6
Dec. 45
stressed
that the difference ought to be settled by
agreement. The British Government put forward
the view that Danzig should be guaranteed and,
indeed, any agreement come to should be
guaranteed by other powers, which, of course, in
any event would have been quite unacceptable to
the German Reich.
As I say, one really
need not consider what would have been
acceptable and not acceptable because once it
had been made clear — as indeed it was in
that British Government's reply of the 28th of
August — that England would not be put off
assisting Poland in the event of German
aggression, the German Government really had no
concern with further negotiation but were
concerned only to afford themselves some kind of
justification and to prevent themselves
appearing too blatantly to turn down all the
appeals to reason that were being put forward.
On the 29th of August, in the evening
at 7:15, Hitler handed to Sir Nevile Henderson
the German Government's answer to the British
Government's reply of the 28th. And here again
in this document it is quite clear that the
whole object of it was to put forward something
which was quite unacceptable. He agrees to enter
into direct conversations as suggested by the
British Government, but he demands that those
conversations must be based upon the return of
Danzig to the Reich and also of the whole of the
Corridor.
It will be remembered that
hitherto, even when he alleged that Poland had
renounced the 1934 agreement, even then he had
put forward as his demands the return of Danzig
alone and the arrangement for an
extra-territorial Autobahn and railroad running
through the Corridor to East Prussia. That was
unacceptable then. To make quite certain, he now
demands the whole of the Corridor; no question
of an Autobahn or railway. The whole thing must
become German.
Even so, even to make
doubly certain that the offer would not be
accepted, he says:
".
. . on those terms I am prepared to
enter into discussion; but to do so, as
the matter is urgent, I expect a
plenipotentiary with full powers from
the Polish Government to be here in
Berlin by Wednesday, the 30th of August
1939."
This
offer was made at 7:15 p.m. on the evening of
the 29th. That offer had to be transmitted first
to London, and from London to Warsaw; and from
Warsaw the Polish Government had to give
authority to their Ambassador in Berlin. So that
the timing made it quite impossible to get
authority to their Ambassador in Berlin by
midnight the following night. It allowed them no
kind of opportunity for discussing the matters
at all. As Sir Nevile Henderson described it,
the offer amounted to an ultimatum.