FATEFUL AUGUST 1939

An essay by Bob Babin

During August 1914, most of the nations of Europe declared war on each other for
reasons of swollen national ego, bloated self-aggrandizement, and distorted, iconoclastic
dreams of honor and tradition. Among Europe’s statesmen, common sense and
dispassionate judgment took a holiday that August. World War One, the “war to end all
wars,” began that month and was to drag on for four bloody years. In its final year a
million American troops joined the British and French on the battlefield. They defeated
Germany and shattered the German Kaiser’s dream of becoming master of Europe. When
the killing finally ended, eight million were dead, and every survivor vowed that such
horrible, stupid extermination would never be allowed to happen again!
Exactly 25 years later, in August 1939, Europe was on the brink of another,
monstrously worse blood bath. Those of us who were alive then painfully remember the
events of that catastrophic month. As if to help us recall it more vividly, the August 1989
and August 1939 calendars turn out to be identical.
During that fateful August 1939 most Europeans, except for a few befuddled,
impractical pacifists like Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and many in his
cabinet, had the frightening premonition that another terrible war was only a matter of
days away. In March 1938, Adolf Hitler, the brutal, egomaniacal, power-mad dictator of
Germany, had marched unopposed into Austria and made it part of the Third Reich, while
no one in Europe made a murmur of protest. Then in October 1938, with lavish, personal
help from Chamberlain, Germany was given a large piece of Czechoslovakia’s frontier,
the Sudetenland, after which Hitler publicly swore that he had “no further territorial
demands in Europe.” His skillful deception convinced nearly everyone that the risk of
another war had now vanished and that many years of peace were in the offing. At this
juncture Chamberlain was hailed worldwide as a super hero and lauded as “the man who
saved us from war,” an accolade he never forgot, unfortunately.
Suddenly in March 1939, Hitler had grabbed the remainder of Czechoslovakia, while
England and France, ignoring their protection pact with the Czechs, stood idly by. Their
inaction definitively confirmed In Hitler’s mind his belief that neither of those two great
powers would honor any treaty or would fight for any cause. So he accelerated his plans
for further conquest, and during March he secretly set the date for Germany’s invasion of
Poland: August 26th, 1939.
Hitler was apprehensive, however, about possible problems with Russia, which he
knew had its own designs on Poland and the Balkans. So that spring he began overtures
to the Russian dictator, Joseph Stalin, while cautious diplomatic interchanges between the
two countries slowly began to thaw the frigid relations between them. For more than 20
years Hitler had repeated in his bellowing speeches that communism was an invention of
the dirty Jews and that Russia was a criminal state. But now, incredibly, he shrewdly
pursued an opportunistic, temporary alliance with his life-long enemies, the
“Bolsheviks,” as he had always called them.
In March 1939, the able Soviet ambassador to England, Maksim Litvinov, had made
diplomatic moves toward rapprochement, wisely proposing an immediate conference
among Russia, Britain, France, Poland, and Turkey to form a bulwark against the rising
German threat. His overtures were ignored by France and dismissed outright by Britain.

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 A month later Litvinov formally made a thorough, cogent USSR proposal for a triple
alliance of Russia, England, and France to assure that any Germany offense move
anywhere in Europe would be met by overwhelming force. Poland was welcome to join,
and if she did, Litvinov shrewdly argued, Germany would be completely encircled by
superior military forces. (Hitler later remarked that if Litvinov’s grand alliance had been
formed, Germany would have been outmanned, outgunned, and outwitted, and he would
have had to cancel his war plans and bide his time for an extended period.)
Now the French quickly agreed to pursue with the matter, but Chamberlain delayed.
His extreme distaste for Russian communism smothered consideration of any options
involving the USSR. He and his cabinet stated that Litvinov’s plan was “extremely
inconvenient” and that Russian military strength was “trivial.” What worried them most
was what Hitler might think if he found out about their discussions with the Russians!
After weeks of British inaction, Litvinov stepped down, his diplomatic career
seriously blunted. He was replaced as ambassador to England by Vyacheslav Molotov, a
man known to favor an arrangement with Hitler and convinced that neither England nor
France would fight unless they were attacked.
Meanwhile the secret interchanges between German and Russian diplomats continued.
In the House of Commons during May 1939, Winston Churchill, Chamberlain’s
severest critic and his successor to be, and Lloyd George (Prime Minister during World
War One) had pressed Chamberlain hard on the vital, urgent need to move on an
arrangement with Russia. Finally on May 23rd, after two blistering public speeches by
Churchill, Chamberlain had begrudgingly gave in and agreed to begin preliminary talks
with Russia. The French concurred, and plans proceeded slowly, on a low priority. By the
end of May, polls showed, the British and French people were overwhelmingly in favor
of a big-three alliance with Russia, and that except for the Chamberlain pacifists, very
few persons anywhere in Europe doubted Hitler’s ruthless, bellicose intentions.
Throughout June and July the Anglo-French project flickered and sputtered, while
Hitler fervently hoped that it would collapse.

Now the start of the insane slaughter of tens of millions was now only days away.
August 1939 would be the last month of peace until 1945! During those few remaining
hours, while when the fate of the world hung on an alliance about to be made with
Russia, the Chamberlain government saw no reason for haste or alarm.
Finally a team was designated to visit Moscow to attempt firm negotiations. As if to
offend the Kremlin, Chamberlain chose to head the team an obscure, undistinguished
admiral on the verge on retirement. Worse yet, he was given no written authority to
negotiate and was instructed to be discourteous to the Russians. Instead of flying to
Russia in a few hours, the British team traveled to Russia by boat, requiring six days for
the trip! They arrived on August 11th and were met by a contingent of Russia’s highest
ranking military officers, who were aghast to discover the low caliber of men they faced.
As discussions ensued it seemed to the Russians that the British envoys had been
given orders to delay and equivocate -- which British foreign-policy documents have
since confirmed was indeed so. By August 15th, their tactics had so upset the Russians
that the meetings were suspended until the 21st.

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 The need for Poland’s agreement had become apparent, and the British had evaded the
topic until August 18th, when the British and French ambassadors in Warsaw approached
Poland’s pompous, blustering General Beck, Chief of the General Staff. He abruptly told
them Soviet troops were “of no military value” and that Poland did not want to
contemplate Russian troops operating in Poland. Two days later Poland formally notified
England and France that it did “not wish to hear any more proposals” concerning any
alliance with Russia and that “Poland would accept no help from Russia against Hitler.”
Instead of demanding that Beck moderate his stubborn stand if he expected England and
France to come to Poland’s aid against Hitler, the Chamberlain government let the whole
Polish matter drop.
Chamberlain was apparently the last politician in Europe to discover that Stalin had
been working both sides of the street. Since March 1939 the Russians had been trying to
negotiate with Germany and with the Anglo-French team simultaneously. When
Chamberlain was informed of and finally came to believe Stalin’s overtures to Hitler, he
dismissed them as being of no consequence. “Nothing will ever come of them,” he told
friends!
On the evening of August 19th, a telegram from the German ambassador in Moscow
marked “Secret, Most Urgent” told Hitler what he had very much been waiting to hear.
Culminating months of increasingly cordial interchanges, it said that Stalin now agreed
that Germany’s foreign minister, von Ribbentrop, could come to Moscow to sign a non-
aggression pact. Hitler replied to Stalin personally, courteously expressing urgency, but
not disclosing that his timetable called for the invasion of Poland just one week hence.
On the 21st Stalin replied to Hitler, saying that von Ribbentrop was welcome to visit
Moscow on the 23rd.
The triple alliance was now dead. Hitler had outfoxed the dallying, naive pacifists
again. He read Stalin’s message and flung his hand into the air. “It’s done. We’ve done it.
Now we can spit in everyone’s face. Now I have the whole world in my pocket!”
Von Ribbentrop’s two aircraft landed in Moscow around noon on Wednesday the 23rd
of August, and within minutes his contingent was in the company of Stalin himself.
Never before had any German ambassador actually met and shaken hands with Stalin.
The old Bolshevik quickly and succinctly stated what he wanted: the Baltic states, the
eastern section of Poland, and parts of Rumania, plus two specific warm-water ports in
Latvia. Ribbentrop had been authorized to agree to all but the last, and a quick telephone
call direct to Hitler got his instant concurrence on it. All parties then quickly touched up
the mutual-protection agreement and signed it.
Toward midnight supper and drinks were served all around, and photos were
taken. Just before they parted, Stalin took von Ribbentrop aside and in the most serious
manner told him that Russia would never break the Nazi-Soviet pact they had just signed.
The next morning, August 24th, the Germans flew home. They had been in Moscow
less than 24 hours.
That same day the British and French met briefly with the Russian negotiators, who
told them that to continue would be pointless. Two Russian generals saw them off on a
train to Poland. They may have been among the last to hear the news of the Nazi coup,
which Radio Berlin promptly announced to the world.
On August 24th, even before von Ribbentrop returned, Hitler had begun a six-hour
speech in Berlin to nearly a hundred of Germany’s top officers. He announced

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dogmatically that he was going to start war immediately and that Poland would be his
first target! “I will find a reason for starting this war,” he said. “I have given the
command, and I shall shoot anyone who utters one word of criticism…Russia will in time
join Poland’s fate…Then there will begin the dawn of German rule of the earth.” Some
officers believed him, while others scoffed at his bombast, refusing to be taken in by such
pipe dreams.
On August 25th, the British Government, recognizing Poland’s peril in light of the
Nazi-Soviet pact, signed a formal treaty of alliance with the Poles, converting an earlier,
unilateral guarantee to Poland into a bilateral pact.
Hitler rescheduled his invasion of Poland from August 26th to September 1st on a
timetable that was kept meticulously. Without warning, German infantry, tanks, and
planes began crossing the Polish border at 4:00 a.m. on the first day of September. Fifty-
six German army divisions raced eastward, while 1600 aircraft began indiscriminate
bombing and strafing of Polish cities! Within a month, Poland would be completely
crushed.
World War II had begun. After more than 48 hours of equivocating and agonizing, at
times actually contemplating more negotiations with Hitler, Chamberlain finally
announced to the world at 11:15 local time on Sunday morning, September 3rd, 1939 that
Britain was at war with Germany!

357,116 Britons would die in World War Two.

Copyright © 1989
Robert S. Babin
Los Angeles, California

Robert S. Babin 9 July 1998 /var/www/apps/scribd/scribd/tmp/scratch9/9049362.doc

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