1939

CHAPTER THREE

GREAT BRITAIN, THE GERMAN RESISTANCE, AND THE POLISH CORRIDOR

In America, as we have seen, 1939 began with a Time magazine cover depicting Adolph Hitler as a demonic organist. In Europe his enemies wondered where he would attack next. On the very first day of 1939, British War Minister Leslie Hore-Belisha met with General Maurice Gamelin, Commander in Chief of the French armed forces, to discuss rumors that Germany might attack the Netherlands and perhaps Britain too (Watt 103). The rumors may well have come from Colonel Hans Oster, deputy head of Abwehr (German military intelligence), who had already played a key part in the conspiracy to overthrow Hitler in September 1938 and remained a key figure in the Widerstand, the German resistance. Though the conspirators had been demoralized by their failure, above all by Britain's acquiescence to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia, Oster's agents--writes Cameron Watt-- had by now "thoroughly penetrated the centre of British secret intelligence operations against Germany in the Netherlands" (Watt 104). What Oster and his co-conspirators wanted from Britain was a show of force, an unmistakeable sign of its commitment to the fight against Hitler. Whether or not Oster was circulating what he had learned from other sources or simply manufacturing a threat, he wanted Britain to believe that it was now directly threatened by a German attack.

Well before this time, the German resistance had repeatedly sought to get Britain actively on its side. In late August of 1938, for instance, a staunchly anti-Nazi Pomeranian nobleman named Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzein went to London on behalf of the Widerstand, and specifically of three key resisters: Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Chief of Abwehr; his deputy Hans Oster; and General Ludwig Beck, who had been Chief of the German Army General Staff but who --on the very day of Kleist's departure for London--had resigned over Hilter's plan to invade Czechoslovakia and was now resistance head of state (Klemperer 100). In London Kleist spoke with Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and Winston Churchill, who had been loudly urging his countrymen to beware of Nazi aggression since 1933. To both men Kleist made it absolutely clear that he sought British support for a coup to overthrow Hitler. If the British and French held firm against Nazi aggression, he told Vansittart, "there would be a new system of government [in Germany] within forty-eight hours" (Meehan 141-42). In response, Vansittart thoroughly agreed that Hitler's plans must be met by firmness, not concessions (Klemperer 98). And on August 20, Kleist obtained a letter of support from Churchill, who not only praised him for taking risks on behalf of European peace and "lasting friendship between the British, French, and German peoples," but also seemed to say that Britain would join the fight against any invasion of Czechoslovakia: "I am sure," wrote Churchill, "that the crossing of the frontier of Czecho-Slovakia by German armies or aviation in force will bring about a renewal of the world war" (Meehan 173, Parssinen 76, McMenamin note 18).

These expressions of support strongly suggest that Britain was indeed ready to stand with the Widerstand. But notice that neither Vansittart not Churchill says exactly what Britain would do for the German resistance. What exactly would holding firm mean? And what sort of new world war did Churchill envision? That Britain would fight Germany again, or simply that France and possibly Russia would fight for Czechoslovakia? None of these questions was clearly answered by Churchill's letter, and even if it could be construed as an unequivocal expression of British support for the German resistance, neither Vansittart nor Churchill--then simply a backbencher MP-- could speak for Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, or for Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary. Though both were informed of the interviews with Kleist and though Churchill cleared his letter with Halifax before giving it to Kleist, the PM considered Kleist and his backers no better than traitors to their own land, and he had no confidence in their capacity to overthrow Hitler. In short, according to Klemperer, Kleist found "no one in London . . . prepared to wage a preventive war" and--on his return to Berlin-- no general there who was ready to act on the strength of Churchill's letter (Klemperer 99-100).

Besides a lack of confidence in each other's commitment to fighting Hitler's regime, the aims of the British differed from those of the German Resistance over one crucial piece of territory: the Polish Corridor. In 1920, the Treaty of Versailles gave Poland access to the Baltic sea by means of a corridor sliced from what had once been West Prussia--part of Germany. In the same year, the German-speaking seaport of Danzig (Gdansk in Polish), which controlled the Vistula River at the point where the corridor met the sea, became a Free City protected by the League of Nations and bound to Poland by customs union. Hitler loathed this arrangement. In May of 1933, during his first conference with Alfred Wysocki, the Polish ambassador, he told him that while the German government had not the "least intention" of violating the status of Danzig or the Corridor, he nonetheless deplored the "useless and senseless" decision made by the Versailles peace conference when it tore up German territory by thrusting a tongue of Polish territory right through Prussia, dividing it into west and east (Karksi 167). In this perfect specimen of Hitlerian doublespeak, the Fuhrer voiced a resentment that even the Widerstand would come to embrace, for Kleist plainly indicated to Churchill that the Polish Corridor "was the matter that affected [him and his backers] most" (qtd. Klemperer 98). It is scarcely possible to overstate the divisiveness of this topic. Even as the Widerstand sought British help in thwarting Hitler's invasion of Czechoslavakia, it was asking the British to accept Hitler's demand for the return of the Corridor, which would soon become the spearhead of his designs on Poland as a whole.

Once the Nazis occupied the Sudetenland, this demand for the Corridor remained one of the chief obstacles to any effective cooperation between the British and the German Resistance. In the wake of Munich, the key spokesman for the Resistance--its key conduit to Britain-- was Carl Goerdeler, the Prussian conservative who had resigned as mayor of Leipzig to become Resistance chancellor designate (Klemperer 19-20). In mid-October 1938, after the very thought of Munich had robbed him of sleep for two weeks, Goerdeler began drafting a blueprint for a new League of Nations under the leadership of France, England, and a post-Nazi Germany. In "Heads of Agreement between Britain and Germany," a memo secretly conveyed to the British government on December 4, 1938, Goerdeler makes a number of implausible demands, such an immediate halt to rearmament (leaving Britain far less armed than Germany) and "removal of the pestilence of Bolshevism" in Russia by "constructive" measures short of war--as if Stalin could be whisked away like a gnat. But significantly, the very first of Goerdeler's demands is for the return of the Polish Corridor.

"England," he wrote, "recognizes that the Polish Corridor is a source of continuing disturbance to the justified national feelings and interests of the German people. She therefore agrees that the Corridor be liquidated and guarantees every suitable support to Germany for this end . . ." In thus ending Poland's access to the sea, which had been established by the Treaty of Versailles and confirmed by the Polish-German Non-Aggression Agreement of 1934, Goerdeler notes only, in a later point, that "Poland's access to the sea can be assured in another way" --with no explanation of what that might be (Klemperer 145n212).

In the face of this territorial demand, which might have been drafted by Hitler himself, the British Foreign Office pushed firmly back. William Strang, head of its Central Department, argued that "we should have nothing to do with" Goerdeler's points of "Agreement" because the very first of them proposed "to sell the Polish corridor behind Poland's back" (qtd. Klemperer 114). Likewise, as Klemperer notes, "Goerdeler's demand for the Polish corridor reminded [Vansittart] unpleasantly of the Kleist visit" and confirmed his suspicion that Goerdeler "was merely a stalking-horse for German military expansion" (qtd. Klemperer 114). In effect, Goerdeler was asking Britain to re-enact its capitulation at Munich, to give away the Corridor just as it had given away the Sudetenland. In December of 1938, not even Chamberlain could have swallowed such a move.

Yet with Czechoslovakia in his grip and wide open to complete seizure anytime he chose to take the rest of it, Hitler was looking east, not west. His first objective in the new year was to make the Polish Corridor part of Germany again. Up through January of 1939, the British Foreign Office was preoccupied with a different prospect, as noted above: rumors of impending war that were probably initiated by the Oster group. In mid-January, further news came to the British from Hans Ritter, a former German General Staff Captain now serving as a British agent. According to Ritter, Hitler was planning a sudden air attack on London that could occur in three weeks (Watt 101). Recycling this news with variations on January 19, a Foreign Office memo on "Possible German intentions" reports that Hitler plans either an all-out air attack on London or an invasion of the Netherlands so as to set up air bases from which he could stage air strikes on nearby British cities (Watt 101). By January 25, the British Cabinet concluded that even though its army could do little to help the French fight Germany, Britain would not countenance a German invasion of the Netherlands.¹ Shortly after, in fact, Lord Halifax reported to FDR that Britain was ready to fight. In a memo that reached the president via the British Embassy on February 7, Halifax wrote that Britain would "go to war with Germany" if the Germans invaded Holland or tried "to dominate [it] by force or threat of force."²

Yet Hitler had no such plans for the present. On January 5, when he met for three hours at Berchtesgarten with Jozef Beck, Foreign Minister of Poland, their conversation had nothing to do with any German threat to either the Netherlands or Britain. It was all about the Polish Corridor, and in particular the port of Danzig. Calmly but relentlessly, Hitler pressed his demand that Danzig be re-incorporated into the Reich. "Danzig is German," he told Beck, "will always be German and will sooner or later become part of Germany" (qtd. Karski 244). He also demanded the right to build extraterritorial roads right through the Corridor.

As this demand was ever more insistently repeated, Danzig became a source of growing tension. In Berlin on the day after meeting Hitler, Beck told Germany's Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop that Poland could never compromise over Danzig. "In the minds of the whole Polish people," he said, "Danzig represented a touchstone of German-Polish relations" (qtd. Karski 244). But Ribbentrop never stopped wanting Danzig back. Even while visiting Warsaw on January 26, the fifth anniversary of the German-Polish peace pact that confirmed the status of Danzig, Ribbentrop sought to undermine its status.³ When Beck reaffirmed Poland's refusal to compromise, Ribbentropp claimed that Germany's "wishes" were "extremely moderate" and that Britain and France would support them. Ninety-nine out of a hundred Frenchmen and Englishmen, he said, "would conclude without hesitation that the incorporation of Danzig and of at least the Corridor as well was a natural German demand" (Karski 244). Here is a perfect specimen of Nazi rhetoric. Besides pitching pure statistical fantasy, Ribbentrop inflates the demand that Hitler had made at Berchtesgarten just 21 days before. While Hitler claimed the right to build only extraterritorial roads through the Polish corridor, Ribbentrop claims a "natural" right for Germany to take back "at least the Corridor"--meaning the whole damn thing.

For the next two months, Danzig remained a flashpoint of ever-growing contention between Warsaw and Berlin. In a speech to the Reichstag on January 30, Hitler calmly declared, "Germany is happy to possess today friendly frontiers in the west, south, and north." But since he did not mention the east, where Poland lay, this significant omission was promptly reported to Warsaw by Jozef Lipski, the Polish ambassador to Berlin (Karski 245). Danzig itself was anything but harmonious. As a city of some 20,000 Poles (largely immigrants) engulfed by some 380,000 ethnic Germans, it was ripe for conflict.⁴ On January 29, the very day before Hitler publically noted the friendliness of German's frontiers, a fistfight broke out between German and Polish students at a Danzig restaurant called the Café Langfuhr (Karski 245). In mid-February, a rash of riots between German and Polish students at Danzig Polytechnic University brought classes to a halt, and soon after, anti-German demonstrations took place in various Polish cities including Warsaw, where--on February 25-- an official visit by Count Galeazzo Ciano, Foreign Minister of Italy, goaded Polish students into fresh protests against Germany, including breaking the windows of the German embassy (Karski 245; Watt 316; Ciano, TCD 33).

Though Italy would not formally ally itself with Germany until May 22, it was ruled by a fascist dictator who strongly supported Hitler: Benito Mussolini. Count Ciano was not only Mussolini's Foreign Secretary but also his son-in-law, and a photograph taken during Ciano's visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw's Pilsudski Square (see below) clearly links him with Nazism. As the bareheaded Italian visitor bows his head and bends one knee to the frozen ground skirting the tomb, several figures standing at or near the front of the crowd massed behind him--doubtless part of Ciano's entourage-- raise their right arms in the Nazi salute. Ciano hardly expected the Poles themselves to do likewise. As he told his diary on February 25, "Poland . . . is fundamentally and constitutionally anti-German" (Ciano, TCD 33).

Back in Berlin, at a reception for the diplomatic corps held on March 1, Hitler and Herman Goering, president of the Reichstag, spoke briefly with Josef Lipksi, the Polish ambassador, on the anti-German demonstrations in Poland. The Germans managed to sound both superficially reassuring and subtly menacing. When Lipski ventured to say that these "regrettable" incidents were provoked by Germany's "unclear" policy on Danzig, which agitated a Polish public already "especially touchy" on this topic, Hitler agreed that "Danzig problems [were] ticklish," which is why they required "a solution which would totally remove all complications" (Karski 245). The latent ruthlessness of this formula comes through just as soon as we recall that Hitler would later call mass incineration the "final solution" to the Jewish problem.

The rest of what Hitler and Goering said reeked of duplicity. On one hand, Hitler told Lipski in what sounded like "a positive tone" that no one who sought "to spoil Polish-German relations" could succeed, and after Hitler stepped away, Goering told Lipski that as long as he and Hitler ran Germany, there could be no conflict with Poland over the Danzig corridor. Assuring the ambassador of Hitler's good will, Goering also told Lipski that he well understood Poland's need for Danzig and clearly recognized Polish interests in it. Yet Goering made one statement that effectively nullified all the others. It could not be denied, he said, that Danzig was a German city (Karski 246).

Precisely two weeks after this conversation, Hitler showed just how much his assurances were worth. Though the Munich agreement called for "an international commission" to approve the new borders between Germany and Czechoslovakia, and though Hitler had repeatedly told Chamberlain that the Sudetenland "was the last territorial demand which he had to make in Europe" (Shirer 395, Self 317), Hitler's troops seized both the city of Prague and all of Bohemia on March 15. On the same day, the newly "independent" Slovakia (as of March 14) placed itself under the protection of the Reich, and Hungary--already part of Nazi-Fascist bloc--annexed Carpatho-Ukraine (Transylvania), which lay along Poland's southeast border. Since Germany now controlled Slovakia as well as Hungary, this move gave it access to nearly all of Poland's southern border.

Astonishingly enough, none of these developments rattled the Poles. As far back as January 1935, Poland's foreign minister Jozef Beck had told Goering that the Poles neither "respected nor loved" the Czechs (Karski 257). We must also remember that Poland piggybacked Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia. Just before midnight on September 30, 1938, hours before Hitler began occupying the Sudetenland, Poland demanded that Czechoslovakia cede the 400-square mile territory of Teschen at its eastern tip (Karski 217). Just as Hitler used the mostly German population of the Sudetenland to justify his seizure of it, the mostly Polish population of Teschen was made to justify the Polish demand for it, which the Czechs accepted under pressure from the British and French (Karski 218). Further encroachments on Czech territory, therefore, hardly troubled the Poles. In gaining access to Poland's southeast border, Hungary did exactly what Beck wanted, and so far from decrying the German conquest of Czechoslovakia, mass demonstrations in Poland along with its government-controlled press hailed Hungary's annexation of Transylvania (Karski 246).

Since Poland thus placed itself firmly on the side of the Reich, and since Poland's seizure of Teschen nicely complemented Hitler's taking of the Sudetenland, Hitler warmly appreciated what Goering called this "very bold action performed in excellent style" (Karski 218). Yet Hitler never ceased pressing his demand for Danzig. In Berlin on March 21, less than a week after Poland had joined Germany in devouring what remained of Czechoslovakia, Ribbentrop summoned Lipski to a meeting at which he not only decried the mistreatment of Germans in Poland but also told the ambassador that Hitler was disappointed with Poland's response to his "proposals" for Danzig: that Germany must incorporate Danzig, and must also have an extra-territorial highway and railroad across the Danzig corridor. Winding up his harangue, Ribbentrop suggested that Beck come to Berlin to discuss these matters with Hitler himself (Karski 247).

But there was no room for discussion. Promptly returning to Warsaw for further instructions, Lipski found Beck immovable. In Beck's eyes, Poland's stand on Danzig--whatever the city's intrinsic worth--symbolized the nation's determination to hold all of its territory. If Poland accepted Germany's dictates, he presciently wondered, who could say where they would end? But if Hitler faced "determined opposition," he might back off. Otherwise Poland would fight (Karksi 247).

Unfortunately for Beck and his countrymen, nothing could check Hitler's will to have his way with Poland, which he made absolutely clear in a secret directive of March 25. Four months earlier, he had ordered his military commanders to make plans for a "surprise" seizure of Danzig. Now he tells the commander-in-chief of his army that he "does not wish to solve the Danzig question by force" because he "does not wish to drive Poland into the arms of Britain" (qtd. Karski 247). Nevertheless, he adds, the seizure of Danzig alone "could be contemplated" if Lipski "gave an indication" that such a move would make it "easier" for Warsaw to accept Hitler's solution (Karski 248). The question, in other words, was how much force would be needed to make Poland submit, to gain its would-be diplomatic acquiescence. But without any sign of encouragement from Lipski, or of Polish assent to Germany's demands, the German army might have to wage an all-out war against Poland. In that case, he wrote, "Poland would have to be so beaten down that, during the next few decades, she need not be taken into account as a political factor" (DGFP, Series D, VI, 117-19).

Poland's fate was thus decreed. Hitler would tolerate nothing less than complete acceptance of his demands, which Poland would not grant. On March 26, just after returning to Berlin, Lipski told Ribbentrop that Warsaw was ready to conclude a bilateral treaty on Danzig but not to let the Reich annex it; Warsaw would also give Germany transit rights across the Corridor but not extra-territoriality there (DGFP Series D, VI, 121-22). The following day, reports of anti-German demonstrations in north central Poland drew bitter complaints from Ribbentrop, who warned Lipski that Warsaw's rejection of Hitler's "generous proposals" might undermine all relations between the two countries (DGFP Series D VI 135-36). Thus ended negotiations between Lipski and Ribbentropp, who would not meet again until August 31, the day before Germany invaded Poland.

In Warsaw on March 29, however, Jozef Beck issued a solemn warning of his own about Danzig to Hans Adolph von Moltke, the German ambassador (Watt 189-90), and the very next day, Beck formally accepted the offer of a British guarantee to safeguard Polish independence (Karski 268). In London on the day after that (March 31), Neville Chamberlain broke the news to the House of Commons. Since Nazi Germany had defied the Munich agreement by occupying Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain declared that Britain and France would now stand by Germany's next likely target, Poland:

. . . [I]n the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect.

I may add that the French Government have authorised me to make it plain that they stand in the same position in this matter as do His Majesty's Government.

When Hitler learned of this declaration, he pounded his clenched fists on the great marble table in his new Reichs Chancellery. "I will brew them a devil's drink!" he shouted (Watt 190). The very next day (April 1), while visiting the port of Wilhemshaven to witness the christening of a new battleship, he told General Wilhelm Keitel to have the armed forces ready to attack Poland anytime after September 1 (Watt 190); then, in a speech delivered that evening before the Rathaus (Town Hall) of Wilhelmshaven, he denounced both Britain and Poland for their "encirclement" of Germany even while insisting that "Germany has no intention of attacking other people."

Attacking Poland, of course, is precisely what Hitler intended. But what did Britain and France intend? While Watt states that Chamberlain's statement "clearly involv[ed] British support for the Polish position over Danzig" (Watt 190), Jan Karski--a Polish historian--aptly notes that Chamberlain nowhere mentioned Danzig (Karski 268). Nor did Chamberlain pledge to defend Poland's territorial integrity. As the London Evening Standard of March 31 stressed, Chamberlain's word was "independence" (qtd. Watt 186). Given this word, the London Times of April 1 declared that Britain was not committing itself "to defend every inch of the present frontiers of Poland" (qtd. Watt 186). And in a letter to his sister Hilda the very next day, Chamberlain himself gelded the commitment still more. Though he had told parliament that Britain would support Poland "in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces" (emphasis added), he now wrote: "it is we who will judge whether that independence is threatened or not" (qtd. Watt 186, emphasis added).

What then did Chamberlain's statement on Poland really mean? On April 3, in the face of questions about its ambiguity, the Foreign Office insisted that its meaning was "clear and logical" (Watt 187). But even before Colonel Beck flew from Warsaw to London on April 2, a British Treasury official named Sir Robert Waley effectively denied that Britain was committing itself to anything more than moral support. Given the shaky condition of Britain's finances, he said, he hoped that "Colonel Beck would not be encouraged, as there was no money for Poland" (Watt 333).

Ironically, Beck himself feared an open commitment. Even while seeking a full-fledged alliance with Britain and France, he opposed a public agreement because he did not want Hitler to think that Poland would be helping to encircle Germany (Karski, GPP 270). Yet Hitler had already concluded that he would be facing a two-front war unless he crushed Poland first--by annexing Danzig and then destroying the nation's armed forces.⁵ Though Hitler hid his plans behind the duplicitous claim that "Germany has no intention of attacking other people," as noted above, the British and French chiefs of staffs concluded on April 4--after five days of talks--that if Germany launched a major "offensive against Poland it would only be a matter of time before Poland was eliminated from the war" (WFF). Apparently, the chiefs of staff did not even discuss the possibility of keeping Poland militarily alive.

Two days later, on April 6, the American ambassador-- Joseph Kennedy-- sent FDR a long memo demonstrating that Britain's air force program now rivalled that of Germany.⁶ But the Anglo-Polish communiqué issued on this very day by Colonel Beck and the British government hardly guaranteed that Britain would rush to the aid of an invaded Poland--even if only by attacking Germany from the west. While both countries agreed that they "were prepared to enter [emphasis added] an agreement of a permanent and reciprocal character to replace the present temporary and assurance" given to Poland by Britain, and while this agreement would assure both countries of "mutual assistance in the event of any threat, direct or indirect, to the independence of either," the agreement was not yet complete because--among other things--the two countries had not yet precisely defined "the various ways in which the necessity for such assistance might arise."⁷ In other words, as Chamberlain had already told his sister, Britain reserved the right--at least for now-- to decide whether or not Poland was actually threatened. And Poland and Britain did not sign a formal agreement of mutual assistance until August 25--just six days before Germany invaded Poland.

While Britain and Poland thus deferred a final agreement on mutual defense, Italy turned aggressive. Re-enacting on a small scale Hitler's bloodless conquest of Czechoslovakia, Italian troops led by Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano invaded Albania on April 7 and took it in just five days, thereby expanding the empire of Benito Mussolini. Two days later, on April 14, FDR sent a long telegram to Hitler and Mussolini citing reports that "further acts of aggression are contemplated against still other independent nations," reminding Hitler of his repeated assertions that he and the German people have "no desire for war," proposing an international peace conference, and asking Hitler for assurance "that your armed forces will not attack or invade the territory or possessions of the following independent nations," listing 32--including Poland (Roosevelt 202-203). In response, the German Foreign Ministry got 17 countries to say -- however reliably--that they did not feel threatened by Germany, but three nations (Switzerland, Latvia, Romania) declined to say so, and five others--including Britain, France, and Poland--were not even asked to speak up (Watt 193-94). As for Hitler himself, he answered FDR's telegram only by publically mocking it in a long speech to the Reichstag on April 28. (While reading the long list of nations that FDR considered under German threat, he gradually goaded his audience into roars of laughter.⁸ ) So far from promising any new steps toward peace, he abrogated the Polish-German non-aggression pact of 1934 and decried Poland's new alliance with Britain as embracing a strategy bent on the menacing encirclement of Germany. In a lengthy memorandum delivered by the German embassy in Warsaw, the German government also decried Poland's refusal of Germany's "offer" to settle the dispute over Danzig (Watt 196). In response to Hitler's speech, Colonel Beck gave a defiant speech of his own on May 5. "For us," he told the Polish parliament, "the idea of peace at any price does not exist. There is only one thing that is without price . . . this is honour" (Watt 320).

Britain likewise was gradually facing up to the probability of war. On April 27, the eve of Hitler's speech to the Reichstag, the British Parliament approved the Military Training Act, which required men of 20 to 22 years to take six months of basic training and then become part of an active reserve. Britain urgently needed to strengthen its armed forces. In April of 1939, as Lieutenant-Colonel Leo Amery (MP from Birmingham Sparkbrook) noted during a long debate on the act, Britain had six divisions at most--less than 250,000 men---which was "not enough for any one even of the lesser of the obligations that we have undertaken." If conscription is adopted, he argued, and "if we are granted six months of peace," Britain would gain over 200,000 more trained men, and its armed forces actually gained over 1.5 million conscripts by the end of 1939.⁹ Yet even this was considerably less than the nearly five million men who made up the armed forces of Germany in 1939 (http://www.feldgrau.com/stats.html). The French forces were much more numerous than Britain's, with 900,000 enlisted men and five million reservists. But the reservists had been unreliably trained, and even though France had joined Britain in pledging its support to Poland, it had assumed an essentially defensive crouch behind the Maginot Line, a series of defensive bunkers, emplacements, and tank traps that took 10 years to build at a cost of 2.9 billion francs. But the Maginot Line did not guard the full length border between France and Germany. Stretching from the Swiss border to Longwy in northeast France, it stopped short of the Ardennes Forest because General Maurice Gamelin, Commander in Chief of the French armed forces, thought the forest and the River Meuse could together withstand the motorized troops of the Wehrmacht (Paillat GI 306). As a result, when General André Corap was put in charge of the Army of the Ardennes on April 14, he was given only three divisions to hold a front of about 120 kilometers altogether. In the spring of 1940, neither his men nor the river or the forest would keep the Wehrmacht out of France.

By the end of April, then, the chances of halting further aggression by Germany and Italy looked dim. Largely because of its acquiescence to Hitler's demand for Danzig and the Polish corridor, Britain had lost faith in the goals--let alone the effectiveness--of the German resistance. Diplomacy had proven hardly more effective. By seizing Czechoslovakia on March 15, Hitler not only showed that his previous assurances were worthless but also falsified any future assurances he might offer--such as the claim that "Germany has no intention of attacking other people," as he said at Wilhelmshaven on April 1. And in his speech to the Reichstag on the 28^th, as we have seen, he derided Roosevelt's urgent request for an international peace conference as well as for assurances that Germany and Italy would launch no further attacks.

What then could Britain and France do besides introducing conscription, as Britain did in late April, and building up their own defenses, as France had been doing since 1929? One answer came from Philip Kerr, Lord Lothian, who had strongly supported appeasement of Germany until Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia on March 15. "Up until then," he wrote (in a letter of March 29), "it was possible to believe that Germany was only concerned with recovery of what might be called the normal rights of a great power, but it now seems clear that Hitler is in effect a fanatical gangster who will stop at nothing to beat down all possibility of resistance anywhere to his will" (Butler 227). As a result, on April 12 in the House of Lords, Lothian not only seconded Churchill's call for a grand alliance against Hitler but also urged that it include the Soviet Union. Though Lothian had strongly opposed communism in the past, he now argued that"Russia may be absolutely vital" to any alliance that would function in the East (qtd. Quigley, Chapter 12, 244).

At the time, Russia seemed ready to welcome such an alliance. On March 18, the Soviet government had already proposed that representatives from Britain, France, and Poland join it -- along with Rumania and Turkey-- to discuss measures for the prevention of further aggression. But on March 15, the very day Germany seized Czechoslovakia, Stalin had declared, "The Soviet Union has no reason to make war on Germany" (Paillat, GI 57). Whether or not Britain could have persuaded the Soviet Union to do by the end of 1939, it made no serious effort to forge an alliance until days before Germany invaded Poland. Meanwhile, Hitler was gradually but inexorably turning his adamantly anti-Communist stance into an ardent courtship of the Soviet Union, more precisely into a partnership forged to divide and conquer Poland. Meanwhile, as we shall see in the next chapter, Stalin likewise came to see what he could gain by working with Hitler rather than against him.

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