Word: hitlered
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...this point, even with fighting under way all along the Polish frontier, it was still conceivable that Hitler might once again achieve his goal without a major war. Italy's Benito Mussolini, who had promised to join Hitler's side in case of war, telephoned Berlin to say that he wished to remain neutral; Mussolini had been telling the British and French all that week that if they , would agree to a new four-power conference (much like the one at Munich that had carved up Czechoslovakia the previous year), he might be able to arrange some kind of compromise...
...next day, Saturday, Sept. 2, while the German tanks kept pressing forward, Hitler made no response. The British Cabinet met in the afternoon and decided that Hitler was stalling and that Britain and France should deliver an ultimatum to Berlin at midnight, to expire at 6 a.m. the following day. When Halifax proposed this to Paris, however, Bonnet said the French military commanders needed another 48 hours to mobilize...
Schmidt dutifully took the British ultimatum to Hitler's Chancellery, where he found the Fuhrer at his desk and the "unavailable" Ribbentrop standing at a nearby window. Schmidt translated the ultimatum aloud. "When I finished, there was complete silence," he recalled. "Hitler sat immobile, gazing before him. After an interval that seemed an age, he turned to Ribbentrop, who had remained standing by the window. 'What now?' asked Hitler with a savage look...
...noon on Sept. 3, Chamberlain rose in the Commons -- newly outfitted with blackout curtains -- and announced that his years of effort to appease Hitler had ended in failure. "This is a sad day for all of us, and to none is it sadder than to me," he said. "Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have believed in during my public life has crashed into ruins. There is only one thing left for me to do: that is to devote what strength and powers I have to forwarding the victory of the cause for which we have...
...Adolf Hitler left Berlin that same night to survey his armies' progress in Poland, and what he saw pleased him mightily. General Heinz Guderian, the tank commander who had already swept across the 50-mile-wide Polish Corridor, the once German area linking Poland to the Baltic Sea, took the Fuhrer on a tour of the newly conquered territory. Hitler was amazed at the low number of ! German casualties, only 150 killed and 700 wounded among four divisions; his own regiment had suffered 2,000 casualties during its first day of combat in World War I. And he was impressed...