These sentences apply as neatly both to the situation and the psychology of Hitler and Stalin: their restive desire for change, their gigantic dreams, and the bold stroke that brought them together in one of the most dramatic coups in history. The ideologies of both were marked by an acute sense of power politics. Hitler once said that “he was not among those who let historic moments pass by unused,” and the same was true of Stalin. Neither man was in the least disturbed by the expostulations of uncomprehending followers. The Moscow Pact threw the Communist parties of the world into one of those crises that consumed what was left of their influence. Similarly, on the morning of August 25 indignant followers of Hitler threw hundreds of swastika armbands over the fence of the Brown House in Munich.135
On the same day the Western military missions left Moscow. Subordinate Soviet generals saw them off. The day before, they had asked Marshal Voroshilov for a meeting, but Voroshilov later apologized, saying that he had been duck hunting.
From Hitler’s point of view, the conclusion of the Moscow Pact had paved the way for a quick, stunning victory over Poland. What followed was merely a mechanical procedure, “as when a fuse bums to the end.” In the interval he was concerned entirely with the effort to strengthen his alibi, to fend off any mediation, and to separate the Western powers from Poland even further than he had done so far so successfully. All the initiatives and final offers of the remaining week, all those sham negotiations to which so many vain hopes were attached, sprang from this triple aim.
Hitler’s address to the High Command on August 22 at Obersalzberg had already been dominated by these considerations. In the best of spirits, fully confident of success in Moscow, he reported on the situation and once more justified his unshakable determination to go to war. His own standing and authority, as well as the economic situation, required the conflict. “There is no other choice left to us; we must act.” Political considerations and the alliances also argued for a rapid decision: “In two or three years all these fortunate circumstances will no longer exist. No one knows how long I may live. Therefore conflict better now,” one of the jottings taken by a participant reads.136 Once more Hitler outlined why the Western powers would not seriously intervene:
The opponent still had the hope that Russia would come forth as an adversary after the conquest of Poland. The opponents have not reckoned with my great resoluteness. Our opponents are little worms. I saw them in Munich.
I was convinced that Stalin would never accept the English offer. Russia has no interest in the preservation of Poland. In connection with the trade treaty we arrived at the political dialogue. Proposal of a Nonaggression Pact. Then came a comprehensive proposal from Russia…. Now Poland is in the situation I wanted to have her.
We need have no fear of blockade. The East will supply us with grain, cattle, coal, lead, zinc. It is a great goal that demands a great commitment. My only fear is that at the last moment some Schweinehund will present me with a mediation plan.
In the second part of his address, held after a simple meal, Hitler seemed somewhat less certain about the attitude of the Western powers. “There can be no other outcome.” Consequently, “the most iron resolution” was requisite. “Shrink from nothing… life-and-death struggle.” This formula promptly transported him into one of his mythologizing moods in which history appeared before him as a bloody panorama filled with battles, victories, and downfalls. In the earlier part of his address he had referred to the “founding of Greater Germany” as “a great achievement,” but commented that it was “regrettable that it was achieved by a bluff on the part of the political leadership.” Now he declared:
A long period of peace would not be good for us…. Manly bearing. Not machines struggling with one another, but human beings. The qualitatively better man on our side. Spiritual factors decisive.
Annihilation of Poland in foreground. Goal is elimination of the vital forces, not the attainment of a specific line….
I shall provide the propagandistic pretext for launching the war, no matter whether it is credible. The victor is not asked afterward whether or not he has told the truth. What matters in beginning and waging the war is not righteousness, but victory.
Close heart to pity. Proceed brutally. Eighty million people must obtain what they have a right to. Their existence must be guaranteed. The stronger is in the right. Supreme hardness.
Hitler dismissed his generals by remarking that the order for commencing hostilities would be issued later, probably for Saturday morning, August 26. On the following day General Halder noted in his diary: “Y [Day] = Aug. 26 (Saturday) final—no further orders.”
This timetable, however, was once again upset. For although practically the entire framework of Western policy had collapsed as soon as the pact was signed, England led the way in demonstrating a stoic equanimity. Poland was as good as doomed, but the British cabinet dryly announced that the latest events had changed nothing. Military preparations were ostentatiously continued and increased. In a letter to Hitler Chamberlain warned against any doubts of the British determination to fight:
No greater mistake could be made…. It has been alleged that, if His Majesty’s Government had made their position more clear in 1914, the great catastrophe would have been avoided…. His Majesty’s Government are resolved that on this occasion there shall be no such tragic misunderstanding.137
The Prime Minister also made a statement to the House of Commons pitched in the same tone. England would not retreat an inch—unlike France, which kept up an air of resolution with considerable difficulty and whose press expressed its defeatist attitude in the question, “Mourir pour Dantzig?” Danzig was no more the issue for Chamberlain than for Hitler. For him, as for the French, it was “a far-away city in a foreign land.” No one was going to have to die for it. But now, when the Moscow Pact had shattered her whole policy, England recognized the things her people would have to fight and die for. The policy of appeasement had been partly based on and sustained by the bourgeois world’s fear of Communist revolution. In the script of English statesmen, Hitler was assigned the role of a militant defender of the bourgeois world. That was why they had endured all his slaps in the face, his provocations and outrages. But this was the only reason. By coming to an agreement with the Soviet Union, he indicated that he was not the opponent of revolution that he had pretended to be; he was no protector of the bourgeois order, no “General Wrangel of the world bourgeoisie.” Although the pact with Stalin was a masterpiece of diplomacy, it contained an inconspicuous flaw: it abrogated the premises on which Hitler and the West had carried on their dealings. Here was something that could not be glossed over, and with rare unanimity the British, including the stoutest spokesmen for appeasement, now showed their resolve to oppose him. Although Hitler had a deserved reputation for psychological acuity, it became clear in this decisive moment that, after all, he was the psychologist only of the exhausted, the resigned, the doomed. And he was far better able to estimate the moves of victims than of adversaries.