Hitler

pushing at an open door. ‘The mood of the people can be much more quickly whipped up against the Poles than against any other neighbouring people,’ commented the exiled Social Democratic organization, the Sopade. Many thought ‘it would serve the Poles right if they get it in the neck’. Above all, no one, it was claimed, whatever their political standpoint, wanted a Polish Danzig; the conviction that Danzig was German was universal.
    The issue which the Danzig Nazis exploited to heighten the tension was the supervision of the Customs Office by Polish customs inspectors. When the customs inspectors were informed on 4 August – in what turned out to be an initiative of an over-zealous German official – that they would not be allowed to carry out their duties and responded with a threat to close the port to foodstuffs, the local crisis threatened to boil over, and too soon. The Germans reluctantly backed down – as the international press noted. Forster was summoned to Berchtesgaden on7 August and returned to announce that the Führer had reached the limits of his patience with the Poles, who were probably acting under pressure from London and Paris.
    This allegation was transmitted by Forster to Carl Burckhardt, the League of Nations High Commissioner in Danzig. Overlooking no possibility of trying to keep the West out of his war with Poland, Hitler was ready to use the representative of the detested League of Nations as his intermediary. On 10 August, Burckhardt was summoned to the telephone to be told by Gauleiter Forster that Hitler wanted to see him on the Obersalzberg at 4 p.m. next day and was sending his personal plane ready for departure early the following morning. Following a flight in which he was regaled by a euphoric Albert Forster with tales of beerhall fights with Communists during the ‘time of struggle’, Burckhardt landed in Salzburg and, after a quick snack, was driven up the spiralling road beyond the Berghof itself and up to the ‘Eagle’s Nest’, the recently built spectacular ‘Tea House’ in the dizzy heights of the mountain peaks.
    Hitler was not fond of the ‘Eagle’s Nest’ and seldom went up there. He complained that the air was too thin at that height, and bad for his blood pressure. He worried about an accident on the roads Bormann had had constructed up the sheer mountainside, and about a failure of the lift that had to carry its passengers from the huge, marble-faced hall cut inside the rock to the summit of the mountain, more than 150 feet above. But this was an important visit. Hitler wanted to impress Burckhardt with the dramatic view over the mountain tops, invoking the image of distant majesty, of the Dictator of Germany as lord of all he surveyed.
    He played every register in driving home to Burckhardt – and through him to the western powers – the modesty and reasonableness of his claims on Poland and the futility of western support. Almost speechless with rage, he denounced press suggestions that he had lost his nerve and been forced to give way over the issue of the Polish customs officers. His voice rising until he was shouting, he screamed his response to Polish ultimata: if the smallest incident should take place, he would smash the Poles without warning so that not a trace of Poland remained. If that meant general war, then so be it. Germany had to live from its own resources. That was the only issue; the rest nonsense. He accused Britain and France of interference in the reasonable proposals he had made to the Poles. Now the Poles had taken up a position that blocked anyagreement once and for all. His generals, hesitant the previous year, were this time raring to be let loose against the Poles.
    Burckhardt, as intended, rapidly passed on to the British and French governments the gist of his talks with Hitler. They drew no conclusions from the report other than to urge restraint on the Poles.
    While Hitler and Burckhardt were meeting at the ‘Eagle’s Nest’ on the Kehlstein, another meeting was taking place only a few miles away, in Ribbentrop’s newly acquired splendrous residence overlooking the lake in Fuschl, not far from Salzburg. Count Ciano, resplendent in uniform, was learning from the German Foreign Minister that the Italians had been deceived for months about Hitler’s intentions. The atmosphere was icy. Ribbentrop told Ciano that the ‘merciless destruction of Poland by Germany’ was inevitable. The conflict would not become a