Word: ultimatums
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...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...
...worried Chamberlain telephoned French Premier Edouard Daladier and said Britain could not wait 48 hours; Daladier said it must. Halifax called Bonnet and proposed that an ultimatum be delivered at 8 a.m. Sunday, to expire at noon. Bonnet insisted on no ultimatum before noon. Halifax said the House was meeting at noon, and any further delay would mean the downfall of the government. He said that if necessary, Britain would "act on its own." When the Cabinet asked Chamberlain to pledge no further compromises, he said, "Right, gentlemen. This means war." As he spoke, one witness recalled, "there...
Halifax cabled Ambassador Nevile Henderson in Berlin and told him to deliver an ultimatum to Ribbentrop at 9 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 3. Ribbentrop scornfully let it be known that he would not be "available" but that Henderson could deliver his message to the departmental interpreter, Paul Schmidt. As it happened, Schmidt overslept that morning, arrived by taxi to see Henderson already climbing the steps of the Foreign Ministry, and slipped in a side door just in time to receive him at 9. Henderson stood and read aloud his message, declaring that unless Britain were assured...
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...
What should the U.S. do? There is an instinctive longing for the bravado of 1904, when President Theodore Roosevelt was faced with the kidnaping of an American, Ion Perdicaris, by a Moroccan bandit named Ahmed Raisuli. Legend has it that Roosevelt pronounced a famous ultimatum: "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead." (It is less well remembered that Perdicaris was freed only after the Moroccan government paid ransom.) But a poll conducted last Thursday for TIME/ CNN by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman indicates substantial public recognition that a big stick may not be the answer to an explosive and delicate situation. Among those...