and even for two days beyond that. Only Hitler
was sure that he was going to attack Poland and
that his military timetable allowed only a few
days’ leeway. He used these days not to make any
genuine attempt to draw back from the war with
Poland, but to try to persuade Britain and France
to abandon it. He wanted to postpone war with
them until after Poland had been defeated and so
avoid, if he could, a war on two fronts. Hitler
concentrated on Britain. The most dramatic day
of the crisis in Berlin was 25 August. At 1.30 p.m.
Hitler talked to the British ambassador, Nevile
Henderson, and he put on a very good act; he
declared that he wanted to live on good terms
with Britain, that he would personally guarantee
its world empire, that Germany’s colonial
demands were limited and that his offer of a
general settlement would follow the solution of
the Polish–German disputes, which in any case he
was determined to settle. This, he emphasised,
was his last offer. He overdid it a little, stretching
credulity too far by confiding to Henderson that
once the Polish question was out of the way he
would conclude his life as an artist and not as a
war-maker.
About half an hour after Henderson had left
the chancellery in Berlin to fly with this offer to
London, Hitler ordered the attack on Poland to
commence the following day. The war machine
was set in motion at 3 p.m. At 5.30 p.m. Hitler
received the French ambassador to tell him
Germany wanted to live at peace with France and
that the issue of peace and war was up to the
French. But Hitler was unsettled that afternoon
by the news of the imminent conclusion of the
Anglo-Polish alliance, and by Mussolini’s message
revealing his unwillingness to join Germany in
war. In London, meanwhile, the news that the
Soviet Union and Germany had signed a treaty,
and that the Anglo-French alliance negotiations
with Russia had thus ended in failure, meant that
nothing now stood in the way of the formal con-
clusion of the Anglo-Polish alliance, which was
signed on 25 August. It promised Poland that
Britain would go to war with Germany if
Germany attacked Poland. In Berlin it was
dawning on Hitler that Britain might not simply
desert Poland the very moment Germany attacked
it. Then, in the late afternoon of 25 August,
Mussolini informed Hitler that Italy did not have
the resources to go to war.
Not surprisingly Hitler now thought it
prudent to give his ‘offer’ to Britain a last chance
of being accepted and not to jeopardise his over-
ture by simultaneously attacking Poland. Hitler
did not rely on Henderson alone. Göring had ini-
tiated the use of an unofficial emissary, Birger
Dahlerus, a Swedish businessman, who shuttled
between London and Berlin from 25 to 30
August. After his first return from London he saw
both Göring and Hitler; unwittingly he became a
tool of Hitler’s diplomacy to detach Britain from
Poland. If that succeeded, then France also could
be counted on to remain out of the war. The
British reply on 28 August to Hitler’s ‘last’ offer
was to welcome the opportunity of an Anglo-
German settlement, but not at Poland’s expense.
Instead, the British Cabinet urged direct
Polish–German negotiations, offered to act as
mediators and informed Hitler that the Poles
were willing to enter such negotiations. Germany
was warned against the use of force. Henderson
saw Hitler on the 28th and again on the evening
of 29 August when Hitler angrily conceded direct
negotiations – solely, so he claimed, to prove his
desire for lasting friendship with Britain. Such
proof, he hoped, would dissuade the British from
supporting an unreasonable Poland. As Goebbels
recorded in his diary, Hitler’s aim was ‘to decou-
ple Warsaw from London and still find an excuse
to attack’.
Hitler demanded that a special envoy must
reach Berlin the very day following, on 30
August. Henderson was upset by the peremptory
German reply. He gave as good as he got, shout-
ing back at Hitler and warning him that Britain
was just as determined as Germany and would
fight. The British Cabinet refused to ‘mediate’
what amounted to an ultimatum. The German
demands were unknown yet Hitler was insisting
that the Poles should come immediately to Berlin
to settle all that Germany required within a time
limit of only a few hours. The time limit was
ignored in London and discussions about starting
direct negotiations were still proceeding on 31
August. Hitler’s time limit for a Polish plenipo-