The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1960

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-4

Part 2, Chapters 5-8

Part 3, Chapters 9-13

Part 3, Chapters 14-17

Part 4, Chapters 18-22

Part 4, Chapters 23-26

Part 5, Chapters 27-29

Part 6, Chapter 30-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 3, Chapters 14-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “The Road to War”

Chapter 14 Summary: “The Turn of Poland”

Shortly after wiping Czechoslovakia off the map, Hitler shifted his attention to Poland, Germany’s eastern neighbor. Through Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, Hitler made clear to the Polish government that Germany demanded the city of Danzig, as well as the right to build a railroad and superhighway through the Polish Corridor, which separated East Prussia from the Reich. Poland refused, setting the stage for Hitler’s next act of unprovoked aggression, which would trigger World War II.

Hitler’s invasion of Bohemia and Moravia on March 15 left Poland vulnerable to German armies from the west, north, and south. With the Soviet Union to the east, Poland suddenly found itself surrounded by historically hostile powers that were now controlled by totalitarian dictators. On March 23, 1939, Hitler’s forces seized the Lithuanian port city of Memel. Eight days later, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain—in a radical departure from his past behavior—guaranteed British and French support in the event of a German attack on Poland. On April 3, Hitler ordered his armed forces to prepare “Case White,” a plan to launch an invasion of Poland as early as September 1 (the date of the actual attack, as it turned out). Hence, from early April onward, Hitler was committed to a strategy that would destroy Poland, one way or another.

Before he could subdue Poland, Hitler had to neutralize the Soviet Union. For most of his public life, Hitler had railed against Soviet Bolshevism. Now, in the spring and summer of 1939, he softened his rhetoric in hopes of persuading Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin that Nazi Germany posed no threat to the USSR Berlin correctly surmised that Stalin’s May 3 appointment of Vyacheslav Molotov as Foreign Minister signaled a diplomatic move away from Britain and France. On the other side, Hitler’s May 22 “Pact of Steel” with Mussolini, which committed Italy and Germany to a military alliance, showed that Hitler was moving all his pieces into position.

One day later, on May 23, Hitler called his leading military commanders to a secret meeting at the Reich Chancellery, where he announced that war was inevitable, the Polish dispute had nothing to do with Danzig, his real objective was Lebensraum for the German people, the British were the primary impediment to his goals, and he would make war on Britain and France together if necessary. For the next three months, both Britain and Germany courted Soviet friendship. Meanwhile, the Italians grew nervous. At successive meetings with Ribbentrop and Hitler on August 11-13, Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, learned that the Nazis wanted war, not a peaceful settlement, and that Hitler still believed Britain and France would not fight.

Chapter 15 Summary: “The Nazi-Soviet Pact”

In the contest for Soviet assistance, Britain and France could offer only military alliance. Nazi Germany, however, could offer “to divide up Eastern Europe” with the Soviets (515). It was an offer Stalin could not refuse.

On August 14, Hitler once again convened his military commanders and treated them to a lecture on the coming war. In short, Poland must be defeated quickly. The SS already had set in motion plans to stage an incident on the Polish border that would justify “retaliation.” At another military conference on August 22, Hitler told his commanders to expect the order to attack within days.

Meanwhile, German and Soviet diplomats discussed a possible non-aggression pact. On August 21, Stalin informed Hitler by telegram that he would agree to receive Foreign Minister Ribbentrop in Moscow to conclude negotiations with Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov. British and French overtures toward the Soviet dictator had proved fruitless, in part because the Polish people would not consent to Soviet troops on Polish soil. On August 23, Ribbentrop and Molotov signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact. A secret protocol gave the Soviets territorial concessions in the Baltic States and in eastern Poland. Hitler now could go to war without fear of a (premature) conflict with the Soviet Union.

Chapter 16 Summary: “The Last Days of Peace”

In the days following the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact on August 23, Hitler continued to hope that Britain would allow him a free hand in the east. Having neutralized the Soviets, the Fuehrer gave the order to attack Poland early in the morning of August 26, but news of an updated and strengthened Anglo-Polish treaty reached Berlin early in the evening of the 25th, causing Hitler to postpone the attack. As it turned out, the postponement gave Europe another six days of peace.

Meanwhile, Mussolini wavered. The Italian dictator had tried for years to warn Hitler that Italy was not ready for a broader European war and likely would not be so until 1942 or 1943. The anti-Hitlerites inside Germany, the so-called “conspirators,” were elated when Hitler gave the order to stop the August 26 attack, for they believed it meant the end of the Fuehrer. In truth, however, Hitler merely bought himself time for last-minute negotiations in an effort to keep Britain neutral. Diplomats, both official and unofficial, passed between London and Berlin during the last week of August, but to no avail. Hitler wanted war. He simply wanted to pin the blame for the coming conflict on Poland and thereby persuade the British that they should not intervene. He even went so far as to broadcast phony peace proposals, which hoodwinked the German public but were never presented either to the British or the Polish. On the afternoon of August 31, Hitler gave the order to attack Poland at 4:45am the following morning.

Chapter 17 Summary: “The Launching of World War II”

On September 1, 1939, German forces invaded Poland. Shirer recalls that the German people appeared to greet the news with a combination of bewilderment and apathy. The SS staged a phony Polish attack on German soil, and Goebbels’s propaganda machine worked overtime to shift the blame onto the victims. On the ground and in the air, the German assault was relentless—unlike anything the world had seen up to that time. The British did not declare war on September 1, but they did insist that German forces must be immediately withdrawn from Polish soil to avoid a world war. Italian and French diplomats tried to forestall the inevitable, but Hitler paid them little notice. At noon on Sunday, September 3, Shirer stood in front of the Reich Chancellery as loudspeakers informed the people of Berlin that Great Britain had declared war on Germany. After the announcement, “there was not a murmur” (615). A French declaration of war followed. At 9:00pm that evening, a German U-boat sank a British passenger liner, killing 112 people, including 28 Americans.

Part 3, Chapters 14-17 Analysis

Chapters 14-17 explain the consequences of events described in Chapters 9-13 while introducing new elements into the narrative, including the Nazi-Soviet rapprochement and Hitler’s struggles to understand the British, who were finally beginning to understand him.

After Hitler’s move to occupy Czechoslovakia, the West was no longer credulous, but it was decidedly weakened. Indeed, Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler at Munich in September 1938 helped shape the disastrous events of 1939. After Hitler broke the Munich Agreement, Chamberlain and the British realized that they had been duped and immediately drew a line in the sand when Hitler began to threaten Poland. Shirer recalls that in Berlin on the weekend of March 31-April 2, 1939, Chamberlain’s “unilateral guarantee of Poland seemed incomprehensible” in light of recent British behavior (465). This signals a new development in the narrative: German befuddlement at Britain’s determination to fight, particularly in defense of another country.

The confusion of 1939 reached all the way to Moscow. While Hitler courted the Soviets, whose complicity he needed in the coming war on Poland, Stalin and Molotov still had good reason to believe that “Chamberlain still did not take very seriously the business of building an alliance to stop Hitler” (496). Furthermore, after the West’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia, Stalin was “intensely skeptical” about Britain’s commitment to Poland and did not want to face Hitler’s armies alone (543). Meanwhile, although Hitler regarded Bolshevism as one of the world’s great evils, he nonetheless skillfully highlighted the Germans’ and Soviets’ shared antipathy toward capitalism and democracy. It also underlines the theme of Hitler as An Evil Genius and a Demonic Dictator by providing yet another illustration of Hitler’s willingness to bend his morals to achieve an improved political position and take advantage of a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” frame of mind.

In the days preceding the attack on Poland, it is clear that the British behavior both concerned and perplexed Hitler. He could not figure out their motives, nor could he account for their about-face since Munich. He seems to have believed that the British government would abandon Poland in the same way it had abandoned Czechoslovakia. After all, if they would not die for the Czech, why would they die for the Polish? According to the Foreign Office Records, on September 3, when the translator read the British declaration of war on Germany, Hitler turned to Ribbentrop and asked, “What now?” (613)