Inferno - Max Hastings [11]
But many Germans echoed the sentiments of Fritz Muehlebach, a Nazi Party official: “I regarded England’s and France’s interference … as nothing but a formality … As soon as they realised the utter hopelessness of Polish resistance and the vast superiority of German arms they would begin to see that we had always been in the right and it was quite senseless to meddle … It was only as a result of something that wasn’t their business that the war had ever started. If Poland had been alone she would certainly have given in quietly.”
The Allied nations hoped that the mere gesture of declaring war would “call Hitler’s bluff,” precipitating his overthrow by his own people and a peace settlement without a catastrophic clash of arms in western Europe. Selfishness dominated the response of Britain and France to the unfolding Polish tragedy. France’s C-in-C, Gen. Maurice Gamelin, had told his British counterpart back in July: “We have every interest in the conflict beginning in the East and only generalising little by little. That way we shall enjoy the time we need to mobilise the totality of the Franco-British forces.” Tory MP Cuthbert Headlam wrote petulantly in his diary on 2 September that the Poles “have only themselves to blame for what is coming to them now.”
In Britain on 3 September, the air-raid alarm which sounded within minutes of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s broadcast announcement of war aroused mixed emotions. “Mother was very flustered,” wrote the nineteen-year-old London student J. R. Frier. “Several women in the neighbourhood fainted, and many ran into the road immediately. Some remarks—‘Don’t go into the shelter till you hear the guns fire’—‘The balloons aren’t even up yet’—‘The swine, he must have sent his planes over before the time limit was up.’ ” After the all-clear, “within minutes everyone was at their doors, talking quickly to each other in nervous voices. More talk about Hitler and revolutions in Germany … Most peculiar thing experienced today was desire for something to happen—to see aeroplanes coming over, and defences in action. I don’t really want to see bombs dropping and people killed, but somehow, as we are at war, I want it to buck up and start. At this rate, it will carry on for God knows how long.” Impatience about the likely duration of the struggle proved an abiding popular sentiment.
In remote African colonies, some young men fled into the bush on hearing that a war had started: they feared that their British rulers would repeat First World War practice by conscripting them for compulsory labour service—as indeed later happened. A Kenyan named Josiah Mariuki recorded “an ominous rumour that Hitler was coming to kill us all, and many people went fearfully down to the rivers and dug holes in the bank to hide from the troops.” The leaders of Britain’s armed forces recognised their unpreparedness for battle, but some young professional soldiers were sufficiently naïve merely to welcome the prospect of action and promotion. “The effect was one of exhilaration and excitement,” wrote John Lewis of the Cameronians. “Hitler was a ludicrous figure, and Pathé newsreels of goose-stepping German soldiers were a cause of hilarious merriment … They were pretty good at dive-bombing defenceless Spanish villages, but that was about all. Most of their tanks were dummies made of cardboard. We had beaten