World War II Day by Day

Warsaw, Poland • August 30, 1939

After his sudden decision on Friday, August 25, 1939, to cancel his inva­sion of Poland, Adolf Hitler ordered prep­a­ra­tions for a second planned inva­sion of his neigh­bor to the east. From the Army’s Quarter­master General he learned that the ear­liest date on which mobi­li­za­tion could be com­pleted was Thurs­day, August 31. There­fore, he set Friday, Septem­ber 1, as the new launch date. Between those 2 Fridays, Hitler and his for­eign minis­ter, Joachim von Rib­ben­trop, used every oc­ca­sion to reas­sure their inner circles that Great Britain and France would not come to Poland’s aid in the event of war, even though all 3 nations were in, or soon would be in as in the case of France, a mili­tary alli­ance with Poland. Hitler’s fatal mis­cal­cu­la­tion was due in part to his per­verse and reck­less faith in force of arms and to Ribben­trop’s repeated assur­ances that neither Britain nor France was in a posi­tion to wage war against Germany, that the 2 nations were only bluffing in order to frighten Hitler out of his plans to attack Poland.

During those days of peace Hitler continued his diplo­matic press of iso­lating Poland from its West­ern backers. The German offer to meet a Polish pleni­po­ten­tiary in Berlin to resolve the German-Polish dis­pute over the fate of the eth­nic German enclave of Danzig and the ethnic German minor­ity living in the Polish Cor­ri­dor was rejected by the Poles. (Both popu­la­tions had formerly been part of West Prussia and the Impe­rial German pro­vince of Posen (Polish, Poznań) but now were cut off from the Reich by the 1919 Treaty of Ver­sailles.) The Poles saw through Hitler’s attempt to over­awe the Polish dele­gation in the German capi­tal, so the Polish Foreign Office recom­mended a meeting, per­haps in a rail­way car, in a small town some­where near the Polish-German border. The next day, Wednes­day, August 30, the Polish ambas­sador, Jóżef Lipski, was shown the door by Ribben­trop for arriving at his office with­out the requi­site pleni­po­ten­tiary credentials required to negotiate terms.

Ribbentrop, a former German ambassador to London who had alienated much of the British popu­lace with his arro­gance, treated Britain’s ambas­sador, Sir Nevile Hen­der­son, worse. The 2 men came close to blows when Hen­der­son, crim­son faced, hands shaking, finger wag­ging, real­ized that his coun­try had been duped all week long as Rib­ben­trop read aloud, in an angry and scorn­ful voice Hen­der­son recalled, a new list of demands on Poland but refused the ambas­sa­dor’s request to for­ward it to London or even Warsaw. (The Polish embassy and govern­ment were never pre­sented with the latest German demands for new pleb­i­scites on the future of the Polish Cor­ri­dor and of the former German terri­tories in Western Poland, which at roughly 12 per­cent of Polish terri­tory and over 3 mil­lion people, clearly had the poten­tial to break up the Polish state.) Hender­son left the tense meeting con­vinced that the last hope for peace had vanished.

In Warsaw, on this same date in 1939, Polish autho­rities announced a gen­eral mobi­li­za­tion when it became clear that gen­u­ine dia­log with Germany was point­less. The see-saw week of diplo­ma­tic highs and lows had cost the Polish Army valu­able time in pre­paring for the over­due German inva­sion of their country, which occurred on Friday, September 1.

Polish and British Ambassadors Who Sought a Peaceful End to the Polish Crisis

Left: Ambassador Jóżef Lipski, Polish diplo­mat in Germany, 1933–1939. Poland’s foreign minis­ter, Jóżef Beck, selected Lipski to nego­ti­ate for Poland during the week running up to the inva­sion of that coun­try. Lipski was not the Polish pleni­po­ten­ti­ary German For­eign Minis­ter Joachim von Rib­ben­trop had demanded to meet with on August 30, 1939. The Poles were dead set against nego­ti­ating a solu­tion to the Polish crisis while meeting in the lion’s den; instead, they sent Ambas­sador Lipski, who lacked the requi­site cre­dentials, to feel out the Germans.

Right: Sir Nevile Henderson, British ambassador to Germany from 1937 to 1939, believed Hitler could be mani­pu­lated into embracing peace and cooper­a­tion with the West­ern powers. An hour-long, face-to-face meeting on August 28, 1939, between Hender­son and Hitler was “unsat­is­factory” in the opin­ion of Otto Diet­rich, Hitler’s press chief, who specu­lated that the British diplo­mat had reit­er­ated His Majesty’s Govern­ment’s pledge to fulfill its obli­ga­tion toward Poland. On the fate­ful night of August 30, 1939, Rib­ben­trop pre­sented Hen­der­son with Germany’s “final offer” at resolving the Polish crisis, warning him that if Germany received no reply by dawn the ”final offer” would be con­sidered rejected. Several days later it was Hen­der­son who, on the morning of Septem­ber 3, 1939, 2 days after the German inva­sion of Poland, delivered the British ulti­ma­tum to Hitler, declaring that if hostil­i­ties between Germany and Poland did not cease by 11 a.m. that day a state of war would exist between the 2 coun­tries. Germany did not respond and British Prime Minis­ter Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany at 11:15 a.m.

U.S. War Department Uses German News Coverage to Document the Invasion of Poland