Hitler

general one. Were Britain and France to intervene, they would be doomed to defeat. But his information ‘and above all his
psychological knowledge
’ of Britain, he insisted, made him rule out any intervention. Ciano found him unreasoning and obstinate: ‘The decision to fight is implacable. He [Ribbentrop] rejects any solution which might give satisfaction to Germany and avoid the struggle.’
    The impression was reinforced when Ciano visited the Berghof next day. Hitler was convinced that the conflict would be localized, that Britain and France, whatever noises they were making, would not go to war. It would be necessary one day to fight the western democracies. But he thought it ‘out of the question that this struggle can begin now’. Ciano noted: ‘He has decided to strike, and strike he will.’
    Important news came through for Hitler at the very time that he was underlining to the disenchanted Ciano his determination to attack Poland no later than the end of August: the Russians were prepared to begin talks in Moscow, including the position of Poland. A beaming Ribbentrop took the telephone call at the Berghof. Hitler was summoned from the meeting with Ciano, and rejoined it in high spirits to report the breakthrough. The way was now open.
    A flurry of diplomatic activity – Ribbentrop pressing with maximum urgency for the earliest possible agreement, Molotov cannily prevaricating until it was evident that Soviet interest in the Anglo-French mission was dead – unfolded during the following days. The text of a trade treaty, under which German manufactured goods worth 200 million Reich Marks would be exchanged each year for an equivalent amountof Soviet raw materials, was agreed. Finally, on the evening of 19 August, the chattering teleprinter gave Hitler and Ribbentrop, waiting anxiously at the Berghof, the news they wanted: Stalin was willing to sign a non-aggression pact without delay.
    Only the proposed date of Ribbentrop’s visit – 26 August – posed serious problems. It was the date Hitler had set for the invasion of Poland. Hitler could not wait that long. On 20 August, he decided to intervene personally. He telegraphed a message to Stalin, via the German Embassy in Moscow, requesting the reception of Ribbentrop, armed with full powers to sign a pact, on the 22nd or 23rd. Hitler’s intervention made a difference. But once more Stalin and Molotov made Hitler sweat it out. The tension at the Berghof was almost unbearable. It was more than twenty-four hours later, on the evening of 21 August, before the message came through. Stalin had agreed. Ribbentrop was expected in Moscow in two days’ time, on 23 August. Hitler slapped himself on the knee in delight. Champagne all round was ordered – though Hitler did not touch any. ‘That will really land them in the soup,’ he declared, referring to the western powers.
    ‘We’re on top again. Now we can sleep more easily,’ recorded a delighted Goebbels. ‘The question of Bolshevism is for the moment of secondary importance,’ he later added, saying that was the Führer’s view, too. ‘We’re in need and eat then like the devil eats flies.’ Abroad, Goebbels remarked, the announcement of the imminent non-aggression pact was ‘the great world sensation’. But the response was not that which Hitler and Ribbentrop had hoped for. The Poles’ fatalistic reaction was that the pact would change nothing. In Paris, where the news of the Soviet-German pact hit especially hard, the French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, fearing a German-Soviet entente against Poland, pondered whether it was now better to press the Poles into compromise with Hitler in order to win time for France to prepare its defences. But eventually, after dithering for two days, the French government agreed that France would remain true to its obligations. The British cabinet, meeting on the afternoon of 22 August, was unmoved by the dramatic news, even if MPs were asking searching questions about the failure of British intelligence. The Foreign Secretary coolly, if absurdly, dismissed the pact as perhaps of not very great importance. Instructions went out to embassies that Britain’s obligations to Poland remained unaltered. Sir Nevile Henderson’s suggestion of a personal letter from the PrimeMinister to Hitler, warning him of Britain’s determination to stick by Poland, was taken up.
    Meanwhile, in excellent mood on account of his latest triumph, Hitler prepared, on the