretaries. They're called Christa Schroder and Gerda Darenovsky. And he famously says to them 1 of them, I can't remember which 1 it is, tells the story. He goes in, he says, sew children to the secretaries, and he points to his cheeks of his face.

He says, I want each 1 of you to give me a kiss here and here. This is the happiest day of my life. What has been striven for in vain for centuries, I have been fortunate enough to bring about. I will go down as the greatest German in history.

He's no longer crippled by self doubt at this point. No. It would seem.

I think it's fair to say he's not scrippled by self doubt. So 2 hours later, right on time, the first German units cross the border into their new protectorate. Again, this is the first time that they have not been greeted by cheering crowds. So that again is a reminder how different this is from the Rhineland or from Austria or even the Sudetenland. There's nobody cheering.

There's nobody with flowers. There's nobody saluting. By and large, the Czech people stay indoors. They're horrified. It's a misty snowy day.

It's a funereal atmosphere. Hitler crosses the border later that day by train, then he transfers to this kind of fleet of Mercedes cars.

And now he can go to Prague, which is kind of what he'd wanted all along. Right? I mean, his ultimate object.

He's got his arm outstretched in the in the salute as he passes all his troops, so columns of troops heading into Czechoslovakia. He reaches Prague. Night has fallen. He goes right up to the castle. Yeah.

If anyone's been to Prague,

amazing. Dominates the city.

Dominates the city. The kings of Bohemia, holy Roman emperors, Rudolf the second had been there. He goes up. The castle is dark and abandoned. To his great displeasure, it's like when Ted Heath became prime minister and arrived at number 10 Downing Street.

There's no food. This was the case, Tom, in 1970. There's no food at the Prague Castle in 1939, and Hitler sends his military escort out to find food. They bring back ham and bread and some Czech beer lager. Hitler doesn't like the beer, which is madness because Czech beer is very good.

He says it's too bitter. Not pleased at all.

So to add to Hitler's many faults Yeah. Is an inability to appreciate Czech beer.

Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Add that to the charge sheet. He issues this proclamation which he says the Bohemian and Moravian lands have belonged to the living space of the German people for a 1000 years, which is not really true.

And he says now they've been reunited with their masters.

Those are kind of the Habsburg words, aren't they? Those are the words that the the Habsburg empire had used.

Bohemia and Moravia. Yes. Exactly.

And they nick the the crown jewels, don't they, and take

them back to They do indeed. To Germany. Yes. They do. The Bohemia and Moravia becomes part of the Reich.

The Slovak state becomes, under Monsignor, Tissot becomes a kind of clerical fascist puppet state of Germany. And the last bit of Czechoslovakia, which is over in the east, Subcarpathian Ruthenia, is taken initially by Hungary, and then it actually ends up being part of Ukraine in the Soviet Union later on and remains Ukrainian to this day. So the Czechs never get it back. And a first in the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, there is a sort of pretense of autonomy. So that there's still a Czech president, still a prime minister, and so on, the Czech courts.

But over time, of course, all this begins to disappear. Jews are repressed. The state's assets are plundered. And it really becomes worse when Heydrich from the SS becomes the deputy protector in 1941.

And then he gets shot, doesn't he, in their terrible reprisals?

Exactly. So Hitler returns to Berlin in triumph, sort of Roman style like a conqueror, great crowds. Goring is there with kinda great tears on his fat face.

And now everyone's happy? Everyone in Germany kind of happy, are they?

Or Well,

this is the interesting thing. Right? So the Nazi high command are happy. Nazi true believers are very happy. They've got a conquest.

But for ordinary Germans, I don't know that they care very much about Bohemia and Moravia. I mean, nobody thinks that these are integral parts of the Reich. Like, they've never been part of Germany. In his biography of Hitler, Ian Kershaw quotes a teenage girl from Paderborn.

Oh, where the pope went to meet Charlemagne.

Right. Exactly. I think this is from a girl's diary. The girl's mother said, is he never satisfied? You know, can't he get enough?

And the girl herself writes in her diary, she says, I completely understand why we took the sedation line because it's full of Germans. But why are we taking over an entirely alien people, that's those are her words, who cannot possibly be turned into Germans. Because, of course, the 19 thirties, it is an age of of nationalist thinking. You know, when ethnic nationalism is so important to people, it constructs the way they view the world. So for Germans who've been brought up on ethnic nationalism and linguistic nationalism to suddenly have all these checks in the Reich doesn't make any sense.

What are they doing there?

And I suppose, also more Jews.

And, of course, more Jews exactly, which will be even more the case when we turn to Poland later on. And even Nazi party reports themselves slightly sort of reluctantly said most people are actually pretty they don't quite understand this. They're grudging. They're even critical. They don't understand why it was necessary.

Richard Evans, in his book on the Third Reich, he quotes a worker who said, we were always winning these days, but we were always winning once before, and that came to a bad end. So in other words, there is a slight sense of foreboding about all this. I think this is Hitler's first really, really serious misstep. Because I think much more than Munich, this is the moment that destroys the case for appeasement. Because if you were massively pro appeasement, even after Munich, you could say, well, we've avoided war and, really, the Sudeten Yeah.

Is

called Germans. Yeah.

Yeah. You could say that.

And he had signed his piece of paper, hadn't he? Of course. You were saying in the previous episode how, actually, that is very important. People laugh at it. But it now enables Chamberlain, I guess, to feel Yeah.

I've done my best, and now I have no chance, and everyone in Britain to agree with that.

I mean, I think this is what you all might say would be the revisionist case for appeasement, which is if you give Hitler every possible chance, then when the crunch comes, you will have a united country where everybody says, look, clearly, we gave him every opportunity.

Apart from unity, of course.

Apart from unity, Mifford and Oswald Moseley. We gave him every opportunity, and he showed himself to be a total and utter shyster.

And the same reaction in France, is it?

It's absolutely the same reaction in France. So in France, de Lardier, the prime minister, who'd been there in Munich, of course, looking like a snail, looking very miserable, he says to his chamber of deputies, right. Okay. Fine. It's very clear now.

We have to prepare for war. And they vote him emergency powers in the nation's defense after this moment. In Britain, every newspaper, The Observer, which had been a pro appeasement newspaper, had said this was, and I quote, the most shameful and ominous page in the modern annals of Europe. The brilliant diarist, the Tory MP, Chips Channon, he'd been an ultra appeasement, a massive admirer of Chamberlain. No bolder, bolder departure from the written bond has ever been committed in history.

The manner of its surpassed comprehension and Hitler's callous desertion of the prime minister is stupefying. I can never forgive him. So in other words, this business, I think, is not as famous, actually, as Munich or the attack on Poland. I think really, really matters. And Chamberlain, at first, doesn't quite get it.

He gives a speech in the House of Commons that's very perfunctory and doesn't quite match the mood at the moment. But then 2 days later, which is 17th March, he goes to give a speech in Birmingham, of course, the Chamberlain stronghold. And he clearly, by this point, has changed his tune because he strikes his hardest line yet. He says it's very clear now. Hitler intends, and I quote, to dominate the world by force.

If that's right, we will stop him. Says Britain will take part to the utmost of its power in resisting such a challenge if it were made. And I think here, actually, as in 1938, he speaks for the nation. He's reflecting the public mood. You can see it in papers, in letters, in diaries, in Britain, and in France.

With this attack on Czechoslovakia, Hitler really has crossed the line, and there is no going back. Now we know what kind of man he is.

And so now Chamberlain is looking for you know, he's abandoned Czechoslovakia. Yeah. But is there another country where he can kind of draw a red line along its border?

Exactly. He's saying, where are we gonna draw the line? And the very next day, 18th March, he meets his cabinet, and he says exactly that. Like, okay, we draw the line now. 1 more step, and it is war.

Where will Hitler's next challenge come? And Chamberlain is in no doubt the key to the future of Europe, he says, will be Poland. Right. So let's take

a break now. And when we're back, we will come at last to the country where, as everyone listening to this will know, the 2nd World War begins. Hello. Welcome back to The Rest is History. It's been a long sweep, hasn't it?

This history of the rise of the Nazis, they're taking going to power, the road to the 2nd World War. And now at last, the 2nd World War is hoving into view because we have come to the country for which Britain and France went to war to defend it, and that, of course, is Poland.

Yes. So Poland, Polish history 101. Poland had vanished from the map of Europe after 17/95 for more than a 120 years. It had been partitions between the empires, as lots of people know, between the empires of Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Poland got its independence back at the end of the First World War, and it's 1 of the largest countries in Central Europe.

It's 31,000,000 people. But Poland, unlike Czechoslovakia, is very, very rickety. So because it's been carved out of 3 different empires, nothing is joined up. It doesn't even have a joined up railway network.

Because they've got different gages.

Yeah. Exactly. It's very rural by and large. A lot of it is very poor. A lot of the the First World War in the east was fought in Poland, so it's scarred by war.

Like a lot of Central European countries, it has an issue with minorities. Basically, it's meant to be an ethnic nation state, but you can't draw the boundaries perfectly.

So they don't feel that diversity is their strength?

They do not feel that diversity is their strength. Only about 2 thirds of the population are ethnic Poles. So if you look at the census, there's about 4,000,000 Ukrainians. There are 3,000,000 people who are identified in the census as Jews. There are a 1000000 Belarusians.

There are almost a 1000000 Silesian

Germans. And that, I guess, is the key thing for Hitler.

Of course. In fact, again, unlike Czechoslovakia or or far more than Czechoslovakia, none of Poland's neighbors like it. Everybody thinks it's illegitimate. Everybody contests its borders. And it's extraordinary thing that in the 3 years after 1918, the Poles fought 6 separate frontier wars.

Well, I guess I mean, if it's been reconstituted out of the territory of great empires Yeah. Great powers, then, I mean, that's inevitable, isn't it?

Of course, it is. They pretty much fight every single 1 of their neighbors. Most famously, the Soviet Union, they turn them back in the miracle on the Vistula when they defeat the Bolsheviks. You know, it's a terrible thing for the Poles. They're trapped between 2 much larger, much richer neighbors, both of whom regard Poland as illegitimate, and they are Germany and the Soviet Union.

And you would have to say that being trapped between Stalin and Hitler is not to have been served Yeah. 1st prize in the lottery of life geopolitically, is it?

No. It's not. To pick up an analogy that we mentioned in the last week's, series about Munich, it's rather like you're on that plane strapped between Goring and Ribbentrop. Actually, things don't get any better for the Poles. They suffer massive inflation unemployment in the 19 twenties thirties.

A 1000000 people emigrate mostly to the United States. They can't sustain their democracy, So there's a coup in 1926 by the great wartime nationalist hero, Marshall Pilsudski. And then they have an authoritarian regime called the Sanazia regime, which means the kind of healing regime. And this is a kind of nationalist authoritarian regime. The key person in this is probably the foreign minister called Josef Beck.

Beck is a Calvinist for unusually for a for a Pole, and he's a kind of very clever satanine man, but everybody hates him.

Well, except for Goering, I gather.

Did Goring like him?

Yeah. He did because, Beck had served in the German cavalry, I think

Right.

During the war and was very pro German. Like you, he strongly disliked the French. Oh, my word. Inevitably, he disliked the Russians.

Right. So Goring Goring's a funny man, isn't he? He's a strange man.

Yeah. Henderson, Beck, and Goring, they'd all had a great time going shooting things. Yeah. Can I just ask? Czechoslovakia was a democracy.

Yeah. And presumably, that was part of of why they were allies with Britain and France.

Is it important that Poland isn't? Poland isn't.

Yeah. Is that an issue?

I don't think it's a massive issue deep down because, of course, there are lots of countries at this point that are not democracies. And I think it would have been an easier sell if it was. But actually, the French, for example, the French are very Polona file and have been for a very long time. Yeah. They regard themselves as having a kind of special relationship with Poland.

And in Britain, do people say, oh, the polls really? They're not a democracy. I don't think they do actually. I don't think they give it that much thought deep down. Really anything about the polls.

I don't really care what kind of government they have. The interesting thing is what Hitler and the Germans make of the polls. So most Germans hold the polls in very, very low regard. So in the 19th century, when a lot of Poland, of course, had been part of the Wilhelm-ein Reich, the Kaiser's regime, they had looked down on the Poles. They'd pit Germans had said, well, the Poles are very backward.

The Poles are very superstitious. They're very stupid. They actually had an expression, Polonwirtschaft, a Polish business, which meant kind of muddle and incompetence. You know, they sort of looked on them. I suppose the analogy would be how people in the late 19th century in Britain talked about Ireland, actually, as a kind of, you know, or they can never govern themselves.

They're so disorganized, and they're so backward and primitive and blah blah blah blah blah. That's how Germans think of the Poles. Even in the 19 twenties, lots of Germans said, look. In the long run, Poland will have to cease to exist again. There's no way we can live with a country called Poland on our eastern border.

I mean, the the head of the army of the Weimar Republic, general Hans von Seeckt, in 1922, said Poland's existence is intolerable and incompatible with Germany's vital interests. It must and it will disappear through its own weakness and with our help through Russia. So even then,

the Germans are thinking that perhaps they should carve it up with the Russians.

Yeah. Because they have done before, like the partitions of the 17 nineties.

But even though the it's actually, of course, not Russia anymore. It's the Soviet Union.

But they think, you know, it's kind of the law of nature and of history that the Poles never govern themselves. A bit like, you know, the Kurds don't have a state. They'll be 1 of those people who never get a state of their own.

Okay. And so 1 guy who's very keen on this idea that the strong must prey on the weak is Hitler. What is his take on the Poles?

Well, this is fascinating. Hitler, who, of course, later on is perceived as incredibly anti Polish, he doesn't have a strong view about Poland at all before 1938. He barely mentions Poland and Mein Kampf. And the obvious reason for this is that, of course, Hitler is not German. I mean, Hitler is Austrian.

Yeah. He's much further south, isn't he? So that's why he hates the Czechs.

Yeah. So he never really thinks about the Poles. Why would he? When he's in in Vienna, the Galician Poles aren't massively playing on his mind. He doesn't care to think about Warsaw and all of that kind of stuff.

And, actually, in January 1934, he had overruled conservatives in the foreign office to sign a non aggression treaty with Poland because he wanted to secure his eastern flank.

But the I mean, people are always talking about these non aggression pacts and things.

Yeah. Meaningless.

They are meaningless, aren't they?

That's actually meaningless.

They're not worth the paper they're written on.

No. Unless you're Neville Chamberlain, in which case you love a piece of paper. But, I think it's fair to say, Adolf Hitler is not a man who adheres to a nonaggression pact. I think that's the 1 lesson we can all take from this, from these 3 seasons on Nazis.

But, generally, I mean, do other powers stick by them? I mean, if the Soviet Union signs a nonaggression pact, for instance, I mean, were that to happen Yeah. Do they think, yeah, we should stick with this, or is that kind of bourgeois legalism?

I think it depends on the country, doesn't it? I think if I signed a nonaggression pact with Stalin, I wouldn't necessarily have a greater confidence in his word. If I signed a non aggression pact with Neville Chamberlain or De Lardier

Then you would.

I would. Wouldn't you? Yes.

I would. But I I mean, all these non aggression pacts that everyone is furiously signing with Germany and

Yeah.

The Soviet Union. I mean, it just

seems a waste of effort. They wasted their time, Tom.

I think it's fair to say. Good.

Well, I'm glad I've got that sorted. Right. So what does Hitler want to do with Poland? He's absolutely even at the beginning of 1939, I'm not sure he's thinking about attacking and conquering it. He's thinking that Poland will just be a satellite.

Basically, turn it into a client state, which is what he does with Slovakia and what he does with Hungary, bind Poland to him as a loyal ally in the crusade against Bolshevism. And, actually, you can see why he thinks he could do that. They have an authoritarian nationalist regime. The Poles had rather let themselves down at Munich.

Yeah. So Hitler's given them a chunk of, Czechoslovakia.

He has. The old Silesian Duchy of Teschen.

Not the Silesian Duchy of Teschen.

Yeah. The Czechs and the Poles had fought each other for this in 1919, and the Czechs have got it. And then the Poles snatch it back at the end of 1938.

This actually makes them all pretty pro German, doesn't it? And they all kind of rush around Warsaw shouting out long of Hitler.

Right. And, actually, there's a there's a very famous moment. So 2 days after Munich, they got it. And the Poles went in, and the Czech general who handed it over to them, he said to the Polish general, well, you better make the most of this because I tell you what, you're gonna be next. And the Poles are, that will never happen, and how wrong they were.

Anyway, 3 weeks after that moment, Ribbentrop asks the Polish ambassador, his man called mister Lipsky, to come and see him. He says, we actually have a bit of a problem that we need to discuss. You can imagine that that blood draining from the Polish ambassador's face. So here is the problem. After the First World War, when Poland had been carved out of these empires, the peacemakers of Versailles realized that Poland wasn't gonna get any access to the sea at all because it was on the northern sort of flank of Poland.

It was all East Prussia, which is German, and Lithuania. And they realized that they needed to give Poland an outlet to the sea. Otherwise, Germany in particular would have a complete stranglehold over Poland's trade, its exports and imports. So they had carved out this Polish corridor, as they called it, which is quite narrow. The narrowest point is about 20 miles across.

It went through West Prussia. So basically dividing Germany into 2 parts, into the main bit of the Reich and then East Prussia, And there's the Polish corridor between them.

And that's not the kind of thing that Hitler would approve of, is it?

Not at all. Because the population of the Polish corridor is mixed. It is majority Polish, probably. I mean, this is very contested at the time by kind of rival census takers, but there's a very sizable German minority. And at the north end of this corridor on the coast is the city of Danzig or Dansk as it is today.

And there is no doubt what kind of city Danzig is. It is a Hanseatic League German city. It looks kind of German. Now it had belonged to Poland. It had belonged to the Teutonic Knights.

It had belonged to Poland again, and then it had belonged to Prussia. The population of Danzig is definitely majority German speaking, at least 90%. I mean, you can go to Gdansk today, which I have. It's in the most amazing city to visit. It's incredibly rich architecturally and in history and whatnot.

And it looks like a Hanseatic League city. However, you know, Poland needs its outlets on the sea. So what the Versailles peacemakers did was they made Danzig a free city, an independent city state under the supervision of the League of Nations. So very Hanseatic? Yeah.

Very Hanseatic. It was governed by a senate of basically, German senate, but the Poles had the right to use the harbor, and they were given a post office there and customs posts. And on this sort of peninsula across the harbor called the Westerplater, which we'll be talking about a fair bit in the next couple of episodes, there was a Polish military garrison. And this was a massive running saw. This was a massive affront to German nationalist conservatives, especially if you're Prussian or something.

Because Danzig is a place in important role in Prussian hearts.

Yeah. Absolutely. You're like, this is a Prussian city. These people are Germans. It's not right that it's a free state.

You know, it should really be part of the Reich. And who cares about the Poles? That's basically the German position. So this is what Ribbentrop says to this ambassador. He says, right.

We've had enough. We want Danzig back. We also want to be able to build a motorway and a railway across the Polish corridor, which we control. We'll extend the non aggression pact for another 25 years. Tom, I know your views on non aggression pacts.

That's a good deal.

And we'd like you to join the anti Comintern Pact to basically bind you into our alliance, our anti Bolshevik alliance. The Polish guy says, alright. Well, I'll take this back to Warsaw, see what they say. And the Poles reply very quickly, and they say, absolutely no way. We can't allow ourselves to be cut off from the sea.

They couldn't have built a road under the German motorway and railway.

Well, they could have undermined it with a road of their own.

I mean, you'd have bridges. You could have a Polish motorway over the

It's not to be fair, it's not motorway architecture that is the, that is the point at issue.

I'm just trying to think creatively. I'm just trying to think of ways that the Second World War could have been stopped.

Of course, you are. Neville Chamberlain joins us now on the podcast.

Just trying to think creatively.

We're gonna hear him from Lord Halifax now. Brilliant.

Well, because let's I mean, let's face it. The consequences of the Poles deciding that they're going to resist German aggression Yeah. For Poland

It's disastrous. And for millions

and millions of Poles and especially Jewish Poles Yeah. I mean, is literally genocidal.

Correct. They are.

But I'm just wondering whether there was any possibility of a kind of modus operandi that could have been struck.

No. And the reason is because if they do this, they turn themselves completely into a satellite of Germany, which they are never ever, ever going to do.

Right. Okay.

They think if we give them Danzig, we totally lose control of our trade. Germany will now control everything we export and everything we import because it has to go through this port pretty much. Or if it's gonna go by land, it's gotta go through Germany. So we just turn ourselves completely into a puppet. If we join the anti Comintern pact, you know, we are on Germany's side against Russia.

Again, we lose control of our foreign policy.

Yeah. And they're bordering Russia.

We're not gonna do that. The point is Polish independence is which they fought for, which their forefathers have fought for for decade for more than a century. They're not gonna give that away that you know, like that. Now Hitler at first thinks, well, the Poles are being very difficult, but he doesn't immediately think I'm gonna attack them. He thinks they will see sense eventually.

He invites Beck to the eagle's nest. Beck goes along to the eagle's nest where Chamberlain went, and Beck says, look, you know, I can't help you. Polish public opinion will not allow us to give you these concessions. At this point, Hitler hasn't yet entered Prague. So he says to his aides, well, when I crush Czechoslovakia and I enter Prague, that will frighten the Poles, and they will be more cooperative.

So let's see if it does. Let's go forward in time to March. 6 days after Hitler has entered Prague as a conqueror, Ribbentrop again meets the Polish ambassador, and he says, right. I need Beck to come to Berlin. We're running out of patience.

Our newspapers have had enough. They're really putting pressure on us. If you give us Danzig, maybe we'll give you a little bit of Slovakia. We'll get a bit of Ukraine for you or something. Tell Beck to come anyway.

We'll talk to him about it. And the ambassador 5 days later says, you know, Beck's not gonna come. He doesn't wanna come. You're not interested. He says he's not interested in anything that you could possibly offer him.

And if you attack us, we'll fight you. Now you may say, this is your point here, Tom. This is reckless. This is incredibly bold. Beck's argument and the poll's argument is we saw what happened to Czechoslovakia.

I'm aware that I am being inconsistent here because I've been encouraging the Czechs to resist. Yeah. But I suppose also at this point, the poll think that they're only facing a conflict on 1 of their borders.

They are indeed.

They don't think there's any possibility of, say, an alliance between the Soviet Union.

They absolutely don't. The polls think, look, we saw with the Czechs what happened when you appease Hitler. When you give in to him, he just nibbles more and more and more, and eventually he comes back for the lot. The only way to stand up to him is just to draw a red line and to say no, and then maybe he'll back off. And Beck gives this amazing speech actually to the Seim, which is the Polish parliament.

He says, peace is a precious and desirable thing. Our generation, blooded in war, certainly deserves peace. But peace, like almost all things of this world, has its price, a high but immeasurable 1. We in Poland do not know the concept of peace at any price. There is only 1 thing in the lives of men, nations, and countries that is without price, and that thing is honor.

And that's the attitude that a Prussian nobleman

should respect, and it reflects poorly on Prussian noblemen. They don't respect it in this case. Now Beck is confident that he can back this up because he has sent feelers out to London saying, will you back me up here? Please, will you support me? Now we heard before the break, Chamberlain has already changed his policy, and he thinks we need to deter Hitler.

And his military chiefs are quite keen on an alliance with Poland because, of course, what they want is if there's a war with Hitler, they want Hitler to be fighting on 2 fronts,

west and east. But, of course, there's no, I mean, real practical possibility of British armed aid reaching Poland.

No. And we will come to this in in the next couple of episodes that, unfortunately, there is a difference of opinion between London and Warsaw about whether or not Britain can actually help owners. We shall see Britain doesn't. Now the French are also keen on an alliance with Poland. They've got a long history of of friendship.

And de laity says to London, yeah, we'll fight for Danzig. You know, that's our red line. That's fine. That's the context for Chamberlain going to the House of Commons on the 31st March 1939 and delivering his famous guarantee that if Polish independence is threatened and if Poland resists, his majesty's government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish government all support in their power. Now you made this point just a second ago.

What does that actually mean? Like, what could the British actually do? Britain is a long way from Poland, and Germany is in the way. So, realistically, what can we do? And actually even at this point, Chamberlain's military chief say

to him, do you know what?

If Hitler does attack Poland, we're probably not gonna do anything. There's nothing much we can practically do to help the Poles. But I suppose what Chamberlain would say in his defense is he doesn't see this as a last step, but as a first step. So he is thinking, we'll get Poland, then we'll maybe get Romania in an alliance, and and ideally, maybe the Soviet Union.

Well, because that was the card that he could potentially have played over the Czech crisis

Yeah.

But doesn't. I mean, that's the 1 card, I'm guessing, that Hitler would have

Yes. Agreed. Of course, that's a very difficult card for any British government, especially a conservative government to play. They regard the Soviet Union really as the ideological archenemy and have done for 20 years. You know, the Bolsheviks, Stalin's regime, a blood soaked regime, rumors, reports of the great terror coming out of there's been rumors of the famine in in Ukraine and the Holodomor.

You know, there are big obstacles to a deal with the Soviet Union, and 1 of the biggest, by the way, is the Poles. The Poles, when they hear talk of this, they're like, what? The Russians. We hate the Russian. No way are we doing an alliance with the Russians.

Are the British and the French, are they they're sufficiently alert to the fact that the Soviet Union is the great object of Nazi hatred.

Yeah. They know that. They know that Hitler has ranted and raved about the Soviet Union for, you know, more than a decade.

So the Soviet Union is quite keen on the idea of the capitalist powers fighting themselves, say Britain, France, and Germany. Yeah. I mean, is there any enthusiasm in Paris and London for the notion that the Nazis and the Soviets fight each other, and we just sit back and watch them?

Yes. Absolutely. Somebody at Neville Chamberlain would have said to you, that's the dream. That, basically, they'll destroy each other. They're both terrible regimes, and I hope they fight and I hope they both lose.

That's exactly what a lot of people in Britain and indeed in France would have said, I should say.

Right. Okay. Does the Polish alliance complicate that? Because, obviously, Poland lies between Germany and the Soviet Union. So if they're allying with Poland, that complicates that strategy.

So I think at this point, in the March 1939 when they give the guarantee, they realize, of course, the next war is not gonna be Hitler versus Stalin. The war that they're trying to avert is Hitler versus Poland. So Hitler versus Stalin is off the table as a as a war realistically at that point.

I just wonder whether they war game it and think if Hitler marches into Poland and seizes Poland, that is then a threat directly on the Soviet Union's doorstep. I mean, that's got to provoke a a response, hasn't it? Wouldn't it be better to just sit back and let these 2 monstrous regimes fight each other?

No. I don't think they think sitting back is an option at this point because they think they've sat back too much already. There's no appetite for sitting back at all at this point. All the momentum, all the kind of psychological moment political momentum is for deterrence. They feel they have to make a stand here, and they can't just sit this 1 out.

That's the mentality that got them into this mess in the first place would be the argument.

But you think there's a maybe an argument that this actually would have been a good time to apply that strategy in a kind of bleak cynicism?

Do you know who would probably make that argument? John Charmley, the historian John Charmley. Are you familiar with him?

What's his name? The, the realist guy over Ukraine.

Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer. John Mearsheimer. He might make this argument, but but I I wouldn't make it personally. I think there were rights to try to deter Hitler in the States.

Well, it's not about right. It's about what's kind of cynically the most effective.

Yeah. You know who's a big fan of, Mearsheimer, the realist, Putinophile? Theo.

Oh, of course, he is.

He is a massive fan of John Mearsheimer.

Yes.

It's 1 of Theo's worst takes, I think, in

my mind.

Anyway, that's by the by. Right. Hitler hears about the guarantee to, don't cut that out, Theo. You're better than that. It's about the guarantee to Poland, and he is stunned.

See, this is Hitler misreading things, which he's doing at this point. Hitler can't believe it. He can't believe that the Poles would stand up to him, and he cannot believe that the British would be so, in his mind, deranged as to give Poland a guarantee. And admiral Canaris, the intelligence chief, was with him at the right chance when he heard the news, and he has this description of Hitler. Hitler flew into a passion.

With features distorted by fury, he stormed up and down his room, powdered his fists on the marble tabletop, and spewed forth a series of savage imprecations. Then with his eyes flashing with an uncanny light, he growled the threat, I will brew them a devil's potion. I've always been struck by that because it just seems such a bizarre threat to make. I will brew them a must be some German expression. Right?

Do you think, Tom? I guess. I mean, it's not an expression that people are banding around in the 19 thirties. Hitler's been spending too much time with Wagner. That's what it is, isn't it?

Yeah. Maybe. I mean, if the devil is the embodiment of evil, he does what he brews for Poland kind of I mean, it is the essence of evil.

It is. It is. But you wouldn't make that you wouldn't say that of yourself, would you?

I don't know. I mean, I find it striking that he talks in I I know it's just a a phrase, but kind of implicit theological terms because in the long run Yeah. What happens Of course. In Nazi occupied Poland will raise all kinds of questions about evil and the absence of good.

Absolutely. It does. So inevitably now, he tells his generals to draw their plans for war, and they present him on the 11th April with a plan for case or operation white.

So they're all colors, aren't they?

Always colors. Yeah. Green, white, and so on. The blueprint for the invasion of Poland, which is their plan is to begin in September. And, the army chief of staff, general Halder, he briefs the senior officers.

He say, we're gonna destroy the Polish army at record speed. We're gonna stop the British intervening. He says, the Poles are no serious opponents. We know we can defeat the Poles. But even at this point, Halder says to the other officers, this is not going to be an ordinary war.

We are gonna take the SS, and we are gonna take Nazi paramilitary formations with us. We must ensure that, and I quote, Poland, as rapidly as possible, is not only defeated, but liquidated.

And do we have a sense of what that means?

Well, we'll come to this in the next couple of episodes, exactly what that means. At this point, it is vague.

So he might be talking about the state Yes. But he might, I mean, be talking about people.

Yes. Exactly. Exactly. We're gonna do it in 3 weeks, Halder says, and then we will be ready either to confront Bolshevism or to hurl our army against the West. So at this point, there is still a question mark there.

After we've finished with Poland, do we go west, or do we go east? And now we had a few twists last week. Here is the biggest. 1 of the most momentous, ominous, and extraordinary twists in world diplomatic history.

Yeah. I mean, it's the greatest coup de tautre in the history of of diplomacy, I would guess.

It is. Because it's about this point, April 1939, that some of Hitler's courtiers begin kinda quietly to discuss a u-turn that would change everything. And they mentioned it to Hitler. And when they first mentioned it to Hitler, he says, I don't know about this. That would be a massive ideological shift.

I'm not sure about it. And then a couple of weeks later, in early May 1939, the story goes that Ribbentrop shows him footage of another world leader reviewing a military parade. And Hitler watches this footage intently, and he's staring at this bloke's face. Like, it is said, like he had taken a fancy to him. And then at last, he says, he looks like a man that you could do business with.

And that man is Stalin.

Well, Dominic, what a twist. What a bombshell. And we will be back on Thursday to see how the rapprochement between these 2 mustachioed dictators with a taste for killing people works out. But if you can't wait to hear about the Nazi Soviet pact, which will be the subject of our next episode, and then our final episode, the countdown to the 2nd World War and the tragic story of the fall of Poland, then you can hear all 3 episodes right now by joining the rest is history club at the rest is history.com. Goodbye.

Goodbye.