The Road to War (2/8) : Germany
For educational purposes
Hitler, more than any other individual or comination of events, started the war, he deceived many people in Germany and abroad by his claim that he was merely demolishing the Versailles treaty.
when his real aim was the creation of a racial empire in eastern Europe for the German master race. His bluff was not called until it was too late.
In 1939, Hitler believed that Britain would not interfere if he attacked Poland but was proved wrong.
Hitler, more than any other individual or comination of events, started the war, he deceived many people in Germany and abroad by his claim that he was merely demolishing the Versailles treaty.
when his real aim was the creation of a racial empire in eastern Europe for the German master race. His bluff was not called until it was too late.
In 1939, Hitler believed that Britain would not interfere if he attacked Poland but was proved wrong.
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LearningTranscript
00:00More than any other man, Adolf Hitler was the cause of the Second World War. War for
00:12its own sake was his driving obsession. Prolonged peace, he once said, would make a nation rot.
00:19Hitler never made a secret of his intention to use force to make Germany the dominant
00:24power in Europe. He triumphed because the world was blind to his signals. Hitler could
00:29have been stopped, by his fellow Germans at first, by foreign leaders later. Not until
00:361939 did the Allied leaders move to check him. By then it was too late to block his
00:41road to war.
01:11The
01:40First World War ended in 1918 with Germany's surrender, in response to an offer of an honourable
01:46peace by the victors, Britain, France and America. Early next year, the victorious powers
02:03met at Versailles to draw up the terms of the treaties. Driven by public opinion in
02:11their own countries, the Allied leaders were in a vindictive mood when they assembled in
02:15the Hall of Mirrors. They held Germany responsible for the war. They demanded safety and retribution.
02:27They stripped Germany of her colonial empire, reduced her armed forces to a mere 100,000,
02:34distributed pieces of her territory to her neighbours and ordered Germany to pay huge
02:39sums in reparations, compensation for the damage done by German aggression. The German
02:47delegates had expected to be allowed to negotiate. Instead, they were summoned and given a week
02:52to accept or suffer invasion and occupation. They signed. But Germans of every political
03:03persuasion were bitter. Versailles created a resentment that was to shape German politics
03:08for 20 years. We felt in the German people that this treaty was dictated by hate of the
03:23other side, by a tremendous hate, especially by the French, but partly, I'm sure, by British
03:31people too, and by the American people too. You feel so helpless when the victors trample
03:43on a loser who's already very weak on the ground, you see. And this feeling was one
03:53of the reasons that later on, much later on, the people looked at Hitler because he brought
04:00another possibility for the future in their mind. Ten years later, in 1929, it was a campaign
04:13against further payment of reparations that brought the ex-corporal Adolf Hitler from
04:17local obscurity to nationwide prominence. Reparations was already a national obsession
04:25and Hitler easily persuaded his crowds that they were being ruined by the peace treaties
04:30as a whole. It was fixed we should pay until 1983. 1983. And this was incredible. And so
04:49the first idea, of course, was that all these payments should be stopped by Germany. Definitely
04:58stopped. Not paying any more. The idea that Allied injustice was the principal cause of
05:11German misery was a myth. But poverty was real enough, and in 1923, hyperinflation wiped
05:18out the savings of millions of middle class Germans. Six years later, the Great Depression
05:25struck Germany and confidence in parliamentary democracy largely collapsed. That was Hitler's
05:32chance. I can say that Germany was in very bad years until Hitler came in 1933. Everybody was
05:46poor. There were, I think, about seven million unemployed people. It was no hope. And Hitler,
05:55I must say that he was the first man who, with his speeches and his ideas, he gave hope to the people.
06:06Hitler promised bread and jobs, but what captured his audiences was his aggressive
06:17self-confidence, his conviction that he could bring about national revival by overthrowing
06:23the existing order of things. It was not only the Nazis who promised to overthrow parliamentary
06:45government. The Communist Party had made big gains in the cities, especially in Berlin,
06:50and the bourgeoisie was terrified of revolution. My feeling was we are just on our way to become
07:03a communist state, you see. And that was, in my opinion, the reason to take again a gun in the
07:13hand and to fight it. Because we had the feeling, young as we were, the elder ones have enough of
07:21the war and they don't want to fight. They take everything, accepted everything. And we youngers,
07:28we wanted to fight. In Germany in the early 1930s, there was civil war on the streets.
07:46Nazis fought communists in all the big towns. As the democratic parties lost ground, the future
08:03became a choice between extremes, the far left and the far right. We young people saw the choice
08:22before us as communism or national socialism. It was now make or break for Germany. We've had it
08:37if the communists win. So there was only one answer, national socialism. We must give it a chance.
08:46Curiously, it was a series of general elections that brought the Nazis within reach of government.
08:53No more than a splinter group in the Reichstag in 1928, they became in 1932 the biggest single
09:00party with a third of the popular vote. That was their peak. What they lacked was an overall
09:06majority. And later that year, they lost 2 million votes. What saved Hitler from probable
09:15oblivion was a deal with the conservatives. Each side despised the other, each expected to come
09:21out on top. The conservatives got nearly all the cabinet posts. But Hitler was chancellor,
09:27and he made sure that his right-hand man, Hermann Göring, was in charge of the police.
09:32These conservatives thought Hitler couldn't last and he was not a man to be feared or anything. But
09:41they, they had been of the governing class, ruling class for a longer time, and they knew how to
09:49govern. And they had all the connections and they were real Germans. So they thought if we get into
09:56coalition with this Nazi party, with this Hitler man, after six months or so, he will drop out,
10:02and we will stay in power. It soon became clear that the conservatives had underestimated Hitler.
10:12Someone set fire to the Reichstag. Hitler pronounced it a communist plot. He suspended
10:18all constitutional rights, arrested 5,000 communists and socialists, and declared what
10:24became a permanent state of emergency. The dictatorship was in place.
10:54What followed was summed up in the word Gleichschaltung, forcible coordination. It
11:11required systematic and public acts of brutality, like the burning of books.
11:15Nazi stormtroopers now enjoyed the protection of the state,
11:37and one of their favorite excesses, the persecution of Jews, was institutionalized.
11:45The Jews were driven out of business and the professions, and driven out of Germany. Those
11:59that stayed ended up in concentration camps. The first camp opened in March 1933. It was
12:10built at a place called Dachau. Labor liberates, said the slogan on the gate.
12:14Josef Felder was a socialist who'd voted against Hitler in the last free vote in the Reichstag. He
12:23was one of thousands of men and women whose names had been marked down during the Nazis'
12:27struggle for power. His fellow inmates were writers, mayors, Jews, trade unionists,
12:33social democrats, and communists. Felder was kept in chains in the punishment block. He was
12:43fed every fourth day. He remembers that one of those feeding days happened to be Christmas Eve.
12:49On December the 24th, on Christmas Eve, the guards came to my cell door, which I could reach,
13:00even though my legs were in irons. And they showed me a plate of Bavarian sausages with
13:07potato salad, and said, this would be a nice gallows meal for you, but you don't deserve it,
13:13you traitor. And then the chief guard came carrying a rope, and showed me how I could
13:23hang myself from the overhead pipes. We'll give you an hour, he said, then we'll come and do it
13:30ourselves. He came back twice during the night. It was psychological pressure to try and make
13:38him commit suicide. Hitler now put the country to work, chiefly on public projects like roads.
13:56He formed a compulsory labor corps. Unemployment fell dramatically.
14:27Hitler soon energized a nation that longed for decisive leadership. He showed an uncanny
14:37understanding of the attraction to the masses of a combination of force and success.
14:42His personal appeal was greatest among women and boys. Gunther Roos, then aged 12,
15:02remembers seeing the Führer in the flesh. I was so moved, I was speechless. I couldn't
15:11shout Heil. I just stood there and looked. And then the most incredible thing happened to me.
15:19Hitler looked deep into my eyes. I can't describe this moment with words. Afterwards,
15:39I stood there for half a minute or so, hypnotized. Then I turned to my friends and said, he looked
15:51deep into my eyes. The fascinating thing is that they said, no, he looked into my eyes.
16:01It was a mass hypnosis. Gunther Roos described his great day in his diary. And later that night,
16:16the family spoke of their glimpse of the leader as a profound religious experience.
16:21One of us said, it must have been like this 2,000 years ago when Jesus said to his disciples,
16:32leave your home and family and follow me. This was precisely the feeling I had.
16:38Hitler, now commander-in-chief, demanded an oath of loyalty sworn by every soldier. In 1935,
16:54he revealed the existence of a German air force and announced that conscription would bring the
16:59army to five times the limits permitted by Versailles. To justify his actions,
17:10he argued that universal disarmament, foreseen by the peace treaty, had never taken place.
17:15It was said by the Allies, the Allies of the First World War, I mean,
17:27that Germany must disarm first and then they would follow with a disarmament. This was said
17:39obviously and clearly by the Allies. But years and years passed away and nothing happened concerning
17:48the disarmament of the Allied side. On the contrary, the Czechs, the Poles, armed, aided
17:57by the French and encircling Germany, and so what was left? Germany was in the middle, you see. So,
18:06because the others had broken the promise for disarmament, obviously they had broken this
18:14promise, they hadn't disarmed, no? So, Germany was forced to rearm. Very simple.
18:22Britain and France protested against Germany's rearmament. That was all they did. A few weeks
18:32later, Britain, without consulting the French, concluded a naval agreement with Germany. It
18:37recognized Germany's right to build a powerful modern navy, from battleships to U-boats.
18:42Hitler hoped his agreement with the British would prove to be a breakthrough. He wanted a
18:50settlement with a passive Britain that would allow him to pursue his long-term plan of expansion to
18:56the east. Herbert Friedrichs was now a member of the German naval staff. He loved England. That was
19:05a funny thing, you see. He loved everything which was might. And he loved England because it was,
19:13in his opinion, the expression of building an empire, as Hitler perhaps wanted to. He wanted
19:26to crush the Russians. He hoped the British would do nothing against it. And I think that
19:34during those years when Hitler said, I hate the Russians and that's the greatest danger for Europe,
19:41England must always be a friend of us, or become a friend of us. That's what he meant.
19:50Hitler now embarked on a gamble that was to overturn the entire post-war system of security.
19:57Under the peace treaties, the Rhineland had become a demilitarized zone. At the insistence
20:04of France, determined to block a German invasion, German troops were forbidden to set foot in it.
20:09On a Saturday morning in March 1936, a German battalion entered Cologne and occupied both banks
20:23of the Rhine. The whole zone had been out of bounds to German soldiers since the war. Wilhelm
20:31Meger, then aged 18, was on his way to his sister's wedding when he spotted German troops on the
20:37bridge. At midday, the battalion fell in and marched across the bridge onto the left bank.
20:50I was carried away by the military music. Full of enthusiasm, I followed the battalion, pushing my
21:00bike. Unknown to anybody else, the troops had orders to retreat if France's vastly greater
21:16forces moved. Neither France nor Britain interfered. Prompting Hitler to remark,
21:21the world belongs to the man with guts. When I got to the left bank, I suddenly remembered the
21:36wedding. I'd missed the lunch, but I got there just in time for coffee. Why are you so late?
21:43I said, I've got news. Our troops have occupied Cologne. Great excitement and pleasure, especially
21:57from the younger people there. We all drank an enthusiastic toast. In fact, we drank several.
22:05Five months after the occupation of the Rhineland, Germany staged the Olympic Games in Berlin.
22:21Hitler's successful defiance of Britain and France had strengthened his prestige at home.
22:26And his own self-confidence must have been boosted when the athletes from France,
22:33the country he had just humiliated, gave him the Hitler salute.
22:36The games were a public relations triumph. Droves of white doves projected an image of
23:03Germany at peace with itself and at peace with the world. In 1937, Hitler explained to his generals
23:16the grand design he had outlined years before in his book Mein Kampf. He told them his defiance of
23:23the Treaty of Versailles was merely the overture. His real objective was the creation by conquest
23:29of an empire in the eastern part of Europe in which the German master race would subject the
23:34present inhabitants, Poles, Russians, Slavs and Jews, to slavery. His vision is said to have
23:41appalled some of his generals. But no empire, said Hitler, had ever been built without force.
23:47Hitler followed a so-called plan in stages. What he had in mind was to become the dominant power
24:02in Central Europe, then to get the hegemony over the European continent, then in a next stage to
24:14conquer living space in the Soviet Union, and in a fourth stage he had in mind to, well, to fight
24:32against the United States and to conquer a maritime empire as well. Hitler's first chance to expand
24:45into Central Europe presented itself in Austria, where fervent local Nazis were exploiting ancient
24:51ties of language and culture and agitating for Anschluss, or union with the fatherland. This was
24:58expressly forbidden by the treaties, lest Germany become too strong. In an effort to hold back the
25:04tide, Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg had asked Britain to guarantee his country's independence.
25:09When Britain declined, he proposed a plebiscite, or referendum. Hitler ordered his generals to
25:27prepare to march on Vienna, but he had one nagging doubt. Would Britain intervene? The German foreign
25:34minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, was visiting London. To him, the Führer sent an emissary. A
25:39young Austrian Nazi, Reinhard Spitzi, was summoned to the chancellery. I stood alone in front of the
25:48big Führer. And Hitler immediately said, I need now a messenger for Ribbentrop, because I must know
25:57what the British would do if I enter in Austria. What is necessary, because there is already a
26:06certain disorder. And Schuschnigg, and then he got furious and said, Schuschnigg tried to cheat me
26:14with a faked election and plebiscite, and I'm not going to admit that. I must know what the British
26:23would do. Spitzi returned from London with Ribbentrop's assurance in writing that Britain
26:30would not interfere. He reported to the leader. I entered in the room and greeted him in the normal
26:40way. Then he said, sit down. I'm going to read that. Oh, that's fine. Good. So we can trust the
26:50British will do nothing. He said, well, the whole embassy has the same opinion. Nothing will happen.
26:56That's good. And then he told me, so tomorrow we are going to Austria. Spitzi's reward was a place
27:05in the motorcade as the Fuhrer returned to the land of his birth. Hitler was full of emotion,
27:12and sometimes he nearly had tears in his eyes. It was without any doubt the greatest moment in his
27:22life. Enormous crowds welcomed Hitler to the Heldenplatz, the main square in Vienna. The
27:29peace treaties had reduced Austria's importance in the world, and most of its citizens longed to be
27:35part of Germany's national revival. Ingeborg Swinney, then age 20, was one of thousands
27:41transfixed by the Fuhrer. When he came in, you could see people were in tears, and some even
27:56fainted. And I personally, I think all the others too, saw in Hitler our savior, almost like that,
28:07because we in Austria had such a bad life, very sad life. It was high unemployment, and people
28:18had, many people had nothing to eat. So it was really like in the last minute that Hitler came
28:24in, brought the people food and work.
28:55One of these reasons why we supported Hitler was all about the Jews, how they behaved, how they
29:05lived amongst us. And very, very many lived in Vienna at this time. First of all, it was their
29:11behavior and their appearance. They looked so dirty and with their long hairs, and rather strange
29:22amongst us. You know, they didn't really belong to Vienna in a way. But they had the power. All the
29:31banks and all the shops, everything was in Jewish hands. As they had done in Germany, the Nazis were
29:40able to build on the ingrained anti-Semitism of so many Austrians. The treatment of Jews in Vienna
29:47was savage. Within a day or two, Jews were rounded up in the streets. Elderly Jews, including my
29:59father, were forced to scrub the streets on their knees to wash off the slogans from the Shushnik
30:11plebiscite. When it happened, I happened to see it. My father was there on his knees, surrounded by a
30:20group of 30 or 40 people in brown shirts and also passers-by who yelled and clapped and shouted,
30:35Jewish speak. And it went on for about 20 to 25 minutes. And it was pushed away. Of course, thousands
30:51more were doing the same, forced to do the same things in Vienna over the next two or three days.
30:59You see, it went on and on. Later, Edward Arie's father died of starvation in a concentration camp.
31:09The annexation of Austria opened the door to the next objective, Czechoslovakia, where the
31:18Versailles Treaty had left three and a half million Germans on the Czech side of the border. Encouraged
31:24by the example of the Austrians, Sudeten Germans, as they were called, agitated to join the Reich.
31:30And for Hitler, their grievances provided the pretext for a short, sharp war of conquest. He
31:37ordered his generals to prepare a lightning strike. Nazi propagandists busily soaked up
31:45the crisis. German newsreels showed persecuted Sudeten Germans fleeing to the fatherland.
31:51What the world was to call the Munich crisis brought Europe to the brink of war and Britain's
32:09Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to Hitler's home at Berchtesgaden. Hitler wanted armed conflict.
32:15The Czechs wanted to fight with British and French support. Chamberlain was determined to
32:20arrange concessions and save the peace. At the height of the negotiations, Hitler was struck
32:27by doubts about the martial spirit of his people. Hitler had the glorious idea to let a brigade of
32:37tanks, a whole division of tanks, pass through the center of Berlin. And he would have wished
32:47enthusiasm of the Berlinese people and shouting and content. But nobody was on the street. Everybody
32:56went home. Poor old women looked a bit, then they went away. It was a complete disaster for Hitler.
33:07And Hitler looked at it and said, with this people, I can't lead a war.
33:14The fear of a general war was shared by sections of the aristocracy and the upper classes. Notably
33:27by men in key positions in the army and the foreign service. They believed that Hitler
33:33could be overthrown if his demands met with greater resistance in Britain and France.
33:37Hans von Herbart, then an attache in Moscow, was one of a group that planned to arrest the
33:47Chancellor as soon as he gave the final order to invade Czechoslovakia.
33:52I consider this my duty as a good German to try everything to prevent Hitler to start a second
34:06world war. The idea was to convince the British and the French not to give in to Hitler. But
34:15unfortunately, all what we told the British in London and in Moscow, and also what we told the
34:23French, did not induce the French and the English to take a firm stand. Finally, in Munich, they gave
34:31in. The conspiracy collapsed when Chamberlain and the French showed once again they were not
34:38prepared to stand up to Hitler. Instead, they compelled Czechoslovakia to hand over the Sudeten
34:44area without a fight. Hitler's gains included the elaborate Czech frontier defences, large
34:51supplies of coal, and three and a half million new Germans. But Hitler was ungrateful, as Reinhard
35:03Spitze, here revisiting the building where the Munich Agreement was signed, recalls. Hitler
35:09didn't like this Munich conference because he had the feeling that he was cheated of his little
35:21war, smashing Czechoslovakia, and Hitler was very much annoyed by this sort of democratic conversation.
35:30He wasn't impressed by Chamberlain, and he had the feeling that Britain has gone to the dogs, that it's in the
35:44hand of capitalists, Jews, Democrats, liberals, and so on, and no more empire spirit, and he thought that
35:55Britain is not in the shape and has not the will to defend the empire in an energetic, decisive way.
36:10What made headlines outside Germany was a piece of paper supposedly promising peace for our time.
36:17Both Chamberlain and Hitler had signed it, but according to Spitze, only one of them took it
36:23seriously. When Hitler and Rimtrop stepped out from this building, I was following them, and I
36:36listened to their conversation. Rimtrop complained about the ridiculous piece of paper that Hitler
36:44had signed together with Chamberlain. Hitler said, don't bother. This piece of paper has no importance at all.
36:56And then I heard and I was convinced that Hitler did not intend to keep the Munich Agreement.
37:07In March 1939, Hitler tore it up. German troops occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia. This time,
37:14there was no welcome for the Germans. It was an act of pure, unprovoked aggression. Czechoslovakia was an
37:21independent foreign country shorn of its German-speaking districts five months before.
37:28When he entered Prague, he said, within a few weeks, nobody will talk about it. Well, I don't say that he meant this.
37:41It was a way of talking. But he thought that the British would forget, and he forgot that that was the turning point,
37:50this moment. Then he'd enslaved other nations and didn't unite Germans. And from that very moment, he became an imperialist.
38:05Hitler's unopposed conquest of Czechoslovakia altered the balance of power in Europe.
38:10The Czech army of 30 divisions was disbanded, its aircraft, tanks and weapons used to re-equip units of the Wehrmacht,
38:18as was Czechoslovakia's impressive armaments industry.
38:26Hitler's next target was Poland. Again, there was a ready-made pretext Hitler could use.
38:32Versailles had deprived Germany of the city of Danzig, and the Polish corridor, giving Poland access to the sea,
38:39had cut off East Prussia from the Reich. But those were secondary considerations.
38:45Poland was to be a launching pad for Hitler's historic confrontation with the Soviet Union.
38:58To win Lebensraum, or living space, in the East, Hitler needed a common frontier with the Soviet Union.
39:06He could get this if the Poles allowed the German army right of passage. But he could also get this, and this of course is what happened,
39:14if he conquered Poland. Then he would not only have a common frontier with the Soviet Union, but a base from which to launch his attack.
39:26In Britain, Neville Chamberlain had experienced an abrupt awakening. Convinced that Hitler must be stopped,
39:32he offered a guarantee of Polish independence. Distance, however, made the guarantee worthless without a military alliance with the Soviet Union.
39:40So, in August, an Anglo-French delegation set off by sea to negotiate with the Russians.
39:48On the British side, at least, it was a half-hearted enterprise. But it jolted Hitler into action.
39:56It led to a crisis when Hitler got the news that the French and the British were negotiating with the Soviets about a treaty, anti-German treaty.
40:06Then he got nervous. He thought, these three powers against me is a little bit too much.
40:10And then he started to put pressure on the embassy in Moscow and also on the negotiators in Berlin and said, you must come to a positive end.
40:22Hitler now pulled off the greatest and most cynical diplomatic coup of his career.
40:28He sent his foreign minister to Moscow to do a deal with Stalin, whose country he planned later to destroy.
40:35Hans von Herbert was in the Ribbentrop team.
40:41Neither the British nor French could believe that Hitler and Stalin, who were like fire and water, would come together.
40:49They didn't realize how dangerous the offers of Hitler were, because Hitler could offer to the Soviet Union all what they wanted.
40:58Practically, he offered to Stalin all what the Soviet Union had lost after the First World War, the Baltic states and parts of Poland.
41:08So, it was a wonderful deal for Stalin.
41:12It was also a wonderful deal for Hitler.
41:15With Stalin in the Nazi camp, Poland was isolated and effectively defenseless.
41:38Nazi propaganda concocted the usual alibi.
41:42Newsreel pictures of German families driven from their homes in Poland provided the familiar pretext for a war of liberation.
41:50In loyal alliance with our brothers in the East, the whole of Germany is ready.
42:10Hitler spent most of the summer at Berchtesgaden, his country home.
42:14His ambassador in London had warned him that Britain would fight over Poland.
42:18Hitler ignored him.
42:20His course was set on war.
42:22He told his generals that the Western leaders would back down.
42:25I saw them at Munich, he said.
42:27Our opponents are little worms.
42:32The answer of Hitler was always the same.
42:35England will do everything bad against us what is possible.
42:43Break diplomatic relations and so on.
42:47But one thing England would not do, enter a war.
42:51And that he said, despite England had told the Polish government months ago,
42:59we stay at your side if you will be attacked.
43:06As Hitler told the story, the Second World War began at Gliwice, a small town on the German-Polish border.
43:13To prove that Poland fired first and started the war, a unit of SS men mounted a sham attack on a German radio station.
43:22As evidence, they left behind them corpses in Polish uniforms, actually the inmates of concentration camps.
43:31So, Hitler was able to claim in a speech to the Reichstag the next day that Polish aggression had caused the war.
43:39Poland has fired at our own territory for the first time tonight,
43:44also with the Reich's regular bullets.
43:49Since 5.45 p.m. they have been firing back.
44:01And from now on, we will bomb with bomb.
44:17At dawn on the 1st of September, Hitler launched his blitzkrieg from prepared positions all along the border.
44:24It was to be a quick, easy, local war.
44:31This was a local war to get back old German territories.
44:38Nobody thought England or France would get involved,
44:42because we completely trusted in the genius of the Führer, who was always proclaiming his love of peace.
44:48We were also convinced that as a veteran of the First World War, the Führer would never start a war on two fronts.
45:00On September the 3rd at 9 a.m., Britain's ambassador in Berlin, Sir Neville Henderson,
45:05delivered his government's ultimatum to Germany.
45:08He was received by the chief interpreter, Paul Schmidt.
45:12And he read the document to me, it was an ultimatum,
45:16with the sentence that said,
45:21unless the German government declares its readiness to withdraw their troops to the German-Polish frontier,
45:30and unless they announce that readiness in two hours,
45:34there will be a state of war between His Majesty's government and the German government.
45:40Adolf Hitler was in his study at the Reich Chancellery.
45:44Schmidt hurried over to report.
45:47I walked straight into Hitler's study, where I found him with his foreign minister, Herr von Ribbentrop,
45:54and I translated this ultimatum to him.
45:58And when I came to the last sentence,
46:01there was a state of complete silence in that very important study,
46:07or the most important study which existed in Germany at that time.
46:11Now it had happened, and they were holding their breath,
46:15because it was somewhat unexpected.
46:19It was Hitler who broke the silence.
46:22Glaring at Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, he asked, what now?
46:26Ribbentrop's reply, I assume that within the hour, the French ultimatum will follow.
46:37Eyewitnesses have recorded that the German in the street was shocked at this extension of the conflict.
46:42He had become accustomed to Hitler's bloodless victories
46:45and prepared at worst for brief, relatively painless wars.
46:49But the indefatigable young diarist, Günter Roos, was loyal to the last.
46:58After England presented us with an ultimatum,
47:01England and France declared war on us at midday.
47:05The pigs.
47:13You see there our rage and bafflement
47:17that England and France should dare to interfere in purely German matters
47:21and try and prevent us from recreating the old German Reich.
47:43The End
47:48The defeat of Poland gave Hitler his common frontier with Russia.
47:52He had made war.
47:54But it was not the war he wanted.
47:57His misjudgment of the temper of Britain and France had wrecked his plan.
48:03Before the great march of conquest in the East could begin,
48:06he must eliminate both France and Britain.
48:09Either that, or plunge Germany into a prolonged two-front war.
48:39THE END
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