Now, on 24 August, after the orders to march had been given by Hitler, the news came that such a formal document had been signed. The invasion was thereupon postponed for the sole purpose of making one last effort to keep England and France out of the war—not to cancel the war, but solely to keep England and France out of it. On 25 August, having postponed the invasion, Hitler issued a verbal communique to Sir Neville Henderson, the British ambassador in Berlin, which was a mixture of bribe and threat, and with which he hoped to persuade England to keep out.
On 28 August, Sir Neville Henderson handed the British Government’s reply to that communique to Hitler. That reply stressed that the differences ought to be settled by agreement. The British Government put forward the view that Danzig should be guaranteed, and that any agreement reached should be guaranteed by other powers. Whether or not these proposals would have been acceptable or unacceptable to Germany are of no great matter. For once it had been made clear—as it was in the British Government’s reply of 28 August—that England would not be put off assisting Poland in the event of German aggression, the German Government had no concern with further negotiation but was concerned only to afford itself some kind of justification and to prevent itself from appearing too blatantly to turn down all the appeals to reason that were being put forward.
On 29 August, at 7:15 p. m. in the evening, Hitler handed to Sir Neville Henderson the German Government’s answer to the British Government’s reply of the 28th. It seems quite clear that the whole object of this letter was to put forward something which was quite unacceptable. Hitler agreed to enter into direct conversations as suggested by the British Government, but he demanded that those conversations must be based upon the return to the Reich, of Danzig and also of the whole of the Corridor.
It will be recalled that hitherto, even when he had alleged that Poland had renounced the 1934 agreement, Hitler had put forward as his demands the return of Danzig alone, plus the arrangement for an extra-territorial Autobahn and railroad running through the Corridor to East Prussia. That demand was unacceptable at that time. To make quite certain of refusal, Hitler now demanded the whole of the Corridor. There was no question of an Autobahn or railway. The whole territory must become German.
Even so, to make doubly certain that the offer would not be accepted, Hitler stated: “On those terms I am prepared to enter into discussion, but to do so, as the matter is urgent, I expect a plenipotentiary with full powers from the Polish Government to be here in Berlin by midnight tomorrow night, the 30th of August.”
This offer was made at 7:15 p. m. on the evening of the 29th. That offer had to be transmitted, first, to London; and from London to Warsaw; and from Warsaw the Polish Government had to give authority to their Ambassador in Berlin. So that the timing made it quite impossible, if indeed it were possible, to get authority to the Polish Ambassador in Berlin by midnight the following night. It allowed Poland no opportunity for discussing the matters at all. As Sir Neville Henderson described it, the offer amounted to an ultimatum.
At midnight on 30 August, at the time by which the Polish Plenipotentiary was expected to arrive, Sir Neville Henderson handed a further message to Ribbentrop in reply to the message that had been handed to him the previous evening. Ribbentrop read out in German a two- or three-page document which purported to be the German proposal to be discussed at the discussions between them and the Polish Government. He read it out quickly in German. He refused to hand a copy of it to the British Ambassador. He passed no copy of it at all to the Polish Ambassador. So that there was no kind of possible chance of the Poles ever having before them the proposals which Germany was so graciously and magnanimously offering to discuss.
On the following day, 31 August, Mr. Lipski, the Polish Ambassador, saw Ribbentrop, and could get no further than to be asked whether he came with full powers. When he replied that he did not, Ribbentrop said that he would put the position before the Fuehrer. But, in actual fact, it was much too late to put any position to the Fuehrer by that time, because on 31 August Hitler had already issued his Directive No. 1 for the conduct of war, in which he laid down H-Hour as being a quarter to five the following morning, 1 September. And on the evening of 31 August, at 9 o’clock, the German radio broadcast the proposals which Ribbentrop had read out to Sir Neville Henderson the night before, saying that these were the proposals which had been made for discussion, but that as no Polish Plenipotentiary had arrived to discuss them, the German Government assumed that they were turned down. That broadcast at 9 o’clock on the evening of 31 August was the first that the Poles had ever heard of the proposal, and it was the first that the British Government or its representatives in Berlin knew about them, other than what had been heard when Ribbentrop had read them out and refused to give a written copy on the evening of the 30th.
After that broadcast, at 9:15—perhaps while the broadcast was still in its course—a copy of those proposals was handed to Sir Neville Henderson for the first time.
This summary of events during that last week of August 1939 is based upon the contents of several documents which will now be alluded to.