GERMANY: Seven Years War?

GERMANY Seven Years War?

The square-rigged, ruddy-cheeked, sea-trading folk of one of the quaintest old towns in Europe last week dropped their placid and peculiar tasks—such as adding tiny flakes of pure gold leaf to the sparkling, sweet liqueur they sell asDanziger Goldwasser—to come tumbling down the high stoops of theirpeak-gabled houses for a bucolic joy spree over Adolf Hitler.

The populace of Danzig seemed to figure that for them the Blitzkrieg or Lightning War was over, and they cavorted with the gaiety of Armistice crowds in 1918. The 407,000 Danzigers are 94% German, solidly Nazi and have been super-propagandized for years to believe that most of their troubles would vanish once the Free City was unshackled from League of Nations and Polish control, rejoined to the Reich. Trudging in last week with armfuls of wild flowers from the countryside, the people had carpeted with blossoms ten miles of road leading into Danzig from their gambling casino suburb Zoppot. Appropriately, A. Hitler, who had led all Europe to take the supreme gamble, war, had slept the night at Zoppot, after arriving from the crumbling Polish front.

Amid the brilliant sunshine which Germans call “Hitler weather”—they used to call it “Kaiser weather”—the Führer rumbled off to Danzig in a six-wheeled juggernaut staff car, followed by two Gestapo cars in which guards sat fingering new-style German repeater rifles. They did not shoot when the sidewalk lines of brown-shirted storm troops holding people back in Danzig were repeatedly broken as crowds surged forward cheering. One break was made by a brawny group of Red Cross nurses. Whooping with excitement, young Danzig students risked their lives in dashes right to the juggernaut’s flanks. Wherever the stiff-armed, saluting Führer looked he saw swastika flags, bobbing placards, “We Welcome Our Liberator!” “We Thank Our Führer!” “To the Liberator of Danzig!” “Our Hearts Beat For Our c!”

“Peace Jitters.” In far from bucolic Wall Street, meanwhile, war babies stocks sagged heavily as traders, apprehensive of peace proposals Orator Hitler might make at Danzig, did a little quick profit taking, then spun the dials of their radio sets to hear the Führer. “It was a market based on peace jitters,” recorded Financial Editor C. Norman Stabler of the New York Herald Tribune. He figured that the day before, “the market lost 32% of the war upswing” because it was feared that A. Hitler might directly propose peace.

Orator Hitler spoke in the medieval Artushof (Guildhall), introduced by No. 1 Danzig Nazi Albert Forster. “We have only this one wish,” Hitler told Danzig, “that the Almighty God, who has blessed our arms, will now perhaps give other peoples comprehension of how useless this war . . . will be … and that He may perhaps cause reflection on the blessings of peace which they are sacrificing because a handful of fanatic warmongers . . . want to involve peoples in war.”

If this had been taken as the keynote of the speech, Wall Street’s war babies might have ceased to bounce, but the Führer also said: “We are all men who in their long struggle have been nothing but attacked. That only tended to increase the love of our followers. . . . [When Britons say] that this war will last three years, then I can only say my sympathies are with the French poilu. At present he knows that he will have to fight for at least three years. … If it should last for three years then the word capitulation will not appear at the end of the third year, neither at the end of the fourth . . . and also not in the sixth or seventh year! The German people will not split up in this fight. . . .”

This was enough for Wall Street traders, the war babies promptly recovering their losses, some even bouncing fractionally higher than before Hitler went to Danzig.

Adolf to Joseph. The Führer, as a conqueror who had smashed the Polish State in 18 days, turned at Danzig to reassure Joseph Stalin and pave the way for the military partition of Poland by friendly Nazis and Reds (see p. 29). “I am happy now … to refute . . . British statesmen who continuallymaintain that Germany intends to dominate Europe to the Ural Mountains. . . . Now, gentlemen of the British Empire, Germany’s aims are very limited. We have discussed the matter with Russia . . . and if you are of the opinion that we might come to a conflict on the subject—we will not. . . . It will calm you to learn that Germany does not, and did not, want to conquer the Ukraine!”

While thus chumming up to Communist Stalin in a military sense, Nazi Hitler strove to keep a political line sharply drawn between the two regimes: “I want to give here an explanation: Russia remains what she is and Germany also remains what she is!”

Adolf to Neville & Edouard. Actual nub of the Hitler speech was an effort to undermine Allied morale by representing Poland as a Humpty Dumpty which just-cannot be put together again and by asking the Allies, who entered World War II avowedly to assist now crushed Poland, whether it is reasonable to fight on because they find Hitlerism intolerable.

“Such an utter lack of conscience!” cried Herr Hitler. “What would be said if one of us should say that the present regime in France or Britain does not suit us and consequently we are conducting a war? What immeasurable lack of conscience. . . . I have neither toward England nor France any war claims, nor has the German nation. . . . Poland never will rise again in the form of the Versailles treaty. That is guaranteed not only by Germany, but also . . . Russia.

Unspeakable Weapons. Tucked elsewhere into the Führer’s long and heated speech were his old claims that Poland started World War II incited by the Allies; that France was willing at the last moment to keep peaceon terms proposed by Italy but was rushed by Britain into war; that the whole Danzig question was an agony to A. Hitler personally (“What keen suffering I underwent in these years only few can imagine”); that Poles have invented a new atrocity (“Worst of all the Polish Government quite openly admitted on its own radio that parachuting German fliers were murdered”); and that Germany has in reserve a new weapon (see p. 50) (“Let them make no mistake here, however. The moment could come very suddenly when we could use a weapon with which we cannot be attacked. . .We Germans do not like that. It is not in our nature”).

“General Purpose.” The prompt retorts of London and Paris were as different as the personal characters of Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier.

In the House of Commons, the Prime Minister observed: “Herr Hitler says much in his speech about the humane ‘methods by which he has waged war. I can only say that methods are not made humane by calling them so, and accounts of German bombing of open towns and machine gunning of refugees have shocked the world. . . . Our general purpose in this struggle is well known. It is to redeem Europe from the perpetually recurring fear of German aggression and to enable the peoples of Europe to preserve their independence and liberties. . . . Hitler’s speech at Danzig yesterday did not change the situation.”

The square-jawed French Premier returned hot from an inspection of French lines to broadcast: “I am not the leader of fanatic masses. I am charged with direction of a nation of free men. . . . They know why they are fighting. They are fighting because Germany has forced war on us, because for the last three years the devouring German ambition has not left Europe a single secure day. . . .

“The destruction of Poland was secretly resolved in advance. . . . The Red Army entered Poland in its turn as a result of a secret pact. In reality, since August 23 an accord had been concluded between Germany and the Soviet Union for the dismemberment of Poland.

“Mr. Hitler has pretended that he wanted only Danzig, plebiscite for the Corridor, an autostrade. He still broadcast his assurances even while he had in his hands the precious agreement by which Germany and Russia were to partition their living prey.

“What honest man in no matter what country in the world could still believe in the word of those who today declare themselves satisfied or peaceful, now that they are covered with blood? . . . When Mr. Hitler tells us today after destroying Poland that he asks for nothing more, when he declares he wants nothing from France and will respect her frontiers, every Frenchman knows he will not hesitate if he can destroy France as he destroyed Austria, as he destroyed Czecho-Slovakia, as he seeks to destroy Poland. . . .

“After so many lies and so many denials, German propaganda is left the last hope: That of splitting the forces which are going to shatter her march toward world domination. It is clear that German propaganda now has no more than two objectives. It wants to separate France from England. It wants to split the French among themselves.

“But when the French listen to enemy broadcasts which tell them this war is England’s war they reply: No, it’s Hitler’s war. . . .

“We wage war because we do not wish France to be enslaved. . . .

“We will not permit certain individuals to enrich themselves while others give their lifeblood. We are calm and resolved. We are not haunted like our enemies by fear of a long war. We think only of one thing: Complete victory. That victory we will consider won when we can give France the security which Hitler’s projects destroyed for three years!”