6
Dec. 45
"The
Pope is unwilling to abandon hope that
pending negotiations may lead to a just
pacific solution, such as the whole
world continues to pray for."
I
think it is unnecessary to read the remainder of
that. If the Pope had realized that those
negotiations to which he referred as the "pending
negotiations" in the last days of August,
which we are about to deal with now, were
completely bogus negotiations, bogus insofar as
Germany was concerned, and put forward, as
indeed they were — and as I hope to
illustrate to the Tribunal in a moment —
simply as an endeavor to dissuade England either
by threat or by bribe from meeting her
obligations to Poland, then perhaps he would
have saved himself the trouble in ever
addressing that last appeal.
It will
be seen quite clearly that those final German
offers, to which I now turn, were no offers in
the accepted sense of the word at all; that
there was never any intention behind them of
entering into discussions, negotiation,
arbitration, or any other form of peaceful
settlement with Poland. They were just an
attempt to make it rather easier to seize and
conquer Poland than appeared likely if England
and France observed the obligations that they
had undertaken.
Perhaps I might,
before dealing with the documents, summarize in
a word those last negotiations.
On the
22d of August, as we have seen, the
German-Soviet Pact was signed. On the 24th of
August, orders were given to his armies to march
the following morning. After those orders had
been given, the news apparently reached the
German Government that the British and Polish
Governments had actually signed a formal pact of
non-aggression and of mutual assistance. Until
that time, it will be remembered, the position
was that the Prime Minister had made a statement
in the House and a joint communiqué had
been issued — I think on the 6th of April —
that they would in fact assist one another if
either were attacked, but no formal agreement
had been signed.
Now, on the 24th of
August after those orders had been given by him,
the news came that such a formal document had
been signed; and the invasion was postponed for
the sole purpose of making one last effort to
keep England and France out of the war —
not to end the war, not to cancel the war, but
to keep them out.
And to do that, on
the 25th of August, having postponed the
invasion, Hitler issued a verbal communiqué
to Sir Nevile Henderson which, as the Tribunal
will see, was a mixture of bribe and threat with
which he hoped to persuade England to keep out.
On the 28th of August Sir Nevile
Henderson handed the British Government's reply
to that communiqué to Hitler. That reply