four or forty-eight hours. [He] mentions publication
of something or other [the Sixteen Points] that may
just keep Britain out.... Poland will be defeated.
Unfortunately we have forfeited the element of sur-
prise and this will cost us a few hundred thousand
more [casualties].... Big danger is to the Ruhr [in-
dustrial region in western Germany]. Since the new
frontier will be shorter, massive demobilization is
probable after Poland’s defeat and then relentless
armament against Britain.Toward : .. Göring returned to Berlin and found tempers
running high among Ribbentrop’s less bellicose juniors. “Are we
obliged,” Staatssekretär von Weizsäcker heatedly asked the field
marshal, “to watch the Third Reich being destroyed just to
please some mentally defective adviser of the Führer? Ribben-
trop will be the first to hang, but others will follow!”
At : .. a dispatch rider arrived at Göring’s official villa
in Berlin, picked his way around the crates being hurriedly
packed with priceless objects at Fräulein Grundtmann’s direc-
tion in case of air raids, and handed him a red folder. It con-
tained an intercept of Warsaw’s latest instructions to Lipski,
given at : ..: The ambassador was to tell Ribbentrop only
that Warsaw would reply (to London) “in due course.” Göring
scrawled a copy of the intercept for Dahlerus. Later that after-
noon he invited the British ambassador over for tea. Henderson
threw a bleak look at the packing crates and workmen and de-
duced from the mere fact that Göring could afford time to gos-
sip that the die had now been cast. That evening the wiretaps
showed a gulf yawning in the enemy front. Henderson had an-
grily exclaimed to his French colleague that Lipski had disdained
to see the Sixteen Points, even when he visited Ribbentrop at
seven. “It’s a farce, the whole thing!”