1939
Politics and Diplomacy at the Dawn of World War II
James A. W. Heffernan
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be copied without
the explicit written permission of the author.
PREFACE
This is the first draft of the book that became Politics and Literature at the Dawn of World War II. At the time I drafted these chapters in the years from roughly 2014 to 2018, I envisioned a largely historical study of the year 1939 with scant reference to literature. The result was somewhat less than stellar. In the blunt words of my old friend Phil Pochoda, a thoroughly seasoned editor of university press books, my chapters offered nothing but "potted history." Nothing new here, nothing not already known to any reputable historian of World War II. Well, maybe not. But I got so fascinated with various phases of the story--Chamberlain's three flights to Germany in September 1938, the anti-Nazi plotting of the German Resistance, the anguished negotiations in Prague just before the Munich Agreement was signed, Hitler's arduous courtship of Stalin in 1939, Claire Hollingsworth's scoop on the fateful invasion of Poland, and above all the riveting story of Jan Karski--that I felt bound to set them all down as well as I could, as an exercise in purely historical narration. So if you are not a historian and don't happen to already know all about the origins of World War II, you might find these chapters interesting, informative, and above all--I hope--readable. Since there is very little overlap between these chapters and my book, I offer them simply as a companion to the book, or perhaps a platter of antipasti to be savored before the main course.
James Heffernan
Hanover, New Hampshire
July 2022
1939: TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One: The Demonic Organist
Chapter Two: A "Perfectly Normal" Test Flight: FDR's Secret Deal with France
Chapter Three: Great Britain, The German Resistance, and the Polish Corridor
Chapter Four: Hitler and Stalin: Dancing with The Bear